On Sat, 29 Sep 2001, Nick Arnett wrote:
> I'm thinking this should start a thread of fascinating vacation
> opportunities here in the land of the free and home of the brave.
>
> Here's my contribution. We once drove five hours with a guy who told
> us the voltage of every transmission line we passed, based on counting
> the number of insulators. This consisted of many phrases like "Wow,
> 10 insulators, 50,000 volts!"
I haven't experienced this directly, but my father-in-law is an electrical
engineer specializing in microwave communications, and on many a
cross-country trip would point out microwave towers whenever the car
passed one. So by the time his sons got to college, they knew a microwave
tower when they saw one.
When I took a couple of long roadtrips with my husband, he pointed out a
few microwave towers for me, and I got to be good at spotting them myself.
I still haven't been subjected to the full treatment (the longest trip
I've taken with my father-in-law was from Austin to San Antonio), though.
My own parents just subjected me to the more scenic roads, letting me take
or leave the scenery (I missed a lot of the Skyline Drive when I was seven
because I found my book a lot more interesting), and when I was older,
battlefields. I'm not sure which war the Battle of Guilford Courthouse
was, but it was pretty when we visited it, and it must be not too far from
Greensboro, NC because we were visiting my uncle there when we made the
short trek to it. (Gettysburg I remember a lot better. There was a lot
of honeysuckle blooming at Gettysburg when we went there. Amazing how
pretty a battle site can be years after the fact of the battle.)
Julia
