“We have a double shear and double pin on this joint here (pointing to the paper) and that makes for the bearing stress point,” (or the conversation went something like that…anyway..) said the one guy.
The other guy chimes in….“You know what would be a good example of double stress?”
“What?”
“A pogo stick.”
“What is THAT?”
“Oh, you know….bouncy, bouncy, bouncy.”
Take the train south of Barcelona and you will follow the sea for a couple hours. You can see the waves breaking on the Mediterranean shore. The small towns crowded around the sea. And you will see the condos, hotels, vacation homes and McDonalds all of which no doubt are fed from the metropolis of Barcelona just up the shore from this vacation wonderland. It is still winter around here. Jacket weather, not cold. And the shore and water does look a lot like Florida. It is very flat. But inland you can see the land gently slope upwards and as we travel south it begins to become mountainous.
We pass places with names like “Valencia” and the countryside is surrounded with fruit trees in all directions. Haven’t a clue what the trees might hold though. We travel onward and the place begins to look more like Arizona with its dry mountain peaks surrounding a very dry landscape. Finally about 3 pm we pull into a town and the train sits. I surmise that the train crew is changing and I’m right. But then about 3:30 we pull out of the station heading in the same direction from which we came.
Back in my college days, I spent five summers working for the B&O Railroad and at that moment I was able to put all my years of experience into action. My razor-sharp mind, with its railroading skills still honed to a fine edge could confidently say to my not-so-easily impressed daughter. “We are heading backwards right now.”
And though she was in awe of my perception she managed a lame, “It would appear so.”
An hour later when it was clear we were now heading south and not NE back to Barcelona it was evident that we had done some sort of “shunting” and been moved over to a different track for our journey. I was hoping that the railroading terminology would distract Makaila and she wouldn’t ask the obvious question…which she eventually did, “How come you didn’t know we were now headed SW and not NE?”
I told her, “I worked with freight trains, not passenger trains and that is a whole ‘nother ballgame.”
I think she bought that.
In Turkey we ate olives. Lots of olives. We visited Ephesus and the owner of the hotel grew and served his own olives. Greece…olives. Italy….more olives. On the train yesterday, one of the snack options was a beer and olives. Very nice, I tasted both, for a cultural experience, mind you. But then we got into the mountains of Spain and it’s olives on overdrive. We rode for three hours in the mountains and all there were on each side of us and as far as the eye could see…olive trees. No regular trees. Just olive trees. Every portion of the hills and mountains where a tractor and human could remain upright had a grove of olive trees. Do the cooks of the world really use that much olive oil? Are martini’s that popular that most of Spain is blanketed in olive groves? Must be. It was quite a sight. The mountains themselves, where there were not olive trees had a dusting of snow capped peaks.
One of the best train trips I have ever taken. The sun was brilliant and as we wound our way south the light changed in ways hard to describe but was always breath taking. Near the end of our journey in Granada the entire landscape glowed with red as we pulled into the region.
Our plan is to see the Alhambra. If you want a preview, Google it. If not, I’m sure I’ll share more with you tomorrow. A final note, we are in the south of Spain and so they speak the type of Spanish which I studied in high school and college. It doesn’t mean I will understand it any better than Catalonian Spanish but at least I will be familiar with its unfamiliarity. I should feel right at home around here.
Peace, Bob
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