joe shaw

A bunch of people have sent me emails asking what “doubly landlocked” means. It’s a country that is surrounded by landlocked countries. Stop emailing me about it.

Thanksgiving in Ohio with the family last week. Um, lets just say that I’ve had better ones. But on Friday I went with my folks to downtown Kent to check out the new park by the river, take some photos, and get some lunch at the bar they used to own.

thanksgiving 2003

thanksgiving 2004

The river used to run over the dam, where the grass is now. On the near side, where the water runs through now were the locks for the old canal.

river, railroad, railroad, mill

The entire reason why they did this was twofold: the city of Akron’s water supply is a huge lake upriver. They decided to stop letting so much water flow down the river, and the Ohio EPA told Kent they had to take out the dam because the waterflow wasn’t sufficient. But the dam is from the canal days in Kent and one of only two arched dams in the country. So the compromise they worked out was to keep the dam but take out the locks, which is too bad, but they weren’t usable anyway.

This dog was just sitting there, watching us, not moving the slightest bit as we walked by to get lunch. So I took my camera out, approached it, and took a couple photos. He didn’t move an inch the whole time.

Later, Jacob and I went to a Barons game. On the way there I got hopelessly lost in and around Cleveland Heights. Mapquest sucks, I need a GPS.

sunrise over albany

My flight home was at 7 am, which meant I had to wake up at 5 am. Being a total zombie, I vegged around the house all day after I got back. My mom made a little Thanksgiving leftover package for me, and I had some turkey around 1 pm or so and passed out on the couch until 4:30. Around 9 or 10 I had dinner (more turkey) and ended up passing out until 6 am, at which point I dragged myself to bed. Man, I love turkey and stuffing.