The Maxson Homepage on the WWW
Today, we went to Battle which is where the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. Interestingly, I always thought that 1066 was the year the English kicked out the French (the Normans). However, it turns out it was exactly the opposite. That was the battle where the French got their foothold on Great Britain Island. Here’s some pictures (and here are even more on flickr)
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A big row here in the UK is whether or not to allow London’s Heathrow airport to build a third runway or not. The airport argues that they need to add the runway to keep pace with the demands of the world (Heathrow is currently at 95+% capacity). People around the airport say it is a bad idea (either because they’ll loose their homes, don’t want the increase of the airport’s carbon footprint, etc….). Some support building yet another airport around London (there’s already 4 major ones and several other smaller ones).
Yesterday, Prime Minister Cameron announced that he was shuffling government ministers around. Everyone thinks this is a run-up to the UK Government announcing they plan to back the 3rd runway at Heathrow.
Now, the point of this post isn’t to back the runway or not. All of this talk got me wondering what it would look like. So, I went looking. I ended up and found the image at the beginning of this post and an article at the BBC showing the plans. When I saw this, it wasn’t what I was expecting. I guess I was thinking they would build parallel to the existing runways–prevailing winds–but I thought it would be connected to the rest of the airport. Heck, it doesn’t look like you could even taxi to to (if you would even want to). it also looks significantly shorter than the existing runways. I guess they are thinking they could off-load local flights to that runway and free up slots on the longer runways for long-haul flights.
Now, I’m not real sure what I think. I was originally thinking it would be tied to the other parts of the airport and could be used by everyone. That isn’t what this is. It is more like a small airport built “hanging off” Heathrow. But, I don’t think another airport is the answer. I remember my dad talking about not liking flying into JFK or Newark because of the crowding of the airspace. I can’t imagine having yet another airport around London. I also remember him talking about Atlanta (or Dallas) and having to “drive” the airplane 10 miles before takeoff.
Currently, there are some funny–well, I think they are–rules in place. Like they only operate off of one runway at a time then switch at 1500 to give people under the approach and departure plans a rest. They also use one runway for takeoffs and one for departures. I wonder what would happen if they did away with that rule and doubled up: use both runways for takeoffs and landings. I’m not sure about things like separation, etc (so this might actually cause a decrease in efficiency).
Last Friday (3 Aug) we decided to go to the beach. Here’s a few pictures:
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Since we were at the race, I tried to tape it to watch later. The only showing I found was at 12:30 Saturday morning and was 2 hours long (on British Eurosport). I thought it might end up and be a highlight show, but it was the last 2 hours of the race. So, we saw the last loop around Box Hill (there were 9 total). Anyway, when they went by where we were, you could see us on the sides of the road.
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| Cyndi. She’s leaning over to take a picture. | I’m kneeling down right at the guy’s back |
[Update 2012-07-30 06:54:37] Here are links to my other posts with featured pictures from the race:
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Complete Pics of the 2012 London Olympics Men’s Road Race
Yesterday, we went to watch the men’s road race at the 2012 London Olympics. We picked a spot at the top of Box Hill and went. All of our pictures can be found here; however, I wanted to highlight just a few of the images.
We used to live in Serbia (and it still has a special place in our heart). I wondered if they had any riders in the olympics this year when we saw this:
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Hajde!
After the race, I found out there were actually 2 Serbs in the race. It made me wish I had taken my Serb flag to cheer them on.
[Update 2012-07-29 16:18:07] Here are links to my other posts with featured pictures from the race:
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Complete Pics of the 2012 London Olympics Men’s Road Race
