Eaglefest 2007

Steven, Sean, and Matt just got their Eagle Scout award at a joint Court of Honor on Sept. 29th. I had to be out of town, so I'm glad we got some great pictures. Nice job guys!


Earlier we had the "Flight of the Eagle", and here we have the "Bite of the Eagle". That would be kind of a cool scar to show off . . .


No Eagle is an Eagle without a lot of help from Mom. Nice job to you too, Diana and Bonnie!

Fort Columbia, October 17, 2007 (part 3)

Our tour concluded in the old barracks. The men who fired the big guns were elite in their day, and they had their own barbershop. Sweet! I guess it gave them something to do when they weren't fighting their worst enemy (which was boredom, Roben told us).


Thanks to Frank for having the presence of mind to bring a camera and capture this surreal supernatural image. Hey Mike, see any ghosts? Veeeerrrrry strange indeed.


Well, for a heavily photoshopped image taken from 20 or 30 feet away in a dim room and cropped a ton, this looks pretty good.


Another item posted on the wall in the barracks. Nowadays, I wonder if they'd still post such a thing in a US military building. Pretty cool, but pretty un-politically correct, I'd say. JJ would approve, I'm sure.

Fort Columbia, October 17, 2007 (part 2)

It was a dark and stormy night . . . Roben was brave enough to bring some vintage maps to show us.


JJ! Duck!


Well, if you can zoom on this, it's pretty interesting. It's a prime example of government "efficiency", showing that a battery was built some 50 years before the guns were finally installed.


Roben had lots of keys to get us into cool places, like the Fort's jail!

Fort Columbia (part 1)

October 17, 2007

This is Roben and he gave us the tour at Fort Columbia. It was really cool, largely because his genuine enthusiasm for the history of the Fort made following him around fun and interesting.


They heard we were coming and had the ambulance ready. (I seriously have no idea why it was there)


Thomas is standing behind a passage that was likely used to pass the gunpowder out from its storage area so it could be loaded into the shells before . . .


. . . they were hoisted up to the gun. You can see the hoist hole right above Roben's hand, and the overhead track was a system they moved the shells with. The hoist mechanism was designed by the same guy who did the Panama Canal.