Hey, lookie there a new post

Yes, that's right a new post. This past week I had to go and recall a rogue furnace. So on Thursday night I loaded up the wife and kids and headed to Canada! eh. Let me tell you though, it may look alot like the States, but you start talking to the people and buying their crappy groceries and you find right away that you aren't in Kansas any more toto! What a bunch of cheap people. Of course, now I know why. The cost of food in Canada is astronomical. I would say it is half again the cost of the same product here. And gas is just crazy. 134.9 a liter. which comes out to 5.12 a gallon. Of course, we aren't to far there. The coolest thing of this trip was I got to take my wife and children and we stopped at the Grand Coulee Dam. Man, is that thing big! We got to take a tour inside the 3rd power plant. Which was started in 1967 and finished in 1980. It has 6 generators and puts out more energy than the Hoover dam. Here are some pics.

This is the back side of Power Plant 3. it has 6 turbine generators. The water is low right now.

If you look on the right, you can see the black mark going horizontally across the rock. That is the normal water level for the resevoir. The reason that the water was down so far is not because of a drought, but quite the opposite. We haved had so much snow that they have to lower the resevoir down that far to accomodate the Snow melt run off. The resevoir is rising at 3 ft a day! That is alot of water!

Here we are at the top of the dam, getting ready to take a ride down in the vertical elevator. It is a big elevator that holds 28 people with a big glass front for you to look out as you go down and up.

This is the view looking back up out of the little hole at the bottom of the dam. Looking back up to where we came from. Pretty cool!

Here we are in the bowels of the dam. This is a picture of the top of 3 of the turbines. The floor was so clean. It looked like they polished the floors!

This was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. That shaft was spinning so fast. It is the stainless shaft of the turbine. Kinda loud in there too. It was huge, looked like something out of a science fiction movie!

Here is the original Dam that was built during the depression and finished after WWII. In the foreground is the 2nd power plant, and the #1 power plant is on the far side there. With the Spillway in the middle. During the summer from Memorial day to Labor day they put a laser show on the face of the dam and spillway. When the water is coming over the spillway the laser show is awesome. There is enough concrete in the whole dam to make a 4 foot wide side walk around the world almost twice!!

Here we are walking back to our cars. This is on top of the part of the dam that has the 3rd plant in it. The crane is used to pick up the grates that go in front of the pick ups for the turbines. They pick them up with that crane and then sand blast them over by the edge there near the crane! Pretty big grates to need a crane that big! Wow! It was so much fun to go through this Dam. Amazing American Inginuity!

Funny Friday!!

In celebration of the idiotic trantrums thrown by mexicans yesterday and for Cinco De Mayo I give you this joke:

A Russian arrives in New York City as a new immigrant to the United States .
He stops the first person he sees walking down the street and says, 'Thank you Mr. American for letting me in this country , giving me housing, food stamps, free medical care, and free education!'
The passerby says, 'You are mistaken, I am Mexican.'
The man goes on and encounters another passerby. ' Thank you for having such a beautiful country here in America !'
The person says, 'I not American, I Vietnamese.'
The new arrival walks further, and the next person he sees he stops, shakes his hand and says, 'Thank you for the wonderful America!'
That person puts up his hand and says, 'I am from Middle East , I am not American!'
He finally sees a nice lady and asks, 'Are you an American?'
She says , 'No, I am from Africa !'
Puzzled, he asks her, 'Where are all the Americans?'

The African lady checks her watch and says...'Probably at work!'

This would really be funny if it wasn't so true!!