Just
chillin' in the wind
11
January 03: We
took a ride up to Lockport and Middleport for our monthly check
on the Erie Canal. The day was partly sunny and terribly cold
because of the wind chill. The promise of a week of steady snow
showers never made it past the forecast stage, and a bit of
rain on Wednesday and a bit of above-freezing temperatures left
us with barely a coating of snow in Buffalo and not enough out
in the country to warrant using the snowshoes this time around.
After
skulking about on the Internet, I have decided that my
mother-in-law
is bang-on about the red berries on the bare trees being fruits
of the mountain
ash -- or rowan
tree to those of youon the other side of
the Big Pond. I took some closeup shots of the berries, and
I believe them to be from another planet ...
they have an other-worldly quality -- but am also convinced
that they are linked to our mountain ash, too... .
In
another bit of on-going confusion, I feel that I finally can
do a bit more than just guess at why the Guard Gate on the canal
at Middleport is not all the way down: The Guard Gate is there
to go into use as an emergency dam if there were to be a washout
or some such problem in the canal levee. Many creeks cross the
path of the canal as they flow north to Lake Ontario.The Guard
Gate would be lowered to keep the water loss more localized
and to make repairs possible sooner by holding back water upstream.
A faithful visitor to the website emailed me a question about
the reason for Guard Gates a month ago and more. I've been thinking
about it a lot without any success until this morning. I was
reading he latest issue of Messing
About in Boats. There is an article on the Trent
Severn Waterway in Ontario near Toronto. The article included
a picture of a Guard Gate that the author, a retired lock operator
who goes by the moniker of Mississippi Bob, said was designed
to close even while water was streaming through. That is the
piece of the puzzle that had been eluding me. Guard Gates guard
against disasters. I think that the Middleport gateis the upstream
barrier to problems or maintenance on the spot where Oak Orchard
Creek, a mighty stream, crosses under the canal at Medina, about
4 miles away..
On
the way there, we noticed a lot of escaped ice on the Niagara
River at the foot of Ontario Street, and on the way back I took
a few shots. With my old camera the birds would have been specks;
with the new camera the birds on the river at least look birdlike
in the shots that I took today.
| Mountain
ash berries on a tree in Lockport. Shot taken looking up. |
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| Erie
Canal near the Middleport Lanuch Ramp. |
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| Middleport
Guard Gate. It was so cold that I couldn't feel the camera
shutter after five minutes in the wind. |
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| Ducks
and ice in the Niagara River near the foot of Ontario Street
just downstream from the Lock at Goat Island. New camera,
a Fuji FinePix 3800, has a 6X zoom. |
 |
| Ice,
gulls, and Strawberry Island. I took these shots while sitting
in the car. |
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