Conference Presentation

I have just presented our paper to the Western Regional Science meeting in Santa Barbara. It was fun and went well, even though the subject was ostensibly dry - namely, the elasticities in supply for residential accommodation in Adelaide, 2000 - 2012!

It's been a glorious day, so I'll head out for another walk prior to the President's reception.

AS

A Walk Along the Foreshores

Having been quiet for a little while I think it wise to confirm I'm still alive, though I've shifted location. Right now I'm Santa Barbara a little north of Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast and I'm here for a conference of the Western Regional Science Association, of which I'm a member, beginning two hours from now and for the happy event some of you will have heard about a few days ago. That was the arrival of Flynn Sorensen Castle in Mountain View, California - about 450 km up the road up highway 101. Rather serendipitous don't you think.

Anyway, I arrived here two days ago thanks to my colleague Ralph McLaughlin who works at San Jose State University near Mountain View and who ferried me to see Flynn, Emily and Greg on Friday when Flynn was only a day old. Yesterday I took the opportunity of a walk along the Pacific Coast and I attach come pictures of the location. I have to say that from what I have seen of it ... and I was last in Santa Barbara in 1984 (apart from a dash through it on 101 last year en route to LA) ... it's a rather laid back city and home to a somewhat alternative culture.

Here are some first visual impressions, arranged in no particular order
The groounds of the Fess Parker Hotel where I'm staying.:

Skate-board park on the beach. Max would have been at home here.

Why do so many cities have quaint public transport like these electric trolleys?

Stearne's Wharf - a tourist trap!

Santa Barbara from the Wharf ... nice location, eh!

Boat Harbour

Coastline to the south-east!

Arts and Crafts Sale. Numerous stalls we laid out over a km long next to the shore-line selling local creations of various kinds: paintings, glass-ware, jewellery, pottery and so on! Very interesting.

No comment

Bike hire was popular and this model looks like the one reported on these pages a month ago.

A close-up of the mountains.

I walked faster after seeing this!

AS

Train Ride

This is the last of my Cockington Green postings. The gardens also boasted a miniature railway, but not the ones already seen. This one pulled a passenger train around the gardens on a picturesque elevated track hauled by a steam engine. Max very much enjoyed the ride which delivered us back to the "Parsons Nose" tea house - typical of those found in the English countryside - for a quick snack before heading home.

Max enjoyed reading the questionable sign from the Somerset and Dorset Railway, as would most small boys!

AS

Cockington Green

Those of you from Devon, and especially the Torquay area, might know of the village of Cockington. Well, Canberra has Cockington Green, which consists of (a) picturesque scenes of British countryside and (b) a collection of buildings from around the world sponsored by various embassies in Canberra, and the first collection is at a scale of of about 1/16. The second set of buildings are at numerous different scale because it's hard to model Machu Picchu at the same scale as the Triumphal Arch at Palmyra in Syria, Don Quijote's Windmills, Tenochtitlan Temple in Mexico, Persepolis in Iran, or Karlsteijn Castle in the Czech Republic.

The British models were taken from all over the country as the following pictures show: Devon, Sussex (Lewes), Midlands, East Anglia, the Scottish Highlands, and so on. There were also models of a soccer stadium with a game in progress - see if you can spot a streaker being apprehended by a cop whose helmet covers the former's private parts - a cricket match and a fox hunt, among others. The crowd watching the soccer match were also singing the kinds of songs one regularly hears at grounds. Also, see the model inter-city 125 train which Max enjoyed controlling and the Castle of Mar (which I first read as Max). All the models were set in beautiful grounds with carefully manicured lawns, miniature trees, and glorious flower-beds.

The following photos show some of the international exhibits. They had a miniature railway system running between the various buildings, this time with parallel tracks, and Max and I raced trains around the circuit. He won! Bec and I both visited one of the sites shown here. That was La Boca, a suburb of Buenos Aires and home to the famous soccer club Boca Juniors whose scarf adorns my office at UNE. The penultimate picture shows the cliff railway at Lynmouth in Devon - surprisingly included in the international collection as representing something quintessentially British by the UK High Commission in Canberra!

AS

Model T Bicycle

I've just spent a couple of nights in Canberra after returning Max to home base. Dot on the other hand stayed in Sydney to look after her ailing brother, Dick.

Not having ridden my bike for a couple of days, I was beginning to suffer withdrawal symptoms and one of the things I managed to cram in during my short visit was a cycling trip (sort of) around the shores Lake Burley Griffin. The mode of transport was, however, strange. Instead of two wheels it had four. And in a design sense it resembled a model T Ford c. 1920, though with one major difference. Ford himself preferred colour (or should I say color) black, but our model was bright red with a splash of yellow. And while you've all heard of "a bicycle made for two", the vehicle shown below seated three.

Like the early model Ts - or just about early motor car - the appointments were rather crude: a very simple brake, little suspension and no gears. The last-named made cycling up even gentle hills rather difficult. However, it did come with two steering wheels, but Bec's worked while mine didn't and I automatically tried to steer the contraption to great frustration. We even let Max steer for part of the journey, but that was dangerous because the little fellow had crazy ideas about what constitutes a straight line. It also had two sets of working bike chains and pedals, which was just as well when it came to going up hill.

As you can imagine, our model T version was nothing like a racing bike but we attempted the world speed record for such a machine and, after pedaling furiously along a flat stretch, we managed about 10 kph! No-one was around though to verify our claim, so we won't make the Guinness Book of Records. By the way, Emily, our route took us to spot you'll probably remember - the Carillon. It's still there but we discovered the designers omitted to include sufficient turning space for a model T bike. Going the other way, we almost reached the National Museum.

AS