Thanks for that link. I found not only the field we used to fly out of on our trips back to the farm in Kansas (Tri-City) but also the one under the golf course next to my school (Crafton.)
Lots of memories there.
Arizona had quite a few Army Air Force fields built during WWII. Most of the ones near a town have been converted into general aviation airports, most of the ones in the middle of nowhere have been abandoned. The latter generally have a couple trenches dug across the runways to discourage the locals from using them as drag strips.
Many training bases of the day in AZ or elsewhere built several auxiliary fields 10 or 20 miles from the main base in various directions. Often a triangular or sorta A-frame looking arrangement of runways with no real facilities there; just concrete or asphalt pavement. The noobs used those aux fields for practicing landings and takeoffs and the triangular shape ensured there was always a runway pointed more or less into the wind. Which was a much bigger deal with the tailwheel airplanes of the day than it is now.
The more arid and non-freezing the local climate the better those 75yo constructions have fared.
And ‘drug’ strips!
Not even close. Even now, with the world’s population at the highest it’s ever been, there’s still a lot of people. Look around you right now, and imagine that every single person in your vicinity dropped dead right now: That’s about how many square feet of corpse-coverage you’d expect over a span of 70ish years. Over “a couple of millennia”, you’d multiple that coverage by a few hundred. Even in an urban area like where I am now, that’d still leave a lot of ground uncovered. And it’d be much less in rural areas, and back in time when the total population was lower.
In fact, given population growth, I suspect it’s not even true if you replace that “last couple of millennia” with all of history.
This website estimates that, including everyone alive today, there have been 117 billion humans that have ever lived.
And this site calculates that there are approximately 15.77 billion acres of habitable land on earth.
That calculates to an average of about 8 people per acre. Since an acre is about the size of a football field, I would agree with @Chronos.
Well, I’ve been wrong before; and it looks like it’s happened again.
The Earth is a very big place. We are small critters. Someone from a dense urban area could be forgiven for forgetting that. Even ruralia has a bunch of people. There are still vast tracts of potentially usable, albeit shitty, land devoid of people.
Presumably I’m unforgiven, then.
Not at all. I know you’re rural, but that’s still quite different from e.g. the wilds of Wyoming or Brazil.
That’s really cool! I knew about the Motordrome in Playa del Rey (very close to me), but I didn’t know there was also an airfield there. And I never knew exactly where the airfield in Culver City was – it was where the old drive-in movie was. We used to go to a hamburger stand that was in “Airport Village,” and now I know why it was where it was! Nothing to do with LAX (it’s a good 3 or 4 miles south.
But it’s Home Sweet Home to Me!
I knew that was you before I saw your avatar!
But I think he meant Nebraska, no mountains, no ocean, no real beaches.
I’ve driven across Nebraska. I’ve also driven across Saskatchewan. Both absolutely flat. Heck, you can see Saskatchewan’s capital city, Regina, in the distance, an hour before you get there.
But it does have interesting road signs commemorating Saskatchewan Roughriders (for those not in the know, they’re a Canadian Football League team) players, and usually designating the distance from the sign to the Roughriders’ home stadium in Regina.
They take their football seriously in Saskatchewan.
Just like we do in Nebraska! On game days the college football stadium a mile from my house is the third largest ‘city’ in the state.
My beloved son-in-law grew up in Saskatoon and outfits himself and my grandkids in Roughrider gear on appropriate days.
I drove past a commercial building today that was unoccupied. Large “For Lease” sign.
Someone had slapped a big “NAVIDAD” label below that.
Two submissions:
A sign that says “PARK POLICE SNOWMOBILES HERE ONLY”. There are at least 32 possible meanings for this sign, depending on which combination of the other words “ONLY” is modifying, and whether “PARK” refers to a place for recreation or for the act of leaving a vehicle.
A sign I saw on my morning commute, saying “HORSE AND PARROT FOR SALE”. I didn’t know what exactly was going on, but was overwhelmed by the sense that I was living inside a joke.
Or whether “Park” is modifying “Police”.
Anyone translate the French? This on a dock in water 2 feet deep. I told my gf Interdiction De Plonger means Don’t be an idiot
Google French to English says “Diving Ban”.