Griffin Museum

 I enjoy visiting musea, so wherever I go, I usually take in at least one. 

The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry is the most extraordinary one I have ever toured in my life. 

I had never seen or heard about it until yesterday when we visited the Obama Museum on (infamous!) Southside of Chicago (https://share.google/qd4d6TQFCBio7tRoS) and saw the imposing structure from the 8th floor of that Museum.

 Established in 1933, it is reputed to be the largest Science Museum in the western hemisphere and so far some 200 million people have visited it.

This extraordinary musem has 14 acres of inside display housing some 35,000 artifacts, showcasing just about every development known to us, from space travel to a coat that barks like a dog, if someone gets too close to the wearer.😁

The barking coat🤣.

I could get lost in this place just taking pictures of my favorite things and tracing their development. 

Like the bicycle which I still ride😊,

to trains that I love to ride,

The fastest steam engine in 1893. Top speed 112 mph. We've certainly come a long way baby!

Inside the engine. The glowing red is burning coal which produces the steam.

An engineer had to sit in the hot engine for the entire journey 

The Zephyr 

 to classic cars and carriages

Camille taken in by early cars

A solar powered car developed by the University of Michigan in 1993.

to aeroplanes which I hope to learn to fly in my next life when I reincarnate.🙏

A replica of the Wright Brothers plane.

There was also a whole room dedicated to tornadoes, another to glaciers, one to different forms of energy generation and on and on.

School kids got to experience a simulated tornado😉, and there was an entire floor dedicated to the U-505 submarine which played such a critical role in World War 2.

Replica of the U-505 submarine 

The submarine's actual anchor. Much smaller than I would have anticipated. 

This place was never in our plans, but it was surely a fascinating journey.👍

Love Chicago,  just not the wind😊.

I love San Francisco ❤️

Now I know why I love San Francisco so much.

It's the topography!

Imagine living in a place where you can become super fit without ever hitting a gym🙂!

And guess what? San Francisco is nothing like the press makes it out to be. For if we followed the press reports, we would never go there.

I guess, as a Jamaican that should not surprise me though.😡

 Anyway, I just love the hills and valleys which make the scenery overwhelming from every angle.

Below are some scenic views from the Coit Hill Tower which was built from a private donation.

St. Paul Catholic Church in the rear

This church became famous as it's where Sister Act 1 and 2 were shot, starring  Whoopie Goldberg.

A classic car on show in front of the church.

Other views from the tower.

Coit Hill tower in background.

The murals in the tower are impressive too!

More scenic views.

Things are expensive in the city though but I guess you have to pay to save on gym fees and have scenic views all around,😊

And guess what, the weather is so much better than all those places where 

 reports are, people are steaming.

I imagine it gets quite cold in the winter though, but that's not my business I won't be here.😬

Important info.

Youtube link; https://youtu.be/DPalWylCLm0?si=hjlMNPzkrF8WLtCt    

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Classic cars

My late father

I just love classic cars.

This interest probably came about because I adored my late father more than anything else in the world, so I was constantly tagging along behind him and from as far back as I can remember, he fixed his own cars.

After another upgrade, the Mercury on the left sits in the garage

The first car I remember seeing him tinker with was the 1938 Plymouth he owned.

According to my cousin Barry who was a bit older than I,  that car had only one trafficator (which is what a turn signal was called) on the driver's side which he would activate by pulling an electrical cord. He also said it had one red tail light and no park lights.

My dad  did everything on it from changing the oil, changing spark plugs, turning up the carburetor and even fixing punctures and pumping the tires with a hand pump. 

I was right behind him at every turn.

Later he upgraded to a second-hand 1946 Mercury. This was a black car with a round back and a big window at the back and to me it was extremely ugly but he loved that car.

Over the years he kept modernizing until the family shrunk and he finally bought a brand new VW bug.

One of the restored autos at the Sunrise show

By then however, he had begun to get all sorts of ailments so I never saw him working on that car although I recall that it gave lots of problems so it was always going back to the dealer.

Although he is long gone, I have always maintained an great interest in period cars, despite the motor industry moving to mass production and improving by leaps and bounds.

I suppose it is because of my upbringing why in 1987,  I enthusiastically got together with a few friends of like-mind, and established the Jamaica Classic Car Club. 

This club was family oriented and quickly gained national recognition.

All our families really looked forward to Sunday runs, where we would all proudly line up our vehicles at a central point in Kingston then drive slowly in line to some town in the countryside. There we would meet up with other classic lovers from  various parts of the island, who had also spent a lot of time and money also having their cherished cars restored. They would drive to the selected spot to participate in a mini-show with us on the designated day.

 People would come from all over to admire our prize vehicles then later all the families would go to a restaurant to socialize.

Some of the great classics in the club at the time were, Model T Fords, Porsches, E type Jaguars, Mustangs, MGAs and B's and some other really great cars from bygone days.

1964 MGB convertible. Mine was red though

I started out with a red British-made MGB convertible but later bought a rare sports Volvo, similar to the one driven by Simon Templer in the British detective series The Saint.

There were only two cars of that type in the island and I really loved mine but was it every heavy and thank heavens petroleum was fairly cheap at the time as it gave probably five miles to the gallon!

A few years after the club was established, we  organized Jamaica's first Classic Car Show at the National Arena. It was an overwhelming success and our cars became the talk of the town for months afterwards.

For that show, I was lucky enough to have been able to convince the international paint company Sherwin  Williams, to restore my wonderful Volvo, red of course.

 It came second in the show. 

Of course, maintaining classic cars is a very expensive affair, so as my kids grew older and things like college had to be financed, I had to find a cheaper hobby.

First I got rid of the MG and devastatingly, the Volvo next.

Despite not being able to participate in classic car treks any longer, I have always maintained a solid interest in those vehicles. That is why I attended one in Sunrise, Florida last week and dragged my grandson along in the vain hope that he might love to appreciate the beauty in these carefully made cars of old, but I don't think he was particularly impressed.

 I guess it's because to young people, details are not really important, as all they want in a car is good mileage, speed and of course automatic transmission, a/c and power steering!

At the Sunrise show, they had quite a few real classics but a number of the cars on display were just old American cars that proud owners had restored.

 The greatest collection of such vehicles that I have ever seen in my life though was at the motor vehicle museum in Santiago de Cuba, although most were not really immaculately restored.

,

My thrill for the day however was when a proud owner allowed me to pose for a photo inside his immaculately-restored Ferrari, while most other owners had stickers on their vehicles saying "Look but please do not touch!"

Poor Santiago de Cuba.

New houses in Santiago

The streets of  the city of Santiago de Cuba remind me of the streets of some in San Francisco in that they descend steeply to the bay but that is where the similarity ends. For most of poor Santiago is now one big, derelict, depressing mess. 

This is because it has yet to recover from the extensive damage done by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. 

In fact according to the Cuban hurricane organisation; "Reports from the area after the passage of Sandy spoke of widespread damage, particularly to Santiago de Cuba.  Throughout the province, 132,733 homes were damaged, of which 15,322 were destroyed and 43,426 lost their roof. Electricity and water services had been knocked out, and most of the trees in the city had either been ripped off their roots or had lost all their leaves. "

Monument at General Maceo Plaza of the revolution

While the historic, official  buildings and monuments are in pristine condition, obviously restored and repainted since the hurricane, the residential areas including most of the 132,000 homes seem to have had very little if anything done since the devastation although I will admit that Santiago is the only place in Cuba I have seen brand new homes. 

These are just across from the 26 de julio museum and I had thought they were offices or some other type of official buildings until I saw the lady who works in the bathroom at the museum entering one and she told me she lived there.

Anyway, the historic districts are a must visit when you go to
Cuba as there is so much to see and learn.

On the other hand, the  historic city centre  is the only place I have ever seen beggars  and persons pestering you to buy everything from tours to services, after four visits to Cuba.

However, the province of Santiago de Cuba itself is really beautiful, lush, expansive, with thousands of acres of healthy cane fields, billowing ranches where horses and cattle seem to roam without a care in the world while the  looming, variegated and historically important Sierra Maestra mountains hover protectively on the periphery.

Despite how depressing some of the city now looks however, I am indeed happy that we undertook the over 170 km ride  from Holguin in our smooth running 1953 Chev  (driven by Rashell) to once again visit that historic province which remains the home of so many Jamaican descendants .

                                                    Other memories

The magnificent cathedral