Olympic Rowing Memories

Posted on July 24, 2021 by vanbraman

While watching Olympic rowing this afternoon my mind wandered to some memories of long ago.

rowing olympics, sculling, crew, boatsThe first was a picture I took during a trip to Taipei about 10 years ago. This was of a bug walking across water in a park we visited. While watching the sculling races, this is what I thought about.

rowing olympics, sculling, crew, boatsHere are two more of these water bugs. I should look up what their names are, but it is too late in the day.

rowing olympics, sculling, crew, boatsThe next memory is of a trailer full of boats. I took this picture in Princeton, NJ about 20 years ago. Later I found out that one of my friends was a cockswain for the Princeton Crew team and these were some of their old boats.

rowing olympics, sculling, crew, boatsThey would practice on Carnegie Lake near George Washington Bridge.

rowing olympics, sculling, crew, boatsSince I just mentioned George Washington, and am thinking about boats, I thought I would share this picture of a sculpture of Washington crossing the Delaware River. I took this picture the same day as the ones above.

Now back to the Olympics.

Steven

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Tokyo Office

Posted on July 23, 2021 by vanbraman

Tonight I was going to show some places that I have visited in Tokyo near the Olympic Stadium.

Tokyo 2020, Olympic Stadium, Construction, TokyoInstead, my post idea changed a bit. I was looking on Google Maps for different places in the area and ended up  finding that a building that I have spent a lot of time in had disappeared.

zeiss, tokyo, shinjuku, yotsua, office. google street view, olympicsWhen I went to Street View this is what I found for where our office used to stand.

Our company had moved to a new building about two years ago, but I had not heard what had happened to the old building.

zeiss, tokyo, shinjuku, yotsua, office. google street view, olympicsI used Street View to look at the office from a different direction just to make sure I was in the right place.

This is what I should have seen.

zeiss, tokyo, shinjuku, yotsua, office. google street view, olympicsInstead, the big blue building was no longer there.

zeiss, tokyo, shinjuku, yotsua, office. google street view, olympicsI had another picture from further down the street so decided to looked to see what it looked like now on Street View.

zeiss, tokyo, shinjuku, yotsua, office. google street view, olympicsIf you look closely you can see some of the same features are still there, but the big blue building is gone.

It is a little sad to see that the building is gone. I have a lot of memories in the building. I probably would have walked by it the next time I went to Tokyo, just for the memories, as it is not far from our new office.

However, by that time there will probably be a bigger and more modern building on the lot. I will have to keep watch on Google Maps. These images were from February 2021 so there may already be a new building there now.

zeiss, tokyo, shinjuku, yotsua, office. google street view, olympicsI  just looked and they have a history of Street View for the location and this is what it looked like in February 2020. Perhaps next February the Google car will drive by again.

I really like Google Maps 🙂

Now back to watching the Olympics.

Steven

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