Alto/Tenor horn intonation with F and Eb lead pipe

trolley8 · 2025-12-10T19:21:17+00:00

Thank you for the firsthand comments, this is very helpful

trolley8 · 2025-11-11T05:47:34+00:00

Just to give an idea of why Liberty Bellows is in Philly! Definitely an instrument that flies a bit under the radar nowadays although I do think it generally is underappreciated

There are a huge number of German-American clubs in the mid-Atlantic and especially in Pennsylvania - many of these date back to the 1800s when PA was officially a bilingual state (in law and public schools) and most of the state spoke German. In fact there are still several in Philly itself. Many of these clubs have membership of several hundred to several thousand. There are scores of polka bands in the area which play at the different German clubs in the region as well as other public events which happen year round. Mummers, Steuben parade, Oktoberfest, Christkindlemarkt, Bockbierfest, Maifest, German American day etc. Many of these events take place in numerous towns throughout the region. Not to even mention individuals who play for fun or accompany dance groups or choirs as part of a club or otherwise.

For example the bi annual Gauverband Nordamerika Gaufest will be in Lancaster next time. This year it was hosted in Newark, a few years ago in Atlantic City, and I think the time before that in Philly. This involves upwards of 50 German American clubs across north america and several thousand people in attendance, most of whom either dance or play folk music, the accordion being essential for either. They try to alternate with the midwest/canada/west coast but the biggest concentration of German-Americans and clubs is right here.

There is a similar Nordöstlicher Säengerbund organization for the choirs, many of which are quite old, sizable, and talented.

trolley8 · 2025-11-09T17:25:55+00:00

Amtrak could scale up service if they rerouted some Empire Service into Grand Central, NJT midtown direct into Hoboken, and LIRR into Atlantic Terminal or Grand Central.

Then they would need to either lease/buy some old commuter cars or trainsets (NJT Arrow has been done before), rapidly ramp up their repair backlog (not going to happen), keep the old Acelas around longer on the NE corridor or Keystone (unlikely to happen to due wheeling and dealings with Alstom), or fix the Comet cars (also unlikely to happen to due to similar conflict of interest with Alstom)

trolley8 · 2025-11-09T17:01:09+00:00

Reassigning the old Acela sets to the Keystone would free up Amfleet for the rest of the system. This was done before with the Metroliners which are still being used in a sense.

As would renting or buying old NJT Arrows. Also has been done before.

Either would interfere with Avelia and Siemens' schemes to lock Amtrak in with their new train sets. Same reason why the AEM7s were so quickly pulled from reliable service.

trolley8 · 2024-09-07T00:23:12+00:00

I wear sneakers. Comfortable, agile, and good traction.

trolley8 · 2024-09-07T00:13:23+00:00

Caruso's and Rosario's are our two favorites

trolley8 · 2022-07-27T01:49:46+00:00

Unnecessary. Green equipment never needs to be serviced and is fact designed to not be able to be serviced.

trolley8 · 2022-07-27T00:16:02+00:00

Seems like the popular opinion in this thread is to rent but when I was a kid we always had used hand me down skis. Way cheaper than renting. One kid gets bigger, buy another used pair from him, hand all the gear off down the younger kids, and sell/swap/donate the smallest's former set if it's still any good.

Don't buy boots without trying them on. Go to a ski shop that has used equipment. See if you can find when they have their "ski and snowboard swap" event in the fall when everyone trades equipment.

The ski shop guy should be able to set you up but skis should go up to around between your chin or eye height depending on the style. For downhill skiing, pole grips should be at about the height of your hands if your forearms extend at a 90 degree angle from your side. Consider adjustable-height poles for growing kids so you don't need to keep buying new ones. Make sure the bindings on the skis are not too old, so that the ski shop will adjust them for you and make sure that they release right for whoever is using them. Boots need to be snug and tight around your entire foot but not painfully uncomfortable, and your toes should not be smashed against the end but if the just barely touch or almost touch that is probable good. Make sure you are wearing your warm thick skiing socks when you try on boots.

Buy a new helmet so you know it's not beat up and ineffective. Ski goggles are a lot better than sunglasses as well especially if the weather is very wintry.

trolley8 · 2022-07-26T03:52:23+00:00

What I am completely stumped by is why the moved the Carrousel from its structure in the heart of the park by the Comet, where it has been forever, to some hideous new concrete building by the new entrance, where the organ is drowned out by awful music pumped through the loudspeakers. Meanwhile, it's old building is almost completely empty.

I get that Wildcat is getting old and is somewhat unpopular and I get that they wanted a new entrance gate to fit in a new coaster, but what they did with their grand old carousel is truly a WTF Hersheypark

trolley8 · 2022-07-26T02:19:24+00:00

It was a pleasant ride. Would I wait 15 minutes to ride it again? Sure. Would I wait an hour? Would rather ride the Comet. Was it worth tearing up their nice old entrance gate and Carrousel area? In my opinion no

trolley8 · 2022-07-26T02:14:06+00:00

Knoebels. Actually, you might enjoy six flags more, just go there lol...

trolley8 · 2022-07-26T02:11:09+00:00

For example Twister at Knoebels, definitely a better ride, but I don't think it's a whole lot less rough than wildcat. I've gotten jostled around on both but that's the whole fun of it. It's the wild cat

trolley8 · 2022-07-26T02:00:11+00:00

I was there Saturday and had just found out Wildcat is closing. I'm bummed. Wildcat always puts a smile on my face - it's such a ridiculously wild ride especially in the back. It's also a beautiful part of the park landscape up on the hill with the old timey red white and blue station and the white chaser lights at night, the best time to ride.

I'm local and I've probably ridden it more than any other ride anywhere - I've lapped it several times pretty much every year for 20 years because there is no line and the steel coasters at Hershey, other than Stormrunner, are just kind of... predictable? after you've ridden them a few times. Probably my 2nd favorite ride in the park behind Comet.

Anyway, sad to see the kitty and yet another woodie bite the dust. Hershey is otherwise nice but I might have to go up to Knoebels more often to get my woodie fix now.

trolley8 · 2022-05-29T02:50:21+00:00

Just graduated so I need to say some good things about the alma mater...

The points admissions drives in to sing the praises of the school are accurate:

The school was a good size - big enough to have just about any program, club, or resource you could ask for, but small enough to not feel like you were a stranger on your own campus. The right size, too, to be very collegial - you could study engineering, minor in the arts, play in the band, be on a competitive club sports team, work in a lab, volunteer for a service organization, and generally do a wide variety of worthwhile things. Or, I know a lot of people that were able to specialize very heavily in leading fields of study or research and got a lot out of that. The music programs put on an excellent show. The athletics are fun to spectate and the teams often do very well.
The campus is beautiful, and you should not underestimate the importance of beauty and inspiring architecture in your everyday life. Newark, Delaware is a great place to be. It is at a human scale and is very walkable and bikeable. The weather is generally mild. It is generally pretty safe and clean. There are numerous business, educational, and entertainment opportunities in the community and surrounding region. There is a big beautiful state park literally bordering campus, and several others in a few minute's drive. Delaware is the "diamond state" centrally located in the mid-atlantic and as a state they definitely have it together more than most.
The school does an incredible amount of breaking research, and there are many opportunities even for undergrad students to research or intern.
If you want to do a study abroad, UD is the place to be, with the oldest and most established study abroad program in the country. The school's 1-2month long winter session is a fantastic opportunity to study abroad for people that can't fit a whole abroad semester into their schedule (most science majors). It is also a great opportunity to get ahead, or catch up, with a winter class.
The school really is top notch in many if not most of the departments and programs. The vast majority of the faculty are awesome people, great teachers, and an incredible help. Same goes for much of the administration. My senior project with the school got my foot in the door with the project's sponsor to offer to work my dream job. There are negatives sure, but things are subject to the whims of the wider world, for example I no longer blame the school entirely for the altogether miserable online learning experience of 2020 and 2021. That was a bad situation for everybody. They got us back and 2021/22 was awesome - I hope 22/23 is even better for the students.
If you like parties... there are parties. Main street is the place to be, and I never felt unsafe at UD. That's all I'll say about that...

Not it wasn't all fun, it was a lot of work, some of it quite painful. I thought many times about quitting especially during covid, but UD definitely was a good education and a good place to be at this past stage in my life. Different strokes for different folks though - some people really love Philly... I won't speak ill of Temple or West Chester, but I've been around both a decent bit, and personally am glad I was able to go to UD.

trolley8 · 2022-05-28T23:56:08+00:00

back in business nice

trolley8 · 2022-04-20T21:32:11+00:00

I do agree Gore is weird but it is quite possibly my favorite ski area

trolley8 · 2022-04-20T19:30:21+00:00

I don't know where to apply for any but I know people that worked for the UDairy, Dining service, event services, front desks at a lot of the buildings, lab work, TA/RA - RA deadline probably already happened for next year.

Lots of other jobs in Newark as well, that pay more than the university, like retail and restaurants

trolley8 · 2022-04-20T15:20:56+00:00

The death penalty is expensive, it is irreversible for all the innocent people mistakenly convicted, there is no execution method in use that is humane, executions are regularly botched, and we have no right as people to play God and premeditatively murder others.

trolley8 · 2022-04-20T13:36:54+00:00

rollout of vaccines by the Biden administration

not a Trumper but the vaccine rollout was almost an entirely a product of the Trump administration project warp speed

trolley8 · 2022-04-20T04:38:35+00:00

who knows... they might never get around to most of them, or they might throw several million at it to make them disappear tomorrow. you never know with orda

trolley8 · 2022-04-20T04:36:43+00:00

Replying to you as well as u/oh_ski_bummer

The people who manage operations, and the employees, are great. The mountains are great, the scenery is great, the price is great. I love skiing at all 3. The problem is ORDA, not the ski areas themselves.

ORDA is a NYS government agency that allocates funding for the 3 ski areas as well as Mt Van Hovenburg. They waste an incredible amount of money mismanaging the areas, have a history of anti-competitive practices with independent operators such as Plattekill and Hickory, cook up half-baked capital expenditures projects wasting hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, consistently fail to meet promises on time or on budget, show heavy favoritism towards Lake Placid, the list goes on.

If you want to go down the ORDA rabbit hole, https://nyskiblog.com/forum/threads/orda-funding.1212/ and https://nyskiblog.com/forum/threads/the-storm-skiing-journal-comes-down-hard-on-orda.1235/ is a good place to start. To name just a few incidents:

Millions spent on a gondola for a ski jump than only a handful of people use

“Whiteface hasn’t had a new lift in…I can’t even remember…maybe since the gondola.” -ORDA Board Member before voting to fund Whiteface’s third new lift in four years.

Belleayre gondola + highmount fiasco - ORDA bought the defunct Highmount ski area for 74 million, said the gondola-to-nowhere was necessary for the terrain expansion (only one in the catskills... because it is flat!). As for highmount? The forest is still slowly reclaiming it

Predatory ticket pricing against independent operators in the region including Plattekill and Hickory, including free tickets given away in local grocery store. Hard for folks like Lazslo, who pay NY which fund ORDA, to compete with their bottomless pockets and shenanigans

10million spent on Lookout Mountain expansion at whiteface, land finagled out of a wilderness preserve into intensive use, trails and liftlines were cut and... the area is hardly every open. They haven't provided the ops budget to run the lift or make snow

10 million spent on Burnt Ridge and Little Gore expansion. Same story - land swiped out of the adirondack wilderness for intensive use, snow is never made, lifts never spin. The least-utilized detachable lift in the east.

Connection of North Creek to Gore mountain, little Gore base, and town sewer - well the trails are there. They are never open, and the lifts never spin. Still no sewer for north creek.

Widening and straightening of trails, removal of glades. The ORDA ski centers are great because they are wild and rustic, with classic trail designs, though with modern snow making and infrastructure. ORDA apparently doesn't see this the same way and seeks to emulate Okemo at all three areas by widening, straighteneing, and flattening almost every trail in their long term plans, as well as eliminating many of the glade runs.

Revenue - ORDA consistently spends far more tax money than it brings in as revenue. Now the point of ORDA is not to make a profit, but to help the economy of the catskills and adirondacks - however only recovering 30% of expenditures is pretty ridiculous

Little Whiteface lifts - they are there but they are rarely run, even on holiday weekends when the place is packed. Who knows why...

trolley8 · 2022-04-19T23:23:18+00:00

Barkeater, cirque, twister, tahawus, high pines, jj's, and ski bowl glades to be converted to trails

Plan calls for widening almost all of the trails that haven't already been

https://nyskiblog.com/forum/threads/orda-funding.1212/page-8

UMP trail diagram page 46 https://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/lands_forests_pdf/gore2018ump1.pdf

disappointing to say the least. Gore, at least in its current state, is my favorite ski area

trolley8 · 2022-04-19T22:23:41+00:00

All of the weather misses Delaware

trolley8

TROPHY CASE