Kansas city BBQ

At home in Kansas enjoying good things!

Gates bbq

One of the best in kansas city !


-- Post From My iPhone

FRIDAY IN THE CITY: Kansas

Friday in the city this week is coming from more of a town – my home town that is. I am taking my annual trip to Kansas to visit family and friends. I will be spending the next week driving up and down I-70 highway – that connects the Von Feldt Family in the towns of Kansas City, Lawrence and Topeka.

As a way to celebrate Father’s Day and have the chance to spend time with my six nieces and nephews, we decided to make dessert. I chose the activity of making rustic French fruit tarts as a great way for all of us to work together and at the same time, have some originality.

We all worked on the French butter dough. But then each kid had the chance to work on create fruit fillings for their series of tarts. Jake went out and picked fresh mulberries. Haley made fresh blueberry while her sister Megan chose traditional French apple with Mexican caramel sauce. Sophia made bananas. We ended up with a few great mixes as well, including banana chocolate, strawberry banana and apple caramel.

It was a great opportunity to make dessert. But for me, it gives me a real snapshot on social skills of each kid and the changes from the last time I saw them. It was a wonderful afternoon of cooking. We finally sat down to our great barbeque ribs meal which was followed by a family drooling over delicious tarts.

Shanghai Transrapid Train Ride

Shanghai Transrapid Train Ride
Originally uploaded by rickvonfeldt

My month long trip in China continues. There are so many experiences and things to write about. Where to start? I have created a travel log with much more information about my experiences over the last several weeks. If you are interested in more reading material, drop me a line at rvonfeldt@yahoo.com and I will send you more to read.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a trip I have been wanting to take for over five years now – a trip on the world’s fastest train.

On Monday of this week, I traveled from Shanghai to Guangzhou in the south of China. The culmination of my project here in China is in this southern industrial city with 1,000 people for my client.

The Shanghai Pudong airport can take 45 – 90 minutes to get to – depending upon where you live in Shanghai. I have been living in Pudong, so my trip would be about 45 minutes. But why spend 45 minutes in a taxi on the highway, when you can get there in 7 minutes and 40 seconds?

I asked my colleague if we could take Shanghai’s maglev – a train that traveled magnetically “above” rails. Well – there aren’t rails. It floats on air. The train can reach up to 250 mph – although, they have slowed it down these days and my trip only reach 186 mph (300 km per hour).

I have always loved trains – and so the journey was exciting, easy to do – and another “first” in my set of life experiences.

I filmed the event, and tried to put together a video. Since uploads still only allow me 90 seconds, it is hard to put together a real picture of the ride in only 90 seconds, but I tried.

Mine's Faster Than Yours
Riding Shanghai's maglev, the world's fastest train.
By Henry Blodget
http://www.slate.com/id/2115114/

A taxi or the world's fastest train? For me, that's an easy choice.

In a drive to reclaim its historical place in the cosmos—biggest and best—China is notching one superlative after another (biggest dam, highest hotel, etc.). In an effort to climb the industrial food chain, meanwhile, it is also acquiring technology from anyone willing to share it. So, in 2001, with Germany's Transrapid International seeking a place to demonstrate its magnetic levitation train—and apparently willing to give the technology away in the process—China killed two birds with one stone. Shanghai's maglev began full operation in March, 2004, covering the 20 miles from Pudong to the outskirts of the city in a blistering 7 minutes and 20 seconds.

The train floated in. And "float" is the word. Thanks to its electromagnetic levitation system, the train hovers a half-inch above the track. It floats like a cigarette boat gliding into a slip, the surprisingly blunt nose emitting a marvelous, rumbling growl. With maglevs, the propulsion system resides in the guideway instead of the train, allowing for less weight and faster acceleration.

Inside the car, you expect to see seat belts and shoulder harnesses (for all the good they would do in a derailment or collision at one-third the speed of sound), but, instead, find only normal seats. The doors shut, and the train accelerates like a skyscraper elevator, silently, smoothly, and rapidly, and by the time the last car leaves the station you already seem to be going 50 miles per hour.

Four minutes of gravity-simulator-style acceleration later, in which the taxis on the parallel highway lose ground slowly, then quickly, then disappear as fast as if they were parked and you were whipping by at 220 miles per hour, you reach the peak speed of 270 miles per hour for the tiny 20-mile run.

Transrapid claims that the maglev is quiet and glassy smooth, but, on the contrary, when the speedometer at the end of the cabin reaches its apex, you are distinctly aware that you are speeding. The car jerks from side-to-side like a jet in turbulence, the air outside whistles in protest, and the growl beneath the floor becomes a full-bodied roar. Just after the speedometer tops out, there is a pop and blur as the maglev headed in the other direction blasts past at an aggregate speed of 534 miles per hour, approaching that of a 747 at 35,000 feet. Then, with about seven miles to go, it's time to hit the brakes, and a few miles later, when you've slowed to a mere 150 miles an hour, you feel as though you are strolling.

For gawkers and other one-time users, the maglev is the equivalent of an adult theme-park ride: cheap, thrilling, and fodder for cocktail parties. For those who just want to get to or from the airport, however, it leaves much to be desired.

First, there's the problem that the maglev doesn't really run from Pudong to Shanghai, but from Pudong to the end of one of Shanghai's subway lines, aka the burbs. So, to get to Shanghai proper, you have to schlep your bags again, either into the subway or into a taxi like the one you could have grabbed at the airport.

Then, there's cost. Thanks to China's polarized pricing system—one price for goods and services sold to foreigners and other rich folks, and another for everything else—the $6 one-way ticket is not a deal. When you throw in the added schlepping at both ends, the maglev loses in cost, convenience, and possibly even time.

Losing money at the speed of sound.

These are two of the reasons the train is running at less than half of capacity, and, probably, hemorrhaging money. The maglev cost $1.2 billion or more to build, which means the system chews through north of $60 million a year in capital costs alone. Assuming 12,000 passengers per day (my estimate), the maglev generates about $27 million of revenue per year, or less than half its capital costs, much less its total costs. It is not clear who is absorbing these losses, China or Transrapid, but, either way, someone's taking a bath.

If it's China, of course, the investment may prove worth it. There is much to be said for the branding impact of cool technology: I, for one, was eager to board the maglev the moment I heard about it, and the ride helped jolt me out of my preconception of China as a land of sock-and-toy factories. Also, China is now the proud parent of a "National Research and Development Center for Maglev Transportation Technology," which presumably builds on know-how that was once the property of Transrapid.

If it's Transrapid, the company now has a live demonstration model with which to try to sell real intercity systems. But one reason Transrapid handed China the keys to its technology kingdom, presumably, was to earn the pole position in the bidding for a planned Shanghai-Beijing maglev. But alas, China dropped that plan—the Beijing-Shanghai maglev would have cost almost $50 billion, three times as much as a traditional fast train—while keeping the snazzy technology. So, it's not clear how much Transrapid really got out of the deal.

The Pudong line may eventually turn out to be a decent deal for airport users. If Shanghai keeps expanding at its present rate, traffic will soon clog the airport highway and choke off the taxi option, and the maglev terminal will soon be in the heart of the city.

Thanks to Slate readers Bharad Ramesh and Heinz Klostermann for sharing their maglev thoughts. For numerous maglev pictures, click here.