Despite the name of "Barbershop", Hawleywood's apparently takes appointments. I have NEVER heard of a barber shop that takes appointments. In my book, if you book appointments, you are, at that point, a hair salon, or some other fancy establishment. Barber shops take in the man off the street. That said, I was told that the next available spot was tomorrow at 3PM. I turned it down. In retrospect, I could have fought harder. I could have explained that I was on a road trip and could they work me in. But I just didn't bother. Afterall, it's only a haircut. still sucked, though.
We went to a nearby Subway for lunch and got in the car and continued south.
Next stop, Palomar Observatory. We drove the Interstate for about an hour, got off, and back out on the country roads we went. Eventually, we turned left onto Highway 6. This road was built back in the 1940's for the sole purpose of getting the 200 inch wide pyrex mirror up the mountain. It took a special trailer and one truck pulling and two trucks pushing to get the mirror up the mountain. The skeletal structure of the telescope was assembled in a shipyard, because that was the only place that could handle pieces of steel that large. Here is the history page of the palomar website:
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/history.html
This is Jennifer at Palomar. She thought the rattlesnake sign was funny because the snake looked happy:
I am awestruck at the engineering and physics prowess it took to build this device. It has got to be the largest mechanical device I have ever seen. IT IS HUGE!! So huge, in fact that I couldn't take a picture of it. It wouldn't fit in the frame of the camera. Here is a video instead. They keep it dark in the dome during the day because they carefully control the climate inside the dome so that it is the same as the nighttime climate outside. Having lights would produce heat, so they only have a few low temperature lights. Ignore me saying "Keck" at the beginning of the video. That is wrong. I had just been explaining to Jennifer that the largest optical telescope in the world is on the big island of Hawaii on Mauna Kea at the Keck Observatory. Palomar was at one time the largest optical telescope on Earth. Here is the video:
After the Observatory, we headed back down the mountain and started looking for a hotel. We are now holed up at a Hampton Inn (we both were in favor after the camping trouble) in San Marcos, CA. Tomorrow is a short drive to San Diego. Jennifer has a beachfront motel lined up that sounds nice. So, until then, goodnight.
1 comment:
I know of some small town barbershops that are pretty legit and take appointments. But I think that's because they are used to slow small-town life, not some California bullshit. I tried to get "squeezed in" before an appointment that was supposed to start in 10 minutes. I actually had to wait until the appointment didn't show before he'd let me in the chair.
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