Profanity included

I shall repeat EXACTLY what I e-mailed my Boston brother:
“Damn thing finally ordered.
50 calendars; $1,880.71 — free shipping.
Shutterfly was refusing my credit-card, which they crunched many times in the past.
‘Contact-us’ on Shutterfly? Go figure!
Fevered calls to Chase in New York City; I guess they refused my charge, but accepted when I called.
(‘Connor.’)
Around-and-around we went; turned on Christmas lights, made bed, walked dog, closed gates while waiting.
At least an hour passed and it still wouldn’t crunch.
Now we’ll see if they show up: between Mon. 1/9 - Fri. 1/13.
(I was about to lump it!)”
My brother is Nazarene, I guess, which makes me try to not use profanity.
I am a sinner (gasp!), or so I’m told, mainly by those Biblically advised to “judge not.” Which makes me tend to avoid profanity.
Although I will admit to gravitating toward F-bombs as a result of my being a bus-driver.
Among other bus-drivers, use of F-bombs in ordinary conversation was the norm. I had to restrict my F-bombs at the Messenger newspaper. Those people were much more civilized than Transit.
The past couple years my Boston brother and I have traveled to Altoona, PA, to chase and photograph trains.
My brother and I are both railfans, me all my life; my brother some time ago.
Altoona is at the foot of Allegheny Mountain, long ago a barrier to trade with our nation’s interior.
Just west of Altoona is where mighty Pennsylvania Railroad conquered Allegheny Mountain. The railroad is now Norfolk Southern.
Pennsy did it without steep grades or switchbacks.
Grading in the early 1800s wasn’t what it is now. Often to get over a mountain a railroad had to employ switchbacks. The train had to go into the first switchback, then reverse up to the next switchback.
Operation was time-consuming.
Often steep grades were required. An earlier attempt financed by the state included inclined planes. It was PA’s attempt to parry NY’s Erie Canal. It was a combination railroad and canal system, since Allegheny Mountain couldn’t be canaled.
Railroad cars had to be winched up the planes by stationary steam-engines.
The planes were as much as 8 percent. That’s eight feet up for every 100 feet forward. Adhesion railroads won’t hold rail that steep — they’ll slip.
The Pennsylvania Railroad avoided both switchbacks and steep grades. Helper locomotives had to be added to get over Allegheny Mountain, but at only 1.75 to 1.8 percent average, the grade was no longer a barrier.
4 percent woulda been a barrier. Trains can do that adhesion, but hafta be broke into sections. A 4 percent grade would probably require three or four sections.
At 1.75 to 1.8 percent, the railroad didn’t hafta break up the train. Just stop to add helpers.
I first went to Altoona in 1968, soon after marriage.
I’ve visited many times, mostly to Horseshoe Curve, the trick Pennsy used to get up the eastern front of Allegheny Mountain.
Pennsy installed a park in the Curve apex; they were very proud.
That park is my favorite railfan pilgrimage-spot.
My stroke in 1993 stopped my visits for a while. But I finally went again post-stroke.
I started photographing there my first visit, 1968, when film was the photographic medium.
Maybe 15+ years ago I switched from film to digital with a Nikon D100.
Perhaps 10 years ago I became friends with Altoona railfan Phil Faudi (“FOW-dee;” as in “wow”), who was friends with another railfan who ran a bed-and-breakfast I patronized in nearby Gallitzin (“guh-LIT-zin”) atop Allegheny Mountain.
Phil was running a business carting railfans around the area to chase and photograph trains.
So began a monstrous cache of fabulous train images taken with Phil.
I considered a calendar. Kodak Gallery had an online calendar application to make a calendar with your own images.
Usually it’s family pictures made into a calendar for Granny. I decided to use my own pictures instead.
I did at least two or three calendars with Kodak Gallery before Kodak tanked. I called the calendar “Allegheny Crossing” with “photos by Bob Hughes with Phil Faudi.”
With Kodak’s bankruptcy, Kodak Gallery sold to Shutterfly®, another computerized photography application. Could I get Shutterfly to produce as impressive a calendar as Kodak Gallery?
My artistic bent was at play. “If my name is on it, it’s gonna look good. No cheap-shots!”
“Will this font do?”
“NOPE!”
“How about this?”
“What you been smokin’, dude?”
Then....
“There it is..... That looks great! The artist has spoken.”
My brother began discovering some of the great photo-locations Phil had shown me.
Soon he was joining me on train-chases; I think our first was when Nickel Plate 765 ran excursions through Altoona a few years ago.
Nickel Plate 765 (2-8-4) is the BEST restored steam-locomotive I’ve ever seen.
What happens now is my brother and I visit Altoona four or five times per year to chase and photograph trains.
The calendar determines photo-choice, mainly the seasons. January, February and December are Winter pictures = snow. October is Fall-foliage: “I need a Fall-foliage picture.” March is melting snow, if possible.
Having done it so many times I picked up tips from Phil, and my brother has caught up. Phil no longer leads me around; his wife has Multiple Sclerosis, so he stays home.
As trains operate over the mountain, the engineers call out signals: e.g. “26T, east on Two, 252, CLEAR!”
We hear that on our railroad-radio scanners, and I know where milepost 252 is.
The railroad also has lineside defect detectors, so on our scanners we hear “Norfolk Southern defect-detector, milepost 253.1, Track Three, no defects.”
253.1 is Carney’s Crossing, a grade-crossing west of the mountain. Track Three is westbound.
If I am west of 253.1, I’ll see that train.
Or....
Do I have time to beat that train even farther west so I can set up and photograph without waiting too long?
What a thrill train-chasing becomes. Ziggity-zag! Up-and-down The Mountain we race. Train-images pile up.
That railroad serves the east-coast megalopolis, so waits aren’t long.
The train engineers also broadcast their train-number as they pass a signal, so we know the train-number of the train we just photographed: e.g. “26T.”
Over a year we end up with hundreds of photographs of trains. Again my artist-bent weighs in. I look at each photograph to cull the extraordinaries.
My philosophy, and my brother agrees, is “Shaddup-and-shoot.” Some are planned, but many of those bomb. Often the “oh, what-the-heck” shaddup-and-shoots are extraordinary.
So out of hundreds of photos I select 13 for a Shutterfly calendar. Crop and process, apply Photoshop if needed, and edit my captions for spelling and syntax errors.
My brother-in-Boston is my train-number guy. I e-mail him a picture, then “I need the train-number, dude.”
After perhaps a month of dorking around, I order from Shutterfly.
I usually do this late November — no more mowing — because those calendars are Christmas presents to people.
Although I vastly enjoy doing them. I make Shutterfly give me an impressive calendar.
I ran late this year, mainly because Shutterfly dumped my format template without telling me = thank you Shutterfly.
They thereby began their own format selection, which in my humble opinion looked AWFUL. (The artist speaks.)
Their format was chopping off parts of locomotives.
Never in a million years! (Again the artist speaks.)
I started from scratch, which put me perhaps a month behind.
I also do a proof calendar — only one — to make sure things are right and look good.
At least their insanity was only one calendar.
Finally the other day I was ready to order.
So 50 calendars, belated Christmas gifts to all-and-sundry.
Shutterfly and Chase-Visa refused to crunch my order.
Yet another delay.
As I said in my e-mail, fevered calls to Chase in New York City. They had refused my charge, but then approved it per my phonecall.
“For security purposes, please state your mother’s maiden-name.”
“Connor,” I said.
Meanwhile, can I engage an actual person at Shutterfly?
Techy Alert!
Shutterfly has 89 bazilyun walls erected, solutions to possible problems they surmised.
Somebody sold all that to Shutterfly so they could hire fewer humans to man their help-desk — if it exists.
“Contact-us.” ARE YOU KIDDING? No sign of any such thing.
At least an hour passed; I thought I was gonna hafta call Chase again.
I also re-entered my credit-card information to Shutterfly, after I stumbled where I could do it.
Finally my calendar-order crunched. Maybe Chase-Visa’s approval took an hour to apply.
Now we’ll see if the calendars actually arrive. Years ago the Post-Office lost a huge Kodak Gallery order — which Kodak had to eat; no wonder they went bankrupt.
I don’t consider all that insanity and hair-pulling progress.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. My stroke October 26th, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability. I recovered fairly well.
• The “Messenger newspaper” is the Canandaigua Daily-Messenger, from where I retired over 11 years ago. Best job I ever had — I worked there almost 10 years, over 11 if you count my time as a post-stroke unpaid intern. (“Canandaigua” [“cannan-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where I live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 14 miles away.)
• “Bob Hughes (‘huze’),”  is me, BobbaLew.