[Composed 8/26/2025]
It's US Open time, baby! Step one was getting to NYC. Our flight from DCA to LaGuardia was uneventful, and the sights along the way did not disappoint.
On the DC side, I appreciated getting an aerial view of the nearby Arlington National Cemetery Southern Expansion project. This effort has been going on in one form or another since we moved to the area nearly 30 years ago. The birds-eye view today shows an island of calm immediately surrounding the Air Force Memorial in the midst of a sea of construction. Outside of these bounds, civilization with its buildings and greenspaces resumes. We've walked past this construction countless times, but the sky view neatly puts it into context.
On the New York side, of course, I was psyched one of my many Manhattan Skyscraper pics came out decent:
I also captured Liberty Island as we flew by, but between the digital zoom and the plane's motion, the quality was especially poor. I asked Gemini's Nano Banana to help me fix the picture, and I think it did a fine job.
Clearly, photography, like many, if not all artistic pursuits, is at an inflection point thanks to AI. Is the cleaned-up version of my photo still 'my photo?' Is it somehow more ethical to open up Gimp and painstakingly edit the image, rather than telling Nano Banana what I want in a few short sentences? Or, is any editing at all 'cheating?' Is AI the gateway to relying on cheap, lightweight gear rather than heavy, expensive tech?
Time will tell on all these questions. For now though, Nano Banana is simply too magical to not embrace.
Between DC and NY, I also captured these pics of the Salem Nuclear Power Plant. I knew I was looking at a nuclear power plant because it looks just like the one on The Simpsons. In fact, both are two-unit pressurized water reactors. Kudos to the Simpsons for including a realistic'ish nuclear plant layout.
While reading up on the Salem site, I learned that they operate a Service Water System that uses water from the Delaware River to cool the nuclear reactor. This system consists of 12 intake pumps that pull in water at a maximum rate of 185,000 gallons per minute. So that means that in the 4 minutes the plant was in view, the system pulled in up to 6,660,000 gallons of water to keep the reactor from overheating. I find that to be a staggering amount of water, and an impressive accomplishment in and of itself.
When I looked back at my pictures from the day, I was curious how tricky it would be to find out the name and details of the site we'd flown by. It turns out, not tricky at all. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a nice map showing all the reactors in the country, and gives extensive details about both units at Salem.
Heck, I can tell you that on the day we flew into NY, there were 4 nuclear-related "events" that occurred around the country, including a missing vial of "Ra-223 dichloride solution," which sounds scary, but was "very unlikely to cause permanent injury to individuals," so that's nice. There were no events at the Salem plant.
Once at LaGuardia we had no problem collecting our bags, and then it was off to the hotel to drop them off and officially start our New York Adventure!
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