W.O.F. 13 BIG MUSKIE!

So, I was headed northeast out of McConellsville on Route 78 yesterday, and this big object on the left side of the road caused me to make a U-Turn and check it out. It is the centerpiece of the Miners' Memorial Park I wrote about yesterday. It is a 220 cubic yard bucket for Big Muskie, a HUGE machine used for strip mining in southeast Ohio. Regardless of what you may think about strip mining, this machine was awesome. It was built in the mid 1960's and was used from 1969 to 1981. It weighed 13,000 metric tons and stood 22 stories tall. It took 200,000 man-hours to construct Big Muskie.
The machine was built to get into coal seams running 185 feet deep. This thing, over its lifetime, moved twice the earth that was moved when they dug the Panama Canal!
Anyhow this bucket can hold two Greyhound buses. Below is the picture of Big Muskie on display at the miners' park. If you can zoom on the picture below, notice the little insert at the bottom left. That is a picture of this bucket with a MARCHING BAND standing inside it!

Unfinished Business - Weird Sports Team Names

It seems that my previous mention of "Furious George" as a great name for an Ultimate Frisbee team led to a comment by a friend and team-mate of my son's. He called me out, saying a better name is out there: SOCKEYE. Indeed, the Seattle Sockeye works on a couple of levels. First, it is indeed a fish that enjoys the cold northwestern waters. (A muskie is a fish, too...a theme emerges...) Second, what might you fear while playing Ultimate? Yeah, gettin' socked in the ol' eyeball. So there you go.