K.C.'s Garage

The metro-Atlanta town of Hapeville, GA lays claim to being the home of Jeff Foxworthy, Chick-Fil-A, and an automobile plant of a well known auto-maker. The "Atlanta Assembly" plant, located in Hapeville between Interstate 75, the Atlanta Airport, and the railroad tracks, was opened in December, 1947 and ceased operations in October, 2006. The plant was bought by a local developer last month and is being demolished to make way for commercial structures. The developer was kind enough to allow myself and a couple of fellow explorer/photographers in to shoot the factory just prior to the deconstruction.

I bought an Aiptek HD digital video camera on Amazon.com recently. Just for fun I strapped it to the right-main landing gear of my 172, basically adjacent to the wheel hub. I wanted to do a test flight like this to see if the video was watchable and whether there were any problems from vibration, wind, &etc. Much to my surprise it worked just fine! The only problem was that I underestimated how far the main gear "sinks" when the weight is taken off of it, so the camera ended up with about a 15 degree right-tilt while in flight. The flight was rather mundane, I was just hopping over to Madison (52A) for gas at dusk. I sped up the cruise portion of the video to make it shorter. Also, there's no audio. I plan to try and use this technique to make some more interesting videos in the future.

It's late. Storms are in the area, but it has just stopped raining. On the way home from visiting some old friends I decide on a lark to drive by Pullman and see what's brewing. The Georgia Power substation development on the North side of the property appears to now be independently secured and fenced off. The open holes in the chain-link fence along the West side of the Pullman property have recently been replaced with new sections of fence. The property itself seem to have been cleaned up quite a bit with the addition of their new neighbor. It's as if the State of Georgia decided to clean up their house now that they are having company over. I wandered in to see what else had changed - sans flashlight, camera, or even appropriate clothing. Once inside the main central rail building I wandered into the darkest corner I could find and just stood in absolute nothingness for a while to let my eyes adjust. Abandoned buildings have a life their own to them. Anyo...

East Atlanta is home to yet another abandoned school. John C. Bordon school was built in 1922 and closed in 1995. I read somewhere that a developer bought it in 1997 to convert to condos but ran into problems and never started on the project. Thirteen years after it is closed it sits in ruin, surrounded by a now bustling community.

Last spring a Budget Inn in a South Atlanta suburb caught fire. According to the news reports, the fire started on a stack of discarded mattresses behind the building, near a gas meter. Arson is suspected. Most of the occupants of this Budget Inn were residents. No fire sprinklers were installed. A family of five was trapped in a second floor room and failed to be rescued in time. It is stunning to me that in the city that lays claim to the deadliest hotel fire in US history (the Winecoff, December 1946) we still allow hotels to operate without adequate fire protection. These pictures were taken after the fire investigation ended and before the demolition crew arrived. My heart goes out to the family and friends of those who died. I support efforts to require commercial residences and hotels to have adequate fire suppression equipment, and be maintained and inspected properly and regularly. I hope these pictures help drive that point home.

I went back through my photos of Japan and came up with these unpublished ones. Beyond these I have some more from my last day and one other Kyoto temple that I never posted, so I might do yet another posting later on. Enjoy!

Funny what you can find laying around in the North Atlanta suburbs! Enough pool chlorine for the entire state of Nevada, for instance...