I just returned from a trip to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Grassy Cove, Tennessee. If you're a long-time reader of IDH, you may remember when I visited them way back in 2009 for the Chip Falcon Road Trip (my brother did the cycle testing).
I'm getting ready to head home from Arc-US in San Diego (which has been a fabulous conference!), and wondering how long it will be before someone tweets a photo of me singing on stage with the Dueling Pianomen. Until then, here's some signage the likes of which I've never seen before. I'm in favor of signage to prevent door abuse. Save the doors!
This post was printed in the November 2012 issue of Doors & Hardware
During a break in today's BHMA meetings I took a drive south to see the Mission San Xavier Del Bac. The mission was founded in 1692, and the current church was built between 1783 and 1797. It is located in the center of a Papagon Indian settlement. The mission has been constantly maintained and periodically restored, so it's in beautiful shape. You can read more about the history of this gorgeous building here.
No, really! They do!
Here are some of the lock shops I visited while shopping for the locks in this post.
I know what you're thinking..."Another day, another kasbah." :-) I sincerely appreciate the chance to enjoy my vacation while still keeping up with my blog, email, etc., so thanks for bearing with me!
I mentioned these gigantic doors in an earlier post, but I went back to see them again since we're in the neighborhood. The mosque wasn't open for tours when we were there (the only way non-Muslims can go into a mosque), but I sent my husband in with a camera and he came back with photos of panic hardware. He's learning! :-)
I hope you're not getting tired of posts about beautiful Moroccan doors because I know I'm not tired of seeing them. There are amazing doors EVERYWHERE in Morocco - adorned bronze, carved wood, hand-painted...absolutely gorgeous. Yesterday I dragged the family to Bahia Palace in the 100-degree heat. They were good sports about it and I think they actually like roaming around old architectural marvels with me. Once we finally find them in the depths of the medina, that is. It's not easy to get around in the old city, or the ville nouvelle for that matter.
Here are some photos of the beautiful sliding bronze doors at the tomb of King Mohammed V. It was built in 1971, adjacent to La Tour (Tower) Hassan. The minaret stands amidst support columns which were once part of a huge mosque destroyed in an earthquake.
As many of you know, I am in Morocco for some vacation time combined with some work, and also working on some family issues with my mother-in-law's estate. We have made the most of each day, and I have seen (and photographed) lots of amazing doors. I hope you don't get sick of seeing them..."Darn! Not another beautiful door!!" I have also had requests for non-door photos so I will show you some of this beautiful country too.
Last week I was a panelist for the BOMA Every Building Conference and Expo in Seattle. It was a pretty busy couple of days but I was able to sneak out each day to see a little of the city, or visit the guy who was LockedInAHouse. I LOVED the Pike Place Market...I was there early in the morning as the vendors were bringing in their flowers, seafood, vegetables, etc. for the day, and it was a sensory feast! I wish I could start each day that way.
Danny Estryk of Entry Systems Ltd. sent me these photos of some very early offset pivots. The wood doors and the other portion of the pivots that were attached to them are long gone, but the stone portion remains. This opening is at the Belvoir Fortress in the Jordan Valley of Israel, built by the crusaders beginning in 1168.
Whenever we're on a family road trip, we try to find cool places to stop along the way to break up the ride. Today we went to Battleship Cove, the world's largest historic naval ship exhibit. The museum is home to the destroyer USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., the USS Lionfish submarine, the battleship USS Massachusetts, and several other vehicles. It's really an amazing place, and the kids loved looking at all the different rooms, many of which were set up as they would have been while the ships were occupied.
It's school vacation week and we took the kids to the Cape for a few days. Here are some of the doors we've seen on our trip.
We were on a mini-vacation earlier in the week, which is my excuse for forgetting two things. First, my pal Zeke Wolfskehl is in search of some research that I remember hearing about but have never been able to find documentation for. Maybe it's an urban legend, but I know that I heard/read somewhere that a pair of doors with a mullion allows more efficient egress than a pair of doors without a mullion. Do any of you remember where that was written? I need a lead to pursue.
I'm on a mini-vacation with my family for the holidays, but I've already spotted some doors of interest for you so I will post those soon.
My coworker Don Cherry and I with special guests.
Here are some more vacation photos submitted by Eyal Bedrik of Entry Systems Ltd. The next time you're on a road trip, don't forget to take some photos for me!
This weekend I left my computer at home (yes, really!) and headed to Cape Cod for my brother's wedding. The wedding was held in North Truro, and the kids had heard me say several times that we were going to "Truro." Well, my kids go to a bilingual school and are fluent in Spanish. All along they thought we were going to "Churro," and expected to see a slew of the cinnamon-sugary donut-stick type pastries on arrival. The disappointment didn't stop there - we didn't see any sandwiches in Sandwich, and luckily - no obvious pee in P-Town (the common nickname for Provincetown, Massachusetts).
We only spent a brief segment of our road trip in Lexington, but it was long enough to spot a couple of doors of interest. Our hotel was originally a single family residence and it's on the Register of Historic Places. We checked in pretty late at night but I immediately noticed the mess they had made of the lock on their front door. Creative, yes...purty, no.
I hope everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday weekend...I have to admit it was really nice to take some time off. I've been in Grassy Cove, Tennessee since Friday and there aren't a whole lot of doors here, but luckily I've got some saved up from last week. We're headed toward home tomorrow so I'll be on the lookout for doors of interest.
Today I had the pleasure of visiting the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. My trusty guide for the tour was Rachel Smith of Karpen Steel, who suggested the Biltmore as a stop on my road trip and then arranged for the visit to the estate.
We're currently on our Summer 2011 Road Trip and I'm on the hunt for doors of interest, but so far I'm seeing more sights like this:
On our way home we had great weather while we were in the DC area, so we decided to stop at the zoo and let the kids get some of the crazies out. The lions were my favorite...a pride of 2 lionesses, 1 lion, and 7 cubs - just gorgeous. I could have watched them all day. At one point a lioness went to the door and I thought maybe she could smell food or hear someone making preparations. Apparently big cats can open doors, because the knob had a shield around it. The door in the tiger exhibit was the same, except that the tigers must be more impatient because instead of waiting and watching they're trying to dig their way in (see below).
We're still on vacation and saw almost no doors today, but we did meet our neighbor. Creepy!
I've been looking at this building on paper for at least 5 years, and although there were days when I wished for the fun to end, I knew it was going to be something special.
I know some of you will remember "Chip Falcon's Road Trip" from a couple of years ago. For those of you who weren't readers of this blog back then...I usually go on a road trip with my family every summer. In the summer of 2009, I had to take a Falcon 25 series panic device on the road trip so I could show it to a specwriter who had moved to South Carolina. Since I was dragging the panic device (nicknamed Chip Falcon) around, I wrote a series of posts about the various places that we visited on our road trip and wrote about some of the features of the 24/25 series which had just been introduced.
This Wordless Wednesday post can't be completely wordless (that's nothing new). These photos were sent to me by my friend and colleague, Kurt Roeper, who is traveling in China at the moment and reports that idighardware/ihatehardware is banned in China. Here's Kurt's note that came along with the photos:
It's not every day a pirate tells you that you've been partying too hard. I wish that was my problem. I actually woke up with laryngitis on Wednesday, which really stinks since I was headed out of town for a meeting. I'm feeling much better after a visit to the convenience clinic, but I still can't talk very well. I'm sure some of my compañeros are happy about that.
We saw this building from the highway on our way to Red Rock Canyon and it wasn't hard to track it down and get the address. It was designed by Frank Gehry, and it's a brain and cognitive center for the Cleveland Clinic. I'm no expert on brain-related stuff, but I think if I was going to my brain doctor's office this building might freak me out a bit.
I'm in Las Vegas for a meeting that starts in a couple of days, and I'm pretty sure I could find enough cool and creative doors here to last me for a few months. Today we visited Red Rock Canyon (not a lot of doors there), the Hoover Dam (more doors there than you'd think), and a weirdly beautiful building by Frank Gehry. Since I'm blogging from an iPad which is not that easy, I'll post some quick photos and save the longer posts for when I get home next week.
Considering how many photos I took of doors during my Mommy's weekend at Foxwoods, it's a good thing I'm not a gambler. I wouldn't have had any time to check out the doors if I was stuck at the slots. I can't imagine what Las Vegas will be like...I hope I don't get arrested like this guy. Now go get a cup of coffee while these 22 photos load.
The first time I ever saw a wicket door, it was for a post office project and I was working on the shop drawings. I haven't run into a whole lot of them since, but I saw a pair last weekend and risked the embarrassment of my friends to take some photos. The employee at the door said that I wasn't the first. :-)
As promised, I have some photos to post from my recent trip to Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut. I don't typically mention the locations of the photos I post, usually because I don't want to get in trouble for showing their code violations. Well, I'm not a gambler so I had plenty of time to look at doors, and I have no non-compliant door photos to post. I was pleasantly shocked. I saw two propped-open bathroom doors that had labels, but that's it. I don't even know why those particular doors were labeled, but in a facility with thousands of doors, thousands of building occupants (one website estimates over 40,000 visitors per DAY), and special security concerns, they're doing a great job with their fire and egress doors, as well as accessibility.
These are the last few miscellaneous photos from our vacation, but never fear...I'm headed off for a Moms' Weekend on Friday so maybe I'll have some good (G-rated) spa photos for next week. :-)
We're back from our vacation, but I have some more photos to share before I finish up this unplanned series on hotel doors. As I mentioned in an earlier post, our hotel was a series of buildings connected by propped open, non-latching, damaged doors which were originally fire rated (as indicated by the painted labels). Based on the condition of the doors, particularly the top hinges, I'm going to make the educated guess that these doors used to be operable, until the facility experienced trouble with the top hinges.
Hopefully you're not getting sick of my vacation photos because I've got a few more. This post has a special bonus at the end though - something I've NEVER seen before.
I don't stay in flea-bag motels - I really don't. That's why it amazes me that almost every hotel I stay in has extreme issues with their fire doors. I'm on a short vacation with my family, and as you can see from the graphic on the right, the resort consists of several connected 2-story buildings with a total of 256 guest rooms. The only rooms that are equipped with sprinklers are the rooms that have fireplaces - if I had known that I might have sprung for the upgrade.
I typically try to stick to more technical topics or photos of creative applications related to doors, but I'm on vacation so I'll be posting random photos and thoughts as I've done on other road trips (like these: Chip Falcon's Road Trip, Escape to Costa Rica, Maine/VT 2010). I don't usually write about one brand vs. another because I want this site to have universal appeal, but I just have to share my favorite Christmas gift of 2010 - a story written by my 9-year-old daughter (excuse the spelling and grammar - she learned to read/write in Spanish first so she's still perfecting the English). It cracked me up, and I know some of you will think it's funny too - whether you have IR hardware, or just "regular doors." :-)
We're on our annual summer road trip, although I didn't have the stamina to listen to the kids bicker all the way to Florida so it's a much shorter trip than last year. Before anyone asks, I don't have a single piece of hardware with me on this trip.
The picture at right has nothing to do with this post, but isn't it BEAUTIFUL?! I had no idea that I had captured this sloth so well until I was putting a photo book together for my daughter's preschool class over the weekend. I took the picture in Caño Negro, and the sloth was waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy up in a tree, but he must have put his face into the sunbeam just as I took the photo. I love it!
This may be in questionable taste, but I thought it was cute. Hopefully anyone who is reading a website about doors and hardware won't be offended by the mention of "pee."
When we drove through Santa Elena, we noticed a restaurant with a tree growing up through the middle of it. It looked pretty cool, so we headed there for lunch after our 3-hour morning hike in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and before our afternoon hike at the Selvatura Hanging Bridges. (On the verge of passing out from exhaustion later that evening, we realized that it was only 7:16 p.m.!)
The hotel with the treacherous handicap ramp (see previous post) was actually a very nice little hotel, but it had some other code-related issues. I think all of the issues stem from the lack of stringent building codes in Costa Rica, but they're still a little scary for travelers who happen to be door hardware consultants.
Yesterday we jammed as much rainforest into one day as we possibly could. In the morning we went to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve and had a 3-hour hike with our awesome guide / biologist, Eduardo. He knew everything about the plants, birds, and animals of the reserve, and we learned A LOT.
Yesterday we went to Caño Negro, a wildlife refuge near the Nicaraguan border. I saw no doors of note, but I did see a mother sloth with her baby, which was SO COOL!! We saw tons of other animals including iguanas and other lizards, caymans, white-faced and howler monkeys, at least 20 different kinds of birds, and 3 other sloths. It was a really great day.
A visit to any volcanic region wouldn't be complete without a trip to the hot springs. We didn't want to miss anything, so we visited two different hot springs resorts - The Springs, and Tabacón.
I don't really like to fly. I know about all of the airline safety statistics, but I just don't like being confined and especially tens of thousands of feet up in the sky. I don't like turbulence, even if it IS just bumpy air. I'm not buying it.
