Hilary was, once again, at the conference which has, in her words, been one of the best she has attended. After a very late start - emails, and a work-related teleconference got in the way (I really must stop trying to do work on holidays!!!), I got away once again to Balboa Park, the site of over a dozen museums. There are museums completely devoted to photography, to sports, the automobile, to "Man" (the one Hilary and I saw on Day 2), to "living artists", and of course, dead ones. Well, the last one is not exactly called that. In fact, the San Diego Museum of Art is world renowned. My destination? Not any of these. I hope to see the Museum of Art tomorrow, but right now, I was headed to the Aerospace Museum and the site of a special exhibit of Leonardo Da Vinci's wonderful inventions.
<--view of one of Balboa Park's towers from the central plaza near the art gallery.
Born in 1452 as the illegitimate son of a notary and a peasant woman, Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the greatest inventors the world has known. His contributions spanned science, math, engineering, anatomy, painting, art, architecture, music, literature and botany. The diversity of his inventions, exhibited here, was breath taking.
Here, was the first idea for a bicycle...
...a paddle wheeler boat
an airplane...
... a military tank
double-hulled boat...
... a helicopter, a parachute, a hang glider, morter bombs (many of his ideas were military in nature), and
... an even automobile, powered by springs and cogs! (The handle above the contraption is the steering wheel; the sail to the right is part of another exhibit)
I didn't realize, until after the exhibit and viewing a reproduction of Da Vinci's famous painting "The Last Supper" that he was one of the first artists to use oil paints. To do so, he had to create his own pigments, dissolving them in oil.
The "last supper", seems to have contained a hidden message - something that Da Vinci was quite fond of doing, as the popular book "the Da Vinci Code" made good use of. An Italian musician and computer geek made the surprising observation in 2007 that the objects in the painting may, in fact, be deciphered as musical notes. The discovery created great excitement in the popular press at the time, and was reported on the CBC and the Discovery channel, among others. Click here for details - it's pretty interesting.
The rest of the museum was filled with artifacts from a century of aviation, from early planes used in World War I and II to spacecraft.
Here, among other vintage aircraft was a restored tri-plane of the type used by the Baron von Richthofen, aka "the Red Baron" during World War I. It was so named after his fearsome red Fokker Dr.I triplane, which could out-maneuver anything in the sky at the time.
Japanese Zero fighter plane, of the type used to invade Pearl Harbour in WWII. What you see here is not a photo of a model - it's a real plane, hanging from the ceiling of the museum-->
<--Ryan X-13 experimental jet, which could be launched vertically from a platform such as this
Apollo 9 space capsule, which carried mission commander Jim McDivitt, command module pilot David Scott and Lunar Module Rusty Schweickart to the moon and back in March, 1969. Four months later, in July 1969, Apollo 11 landed men on the moon--->
My camera ran out of batteries taking so many pictures, so, to must end this little story about my visit to the Aerospace museum. I was probably the last person to leave the museum at closing time.. it was so interesting.
<--Part of the very ornate Spreckels Organ Theater at Balboa Park
Statue of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, Campeador, better known as El Cid, a national hero of Spain who lived around 1045 AD. A beautiful sculpture located in the center of Balboa Park, it's no wonder people often mistake it to be a statue of the famous conquistador Balboa himself-->
I made it back to the hotel just in time to meet Hilary and get ready for dinner, an event sponsored by the convention called "California Highway 101". These fantasy themed events are rather fun. But mainly it gave us an opportunity to meet more of Hilary's colleagues, who came from across North America to discuss common areas of interest.
Tomorrow is our last day in San Diego. I don't know if I'll have an opportunity to write up an entry for that day as we'll have a short morning of meetings for Hilary, and perhaps a quick gym workout for me, before we head out to the airport. Now that I'm writing this, I suspect we'll have to wait to see the San Diego Art Gallery for the next time we visit this beautiful city.
