Grand Canyon of Suckage

[Catwoman2965]

Reminds me of one of my cruises, don't recall which one, when AS the ship is pulling out of port, you see a group of passengers running hell bent for leather back to the ship. YES, they really DO enforce the departure time! Meanwhile, everyone on that side is hanging out on their balcony, jeering and cheering them on! The pilot boat had to bring them out. I did hear that if that happens, you're charged for it, but barring a true emergency, how difficult is it to keep track of time and get back on in time?

[bloo]

I just had to pop in and provide a link (hope that's ok) to a video about Guano Point. Very old recording but the crazy dude riding on top of the cable car is my Gramps. He passed on few years ago and he was still as crazy as ever. Crazy in a good way. Grandma said she married him because she didn't want a boring life. Lesson learned? Careful what you ask for!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyKwpp4T_E

Whoa. That was something!

[AccountingDrone]

For anyone who wants to know why it is called Guano point check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyKwpp4T_E. The crazy man (Bill) riding on top of the cable car crossing the canyon is my Gramps. Grandma married him because she "didn't want her life to be boring." Moral of the story? Careful what you ask for! =D

LOL I bet it wasn't boring!

Rob's grandfather was a high scaler at Hoover Dam. Nothing like a job where you haul tools down a couple hundred feet, drill a hole, pack it with dynamite, light it and then *climb* back up. They used to eat lunch sitting halfway down the rock face and got pissed off at the drivers who would sit above on the rim and drop rocks on them, so one day they dropped a multi-ton boulder into the bed of a descending empty dump truck. That stopped the drivers from dropping rocks on them after that.

Big Roaring Irish Giant of a man, 6'7" [2 meters tall] was originally invited to teach hard rock mining at the Colorado School of Mines, as he was apparently a serious authority until they realized that he never finished high school. He had a shop working on jack hammers when he retired to keep himself from getting bored. One of 13 children in a classic huge Irish Catholic family. He died back in the mid 1960s, I really wish I could have met him - people like that absolutely fascinate me. Rob's brother Pat takes after him, when I first met him in 1989 he was 12 years old and already 6'3" tall.

[Smapti]

For anyone who wants to know why it is called Guano point check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtyKwpp4T_E. The crazy man (Bill) riding on top of the cable car crossing the canyon is my Gramps. Grandma married him because she "didn't want her life to be boring." Moral of the story? Careful what you ask for! =D

The ruins of that tramway station are still there today, in case you didn't already know. You're completely free to wander in and take a look at the decaying walls and the old workplace safety signs and the rusting stove in the corner, and it's rather surreal to actually be walking around in a place like that with no barricades or "DO NOT TOUCH" signs or anything of that nature. If you look in just the right direction over the rim, you can just barely see the rusting tower that held up the cables about halfway down the descent. One of the docents at the site informed us that the narrow flat path we were walking along to hike towards the ruin had once been a service road, and that they would actually pull dump trucks up along that path in reverse to collect the guano that was being hauled up from the basin.

Those drivers must have had balls of steel.

[dalesys]

...Those drivers must have had balls of steel.

Or have been bat-shit crazy.

[dawnfire]

Or have been bat-shit crazy.

I vote a bit of both.

could you imagine if they had it running again as a tourist attraction.

[wolfie]

Or have been bat-shit crazy.

Considering the place is called "Guano Point", wouldn't "bird shit crazy" be more appropriate?

[Geek King]

Considering the place is called "Guano Point", wouldn't "bird shit crazy" be more appropriate?

Guano is the name for bat poo, so your choice of terms, really.

[pudddykat]

Yup crazy and balls of steel, my Gramps had both-. My Gramps is actually the one who put the tram in which involved dynamite and craziness. There also used to be a "two holer" that stuck out over the canyon. Looking down before you sat was a good way to cure constipation. LOL

[Antares]

Something like that happened while on a tour in Hawaii. We stopped and were told to be back at a certain time. At that time everyone was back. Except one person. Despite wanting to leave we were told they couldn't. 45 minutes later the guy shows up and as he is getting
on the bus I ask, "Can't tell time?"

"I got lost," says he.

I looked at my friend. "How the hell do you get lost?"

"I dunno," said my friend. "Its all black lava so maybe he got turned around."

"How the hell do you get turned around," I asked. "You go out, the mountain is on one side and the ocean on the other. You want to come back, the mountain and ocean are on the opposite sides!"

My friend shrugged. I don't know if I'd embarrassed him. It was a small bus and it would have been hard for anyone NOT to have heard me. It was the only bad thing about the trip.