Marcia Smith 0:00
What’s the only bird that can fly backwards?

Bob Smith 0:03
Whoa. And where can you find the skinniest skyscraper in the world? answers to those and other questions coming up in this episode of the off ramp with Bob and

Marcia Smith 0:15
Marsha Smith

Bob Smith 0:32
Welcome to the off ramp a chance to slow down. Steer clear of crazy. Take a side road to sanity with fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia. So there’s a bird that can fly backwards. Yes,

Marcia Smith 0:45
you know this bird Think it through. What do you think it is?

Bob Smith 0:49
The reverse bird.

Marcia Smith 0:51
Also known as

Bob Smith 0:53
the bird that flies backwards, is able to fly oh is able it can

Marcia Smith 0:59
fly back. Yes. And forward.

Bob Smith 1:01
Have you ever seen it fly backwards

Marcia Smith 1:02
out of our kitchen window?

Bob Smith 1:04
Really? Oh, hummingbirds. Of course. I never thought of that.

Marcia Smith 1:08
They are the only one that can do that go forward and backwards, up and down. Some hummingbirds fly at speeds greater than 33 miles per hour. hummingbird’s wings take up so much energy Bob, they beat from 720 to 5400 times per minute. Well, that’s hard to fathom. Yeah, that they spend the majority of their time just resting on branches and twigs because they’re exhausted. They’re flapping. Just you know when they’re out there eating sugars chopping away. And I bet you don’t know that they get their name from the humming noise that their wings make in flight.

Bob Smith 1:44
So that’s where it comes from. It’s the humming of the wings. Not the fact that the bird is going huh.

Marcia Smith 1:52
I always thought I heard him is he humming?

Bob Smith 1:53
He said the food here little sugar water. Okay, that sounds good.

Marcia Smith 1:59
Is this Pepsi one or is it real sugar?

Bob Smith 2:02
Okay, so the hummingbird? That’s a good question. All right, where can you find the skinniest skyscraper in the world? I will say in Dubai, Beijing, New York, Chicago or London? My

Marcia Smith 2:16
guess was fortunately one of those Chicago? No,

Bob Smith 2:20
it’s not okay. That it is in the United States. So that means it must be in New York. And it is

Marcia Smith 2:27
the not the Empire State Bill. No,

Bob Smith 2:29
it’s not. This is just 60 feet wide. It’s 1428 feet tall, but it’s only 60 feet wide.

Marcia Smith 2:37
Is it have a name? I

Bob Smith 2:37
know. Yes, it does. But you probably don’t know it. And I don’t know who’s named after a famous piano. Not Fred’s piano. Not Marsh’s piano. Okay, but the Steinway Steinway. So this is a new tower that was completed in 2022. It’s relatively new, but it’s got a height to width ratio of 24 to one. So that’s really unusual. Really, it’s as wide as a bowling alley is long, that’s it, or the distance between home plate and pitcher’s mound. And not only is it the world’s narrowest, but its height also places among the tallest buildings in the Western Hemisphere. It’s surpassed only by the One World Trade Center and Willis Tower in Chicago and the Central Park tower. What’s in it? Part of it is the original building where the Steinway company was it’s at 111 West 57th Street at four storeys tall, and it’s a residence so it has residents there. It’s they have panoramic views of Manhattan in Central Park, but it’s prone to slight movements and heavy winds. I wouldn’t like that to know they say it might move several inches on a typical windy day and up to two feet on a rear 100 mile per hour day.

Marcia Smith 3:46
Count me out. Okay. All right. Part of its base

Bob Smith 3:49
is a 16 storey tall Steinway Hall, which was built in 1925, his headquarters for the legendary piano company, the Steinway, their original building, and it was a fully equipped concert hall that served as the home of the New York Philharmonic before Carnegie Hall was built. And they took that and build upon that and now it’s the skinniest skyscraper in the world. I didn’t know anything about that. And then if you want to studio at the Steinway tower, the studio apartment that starts at 7.7 5 million Oh my can the penthouse living high and swaying will cost the lucky owner 66 million at the top of the Steinway tower. Anyway, that’s the skinniest skyscraper in the world. Okay,

Marcia Smith 4:30
Bo chap tower Bob is the first major building in Britain to be built from bricks

Bob Smith 4:37
Bo champ is that spelled b e

Marcia Smith 4:39
a u c h a MP

Bob Smith 4:43
okay Bo champ. It’s amazing and we both got that. And we are not sitting side by side looking at the same script either.

Marcia Smith 4:50
It’s built from bricks. Well and it’s located at what historical site I’ll give you choices. Okay. Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, House of parlor. Meet or Blackpool,

Bob Smith 5:01
so it is a building on one of those locations right

Marcia Smith 5:03
one of the historical sites. Okay, so

Bob Smith 5:06
since you said it’s the oldest building in Britain made of bricks you’ll say not stone but bricks, right? I would say it’s located there on that little island where the White Tower is are the Tower of London? Oh, good for

Marcia Smith 5:20
you. Okay, absolutely. We were there bowl champ tower the first English building constructed of bricks was built in 1280 Wow. 1280 It goes back a couple. So

Speaker 1 5:32
before that it was all cut stones but never bricks, the kind of bricks we know today. Modern bricks were invented. Gee, what was it almost 800 years ago. Yeah,

Bob Smith 5:41
it’s amazing. Okay, Marcia, you know, we talked about the Quakers and the Quaker presidents in our last ships and and Herbert Hoover. Correct. And I found it actually 11 other celebrity Quakers I’m going to ask you. Oh, really? What famous movie star of the 50s was also a Quaker. Uh huh. He was a young man. Uh huh. He died early in his career had James James Dean now

Marcia Smith 6:04
he was a Quaker. Yeah, he was raised Quaker. Well, that knocks my socks

Bob Smith 6:08
although that faith may not have played the biggest role in his career. Oh,

Marcia Smith 6:12
that’s fine. Maybe that’s why he was conflicted. And guess what

Bob Smith 6:16
this famous Sure Shot marks person in the 19th century with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and sharpshooting. Annie Oakley real she grew up a dirt poor Quaker, one of the other famous explorers of America. Daniel Boone, Daniel Boone was born a Quaker. His family emigrated to the United States from England primarily for religious reasons. Oh, no

Marcia Smith 6:40
kidding, to be able to practice their faith. Yeah,

Bob Smith 6:43
right. Okay. And then one more a famous newsman of television very famous in the 1950s on television. Was it Edward R. Murrow. He was also a Quaker. He was born in polecat Creek, North Carolina. Creek to Quaker abolitionist parents. Didn’t know that. I think that religion has a there’s an affinity people have for that, because they know that was a pacifist religion. And they stayed by themselves. And you know, very quaint, and I don’t know something interesting about that.

Marcia Smith 7:14
And Edward R was a pacifist, and he was the big wartime reporter.

Bob Smith 7:18
Yeah, right. When Nixon was a wartime president.

Marcia Smith 7:21
I know. Okay, Bob, and I never heard of this before you ever hear of the national park to park highway?

Bob Smith 7:26
The National Park to park highway? Yeah. No,

Marcia Smith 7:30
I never did either. So the question is, how many states does the National Park to park highway traveled through and how many parks does it connect

Bob Smith 7:39
the National Park to park highway? Yeah, there’s a national park to park highway. I

Marcia Smith 7:45
never heard of it either. And it’s been around since the early 1900s. Because they weren’t the roads to get from National Park to National Park. So my question is, how many states does this road travel through? And how many parks does it connect?

Bob Smith 8:00
How would I know? I don’t know. I’ll say it goes through six dates and connects 12 parks. Well,

Marcia Smith 8:05
you’re not far off. On the parks. There’s 13 parks that connects and 11 states. It was built in the early 1900s When national parks existed but it was difficult to get to them. Stephen Mather, the first director of the National Park Service helped develop the park to park highway. The route is one huge loop leading from Denver to Rocky Mountain National Park through Montana Glacier National Park than Western Mount Rainier. Self to Crater Lake, Yosemite, Zion Grand Canyon Petrified Forest. It’s a 5000 mile 76 Day pilgrimage to all 12 national parks. Wow. And its roads were not even paved. This is

Bob Smith 8:49
in the early 1900s. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That’s amazing. All right, Marsha, a body question. What organ that you have? 3822 Marcia, what organ of the body? Oh, Oregon. What Oregon can grow back if some of it is removed the liver? Yes, the liver is the only organ in the human body that can regenerate. However, some patients who have a diseased portion of their liver removed are unable to regrow the tissue. But for most patients with liver disease, a surgeon can perform a liver resection and remove the diseased portion of the liver and a portion will grow back unless it’s really too far

Marcia Smith 9:29
gone. Yeah, yeah, I know. Interesting. Okay, Bob, what unit of measurement is named for Mickey Mouse?

Bob Smith 9:37
Oh, really? There’s a unit of measurement name for Mickey Mouse. Is it a Mickey is that what we’re talking about? Something is a Mickey I thought that was a drink. Gianna no Marsh tell me

Marcia Smith 9:47
that the speed of a computer mouse is measured in Mickey Oh, I didn’t know that. That’s funny. Yeah, named after Mickey Mouse. Yeah, animal based names are surprisingly common when it comes to measurement like A guy things like horsepower. Okay. But there’s also the Mickey, a semi official means of measuring the speed of a computer mouse by computer scientists. And it’s named after a certain Disney character who’s probably the world’s most famous rodent.

Bob Smith 10:14
We know who that is. Yes. So is there a measurement of the size of a Mickey specifically

Marcia Smith 10:18
use to describe the smallest measurable movement that your mouse can make? Okay. So you know, it equals a millimeter here and 100/200 of a millimeter there. Interesting.

Yeah, that’s a Mickey. Mickey. Okay, Marsha.

Bob Smith 10:32
I have a animal question too. All right. How many buffalo now exist in North America? With it many

Marcia Smith 10:40
anymore? There’s a lot we’re talking. It can’t be hundreds of 1000s. It’s 10s of 1000s. No,

Bob Smith 10:45
it’s actually hundreds of 1000s. Really? How many? There once were untold millions today there are 350,000 Wow. Now that’s amazing because according to Ken Burns documentary, The American Buffalo, when Lewis and Clark crossed the plains in 1805, Meriwether Lewis wrote, the whole face of the country was covered by the Buffalo. And then 84 years later, only 84 years after that journey in 1889. How many buffalo Do you think there were 84 years after Lewis and Clark started across? There were a lot No, there were only 541 89 years later, my God they had been hunted to near extinction and that was due to the slaughter they were slaughtered due to the intentional policy of the Department of the Interior to deprive Indians of Buffalo for food scene.

Marcia Smith 11:34
That’s awful Indians use them for for their for and their food and everything. In

Bob Smith 11:39
fact, the Secretary of the Interior from 1870 to 1875, Columbus Delano actually proclaimed the eradication of the buffalo would be a good thing for the nation in its effect on the Indians, oh, my God, who said that that was the Secretary of the Interior from 1870 to 1875, Columbus Delano, things changed. Starting at the beginning of the 20th century, that was a coalition of groups, including Indian tribes began preserving small herds of Buffalo and we’ve gone from there. So today, the Secretary of the Interior is a Native American. Her name is Deborah Hallett first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. And she has a $25 million budget to combine bison restoration with grassland restoration. So we’re still trying to get the buffalo back, but we’ve gotten back to about 350,000 Now, it’s amazing. You’ve come a long way, baby 541. It’s amazing that they hunted them down that far. Even when I was a kid. We went out west and we saw a small herd of them at the Custer State Park in South Dakota. And that was one of the few herds that existed at the time.

Marcia Smith 12:41
Well, I never saw one until you and I went to Yellowstone.

Bob Smith 12:44
Yeah, that’s right. They came right up to the car.

Marcia Smith 12:47
Oh, my God, they were huge. just huge. Okay, I

Bob Smith 12:51
think it’s time for a break. All right, you’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We’ll be back in just a moment. We’re back buffalo in all. I brought my buffalo nickel along here. You’re listening to the off ramp with Bob and Marcia Smith. We do this for the Cedarburg, Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin, and it’s internet radio station and podcast platforms which spread our show all

Marcia Smith 13:14
over the world. Yes. Okay. Bob Stein for perhaps a new segment that I may or may not do in the future and it is called define me define

Bob Smith 13:23
me Yes. Okay.

Marcia Smith 13:26
What is a foo? nebulous? A

Bob Smith 13:29
foo nebulous?

Marcia Smith: Yeah

Bob Smith: F-u-n-a-b-u-l-i-s-t?

Marcia Smith 13:34
Exactly. Boy, you’re good at your spelling today.

Bob Smith 13:35
It sounds like somebody who has fun in motion

Marcia Smith 13:39
in an ambulance,

Bob Smith 13:40
but in

Marcia Smith 13:42
an ambulance. No. What is it? The literal definition of a funambulist is tight rope walker tight rope walking Walker? Yes. Okay. In Latin. fewness means rope and Angular is to walk in ancient Rome tightrope walking here, right? It’s not easy, was a popular site at public markets and gatherings. Today, you might see a few nebulas at the circus, but they aren’t limited to the big top.

Bob Smith 14:08
I had no idea went back to Roman times. Yeah, everything does, doesn’t it? Yeah. Okay. All right. Marcia, There once was a building with a death ray. Do you know about this? Got a couple architecture questions here today.

Marcia Smith 14:21
I did like the beginning of a little there was with a death ray. Okay, this was not long to go. Death Ray coming out of the top. Well,

Bob Smith 14:32
it’s kind of interesting. It was a 37 storey concave shaped building in London at 20 Fenchurch Street now the skyscraper was nicknamed the fry scraper after after sunlight reflected from its curved surface that partially melted a nearby car. Oh my god. Yes. That’s just because of the shape of it and the fact that the sun could come up and it would focus raised my god so they had to spend millions of dollars to Add a sunshade to stop the inadvertent death ray

Marcia Smith 15:03
unintended consequence area

Bob Smith 15:05
goes like Hey, okay, I got an idea for a building. It’s concave. Like

Marcia Smith 15:09
how many Mr. Architect you’re melting car.

Bob Smith 15:12
It’ll be shiny and then the sun will hit it. It’ll be brilliant. They didn’t know it would melt a Honda. Okay, amazing.

Marcia Smith 15:20
Oh, back to those wacky Victorian era women, Bob. Why did they consume arsenic on purpose? Oh,

Bob Smith 15:28
dear. Was that to give their skin a certain paler a white powder? Yes, yes. Yes. Well,

Marcia Smith 15:34
last week we talked I really doubt their fashion choices. Last week, we talked about wearing different heel heights so they could limp like the queen. And you remember the wigs? They were some time Yeah. Who did entire birdcages on the top of their head? God these women? Wow. Back in the day, pale skin was considered high class. Both because you never had a work in the sun. And because of the look you got when you had consumption?

Bob Smith 16:00
That’s right. Because if you had a tan that meant you were a laborer. Yeah, field. Nobody liked that. That’s right. I think today.

Marcia Smith 16:06
And, and if they didn’t already have a ghostly complexion, these little ladies would go out about it and other ways, like through long term slow exposure to arsenic.

Bob Smith 16:19
Oh, my goodness. which,

Marcia Smith 16:21
unsurprisingly, most arsenic eaters ended with this as a nice way to put it the doctor of the time said, an inevitable infirmity of the body.

Bob Smith 16:31
Oh, no kidding. Oh, dead or dead? Either way, not good. Wow. That’s just amazing. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 16:38
they were pretty wacky. But you know, that’s kind of one of those things.

Bob Smith 16:40
Didn’t they know? You know, it’s probably like us having microwaves in our house. someday they’ll go didn’t they know? Okay, Marcia, here’s a nature question. All right. This is one of those old fashioned things. You probably heard about it when you were a kid. You hear thunder? Five seconds after you see lightning? What is that usually indicate how a distance a lightning is about a mile away. Be the storm will produce about three inches of rain. See the storm is dissipating. Or D the storm will last about another hour. Hey, a. That’s right. Every five second interval between lightning and thunder roughly equals a mile distance from the strike. Yeah, I used to think that you’d count and the count would be lightning. One, two, yeah. Three that we three miles away. But no, it’s about a mile away every five seconds. Yeah. So 10 seconds, two miles. 15 seconds, three miles and so on. Well,

Marcia Smith 17:35
we’ll come next time. Maybe even tonight. Okay. Bob, did you know that all images coming into our retina are actually upside down? Did you know that?

Bob Smith 17:45
It’s like a camera? Yeah, like the old cameras where they had a mirror? Yeah. So really, so everything we’re seeing is actually upside down? Yeah. So you’re walking on the ceiling Marsh? How do you do that?

Marcia Smith 17:55
And why? Because the cornea the transparent part of the eye covering the iris and pupil is a convex lens. Okay, okay, but what

Bob Smith 18:05
change is it? Your brain does it that’s it your brain flips that around when light

Marcia Smith 18:09
enters the cornea, it’s flipped upside down, because the brains job is to translate that inverted information.

Bob Smith 18:16
So that is why when you have a problem with your vision, and it’s your brain is trying to connect it like if you have a stigmatism, your brain has to try to correct that. Yeah, that’s why you get headaches sometimes. Yeah, well, because your brain is trying to fix that image in your brain. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 18:31
Isn’t that interested is interesting, another marvel of the old brain.

Bob Smith 18:36
Okay, Marcia, I have another question for you nature. Okay. Okay. The three major cities with populations greater than 100,000 that get the most snowfall on Earth? Or in what country? Three cities with populations greater than 100,000 they get the most snowfall on Earth. Are they in Canada? The US Russia or Japan? Russia? No, not Russia. Canada. No, not Canada. Us. No, not us.

Marcia Smith 19:04
What was the last one? China? Japan? Even with the name I didn’t get it right.

Bob Smith 19:11
Japan Japan’s a more eye city average is 25 feet of snow a year. Are you kidding? Yeah, the northern half of Japan experiences what they call sea effect snow we have lake effect snow here with the Great Lakes. Sea effects snow is when cold Siberian air mixes with warm wet air from the Sea of Japan and dumps all that moisture onto the Japanese Alps. So that’s why Japan has three cities that get most of the snowfall in earth. More than any other country. And that little island.

Marcia Smith 19:42
I’ll be darned. Yeah. All right, Bob time for who am I?

Bob Smith 19:47
Whoa. There we are. Again,

Marcia Smith 19:49
Nick Kubo. I can do with my throat. I don’t know how you do that. In this case, though. It’s Who are we? Okay, you ready? Yeah. In America, this group of people established trial by Jury the protection of life and property by due process and freedom from self incrimination. Who were they? Who

Bob Smith 20:08
were they? Was this a religious group by any chance? Were they the Puritans? Yes.

Marcia Smith 20:13
Okay, Karl, the Puritans, these basic principles of law that the US abides by comes down from the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They created them and put them into effect and we still do it. Well,

Bob Smith 20:28
it makes sense because they came from England, which is where all that stuff came from. And all those traditions and it

Marcia Smith 20:33
was them that reinstated them here. It was they, it

Unknown Speaker 20:39
was it? Was it them?

Marcia Smith 20:40
Was it those guys those

Bob Smith 20:41
guys? Yeah, these guys. Okay. All right, true or false? Marcia, one more weather question. This is a good one to think about. Okay, house Windows should be opened in preparation for a tornado to equalize the pressure, right inside and outside. Correct. False. I always thought that to really whenever there’s a storm coming, I always break open the window. But apparently opening windows prior to a tornadoes arrival will only allow powerful gusts into the house inviting greater structural damage. Can you believe that? That came from botanika.com?

Marcia Smith 21:14
Who told us wrong? Well, everybody

Bob Smith 21:15
in the world? Wow.

Marcia Smith 21:17
Wow. Now you got to unlearn that.

Bob Smith 21:19
That’s gonna be hard to do more important or NATO is coming. Put the windows down? sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? More

Marcia Smith 21:24
importantly, Bob, what percentage of Americans have a jar of peanut butter in the house? Oh, this

Bob Smith 21:30
is the most important question. More important than that. Well, it depends. Okay, so it’s tornadoes or peanut butter. Okay.

Marcia Smith 21:37
What percentage?

Bob Smith 21:38
I would say about 80% of Americans have peanut butter in their house. According

Marcia Smith 21:42
to the National Peanut board. 94% of American households have at least one jar of peanut butter in the house. 90% 9494. That’s amazing. Yes, they report that Americans eat an average of 4.25 pounds of peanut butter per person per year.

Bob Smith 22:00
Well, the interesting thing is there’s a peanut board. I didn’t know that. Is it made out of peanuts or what? Peanut board it’s

Marcia Smith 22:06
also interesting to note because I didn’t know this. Peanut butter is considered a condiment.

Bob Smith 22:13
Well that makes sense it does you add that you put that on top of other thing yeah jelly or nana it’s a spread you know you’d they call it a spread the peanut butter spread. Yeah. But I didn’t know the board. I thought they might have a council or a congress but not a peanut butter

Marcia Smith 22:27
board. This CEOs Mr. Peanut with his little top hat and monocle. Oh,

Bob Smith 22:32
we’ve gone off the rails now.

Marcia Smith 22:34
Okay, I got some more if you need it. Okay. All right. What famous author was an original member of a society called the ghost club in London, England.

Bob Smith 22:44
The ghost club? Yeah. Oh, that must be our favorite English writer who wrote the Christmas tale. Yeah. Charles Dickens.

Marcia Smith 22:53
He’s known for good ghost story now. And then yeah, and he was a member of this very exclusive club interested in dissecting all things otherworldly. They’d sit around and discuss ghost stories. That club started with informal gatherings at Cambridge University and included such literary luminaries as WB Yeats, Siegfried Sassoon and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Bob Smith 23:17
Oh, really from Sherlock Holmes fame. That’s right. I’ll be done.

Marcia Smith 23:20
Bob, there are six foods that never expired. Well, one of those is honey. That’s correct. But how many others can you name? Well, there

Bob Smith 23:28
are five others. I can name five others. Yeah. Five other foods that never expire. Right? They never go back. No. soy nuts. No, no, no nuts. No nuts. Okay, tell me what they are. Right. They

Marcia Smith 23:42
are honey vinegar, white rice, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract.

Bob Smith 23:47
See, I don’t think of salt and sugar as foods. But I guess they are. Yes are ingredients and I certainly don’t think of vinegar as a food. And I think of it as something that you put in food, but it’s

Marcia Smith 23:57
condiment. Okay. And vanilla extract? I wouldn’t have guessed that lasted forever. Well,

Bob Smith 24:02
that’s good to know. So if I’m on a desert island, make sure I have a little cabinet full of that stuff.

Marcia Smith 24:06
What I end a peanut board. So you’ll have white rice, and you can put all this stuff on top of it. Oh my goodness. Okay, Bob, where is the most linguistically diverse country in the world? In other words, who speaks the most languages?

Bob Smith 24:22
I think I read that it’s New Guinea. Yes, you

Marcia Smith 24:26
read and remember hard to believe? Yes, they have 8 million people. And 839 language

Bob Smith 24:33
that’s just amazing. So they have all these aborigine tribes and groups of people that came their

Marcia Smith 24:39
839 languages.

Bob Smith 24:41
That is amazing. Isn’t that when we had a story on a week or two ago where they came there as seafarers? Oh, that was actually Australia, Australia. So nearby but not not the same island. Wow, that’s amazing. Okay, Marcia, you talked about restaurants. I have a question for you. Yeah. Where is the world’s highest revolving restaurant?

Marcia Smith 24:59
I would say, Well, let

Bob Smith 25:02
me give you a hint here. All right. Is it in Bolivia? Switzerland, Turkey or Japan?

Marcia Smith 25:08
Dubai?

Bob Smith 25:11
Dubai.

Marcia Smith 25:12
I don’t know. Okay,

Bob Smith 25:12
here’s a second here. Okay. I’ve been there. Oh, Switzerland. That’s it. Okay. Yeah, the world’s highest altitude revolving restaurant is on Schilt horn, which is a mountain in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. It’s about 10,000 feet above sea level. And it’s a revolving restaurant known as Piz. GLORIA meaning the glorious peak, and it was featured in the 1969 James Bond film. Oh, yeah, I remember that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in fact, that when the filmmakers were getting ready to do that film, they heard about this restaurant being built, and they said, we’ll help you fund that if we can shoot there. Oh, really? Yeah. So they actually helped to finance its construction in exchange for using it in the film. And today, in addition to the dining and drinks, they have an interactive James Bond exhibit. They’re called Bond world.

Marcia Smith 25:57
Oh, that’s cool. Did it turns real slow, like the one downtown here does? Yeah, it

Bob Smith 26:01
turns in me. But the interesting thing is you’re looking at mountains, different mountains is what you’re seeing as opposed to different buildings in your town. Yeah. So it’s pretty cool. Yeah, I shared a drink with my Rockwell colleague, Albert Fischer, at that revolving restaurant in Switzerland. But getting to it. This is what I remember being an amazing trip. You start way down in the valley, there are several ways to get there. But from the louder Broughton valley floor, it took four cable cars and 32 minutes to get to this peak, it’s 9744 feet at the summit of Mount Schilthorn. And some of our fellow passengers were dressed far less casually than us. They came with skis and ski poles. So I looked around them thought, are these people actually going to ski down these Alps because they are much steeper than the Rocky Mountains. It’s amazing, man. So they made their way back down on the mountains on skis. I thought they were some of the bravest souls in the world. I really did. Yeah, I

Marcia Smith 26:54
couldn’t imagine doing that. Okay, I’m gonna wrap it up with Winston Churchill, who better yeah, I got two quotes here. As first one. He said this long before the internet. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Bob Smith 27:11
That’s true. And he was speaking of the Nazi propaganda. Oh,

Marcia Smith 27:14
I’m sure Yeah. Okay. And finally, he said, a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Bob Smith 27:24
That’s absolutely right.

Marcia Smith 27:25
That’s excellent advice,

Bob Smith 27:27
words of wisdom. Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed our wisdom, what we’ve been able to impart and we hope you return to listen to more fascinating facts and tantalizing trivia here on the off ramp. The off ramp is produced in association with CPL radio online and the Cedarbrook Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin, visit us on the web at the off ramp dot show.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai