[ExI] virtual travel improving all the time

[spike]

>...Hey, that thing looks rather like Spike already!  It's got the same
svelte body style...BillK

Hey I resemble that!  

Wait, that's what you said.   {8^D

Actually that's me on the left, disguised as the black-eyed blondie with the
blue water hose wrapped around.

>> the awesome feeling of climbing down into Grand Canyon...Anders

This is a terrific example, for the comment brought back fond memories from
11 years ago when my bride and I, along with another couple, hiked from the
south rim to the north rim, with three nights on the trail.  We became
acquainted with two other couples doing the same thing down there and became
friends, for it was a fairly unusual pair of groups: we were four engineers
who went to school together, they were four doctors who went to school
together.  They were all around 30, we were all around 40.  With the decade
handicap, the oldster engineers were still able to hike their young socks
off.  Of course, they offered a perfectly logical explanation: we were
spending our weekends hiking, they were spending theirs working at the
hospital.

The reason I wanted to hike the Grand Canyon was I wanted to examine the
interface where the layers change.  Look at this photo, and notice the
transition a few hundred meters down from the rim of the canyon, especially
visible toward the right of the photo where the color changes from tan to a
reddish brown:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GRANDVIEWREVB.jpg

I had flown over the canyon a number of times on my way to and from Phoenix
and had wondered what the heck that transition was.  I wanted to see that up
close.  So I talked my bride and my friends into doing this three day hike,
reasoning that the trail had to cross that transition somewhere, so I could
look at it.  

A few hours into the hike, as we neared that transition, I marveled at how
abrupt that layer changes, even as you get closer to it.  It appeared just
as sharp as when viewed from 10 km in a plane.  Still closer, still appeared
to be a sharp transition.  Eventually I found a place on the trail where I
could walk right up to that layer change.  It is so sudden that you can find
that transition and place your thumb on it.  Half your thumb will be
touching a tan material and half will be touching the reddish brown.  The
layer boundary is as sharp as if you drew it with a pencil.

To this day, I find it completely astonishing that geological layers have a
transition that abrupt.

That is an example of something that cannot be experienced by virtual travel
in any real sense.  The feel of the air, the opportunity to meet the young
doctors.

spike