We went to top camp today. The weather was good, meaning not too much wind, but real cloudy. The ride was icy, with chunks ranging from golf ball to softball size falling from the towers into the car. This is the longest tram in Alaska, better than 7000` if I read the drawings correctly.

Top camp was like a ghost town. The old quarters building is now gone, and the new one was so antiseptically clean looking that I expected to see people running around in clean suits. It was built at the cost of 7 or so million, and was only occupied for two years. The thing that bugged me the most was the lack of windows. The old quarters had two windows, and it felt good to look out every now and then.

I sort of paced around where the old FPS-20 gear used to be; there is much less clutter and such now than before. One thing that struck me was how quiet the new stuff is. Can you remember how the old radar gear used to sing to you? I call it the "rhyme of the PRF", and I have danced to it many a day.

When I lived here before at top camp the place seemed alive. The gear had to be tended to and cared for, and we had to take care of ourselves too. Now it is just a bunch of high tech equipment in racks. The poetry is gone. It is like comparing a steam locomotive puffing and belching and consuming coal and water to a modern diesel that pulls the train better but has none of the romance. Boy, I sure do wax philosophically when I have time to sit and think.