Facebooking Natural Mixmaster Eminent Domain Stadium Abuse

I keep forgetting I need to get my bike wheel fixed til I'm in the mood for something aerobic. Maybe I should make a note somewhere. I think I mentioned being up around 4, dipping skinny in the pool around 5, by noon I needed to get out of here.

So, it was back to my ol' standby, the Tandy Hills Natural Area. It was not quite 100 degrees. A bit of a breeze made it a fine hiking temperature.

Usually I take a picture looking west from the summit of Tandy Mountain. Today's picture is looking west from the west end of the natural area. We are looking at the new, what I consider to be hideous, Omni Convention Center Hotel, with it's weird looking gigantic balconies that stick out from the sides, like scaffolding.

In front of the Omni, that mass of ribbons of concrete is what is known as the Fort Worth Mixmaster. It is where I-30, I-35 West and I-287 all join together in one big bunch of flyovers and overpasses. This thing took something like 12 years to build. And cost something like $180 million.

I remember the first time I heard the Mixmaster cost mentioned, as if it was a lot of money, I was quite perplexed. Everything is supposed to be bigger in Texas. I remember the final section of I-90, up in Seattle, across Lake Washington and Mercer Island, cost something like $5 billion. They are replacing a floating bridge and removing a waterfront viaduct up there to the tune of billions. In little ol' Washington, a state with a population smaller than this D/FW Metroplex with its $180 million Mixmasters.

Then again, here in Texas we have a giant, futuristic spaceship inspired football stadium that cost $1.1 billion. Which got built very fast, paid for, in part, by one small Texas town, that being Arlington, while up in Washington, the Seahawks want a new football stadium and the entire state votes on it.

And absolutely no one, not a single person, lost their home so Seattle could have a new football stadium and baseball park. How many were displaced by the eminent domain abuses that occurred in Arlington to build a football stadium and baseball park? In Seattle you have way, way less open space than this D/FW Metroplex zone has, there you are bounded in by water and mountains, yet no one lost their home to a sports stadium. Meanwhile in Texas, well, I tend to harp.

It's perplexing. And maybe just a tad shameful. The Texas thing, I mean, not my harping, my harping is not shameful, it's helpful.

So, that's been my day, up early, hiking hot and spending more time on Facebook than I've spent previously. Why? I am not quite sure.