"Large crops of pink, 8-10 oz that have a full, old-fashioned tomato flavor. Smooth, blemish free fruit are borne in large numbers over a concentrated time period, making this variety a favorite in Southern states for canning and eating. Strong determinate. 80 days, #4515 (30 seeds) $2.55" [Tomato Growers Supply seed blurb] My opinion is that description comes from somewhere other than a grower of Bradley, if you get my drift. I mean it seems to ape other seed blurbs for Bradley rather than the results I've experienced over the past 4 years growing Bradley. First of all, I agree with the 80 days to maturity from transplant. But I don't think I ever got a 10-ounce tomato off a Bradley plant. Maybe 8 ounces with plenty of them running 6 - 7 ounces. "Full, old fashioned flavor" maybe in a hot, dry summer but I'd describe it more on the sweet side of old fashioned and down right bland and watery if the season goes overly wet. Tends also to get soft inside with skin splits in overly wet conditions. I had some excellent results in containers, though, where I did get truly blemish free, 8 ounce, tasty fresh slicers. Concentrated set? Not so much. And surely not like many determinate canners that set one huge crop with maybe a second wind smaller crop then peter out completely. The Bradleys I've grown started yielding at 80 days from transplant and continued with reasonably generous yields until cool, low light conditions in autumn tended to shut them down or render the fruit tasteless. Bradley definitely is a producer though, and does have genes that are useful for increasing yield and standardizing fruit size when crossed with an heirloom like Cherokee Purple. I did that in 2007 and in 2008 grew the F1 that yielded more tomatoes of a uniform size (about 6 - 8 ounces) than any other regular size tomato in the garden ... like 8 - 12 fully ripe tomatoes per picking with two or three pickings a week at the peak season. Awesome. And in no way was the F1 Bradley x CP semi-anything. It was robust indeterminate and grew as long or longer than JD's Special C-Tex and Cherokee Purple as next door neighbors. Out produced them both, too. See below: Bradley x CP, one vine, one day.

Well, I have to answer this one! Due to the quirks of my childhood, my parents' willingness to allow me to travel alone from age 12 on, and the fact that I have severe idiopathic vertigo and, for the past 30 years have been unable to fly - I have crisscrossed the USA by train, by coach and sleeper car. I've also traveled by train in Canada, England, Israel and Mexico, but those trips were all fairly short. I love Amtrak! Some comments about the linked article. FIrst, he misses the main experience of dining on a train. You meet the most fantastic people! Seating in the dining car is done by filling up each 4-place table, and unless there are three of you, you will sit with strangers. Everyone has a story and almost everyone wants to hear yours. I have dined with people from around the world. Foreign tourists are especially interesting, because they want to have a real American experience and are curious about everything. But our countrymen/women are also fascinating. I could write a book about those I've met on the train. The food is forgettable, except for the salmon and roast chicken, which are delicious. For breakfast I always have the "healthy choice" - fresh fruit, yogurt, and a muffin or croissant, plus orange juice and coffee. The snack bar is a snack bar, but does have fresh fruit. The writer of the article discusses train travel when going by coach. I always traveled by coach when I was a lot younger and didn't require sleep and could tolerate anything. Not that there's anything wrong with coach - it's fine for a 10-15 hour trip, and many people travel that way for a lot longer time. But now that I am older and have aches and pains, I like a really good chair for curling up and reading, and a bed at night. So if it's a longer trip (to see the children and DGS) I take a roomette. Yes, it's expensive - $700 for a round trip between Salinas CA and Eugene OR. I know. But for that you have your own tiny room with two cushy seats that fold into a bed, plus various kinds of lights, electrical outlets, a fan, and good space for hanging up clothes and storing carry-ons. All meals are included, plus all the coffee and fruit juice that one could drink. And the sleeping car attendant, who will do his/her best to make you comfortable, including making up your bed, bringing extra pillows and blankets and sundries you might need, plus bringing you your meal from the dining car if you're not feeling friendly. Attendants also have their own stories to tell, if you just ask! They are unionized and have good lives. For sleeping I take a trazedone, a non-addictive sleeping pill. I turn off the lights, leave the curtains open, and if I wake up, just enjoy the passing scene, homes and farms and ranches with a light on, and the stars and moon in the sky. Very romantic! Yes, to enjoy train travel you have to be flexible and not a germophobe. Trains don't always run on time, and someone may get sick in a public bathroom. I always bring plenty of reading matter, wash my hands frequently and never go barefoot. But I also never worry. Two of the most beautiful trips are the Coast Starlight, from L.A. to Seattle, right out over the ocean north of Santa Barbara, and through the Cascade Mts. in Oregon. We've met many people going between L.A. and Portland or Seattle who fly one way and, just for the experience, Amtrak home. Also there is the Zepher, which rides through the Sierra Nevadas and later, Utah and southern Colorado. The Empire Builder, through Idaho and the northern Rockies, is on our list. He is right about Union Station in Chicago. I remember the old Union Station (as in The Untouchables) from my childhood, a wonderful place. Now it's been remodeled and it is not fun, nor elegant. And good luck finding someone to help with luggage. You are on your own, schlepping everything behind you. Train travel is our one true luxury, and for us, well worth it. We talk it up with our friends but still, nearly everyone prefers to fly. I know this was long, but at least it wasn't as long as the linked "memoir"!

I figure, of all the clutter in my life, books are the least of my worries. They usually look tidy and don't take up much space. YMMV. I buy new copies of the generic guidebooks whenever I make a major trip, and only keep the latest if I have multiples. They're a good start to the obsessive planning of the next trip - "oh, I wanted to see this museum but it was closed for renovation," or, "I wonder if this restaurant is still there". I lend them out freely to friends without worrying about getting them back. On the other hand, I'll keep older books that have something interesting to them - The Jane Austen Guide to Bath, for example, or Literary Walks in Rome. The last time I got ruthless about a travel book, I was on the ferry to Corsica for a 3-week hiking trip. As I was tearing out the section on Corsica from the *huge* general Italy book and throwing the rest away, an Italian gentleman looked at me, horrified. "Americans, so wasteful!" Sigh...

You know pdu - your way of travelling without a carrier or crate works... until it doesn't. Sounds like a mellow guy but all it takes is one sudden loud unexpected noise (with a car door open) at a rest stop and your mellow cat suddenly isn't. Im on a lost cat forum and did a ton of research when my cat once went missing - cats lost at rest stops, campsites and while travelling or moving are all too common an occurrence. Add to that people being in a hurry and not willing or able to stay hours or days to look.... its a sad situation for the poor cat who may likely be abandoned ,.... and the people who generally are kicking themselves quite mercilessly for having been so careless. I'm truly baffled why people would not take even the simplest precautions. Carriers breaking in half (the screws coming loose) are another all too common occurrence. BTW - fyi missingpetpartnership.org is an amazing resource about lost pet behavior - dogs may panic and run and keep running, but cats lost in strange surroundings will typically hunker down silently (they are capable of concealing themselves in very small places) and not respond when called until they've calmed down which may take hours - maybe days. Your search would involve combing every square inch of the area - cant assume they'll come when called .... although perhaps at night when its very quiet you might be lucky and hear a tiny scared meow in reply.