BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

was sitting in a meeting, and didn't even notice it over the general HVAC rumbling. But sometimes I have to leave my desk because the shaking makes me a little sick, so this building isn't the most... stationary.

I felt it sitting at the keyboard, and at first I thought it was related to the construction over the hill & the fact that my house is totally undermined. It was strong enough that a few knick-knacks in the office shook, but I doubt you would have felt it on a bike.

My experience was like Marko's. I was relieved it was a tremor, as my first thought was that our house was finally falling apart.

i was hoping for at least one rider... ohhhhhhhhhh wellllllll

A pothole opened up before my eyes!

I thought someone was walking behind me and bumped my chair. My computer display also shook at the same time. It was enough that I immediately searched twitter for "earthquake" to make sure I wasn't crazy.

I was in Oakland and either riding my bike or walking with my bike when this happened. Didn't feel a thing.

erok, seriously?

I was at my desk on the 14th fl of a 19 story brick and terra cotta office building. I noticed the shaking when the other guy in the office started going "did you feel that?". The blinds waved a little.

I wondered momentarily what to do and I figured if the thing started coming down, I would rather be 5 floors down from the top of a rubble pile than somewhere 19 floors down, so I just sat it out. And went back to BikePgh!

@erok .... don't joke about that!

On the earthquake of '85 in Mexico City, my Dad's car was almost swallowed by the road that opened up in front of him.... seriously.

I've experienced various earthquakes before, and this was the first one on a tall building ((12th floor)). Somehow this freaked me out more.... never in my life did I expect to feel something liek this in Pittsburgh

My sister and her boyfriend were riding on Eliza Furnace and said they felt it.

I am just across the bay from the epicenter, in Maryland. We were riding into town when the quake hit. Never felt a thing. When we got to town a few minutes later, it was all anyone was talking about. We presumed that for us, riding, it probably felt like a patch of rough pavement.

erok, seriously?

what, you've never experienced that in pittsburgh?

my house is on the side of the cliff in polish hill and we felt quite a bit, i thought the train tunnel below our house had collapsed... then i realized it was an earthquake and was relieved

I was biking, and didn't notice it. Disappointed! Next bike: no suspension.

I have a friend living in Culpepper VA (maybe 30 mi north of the epicentre) who also happened to be in Mexico for that earthquake. This one seems relatively well behaved, but on the other hand there's this email (excerpt):



Trying to avoid sleep...the aftershocks continue. The quake in Mexico happened early in the morning and woke us up and tossed us out of bed....

My dad was in San Francisco in 1989 for a big quake (knocked down interstate overpasses and such).

He was driving a car on a freeway (not one that collapsed). He thought that he had a flat tire. Freaked out a little when the car stopped and the shaking did not.

@Ahlir

My first earthquake was the Mexico City in '85. I was trying to get off bed to go to school, but then it started shaking. I actually laughed because it felt funny, plus I had a marionnete doll hanging from my bed-lamp that was dancing around with the tremors. My Mom came quickly & told me and my siblings to stay in our beds and wait. Luckily nothing happened in the area where I lived (in the South of the city), but through the TV I got to watch its aftermath.

Much of the Central part of the city went down -hospitals, hotels, businesses, apartment buildings, etc. To this day you can see still some empty lots from then. TV-Station antennas fell down too, so at first there was no TV for a couple of days, which was annoying to me (as a kid) because I couldn't watch my cartoons. But eventually we got signal, and some odd-and very old cartoons were played (which was annoying to me too). Between cartoons there would be live-broadcasting from the emergency shelters, listing food, medicine, and items needed. Children looking for their parents and vice-versa. There was also never-ending lists of names of people rolling in the screen. At first I didn't really understood anything of what was happening -I was a child after all, but eventually it dawned on me that all those names were of people missing or dead...... over 10,000 people died in it.

EDIT-More

In my neighborhood, all the neighboors got organized and we would periodically send this neighboor-man who had a truck with clothes, medical supplies, blankets, water and food to the emergency shelters and to the rescuers. I remember what we as a family did was donate mostly medical supplies and food -we would make lots of sandwiches -I think 100 at the time. My Mom would organize my siblings and me in an "sandwich-assembly-line" to get them done. We as-kids also donated some of our toys too, because I remember as-kids, we were sad that kids needed toys too

sigh....

Out of this experience, at the end, I learned the word --solidarity-- and how at the end, that's how you stand together as a family-city-country

((Sorry for the grammatical errors, but wrote that quickly, just as it came))

^ great story, thanks for sharing it! It is always heartening to hear stories about how people can pull together during a crisis when the news is more typically full of arrogant and senseless violence.

I remember hearing about the Mexico City quake, how much of the city was built on landfill from a drained lake. Much like a lot of the Haiti destruction was because much of the built-up city was constructed on dirt landfill washed down from deforested hillsides.

Mankind brings on a lot of its own horrors, and those that made the decisions that led to those horrors are long gone and the money made. Accountability is not possible. All we are left with is the horror (and the cleanup on someone else's nickel).

Thank you Lucia for sharing this story about how people can overcome horror!

Well, the heart of Mexico City was indeed a lake that was filled-in through the centuries. The city was Tenochtitlan, and it was HUGE!!!!

Sigh.... leyend goes that the city was built in that place because of a prophecy made. The people who erected the city came from the north, and the prophecy made by their astrologers was roughly to find an eagle devoring a snake, and once they found that, to build a city in that location, for it would be a powerful center of power & such. Supposedly they went-on forever until finally, in the middle of a valley surrounded by mountains and a Volcano (the popocateplt), they found a huge lake, and in the center of it, some prickly-pear cactuses came from the water, and on it, they found the eagle devoring the snake -the promised sign from the Gods.

So, as told, regardless of the lake-inconvinience, they built their major temples, to Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli -the Gods of rain/water, and of war (respectively), and the city & hearth of their civilization, with the Aztecs being the last inhabitants of it before being conquered by the Spaniards.

Ok -I'll stop now!

Sorry -I know this is nothing related to bikes! But can you tell (a) I like to share stories and (b) I love history?

Here, some images for better appreciation

((LAST FACTS..... where those major temples were erected (to the Gods mentioned above), that's where the Spaniards built the Catholic Cathedral -still standing to this day. And that area where supposedly the eagle was devouring the snake, is still, to this day, the heart of one of the biggest cities in Hispanic America

Bikey - you spin a good yarn

I've always loved the story of Tenochtitlan (never could pronounce it) - I never really understood why people build cities on top of (or under) water, but "The Gods made us do it" for some reason totally satisfies me.

Besides, in the middle of a lake is easy to defend, hard to sneak up on, and really impressive looking.

That aerial shot looks recent but i can't find it on the map, does it still exist like that?

@salty: If you mean the second pic, to my eye it looks like an aged oil painting. I'll see if I can find it in my tomes.

Edit: It is a piece of art created by Tomas Filsinger as part of the series "Maps of Mexico City 1325-2000". But that's all I could find out.

@humblesage

Correct! That is a painting from Tomas Filsinger from that book.

One can find in this link a "time-lapse" of maps showing Tenochtitlan-Mexico City through 5 centuries.

http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=29048&pageIndex=1

Yay! Google helped me find the artist, but only years of inhaling paint fumes in a cramped studio could have trained my eyes to see the haze that is oil paint drying.

Really cool. Thanks Bikey.

That's what I love about this board. We have enough people who are educated about so many different things and/or have different life experiences, and bicycles are what brings us all together for our mutual benefit. It never ceases to amaze me what I learn here.

^^ Agreed!

^^^ And I also agree!