Canals! We need canals!

They closed the locks @ Willamette Falls a couple years ago so you only get 25 navigable miles on the Willamette now. I don't think the canals lobby will get far in Oregon these days.

Seems like grain traffic on the Columbia still does brisk business but I don't see many container barges.

You do realize that we're talking about the Erie Canal and the connection to the St Lawrence Seaway?

Have you tried the Merek 95g saddle? It's pure carbon fiber.

I have been using one for the past year with no real problems. The only beef I have is that if I lean the bike against a wall that is concrete or stucco, and the edge of the saddle rubs the wall, the saddle gets roughened up and I tore a pair of nice bibs from that rough spot. I have since learned to smooth any induced rough spots with an emory board or sandpaper.

Yeah NJ gets a bad rap from the unenlightened but it's actually a pretty good place to live, generally speaking.

I lived there from birth through HS graduation...parents and sister are still there.

I was thinking "inland" in a general sense, either from NY, SC or Louisiana.

Still no way in hell you're gonna get a sovereign class container boat up the Erie Canal.

A proper chart will have upriver and downriver mileage stats also.

It finally fell off page 1.

Anyone that bumps it is going to get a noogie from yours truly.

But you can have one waiting at Lake Erie for the rest of the (potentially long) trip. Are we really arguing whether or not Charleston is a superior port (vs NY harbor) when it comes to the transport of goods to a large swathes of the continent? It's not. So stop.

Charleston has a seaport.

Navigable rivers were much more important prior to the railroad than they are now, as far as city growth goes. See Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Atlanta, among others.

If river travel was all that, rjones would be living along a superhighway. Instead, all he's got is a giant bark park.

I'm sure plenty more freight is rolling a couple miles from me along I-40 each day than goes up the Hudson River.

Yep many of the waterways that played host to massive freight tonnage in the past are clogged with pleasure craft these days.

There are BUSY train tracks along both sides of the Columbia River.

I think CSX makes it a potential tie.

By the way, you can reach Knoxville by barge. But it's a long trip from the Gulf of Mexico and you've got to go through a few locks. So not a lot of traffic goes that way except for heavy industrial freight like gravel.

fify

Yes, but you only mentioned air conditioning, as if all other parameters were equal or favored Charleston. They don't. Also, even if river travel isn't as big now, do you really think that any advantage in resources would be thrown out as if they were a non-factor? Oh, did you know that there are railways in NY/NJ, too? I know - strange.

Let's not pretend that you've got more paved roads.

Whoooshie!! It's noogie time!

Okay, bike related question (crazy, I know): am I seeing this right - can DT Swiss rear hubs be fairly easily converted back and forth between Shimano and Campy?

Looks like approx. $90 for a Campy freehub body for 240/240s hubs common on Reynolds wheelsets.

(Excludes Solitude, Attack, Assault, and Strike wheels)

Sweet. Thanks.

Let's try this again. Do you have a link to this saddle? Someone created a 135g Aliante?

wut

The advantage now is climate, which was the major disadvantage before air conditioning. All the other stuff can be overcome.

Incidentally, it's 700 miles just to reach the Mississippi River from here. Or 900 miles to the Gulf via the Tennessee–Tombigbee Waterway.

Does that include you also?

They tried that on Mars and look what happened...

Support? Oh, and tell that to the hurricanes.

Why, if you don't have to? I hate to tell you and all the others that stock up on bread and water, but 1" of snow doesn't tax the infrastructure up here like it does down there.

And then it's all upriver to get anyplace interesting and it's still doesn't open up as much access as the Great Lakes.

If a freighter wanted to go to the Golf, wouldn't they just head straight there vs landing in Charleston?

This is silly. In the last decade the South grew 4x faster than the Northeast. New York and New Jersey are losing congressional districts because people are leaving there . . . or jumping into the Hudson River.

Norfolk is the best port on the east coast, everyone knows that! ;) Get rid of that stupid Naval base and think of all the extra freight capacity that could be had there! Seriously though, I think there's a reason for each's existence.

I'm kinda surprised Portland and Vancouver, USA still get so much shipping business. Seems like they'd all just unload at Longview and call it good (if Longview had enough handling capacity). I guess Portland/Vancouver makes sense for grain. Grain barge peeps don't want to run barges that far downriver, they want the grain on big boats or trains ASAP.

Incorrect - they're losing seats because they're not growing as fast, not because they're shrinking. That the south is seeing larger population gains shouldn't be surprising; look at it this way - where is there more room for expansion? Not in Manhattan.

In any event, if you want to talk about silly, let's take a look at the premise of your argument -

So, if American immigration started today, with the technology that's in place now, there would be more people in C, SC than NYC... Okay, question - didn't American immigration occur exactly when it did and exactly as it did, because of the technological advancements of the time? In other words, how can you divorce the timeline of the "discovery" and colonization of NA from the level of technology of mankind? On what planet would an earthbound species evolve to a point where flight was possible without them noticing and taking advantage of a continent of natural resources first?

I have been on the Erie Canal and the Champlain Canal together with the Hudson just beautiful. The sad part is that it no long used for commercial shipping.