("Love Lockdown" by Kanye West)Warning - this is generally going to be a very boring, albeit brief, posting for most people. I nevertheless felt compelled to share (even though it took my nearly six months to finish the draft of this posting!).
This weekend the weather was really beautiful and I took advantage of it and spent some time along the mighty Main River (note that the official name of Frankfurt is Frankfurt am Main, meaning Frankfurt located on the Main). Saturday I took a long walk towards Offenbach and discovered that there was a set of locks there alongside, of course, a dam. There was a pedestrian bridge that ran over all of it (with a grated walkway that might make the faint of heart a bit unnerved), so I headed up to take a look. I guess if you've seen one set of locks, perhaps you've seen them all, but I nevertheless enjoy watching the action. This set was quite long and capable of fitting two long barges at a time. There is a surprising amount of commercial traffic on the Main. One sees barges carrying coal, fluids of some sort, and who knows what else. I have heard that much of the traffic is controlled by Deutsche Bahn, which of course also owns the German railway system, which would seem to give them quite a nice control of transit of goods within the country.
There were three sets of locks. The first two appeared to be two separate lanes for commercial purposes. They were each long enough to contain two barges. In addition, there was a set of doors in the center, so if only one barge was present, the entire lane didn't have to be filled or drained (I am sure those are not the technical terms, but you catch my drift (no pun intended), right?).
The third lock appears to be for leisure craft and is more or less a self-serve lock, which I found fascinating. I hung around to watch this in action. It requires at least two individuals to operate this lock. Essentially, the boat must pull into the lane and let out a passenger, who then operates the lock. The pilot of the boat then pulls forward into the lock area. The ousted passenger then goes to a terminal/interface that is about the size of an ATM machine, but doesn't seem to be quite so advanced. I'm not sure what the machine says, but the operator must essentially push a large button to start the filling/draining process. And continue to hold until it is done. So the guy I was watching got pretty tired of pressing the button with his hand and engaged in a variety of positions mostly involving leaning up against the machine. Who says booties aren't useful for things other than sitting? Then, once the proper level is achieved, the doors are opened, the operator goes down to the lower or higher area where the boat is now located and jumps back into the boat. Now, there doesn't appear to be a way to access the leisure locks, if you will, other than from the river itself. So if your buddy pulls out without waiting for you to jump back in, it's a long swim to shore....
The following day I got on my bike and rode the other direction along the Main. Much to my surprise, I encountered another set of locks. It was more or less the same as the other set of locks, but with a slightly more rural flavor. Just as fascinating to watch.
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