Happy Friday the 13th! As an explorer, I draw inspiration from the achievements of Voyager 1 — which, scientists announced this week, became the first man-made object to enter interstellar space. Launched in 1977, that space probe has now traveled roughly 11.7 billion miles from Earth. Kind of makes my own wanderings seem pathetic in comparison. 🙂 But I do what I can. (Note: many news articles have stated that Voyager 1 has left the solar system. But technically that’s not quite true; the probe still needs to pass through the Oort cloud, a region of comets that orbit the sun. Voyager 1 won’t even reach the Oort cloud for another 300 years or so, and it won’t transcend the outer edge of that region — thereby officially bidding adieu to the solar system –until about 30,000 years down the road.)
Speaking of my own, Earth-based travels, it’s time for another photo drawn from one of my previous trips. This week’s image comes from Los Angeles. It’s a very unusual house. Called the Chemosphere, this residence is octagonal-shaped, which would be distinctive enough; but what truly makes it unique is that it stands atop a 29-foot concrete pole.
Here, the Chemosphere — which was designed in 1960 by the architect John Lautner, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright — can be seen peeking above the treetops. (This is as close as I was able to get to the Chemosphere; it’s privately owned and its driveway is gated.)
Although as you may recall I was just in Los Angeles a couple of weekends ago, this photo was taken during one of my earlier visits to that city, in September 2012.
Would you like to live in a house like this?
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Gorgeous! While I would love to vacation in a house like this, I don’t think I could live there. All the New Yorker in me keeps thinking is, “wow, these people must have a really hard time every time they have to run out to the store to get eggs!”
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@Jess: ANYONE who lives in a neighborhood like this in L.A. has a hard time running out to the store to get eggs. You can’t just walk to the corner bodega. 🙂 If you live in this particular home, you do get to ride a cool funicular (between ground level and the house) every time you want to enter or exit.
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