Tourism, Day Thirteen: Lucky Me

Saturday, 6 June, 2014, I slept fitfully in my seatbelt, and woke up in a fog.

I kid you not. This was looking toward Cheyenne.

We were pretty much socked in until we neared the Nebraska state line,

 when the fog lifted and we rode forth in intermittent rain.

Somewhere just east of Lincoln, the clouds began to break up for us. We stopped for gas and whatever food was ready to go, and, while I was trying to unkink my legs by limping around the store, I found a display gondola filled with electronic accessories – including several different types and price ranges of adaptors. I pointed them out to my friend, who practically broke out in a dance of happiness. Not only was the one I pulled off the rack exactly the size and type she wanted, it was also only thirty dollars, including tax, which meant she could afford it, and she'd have a chance to plug in her laptop and do the paper which was due the next day at midnight (which, I might add, she had been given an extra time allowance beyond that Sunday for, because we had been out-of-country, but she's still a bit anxious about falling behind. Me, I'm a slacker. It's a wonder, opposite as we are, that we're still friends. I guess the universe really does enjoy mixed nuts).

She quit driving, climbed into the back seat next to her nephew, and the foster son drove the remainder of the way home, while she worked on her assignment.

Well, whoopee! Let's have a parade!

Her mood was improved, but that didn't mean we were going to stop for anything but fuel, still.




Naturally, I continued to stare out the window and take pictures of

 the Great American Midwest Landscape

Until we passed through Des Moines and came out the other side with a full tank, heading southeast on US-65. Then I got a bonus activity…

Des Moines, IA. Government is Golden.

shaking. The camera could handle it, but not I.

Seriously. If you have never driven the stretch of highway from Des Moines to Ottumwa, you do not know what shaking is. I don't care if you spent your career riding a jackhammer atop an out-of-balance washing machine anchored to an earthquake simulator, you have not been shaken the way US Highway 65 (and eventually US-63) will shake you. It is not safe to take babies on this road, for fear their little brains will rattle loose and Family Services will have you up on abuse charges.

If I could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate, I'd still be too stable for this road

Look at the above picture. Do you see the division of the wet patches, the little rectangles, with their demarcation lines crossing the road? This is not like the little separations on a sidewalk, or even little bumpy joints to the highway. These mark the waves in the pavement. One hour and thirty-five minutes of this rhythmic jarring of body and soul. And, lucky me! I still had a migraine. Plus, my legs and feet had swollen from their having been immobile so long, so they were tender as well…

Modern chemistry is my lifeline, but there were long moments when I seriously wondered if there were a lifeboat tethered at its other end, or just some a-hole shark yanking me around.

Agribusiness. It's a beautiful thing

 I distracted myself, as usual, trying to watch the scenery go by. That sort of worked. (Not really, but it was that, or whine. I hate whiners.)

I like people who have definite plans

It looked as though we were following on the heels of some pretty serious wetness.

In fact, we seemed to be gaining on the storm.

I was hoping it would be just fast enough ahead of us to be done raining when it came time to unload my crap (and my poor lumbering self) from the truck.

It was about an hour after sunset that we returned to Monmouth, and, indeed, the rains had almost ceased here. In just a few short minutes, I had all my gear unloaded from the truck and brought into the house.

On the down side, my feet had swollen so greatly that I couldn't wear my loosest slippers, my head was pounding, and everything in between was in some state of revolt.

On the up side, I was hailed as conquering hero by a doggyboy,

 a kittyboy,

 and a certain feline princess…

as well as cheerfully received home by a pair of parents:

Warmly ignored by the old M

and P. Such enthusiasm!

And then there was my own bed…but I don't need to draw you a picture, there.

I slept quite a bit, for the next week. I needed every last "Z" I got. It took longer than that, between resting and riding my bike again, to get my legs back to functional (still a bit of a twinge on a regular basis, and two hours on my feet are still my max before the completely quit).

The folks left on their two-week vacation and anniversary trip before the end of the week, packed with a few things I'd prepared for them to take to my seester (cookies for her & her hubby, and also a special batch for their dog).

I had the house to myself again, with the cats as my only company, and a chance to just appreciate the quiet solitude.

And then I got hit with that nasty cough…the one that's still tickling my throat fairly regularly, three and a half months later. 

The Fates obviously have a swell time twisting my thread.

Thanks for the Memorial: The Trek Begins Early

We were originally planning to leave for our cruise on the evening of Monday immediately prior to our Friday launch date (as I mentioned in my earlier post), but we made the important discovery that the weekend included Memorial Day, so my friend was blessed with a four-day weekend from work.

I will be forever thankful twice over, now, for the sacrifices made so that I might have comfort and freedom in this country… this added time meant that we would have the opportunity to stop a couple of places along the way, to see a little bit of what they had protected.

Our original plan involved not sleeping in a bed anywhere between the Mississippi river and Puget Sound. Our new plan allowed for us to leave home early Saturday morning and rest two nights in western Nebraska before heading upward and onward.  It also allowed me to pay my respects to a representative few of those who gave that Last Full Measure of Devotion: our hosts for the weekend were retired military personnel who had been asked to participate in an early Memorial Day ceremony near their home. They invited all of us to go along. The boys were inclined to mow the lawn and otherwise sit back and relax. My friend had studying to do.

I accepted the invitation.

At the church cemetery for Berea Lutheran Church, near Chapell, NE.

I was not disappointed. The day was lovely, with a strong breeze lifting the flag proudly, and carrying voices up and outward to the fields. Our hostess gave a thoughtful speech encouraging family and friends of veterans to ask questions, ask for stories of service from their loved ones, before those stories are lost. 

When the service was done, we returned home to relax and enjoy each other's company for the rest of the day.

Day is done

Monday would be a long day, with a new, extended itinerary, and we needed to rest up for it.


Update:
Here's the video I took of our hostess delivering her speech:

Norman Borlaug, RIP

For those who don't recognize the name, Norman Borlaug was the man who -- almost singlehandedly, it would seem -- fed the world. Where people like Al Gore and Robert Kennedy Jr. call themselves "green" while playing politics with energy and other people's money, Norman Borlaug really was the "Father of the Green Revolution." A native of Iowa, raised and educated in the Midwest, he worked to develop grains that would grow in heretofore impossible environments and would provide enhanced nutrition. Third world countries which had been starving were suddenly able to sustain populations on much less, while doing less damage to the ecosystems around them.

He lived a good life, lasting 95 years, and leaving not only his own children, but the children of those who were expected to starve to death in the population explosion of the mid-20th century.

Those of us who take pride in the contributions America's Breadbasket has given the world also take pride in knowing that Borlaug was one of us, and he helped to create all-new Breadbaskets of the world, if the people are willing to work them. I think we will not see his like again.

Blago getting nervous?

He seems to be trying to shut down our state's societal defense system:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration wants to close the state prison in Pontiac, says Sen. Dan Rutherford, R-Chenoa.

Rutherford got the unexpected news today. He said a letter from the Department of Corrections, which runs Pontiac and other state correctional centers, says that the agency no longer plans to close part of the Stateville prison near Joliet. Instead, DOC now is looking at shuttering the Pontiac facility.

I'm not surprised. One of his first real acts as gov was to renege on his promise to open the one in Tomson, and after much fuss and ado, finally had to cave and open the new building just a couple of years ago -- nearly five years after the building was completed and ready to begin housing inmates. And it's still nowhere near capacity. So, his proposal to shut down the newer and somewhat-more-distant-from-Chicago facility is not at all a novel approach, here.

Maybe, though, with all the Rezko stuff, he's just looking out for his own future. After all, he seems to have a problem with being away from Chicago for any length of time. Joliet is at least an hour closer to the city than is Pontiac:


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Believe me or your lying, frost-sealed eyes?

So, this morning when I got out of bed, I was greeted by frost on my windowpanes, as usual. It is, after all, January in west-central Illinois. Not only was there frost on the window, though, there was this frost on the strike plate to my front door

Mind you, that's an interior shot, and the exterior is protected by a storm door. Those little spots of white near the center of the shot were hardened clumps of effing cold. It was (according to the television station only 50 miles away) subzero... at the time I was putting on my coat to go out and start the car, the weatherman said it was minus 15, with wind chills dragging it down to minus 35 or so. They had issued this warning on their website in the wee hours: Bitter cold temperatures create dangerous conditions.

Today's local rag, however, tells us a different story (from the print edition):

I'll believe it when I can pry my frosted eyelids apart and see it for myself.

How to please my father

Okay, so I'm no expert in this field -- I think, in fact, I'm the one who most frustrates and aggravates Pop. But today, I did something on a whim that raised his eyebrows in a positive manner.

As some (many) people know, I spend my Sundays at one particular auction house, in large part for the social scene, as well as the occasional opportunity to pick up a cool post card or two for dirt cheap (which I did again, today, but only by accident).

Today's auction had a lot of musty, fusty, mildewed books and other not-too-terribly-interesting items, including a half table of cameras and accessories. The bulk of those cameras had been battered Brownies of all sorts, with a few plastic-bodied virtually-disposable single lens reflex units generally given away when one subscribed to Time or TV Guide magazine in the 1980s or '90s. In the midst of these items lay a somewhat grimy thing which, to me, looked as though it might be worth a couple of dollars. It had a bellows structure, and a brand name which only vaguely rang a bell (unlike Kodak, Minolta, Canon, etc. in all their everyday familiarity): it was a Graflex. It had a film packy-thing attached to it, too, so I could tell it wasn't your everyday 35mm toy.

I brought it, plus a box of lenses, filters, etc, for a Zeiss-Ikon, home to my pop. He was practically beaming, as he came downstairs after checking on their respective values -- the Zeiss-Ikon stuff was worth ten-to-twenty times what I paid for it, and the camera, for which I forked over a grand whopping dollar, is quoted in Pop's sources, as valued at $200.

I really like it when good luck comes my way at the auction. Especially when it's pure-dee dumb luck.

And, Pop isn't complaining, either.

Monmouth's Living Windows draws good crowds

Thursday night we in Monmouth were hit with a couple of inches of snow

so conditions were pretty good by Friday evening, when Downtown Monmouth had its Living Windows Festival. I got a call from my friend, Janet, asking me if I'd like to join her in exploring events at the downtown extravaganza, so I agreed to meet her about an hour before things were to start.

I got there just a little early, so I took a few pictures of some of the bigger, better buildings in the downtown area, like the Court House

and the Colonial Bank, in full Christmas regalia

and a shot of the barber shop near the old theater.

My friend Marsha's store window was filled with fun -- Santa and his elf, Eric were getting wild and crazy

On the square, Ronald McDonald greeted cookie-buyers and cocoa-hunters

while, in the Christian book store, sweet songs wafted across the shelves, a cappella

and an electric piano accompanied three members of a barber-shop quartet (with surprisingly good results!), at the Wells Fargo bank.

But the big draw is always the Buchanan Center for the Arts/Warren County Library corner. Crowds outside were, sometimes, ten bodies thick, to see

the kids performing in the windows of the BCA.

From the inside, you could see how much magic was in the air

Ghosts of Degas

Past and present

Back out on the street again -- rides in horse-drawn carriages were available for a small fee.

Santa's helpers were following in Hermey's footsteps

To cap off our evening, Janet and I made our way to Turnbull Funeral Home, where, each year, the Monmouth College bagpipers have come to perform in the main parlor...

Following a rousing performance of Scotland the Brave, Janet and I went to the Maple City Baptist Church a block away, where members of the congregation were serving a hot supper -- coffee, cocoa, choice of chili or hot dog, and a variety of deserts. We ended our evening at the door, after having our fill. We said our farewells, I drove home and collapsed, falling almost instantly to sleep, with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head (or, maybe it was sugar-Clydesdales?).