Walked Our Feet Off!

Chicago has a very comprehensive transit system, and for $14 you can buy a three day pass to get unlimited rail and bus rides. So equipped, we set out to see the city today. Our objective was the Museum of Science and Industry with it's OmniMax Theater but we got into that neighborhood so late we decided to check out downtown instead. We are pondering staying one more day to deplete the last ounce of sight seeing energy in our bones, and this would be a very good place to exhaust ourselves.

I grew up in Washington, D.C. and then worked there until I was 44. At that point in my life, I was ready to retreat to the quiet elegance that is Naples but I have to admit, a big city vibrates with energy that I miss and they have great food, pizza in particular. We get our occasional big city fix in Miami but Chicago has so many things to see and do I will be sorry to leave, only having scratched the surface. It has the best mix of shopping, parks, water, museums, and nice people I've yet see in any big city. This trip may serve as the appetizer for a future, longer visit. I think a week would be good. Two weeks would be seven days too long.

I'm not tempted to move mind you. This place will be downright un-hospitable in December when I'm swimming in our sub-tropical, Naples pool. There are problems too. It gets hotter and colder and windier, and they have traffic that makes any Neopolitan traffic jam look like a day at the beach. If you go too far into some of the South Chicago neighborhoods, a bullet proof vest and a side arm might be appropriate wear. There are over 500 murders here a year. Still, I've enjoyed our stay and would like a longer visit next pass.

We had another sample of Chicago Pizza tonight and found it to be wonderful. I do wish someone would import the recipes to Naples.

Air Show

They bill the Chicago Air and Water show as the largest spectator event in the country, claiming 3.1 million people one year. It could be, there were a lot. I tried to count them but lost track at 2,000,064 when I sneezed. We were treated to many great performers. My favorites were the A-10, F-15, the Golden Knights, and the Thunderbirds. I love it when they sneak in, just sub-sonic, afterburners on, and make the babies cry. I don't dislike babies but I am thrilled by fast noisy jets.

The Golden Knights Parachute Team and the Navy seals tried to wear out the small target they aimed to land on. Most hit the mark with perfect precision; some from 12,000 feet! The wing type chutes they use can be flown, just like a glider.

I was pleased to see one Golden Knight land on the spot, remove her helmet, but on her beret, and narrate the rest of the show. Beautiful, capable, parachuting women are a newly found turn-on for me. Maybe it was the beret.

Owing to a Yellowstone Park leg injury which conspires with my heart medicine to swell my leg when I stand too long, we were allowed to sit in the handicapped area. Finally, some good is spawned by my several accidents. Our seats were front row, show center. To get there early enough we had to get up with the sun, take a shuttle to O'Hare, buy a three day pass for the CTA, (trains and busses), and two trains later, arrive early at the show.

8 hours of baking in the sun prepared us for a trip to China Town for a great meal and some rest. We are now back in the hotel.

Theresa passed out seconds after showering. I am writing the blog on inertia only. I could fall asleep any sec...

Royal Treatment

Today we reached Chicago and we are very impressed. The parts we have seen so far are beautiful and the people are nice. We tried to visit our old next door neighbor, Shirley, only to find she was out of town with family, but found her assisted living community to be first class. Then we went to Costco where a nice lady expertly fixed my glasses, the left lens would pop out if you looked through it hard.

Then off to Trailmaster, Inc. the maker of our Aspen Classic Trailer, which suffered tent ruining hail in Sturgis. We could not have been treated better. First we were greeted by Gary, the marketing director who introduced us to Ron, "the Boss". Ron inspected our damage and helped get the insurance wheels rolling while Peggy who seems to manage much of the office arranged a hotel at a substantial discount. Everything went smoothly and we should have our like new trailer on Monday afternoon.

For those of you who are thinking about a trailer like ours I'll say this. I considered this a major purchase, topping the $5k mark so I shopped diligently. Having closely inspected every product at a half dozen rallies I was convinced that the Trailmaster was the highest quality camper I could find. It is not the cheapest but seeing the way they are built, I understand why. The shop was squeeky clean, orderly, and the workers all impressed me as craftsmen. We intended to go from Florida to Alaska and back on this trip and hoped to keep the trailer for many years after that, so the most economical choice was the high quality choice. Breakdowns on the road eat up your savings on an inferior product real fast. I now discover a part of the price I paid was for superb customer service. We did not have the least trouble in the 6 or 7 thousand miles we've gone so far, except for the hail damage. I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a high quality camper for a bike or small car.

We had to eat and wanted to try some of this famous Chicago Pizza. I've had pizza around the world and so far, Thailand and Germany had the best. We all know that every region has a food product that they claim is the best in the world. New Orleans has crawfish, Maryland has crabs, Maine has lobstah, but Chicago, in my humble opinion, is the undisputed champion of pizza. We were told by three separate sources to go to Lou Malnati's for the best example of real Chicago pizza. I'm glad we did. The experience was sublime. With every bite a symnphony of flavors played out on my tongue. It was so good, I just sat and savored in disbelief that it could be so perfect. It's not reason enough to move to Chi Town, but it's close.

We have a good weather forecast for the big air show tomorrow. Must get to sleep early for the early morning trek.

Nice Drive

Not much happening today. We saw another few billion corn plants and almost as many soybeans. There were some nice old houses after we crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois. We keep meeting nice people like Gary Sindt, the Honda dealer in Dubuque.

Other than that, it was just riding.

Tomorrow we should reach Trailmaster, just west of Chicago. There we should be able to have the tent on our trailer replaced, then on to Chicago and the big Air show this weekend.

One interesting thing yesterday. We passed a train that was probably over a mile long and all coal. I'd love to see the hole that it came from. I suspect it will generate electricity for a whole big town for a long time. To motivate a load this heavy, they use two locomotives pulling and one pushing. No caboose here. We don't see trains in Naples, Florida and tend to forget how important they are to the country's infrastructure. You just can't move a load like that with trucks. Hooray for trains. Toot-toot.

Thinker Toys

Not much to report today except finding a really cool concept in toy stores. Thinker toys is a specialty store in Sioux City, Iowa. The product is toys that are designed to make you think and they have something for kids of all ages. With a whole corner of the store devoted to science toys, even I might be lured here for some brain teasing fun. If I'd had access to a store like this as a kid, or as a parent when our kids were young, I'd have loved it. Alas, I was broken hearted that the store was not flush with customers. This is a concept America needs. If we, as a nation, could restore a love of math, science, and engineering to our youth, we might have a chance to keep some industry here for the next generation. I'm afraid however, that our youth has been spoiled by so much wealth, earned for them by past generations, that they can afford to become experts at playing computer games. They will, or course, eventually buy their games and computers from the Chinese or Indians with what little money they earn from their fast food employment. They will be equipped to do little else.

Parents of America, quick, before it's too late, stir an interest in math and science in your kids before they squander all their valuable learning time on TV sitcoms and computer games. Their very futures are at stake.

Down the road 80 miles or so, Theresa and I found some cheap roadside entertainment watching a crop duster. This guy flew his SEAT, (Single Engine Ariel Tanker), as beautifully as a
Blue Angel if only for a motorcycle mounted audience of two. As you can see in the attached video, he would come in a couple of feet over the power lines, then settle down on the field a few feet above the soybean plants, spraying them as he passed. Then at the end of the field he turned and expertly aligned his plane with the next row to be sprayed. I wonder if he has the assistance of a GPS to perfect his coverage.



This weekend, when we reach Chicago, we will be treated to a huge air show. Actually the largest spectator event in the country. See: http://www.explorechicago.org/etc/medialib/explore_chicago/mose/air___water_show.Par.8473.Image.-1.-1.1.gif for details. I can't wait. Thunderbirds, here we come.


Tonight may be the peak of the Perseid Meteor Shower. Unfortunately, we are stuck in a Ramada Inn, (Hotwire deal again), in Waterloo, Iowa, a town too large to have a really dark sky. I was hoping for a hotel in the boonies so I could watch after midnight for the expected 60 meteors per hour I've seen in the past. Watch it if you can. Maybe next year for us.

Lastly, my youngest brother Bill made a great deal on a new car yesterday. It's a shiny red VW Jetta Turbo Diesel. It seems that if you trade an old clunker in for a new fuel efficient car, our government will take $4,500 from other citizens using threat of armed force to subsidize your purchase. What a deal! My brother is happy. The unions are happy. I'm beginning to think that our new president is such a nice guy, he will give you the shirt off of someone else's back. I recommend you go buy a new car quick, before the other guys run out of money.

Endless Corn

Theresa started the day with a bang. Note to self: Never open a container of yogurt that spent the day in a cooler without ice. The cultures inside grow at a tropical rate, un-restrained by refrigeration, to pressurize the vessel. The sudden release of pressure is sufficient to spray paint the bathroom mirror with the strawberry and kiwi flavored confection to the dismay of the opener. See photo if reminding is needed.

Today we drove from Mitchell, South Dakota and it's Corn Palace, through Western Nebraska to Sioux City, Iowa. This city touches three states and driving through Nebraska gives us state #48 in our 50 state quest. We still have to visit Kentucky and Hawaii. Kentucky is on the way home and Hawaii is the destination of our March 2010 cruise. The bucket list is getting shorter.

The best way to describe today's drive is boring, yet impressive. Boring because the fields of corn, soybeans, and various other crops are miles long. Impressive because the fields are miles long. Sometimes they look endless. Corn from horizon to horizon as far as the eye can see with only a thin ribbon of asphalt intruding on the total dominance of the land. You sometimes drive for miles before seeing another human, usually in an opposing car and since everybody drives at 65 mph or faster, they pass so quickly you can't tell much about them. When you do pass someone slow enough for facial recognition, they often wave. I don't know if it's because we are on a motorcycle, bikers almost always wave at each other, or because here, where people are so rare, you wave because you share humanity. For the last several days, I can't remember stopping for any reason, gas, soda, shopping, bathroom, where someone didn't strike up a conversation. Sometimes we ask about something, more often they ask about the Florida Tag, the bike, the trailer, or just where we've been. The people we've met on this trip are the real highlight. They go so far to offer directions, good wishes, tall tales, humor, and affection. Many tell us we are living their dream we often feel a little like celebrities.

When we needed gas today, the small town of Wynot, Nebraska, population 191, showed up on the GPS as having the one service station near our path; the Wynot Oil Company. It felt like we had passed through some kind of time warp, the Gold Wing magically transporting us back to 1955. The full service gas station had old fashioned, pre credit card, pumps, manned by a real service station attendant with official Wynot Oil Co. hat and shirt. The attached garage looked like a 1950s garage too. It was large and had an example of every tool yet invented, to include all the strange things farmers use. They are probably capable of fixing anything.

A farm machine like none I've seen was swallowing down 120 gallons of diesel fuel at a nearby pump. It had four 6 foot tall tires and long mechanical arms that could extend out to give the monster a 100 foot width. The operator told me it was a sprayer and invited me to climb up to the cab to check it out. Cool!

The Ag-Chem RoGator 1084 is a $200,000 mechanical marvel that can spray a field with anti-bad-bug juice in no time flat. My view from 13 feet up made everything below look tiny. It was like sitting on top of your house, looking at the cars in the street. The air conditioned, computerized, Sirius Radio, air shocked bucket seat equipped cab was as comfortable as a Cadillac. A touch screen computer displays a detailed map of the customer's field and programmes the machine to apply the correct amount of bug juice as a precision GPS drives on autopilot. When the operator demonstrated the computer it looked just like any Windows XP computer but the specialty software was very cool. I suspect you could almost program it to go alone to do the job and return to park itself.

See http://www.agchem.com/default.cfm/PID=1.13.2.1 for details of this amazing tool.

The boom arms extend to cover a 100 foot wide pattern as it sprays it's 1080 gallons of chemical payload.

The right hand controller looked like something from a fighter jet offering one hand direction of all the spraying. The GPS in the RoGator is accurate to one foot but you can buy a more accurate signal from ground based services that improve the accuracy to less than one inch! How'd you like to thread a needle on autopilot with a machine that's bigger than your house? When it drove away, consuming most of the street, I had to admire it's grace and beauty of the engineering that allowed this house sized monster, drive down a city street as easily as a Volkswagen. These farm boys sure have some cool toys. It had a magnificent stereo too.

Tonight we are settled into a comfortable Days Inn, purloined via Hotwire for a mere $44 plus tax! I like this Hotwire thing. Looking ahead to Chicago, we are seeing 4 Star hotels for under $100 a night. I expect we will live well while the tent on our camper is being replaced at the factory. If we can leave Chicago on Monday, we will nose the Honda Southbound toward Florida, seeking adventure and education as we go. Maybe I'll invent a new word for our travels, Eduventure.

Cars and Corn

Today we checked out two tourist traps and enjoyed them both.

In Murdo, South Dakota, the Pioneer Auto Museum was a surprisingly large collection of antique, collectible, and strange cars. They also had a beautiful mineral collection, antique dental and pharmacy artifacts, a reconstructed one room school house, blacksmith shop, jail, bank, a homestead house and much more. It took us more than an hour to feel satisfied for our $8.50 admission but if you are ever in the neighborhood, I recommend it.

They even had a German vehicle designed by the famous WW II airplane designer, Messerschmidt. The small car can get 60 to 100 MPG an can rocket you to your level ground destination at a hair raising 60 MPH! That's faster than a horse and no nasty manure to pick up. Talk about green! Just wait till the new administration discovers this gem. I'll bet Messerschmidt stock will shoot through the roof as soon Al Gore starts driving one. Be prepared to order yours before the lines get too long.

After checking out the many cars, motorcycles, and antiques, we visited their souvenir shop. Their mounted jackalope was beautiful, but pricey. I'd like to own a specimen of this quality, but they are hard to carry on a motorcycle and make a poor front fender ornament due to their high cost and tender constitution. They also had some cheap, made in China, toy jackalopes. Don't fall for them. They are impostors. The real stuffed jackalopes are costly, but worth it. You get what you pay for. Never accept a made in China replica. There are no jackalopes in China. I've been there and all they had was stuffed dragons, and skeptic that I am, I'm not sure they were even real.

We drove another hundred or so miles and settled into a Motel 6 in Mitchell, the home of the Corn Palace. Improbable as it sounds, the Corn Palace is a large public building used for rock concerts, conventions, and any other use that requires a large building decorated entirely with real corn. Yes corn. An artist paints the buildings many murals onto roofing paper, then several hundred thousand ears of corn, grown in 13 different colors for the purpose, are cut in half and nailed in place; sort of a corn by numbers painting. It looks great and is a true work of folk art on a grand scale.

Inside the building a vast array of corn related souvenirs beckon the enthusiast. There were just too many things to illustrate so I've made a collage of some of the products; behold.

The town is rightly proud of their cash crop. Even the unpopular E85 Ethanol fuel can be found in most gas stations. the cost? $1.80 a gallon. That's almost a buck a gallon cheaper than 87 octane gasoline. Not a bad deal for the Flex Fuel cars that can use it, although I think E85 only gets you about 73% to 94% as far on a gallon, depending on the car burning it. Maybe they will work out the efficiency bugs some day.

Tom McDonnell

We left Sturgis and went to Wall Drug, a famous landmark in the middle of nowhere. It seems the proprietors of Wall Drug posted highway signs offering free ice water and in the hot, dusty, pre air conditioned days of the 1930s, this was a real treat for thirsty travelers. Over the years the business expanded to consume city blocks. All because of a roadside sign campaign that has expanded to humorous proportions. That's good marketing. Read the history here http://www.walldrug.com/t-history.aspx

We visited the store(s), did our laundry, and went to bed.

This morning, we got up and had the nicest experience at breakfast. I'll tell a very short story first about Anna Brown.

We met Anna in 1991 while traveling in Casper Wyoming and by coincidence settled in Naples around the same time as she in 1994. Anna was the ultimate people person and always tried to instigate friendships. After her husband Dick died, she found herself eating by herself often and resolved that single people should never have to eat alone. To that end she would invite any loner she saw in a restaurant to join her to share a meal, conversation, and friendship. She was amazing. After several years of this practice, she told us that she had improved the quality of both her dining experience and that of the people she met and made some very nice friends allong the way. Theresa and I have taken up the practice and have improved many a meal by occasionally adopting a lonely single in a restaurant. It's one of those random acts of kindness that seems to work to benefit all involved.

Today, as we were eating breakfast a older gentleman came in and sat near us. Theresa and I remembered Anna and broke the ice with some friendly questions. We noticed the waitresses fawning over the man and we were told by our server that he was a local of 98 years who ate there every day. We started talking and soon found ourselves adopted by this man who had the same friend magnet skills of Anna Brown! After a few minutes of conversation he offered to show us around the town and country side if we had the time. Wow! We'd make time for that! We went back to the hotel, packed, checked out and drove to his modest downtown home.

Tom McDonnell was born near Wall, South Dakota in 1911 and has been working in the area ever since. He and his wife, who died 8 years ago, farmed homesteaded land and prospered. He passed his holding on to a nephew some years back and now enjoys bulldozing the land with his Caterpillar D-7. At 98 he still works, when not rained out like today, and loves it. Steven, his nephew, has done well with the farm(s). Tom drove us around and like a proud father showed us the 5,000 acres of spring wheat, then the 8,000 acres of corn. The cultivated tracts are so large and numerous, I had the feeling that the size of the whole enterprise might be a little smaller than Washington, D.C.! Then we saw the huge farm buildings and machines, most looked new as it is Steven's policy to sell them after three years and buy new tools. He had three, state of the art combines with air conditioned, GPS equipped cabs, and front end tools that are 36 feet wide. Together, they harvest an amazing 100+ foot swath of corn, beans, or wheat at 10 miles per hour! The family kids, drive huge track driven tractors with 1,000 bushel trailers to return the product to the grain elevators where is is stored for market. The scale of the operation was breathtaking. The machines are so large and efficient, they can manage these huge, multi square mile tracts of corn or grain with just a few employees outside the hard working family.

Tom showed us dams he had bulldozed into existence to allow for water retention and to give passage over streams. One large one took him two months to build with his Caterpillar and it stands firm today. He finished that project in 1948, the year I turned one. We drove from farm to farm, learning about wheat, corn, beans, combines, tractors, silos, people, history, we could not have had a better teacher. It was one of the best days of our trip. As Tom returned us to his house so we could beat the rains into the badlands, he talked about his father who's policy was to, "be a friend to man". He talked about how his dad would keep a place for people to stay if they needed a hand. I think he, his kin, and Anna Brown were all cut from the same cloth. We feel like friends after only a few hours. We said our goodbyes, mounted the Honda, and left him so he could go visit with his twin brother. Great genes in that family!

The Blackberry Storm cell phone is Internet capable and with it, I check weather radar. An ominous red spot on my screen was moving toward the Badlands National Park, our next destination, so we made a hasty dash to beat the rain. The park contains an amazing variety of land shapes, geology, fossils, animals, and tourists. We stopped at the first overlook to see why they call it the Badlands and the scene said it all. The terrain is so convoluted, bumpy, craggy, dry, rocky, crevassed, and tortured that farming would be impossible. Heck, walking is almost impossible. Hats off to the poor guys who build the park roads, overlooks, and visitor's center. This terrain is tough!

In the distance, a super cell thunderstorm was looking like a tornado maker. A dark conical finger pointed groundward from the leading edge of the huge cloud. It kept changing shape implying the violence of its winds. I figured we could keep ahead of it so we began the hour long trip on the park's loop through the badlands. On the map, it looked like a pretty straight road, so I figured I could stay well ahead of the storm; not exactly correct on that one. The sky overhead became dark. I don't know if it was a new cloud forming above, or if the huge super cell storm was catching us. Every time we rounded a turn and got on high ground, we checked the progress of the cloud. Was it a tornado yet? Apprehensive after Friday's encounter with killer hail, I had new found respect for South Dakota weather and decided to make a 20 mile dash for the visitor's center. We made it. Slightly wet but safe, we arrived just in time for an excellent movie in the center's comfortable theater. When we came out, the rain had passed leaving us with beautiful skys, rainbows, chirping birds, hopping bunnies, etc. We rode another 50 miles to find a nice hotel, a rib eye steak, and rest. It was a great day.

Instigated by a previous post, there seems to be some controversy about whether jackalopes are real or fake. Allow me to contribute a little information. I have never seen a live one, but I have been assured by two of the blog readers that they have. I have however, discovered that there are some crude children's stuffed jackalope toys which may have contributed to the impression that jackalopes are not real. Please, do not fall for it. These are obvious fakes and only the most gullible would be fooled by them.

A real stuffed jackalope would look like the one below.

I know, some of you will say they are fake like some ladies breasts. But I say, if I can touch them, they're real, and I petted that stuffed jackalope. It felt like real fur and real horns. I realize the glass eyes were a taxidermical necessity, but I found it to be strong evidence in favor of existence of the jackalope. I may use my camera to hunt one down tomorrow.

Sturgis Recap

Crowds

Hail

Motorcycles as Art

Burnouts

Artful Advertising

Crazy Stuff

Pretty Girls

Interisting GuysBeautiful Roads

Hail

Yesterday we went for a scenic ride to Deadwood to re-visit Kevin Costner's restaurant and casino; we last visited in 1991. The food was still great and the prices reasonable. While there I looked out the window to see the rain we were ducking in the restaurant had turned into a hail storm. What we saw was half dollar sized or less and it bounced up to 10 feet when it hit the rubber roof on the building next door. What we didn't know was the storm would move on to our campground, the Buffalo Chip in Sturgis and wreck havoc there, making national news. The hale came so fast, it accumulated up to several inches and our ride back to Sturgis was through an instant fog created by the icy piles on the roadside. It looked strange and beautiful.

We stopped in town to buy ice and proceeded to the Chip where we discovered why the wailing of ambulance sirens seemed so frequent.

Baseball sized hail ripped through the tents, shredding most, ours included. The car parked next to us, like many at the campground, was most likely totaled. Both front and rear glass was broken and the car was filling with water from hail and rain. A girl in the laundry facility was nursing a broken arm sustained when a giant hail stone hit her while driving her Harley. We heard stories of riders abandoning their bikes in the middle of the street to jump into cars with strangers in time to watch their windows get smashed out and the sheet metal pounded as if by some celestial ball peen hammer.

I had to fashion a tarp from our awning to cover the multiple holes in our roof. It was a miserable night of half sleep as howling winds. The rain tested my makeshift repair several times throughout the night. A young girl in the tent nearest us became so scared she woke up her boyfriend to pray. I could clearly hear her saying, "Oh God, oh yeah. Oh God, that's it. Right there. Oh God. She repeated this chant for about ten to twenty minutes when her boy friend chimed in with some encouraging sounds, mostly oohs and ahhhs, of his own. I didn't hear them say amen, but it seemed to help them to sleep as they were silent thereafter. The power of prayer...

It rained a couple more times and the winds blew so furiously I considered putting on our crash helmets, but morning came and we had survived. I've since heard that slightly larger hail has been known to kill cattle in the field and storms that produce large hail often make tornadoes too.

I have many more pictures but owing to a poor sleep last night I have to go to bed now. I'll pick this up at our next hotel.

We are in Wall, SD tonight and will explore the badlands tomorrow.