Chicago Air & Water Show

Our big adventure sunday was to take in the 50th Chicago Air and Water Show. It is a popular event, hyped every day in the local media, kicked off in grand style friday when Chicago's own Bill Murray (of SNL and Hollywood fame) made a tandem parachute jump that even garnered national media attention.

While we live about 40 miles from downtown Chicago, we are not regulars. In fact, in the last 3 summers this was our 5th trip to "downtown". There is certainly a vibrancy and loads of attractions, but there is also loads of traffic and people and it is expensive - gas is high ($4.05 as I write this), parking is high ($18/hour!), those attractions are high as well. This time, as last, we took advantage of the Metra train system - unlimited weekend use for only $5. But once you start the public transportation, you are stuck with buses, walking or cabs...

My friend Janis is working downtown, so the plan was to meet her mid-morning. We caught the 8:40 train and it took about an hour to get us to the Ogilvie hub downtown, and we got in line for a free "shopping" trolley that took us to within a couple blocks of Janis' hotel. We were able to tell upon arrival at the train station that everyone and their brother were headed in, carrying lawnchairs and coolers, so it was going to be crowded! We walked a couple more blocks down to the lakeside and joined the throngs of people there. Actually, we headed down the bikepath and sat on the edge of the seawall for a little patch of turf, and awaited the planes.

We were a bit disappointed in the show. The displays were a little slow-paced, perhaps every 20 minutes a new plane doing flybys or acrobatics. Now granted, a B-1 bomber making a few high-speed flybys or an F-18 doing acrobatics is really impressive, but the jets alternated with prop squadrons, then a tanker made a few passes with some F-16s, then some more acrobatics, and that was about 2 hours... It was great to hang out and catch up with Janis, but taken in by itself, I wanted more... I'm a little spoiled by the air shows at DM Air Force Base in Tucson where you can wander among the static displays on the ground while catching the show overhead and THAT was exciting! For all the planes we saw, other than the fact that these were full size and made full-scale noises, the visual impact was nearly matched by the RC jet air show we saw west of town on saturday!

So about 2:30 we took off walking, our goal being the pizza mecca Pizzeria Uno, the unofficial birthplace of Chicago-style, thick crust pizza. Melinda and I had been there last winter, and I was up for a repeat visit. This time the wait for a seat wasn't 90 minutes, they sat us right away and our pizza, reported to take 45 minutes to cook, came a couple minutes after our appetizer arrived (mmmm, squid!). It was all good, and we left in plenty of time to walk and wait for the trolleyride back to the train (while glimpsing the Blue Angels performing down the City canyons). The train was PACKED - I'm not sure there was an empty seat left. Thankfully we were back in the countryside of St Charles by about 6pm. I feel a little more comfortable on the train and getting around with public transport, and it is certainly less stressfull than driving yourself. We'll have to wait and see what the next attraction will be that sucks us into the City.

Tractors and Trucks and Jets, Oh My!

While at brunch yesterday, Melinda spotted a sign for "Elburn Days", which was runing this weekend. Elburn is a small town, population about 5,000 about 10 miles west of us. Looking on their website, we found that today (saturday) was the tractor pull, and since Melinda had never been to one, we decided to go take in the small-town festival.

We arrived about 11:30, about 30 minutes after the listed start time, but they were just getting under way. Even though near midday, we found parking about 100 yards from the action, so not huge crowds. They had a midway with a number of rides, a few carnival games to "test your skill", some local fundraising booths like dunking tanks, and lots of food - none of it particularly healthy - concentrated in the pork food group!

Heading first for the tractor pull, we watched some of the "modifieds" - tractors that have never seen the cornfield side of a fence, oftentimes rated over a thousand horsepower. Realize this is close to 10 times more than when new from the factory! The vehicles pull a sledge with a moving weight - the further you move down the track, the more the weight moves forward, increasing the drag. The sledge also contains a safety cutoff if the vehicle veers off track and a precision odometer to measure how far down the track it has gone. Some of the contests are won or lost by tenths of a foot and the distance is read out to a hundredth of a foot.

The "pulls" assault the ear as well as the eye - motors scream and spew smoke as progress is made down the track. Even though maxium speeds are about 20 mph, drivers wear special jackets, helmets, and the engine compartments are enclosed to contain flying engine parts should catastrophic failures occur. I've seen some radical machines in the past (jet-powered and multiple-engined machines), but this being a small event and perhaps because of competition from other fairs, there were not a huge number of entries, in fact, there were a lot more trucks pulling than tractors. Still a lot of fun while staying within a half hour drive of home.


After tiring of the competion, we headed for the midway and supported the sponsoring Lion's Club by eating at their food stand - a soda and pork chop sandwich - it was great! We then toured the rides, exhibits and crafts booths. I ended up buying some framed and matted pressed flowers and autumnal leaves. We left midafternoon, headed back towards the big city.


I had noticed on the way out to Elburn that we passed the field of the Fox Valley Aero Club - a radio-controlled model airplane group. Today they had model jets flying, and we stopped on the way back to St Charles. The astronomy club in Tucson shares an observing site with a model airplane group west of Tucson, but I had never seen the jets that occasionally fly there. They are quite incredible - accurate to the smallest detail, complete with retractible landing gear, both airspeed brakes as well as wheel brakes - and true jet power flying at incredible speeds. I have no clue what the cost of some of these are, but there was one with a "for sale" sign on it that had been rebuilt professionally after a crash, listed for $7,000. The most amazing demonstration for me was an F-18
model well over 6 feet long pictured here. While certainly well out of my price range, they were fun to watch and I may look for them in the future.

Long weekend - Friday

I don't make much of an appearance on here during the work week, so Dean told me "You need to blog this morning!"

It was a busy week at work, and I'm glad to be off a few days! Our friend, Carolyn, is home from the hospital and I've been stopping by to visit her in the morning on my way home from work. She's doing so much better since being at home (of course).

Today, I think I'll work on more windows. We haven't worked on in them in a week or more, and it's oddly fun to chip away the old glazing (much like peeling a sunburn). Since we have to replace some panes of glass, we have measurements to take for those, etc.

Sunday we have plans to go to the Chicago Air & Water Show. I've never been to it, so it will be a first for both of us! Living in the Chicago suburbs for most of my life you would think that I would have spent more time in Chicago. But, like most people out in "the boonies", we just don't take the time to "go downtown".

Sitting in the sun room while using the computer provides some interesting views, on occasion. Just now was such an occasion! We see hummingbirds in this area from time to time, but since we don't have feeders out they are definitely little surprises when we do see them. A female Ruby-throated hummer has just been feeding on the flowers near
the cars, and in front of the house. Of course, Dean always has a camera ready to go and he quickly handed me one with a zoom lens at the ready. I think these are the two best of the lot ~

Duckies!

Melinda and I were on a walk down to the river a week ago today and were surprised to find ducklings! It seemed awfully late in the season for us to be having newborns, unless they raise multiple broods per season... No mention of that in our bird book. These are mallards, the most common duck in North America, but are awfully cute with the babies. It was actually difficult to get a shot with more than one of them with their heads out of the water as they fed off the shallow river bottom. It was also interesting to note the water beading up and running past their bodies (click on the image for a closeup). They obviously got cold eventually - on our return trip they were out of the water getting warm underneath mom.

A postscript: I saw this same female tonight, a week later - the babies have grown a lot the last 7 days and all eight pictured this session are still with us!

That same walk we saw a tree full of what we believe are Eastern Kingbirds, feeding on insects near the water with swallows and waxwings. Here, a fledgling makes the universal signal for "feed me", and an adult comes up and oblidges with a mouthfull of bugs - yummy!

These shots were all taken shortly before sunset, so the colors are muted significantly. I used the Canon XSi and the Meade 80mm APO triplet (480mm focal length) and a monopod.

Kitty Update

It is a rare computer session when Sugarpants doesn't come spend some one-on-one time with us. Here he is checking Melinda's e-mails for spelling errors, and comments that our blog "doesn't include enough kitty news".

Actually, the cats we brought up with us from Arizona were my lap cats, and their behavior has changed in subtle ways. After 6 weeks Marley is still not getting along with Melinda's 2 cats and allows himself to be chased into the guest room where he spends a lot of time under the bed. When we are around, however, he is very comfortable hanging out with us and is always within our reach on the sofa during TV-time. So he is our living room lap cat... Sugarpants mostly hangs out in the sunroom ("computer room") and kitchen and bonds with us in those areas. He gets along fine with Annie and Atticus, but still has his part of the house where he hangs out. Neither of Melinda's two are lap cats, though Annie sometimes "passes thru" and says hi - she is quite the talker - really the only one who uses her voice on a regular basis... Atticus is your standard cat and mostly only pays attention to you when it is feeding time!

The photo also shows a little more of our view from the sunroom - looking out at the grounds of the church camp here where we live, with the Fox River about 50 yards away.

Melinda's Excellent Weekend!

We usually note our weekends as "long" (when Melinda has thursday thru monday off) or "short" when she only gets off saturday. This weekend was "short", but man, did we squeeze in a lot of activities!

Today was one of those rare summer days when it is cool and dry, normally after a cold front passes. Here it is, still early August and the high was in the low to mid 70s! Just a spectacular blue sky spotted by a few puffy clouds.

Melinda works graveyard at the local hospital, so arrived home saturday (yesterday) morning, lying down for a nap about 10am. I woke her at 2:30pm for the first event - a surprise 30th anniversary for my sister Linda and her husband Lauren. Dinner is at 6pm, but it is a 2.5 hour drive, so we plan to be on the road at 3:30. With local gas prices right at $3.99, we travel west to DeKalb and get enough gas to get us to Iowa (DeKalb is in the next county west, so is only $3.85 without local county taxes). Headed west, we drove through some squall lines, but had an uneventful trip and made it to Clinton right on time, gas at $3.45!

Linda and Lauren have 3 kids - Marsha, Mallory and Mitchell who conspired for this surprise party. And sure enough, the guests of honor hadn't a clue when they walked in and found 30 friends and relatives. Always nice when that happens, but more often than not the word gets out. The food was fabulous - a private, mostly pasta buffet at Rastrelli's - you couldn't have asked for a better meal or venue.

Appearances of note were a couple of Velmas of my father's generation or earlier. Great aunt Velma Brandenburg is pictured here with my sisters Linda and Kathy. And I'm photographed with my aunt Velma Ketelsen. Both live independently and drove themselves to the party tonight. My great niece Mya, normally pretty shy and reserved, did really well, or at least, didn't avoid me like she usually does. Here she is shown surgically removing the frosting from her cake.

After gassing up in Iowa, we head back for St Charles, finally hitting the road about 2130 under the light of a first quarter moon low in the south not far from brilliant Jupiter. Making excellent time, we get home in only 2 hours and watch a few minutes of live olympic coverage (with the 12 hour time difference) before going to sleep.

First thing in the morning (7:30 for us) we are up and out the door by 8:15 because Melinda has promised to "have breakfast" with Carolyn, who is in the hospital here after suffering a stroke a few weeks ago while on a medical mission to Kosovo. After a week in Paris she finally made it to Illinois late last week where she continues to recover. Thankfully she did not need surgery, nor did she suffer any debilitating effects save some short-term memory issues. So we spent a few hours with her and Melinda helped her take her first shower since Paris.

Leaving the hospital about noon, we headed to American Science and Surplus and browsed the fun stuff they have there (everything from Flying Screaming Monkeys to fake eyeballs to slip in your friend's drink). After another stop at Borders bookstore, we decide to head to the local movie theater and see what we can see. We go to see Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3-D. The movie is pretty hokey, but the 3-D effect is really amazing. Reading Ebert's reviews later, he hated the "murky 3-D picture", but at our screen, it was great!

Finally, 4pm on Sunday we head home to get Melinda a nap before she returns to work at 10. She calls Carolyn's daughter Anne to check in and compare notes on her friend. Anne says - "Oh, we're cruising past your place in our boat, want to go for a ride?" Five minutes later we are dockside watching them pull up. They have a nice pontoon boat, and have another couple with 2 young girls along. So we cruise the river for nearly 2 hours watching boaters and jet-skiers ply the Fox, including Anne's husband Pete, who gets his out also giving each of the small girls a ride. While we live on the river and see these boats every day, it is the first time we've been on the river on a private craft - it was a lot of fun! And while we've always wondered exactly how deep the river is near us, we found out - there was a ring of boats anchored near the river center for a beer party, and it was about waist deep on those on the water!

So finally sunday night at a little after 6pm, Melinda goes back for a little pre-work nap, but man, it has been a busy 28 hours!

Out of the Vault!

We were busy with household chores today - the kitchen faucet was leaking mightily, so we made the trip to Lowes to get a new shiny one. After a lunch at the Colonial (a former dairy and ice cream vendor, now a local small chain of restaurants), we headed home and I "volunteered" to do the plumber thing and lie in the damp, spider-webbed space under the sink and wrestle with plumbing. Melinda is usually the home-improvement pro, but she has a "thing" where spiders are concerned... It went really well and was done in 30 minutes... Then we did some more window glazing, or at least, window unglazing and managed to break a couple of them, so that work continues...

Anyway, all that is extremely unphotogenic, so am going back exactly a year - these photos are from my last trip down to the river in early August before my return to Arizona - only stayed a month in summer '07. Got some nice shots of a male Cedar Waxwing (you can tell from the little scarlet stripe near its wing-end), and of a deer crossing the river a little downstream of the bikepath bridge, looking up-sun, unfortunately. You can see that the river is very shallow here - while walking yesterday a fishing boat's propeller was grinding up rocks on the bottom and you could hear a canoe dragging occasionally too. Anyway, better pictures than recently, so a look into the past...