I know what I was doing…
And I haven't stopped smiling since!
Thank you, Cora, for making me the happiest I have ever been.
E V E R Y D A Y!
And there's still time to get me to pay up on my donation to Susan G. Komen for The Cure. For more details, go HERE.
So, this weekend, we were in Southern Indiana at a family wedding.
But this post isn't about that. It's about what happened on the drive home.
The drive is about 300 miles. I would drive the first leg, and since I'm the only one who doesn't get carsick reading in the car, I would quiz our daughter on her homework in the backseat while Cora drove the middle section, and then we would trade off again, and I would drive the last bit. Cora doesn't really like to drive, but the fact that is was a divided highway through the countryside made it a breeze.
So, our first stop was McDonald's the Meth Lab McDonald's on the north side of Terre Haute, right by Indiana State University. When we pulled in to the parking lot, there was a sketchy/strung out dude, wandering the parking lot with his cup on McDonald's lemonade. We parked, but when he didn't really move on, we drove to the other side of the building, parked and waited for the daughter to get out of the car. (The child takes FOR-EV-ER!) When we got to the building, the sketchy dude, tweaking on meth met us at the door. He'd gone back inside and came out the other door!
Fine, we needed the restrooms, so we pressed on. The guys bathroom looked more like one you would expect to find in a dive bar, not McDonald's. Turns out, the women's was worse. There were reports of used toilet paper on the floor.
While waiting for the girls, I watched the counter, and knew we should have just left, but I ignored that voice, and we eventually ordered. Our order took forever. They kept serving the drive-thru, but didn't care about the people at the counter. They put my cup down on the counter rim down. They got Cora's order wrong. It was just awful.
So, we switched off, and Cora drove for a while. Near the end of her stint, she said she had a bit of an upset stomach, and wanted to hit the washrooms again. Well, we pulled into a town that looked like it had 1,000 people or so, but drove all over, and couldn't find a gas station. Finally, we got back on the highway, and there it was (arrg!), so we pulled in.
While I pumped gas, Cora went inside the restaurant / cashier building to use the facilities. The daughter and I then waited in the car until she came out. When she sat down, I could tell something was up. I asked what was wrong, and got the "Nothing" that meant it was something. I pressed, and got a "No, it's all right." I reached over and held her hand, and gave her the look that said, "I'm not moving this car until you tell me what's wrong."
And she broke.
Turned out, that the bathroom door didn't have a lock, the guy who was in there before her peed all over the seat, and after she cleaned it up, the stage fright of the "no lock" made it impossible for her to even use the toilet. I hugged her, and dried a tear. She just needed a moment, and then she was fine. We drove off, and pulled into another gas station a few miles down the road. I tried to get the daughter to go in with her to guard the door, but Cora made the fateful prediction, "What are the odds that two bathrooms in a row would have no lock." (Turns out, 100%!)
While Cora was gone, the daughter looked at me and said: (paraphrasing) "I'm so glad you married my mom. I could see by the look on your face when she got in the car that something was wrong and you were really concerned. I'm just really glad that she married someone who will take care of her."
And then I hugged her.
Later, after Cora came back reporting that she wasn't using a bathroom until her butt cheeks were planted on her own toilet, the daughter told the wife what she'd just told me.
And hearing it again, I cried a little.
How did I schmuck like me end up with such a great daughter?
You've heard of someone being "worth their weight in gold."
You've heard of someone being "worth their salt."
Well, professional golfer Elliot Saltman is worth his weight in…
HAM.
While golfing in the Madrid Masters, he got a hole in one on the third hole, which earned him his porcine plunder. And Elliot over there weighs in at a healthy 238 pounds, so that's a lot of salty meat candy.
Maybe too much.
How's he gonna fit THAT into his checked luggage, let alone through customs?
I heard this story over the weekend, and couldn't help but laugh.
What news with you?
Editor's Note – While the following rant will is focused on a person in a wheelchair (I will call her "Doris" since "wheel chair lady" sounds ruder than intended), I am not putting the blame on her (though her assistant should take a little heat. He should have recognized he was dealing with someone with an entirely different kind of "handicap" and acted accordingly). Rather this is about the Chicago Transit Authority's (CTA's) inability to handle what you would assume to be a routine situation: A passenger in a wheelchair. And why that situation made me 30 minutes late getting home Friday night.
It's Friday. I have a big I.T. conversion project that I'm in charge of that is scheduled for 4 weeks away, so there's a shit-tonne to do. Oh, almost all the REAL work is done. Now I need to spend 4 weeks documenting how the 8 hours of the conversion will go. But actually, everyone is going to want everything 2 weeks before hand, so I really only have 2 weeks. Oh, and we can start some of the pre-steps at the end of next week, so I need to churn out detailed steps for people who already know the detailed steps and can do it in their sleep. So, I'm putting in some extra time and didn't leave until about 5:30, hoping that some of the 5:00 crush would be gone, and I'd have a relatively easy commute home. Wrong.
I get to my subway station, Monroe, and it's slammed. Jam packed. Having been to this rodeo before, I hopped a train going the wrong way, so I could get on at a less crowded station, and maybe get a seat. I went two stops south, and still no train, so I pulled out my cell phone. The CTA has a "Train Tracker" website that will give you estimates of when the next train is due into the station. It listed the next two trains as "Delayed" and then a third was due in 7 minutes. So obviously, there was some kind of issue with a train, probably at the next station down the line.
A quick aside. As the train pulls into the station, they will announce it with a pre-recorded voice, like "This is Harrison" or "This is Monroe". Whenever they announce "This is Monroe" I have a vision of Jim J. Bullock saying, "No, THIS is MONROE, BITCHES!"
And if you got the joke from the picture, without having to click the link or Googling to find out that Mr. Bullock played Monroe Ficus on Two Close For Comfort, consider yourself either old, or extremely hip and knowledgeable.
Anyway, back to the story: The train finally showed up in about 7 minutes. My plan paid off. I got in and got a seat. While I was hoping they would announce the train would run express to get things back on schedule, that didn't happen. As the stops are made, more people pile in and pile in. But finally, we get to the Belmont stop, where I need to transfer trains lines from the Red line (which runs basically north/south) to the Brown line that zigzags in a northwesternly direction to my neighborhood. As I get off, they announced over the PA that the train would be sitting for a minute, and a CTA worker went up to one of the train doors and inserted a wheelchair ramp into the doorway, and Doris rolled off the train, trailed by a guy, most likely a husband, but not to assume too much on their relationship, I will just call him "Roy".
"Ah," I thought, "that explains the delay." I also thought, "Please don't transfer to the Brown line, I want to get home." (Probably going to Hell for that, but they could have been getting off at that stop, or transferring to a Purple line train, so the odds were 3:1, right?) They transferred to the Brown line. The next train was again, in another 7 minutes then another 5 after that, and during that time, all the Red line trains that had been backed up behind my delayed train kept dumping off more and more people at this extremely busy transfer point.
When the train finally showed up, probably 200 people tried to get into the 8 cars on the train. They all shoved their way in, and then the CTA attendant puts the ramp in the doorway for Doris, and the great shuffle starts. All the people standing in the vestibule need to either get off the train or get out of the way. And there's little room to get out of the way. Then the old Asian gentlemen (70? 80?) has to get kicked out of priority seating (reserved for the elderly and people with disabilities) because that seat needs to fold up so Doris can take the spot. (Some sitting did give the old man their seat). Wouldn't this had been easier if you boarded Doris FIRST instead of LAST?!?
Now, it's right in the middle of this that the train operator starts trying to shut the door. With her co-worker still on the train, and the ramp in the doorway. So the doors keep slamming into the ramp over and over, and finally she gets on the intercom and starts yelling at people to get their packs out of the doorway, and that there is another train right after her. (So, the 5 minute later train has caught up to us.)
Finally, Doris is set, and the CTA station worker takes the ramp away and off we go.
For those of you unfamiliar with the L trains in Chicago, there is a slight height difference and a small gap between the train and the platform. See the picture below. It's a about 3 inches high, and maybe an inch across. This will come into play soon.
During all the slamming and banging and the door chimes announcing "Doors closing" and the driver yelling at people to let the door close, Roy pressed the call button for the operator, and told here that they were boarding a wheelchair. She asked what car, and he told her the last one. "10-4", she replied. I'm now dead certain she has no idea what that term meant. The doors keep slamming on the ramp, and the chimes kept dinging. During the chaos, I texted Cora, because I usually do when I transfer, and she walks to meet me, usually just over half way. I warned her that I may be late.
Finally, the CTA guy takes the ramp away, and we depart. I say a small prayer, hoping that Doris and Roy are going to the end of the line. (ie - "Let me get the HELL OFF THIS TRAIN before we go thru that again.)
My God has a wicked sense of humor.
A handful of stops later, Doris's assistant again pushes the call button, and notifies the operator that they will be getting off at the next stop. Once again, she replies, "10-4". When we pull into the next station, the train doors open up, and the doors that Doris needs to go out have a huge box about 4 feet in front of them. And the ramp that the station attendant has is 5 feet long. So it won't work. Doris's assistant then gets on the call box again, and tells the idiot operator that they can't get out, and to pull the train forward a little, but not leave the station. (Here's where I toss a little blame on Roy. Sure, the ramp would be nice and smooth. And in a perfect world, wouldn't be necessary. But this isn't a perfect world, and this operator is obviously an idiot. If this were Cora and me, sorry, I say to my wife, "Hang on", pop a wheelie, and out the damn door we go.)
"10-4", the operator responded.
The doors close, but instead inching forward 5 feet, the operator starts accelerating like she's heading to the next stop!
Back on the call button, Roy and a chorus manage to get her to stop just before the final car cleared the station. And now, the guy with the ramp is like 50 yards down the platform. A couple of guys had all they could stand, and took the initiative. They hurled Doris's ass off the train assisted Roy in getting Doris off the train and onto the platform, to the cheers of their fellow passengers.
When my train finally arrived at my station, I hugged my wife. Sweet freedom!
And I hope Doris and Roy had a better luck the rest of their journey.
So, a word of caution to anyone in a wheelchair who plans to ride the CTA trains. Just because they are wheelchair accessible does not mean they have the vaguest idea what they're doing. They only got their job because they have connections.
A little while ago, I put up the post Take Two. Or Is It Take Three? In it, I had this picture:
A couple of people asked me how I did it, so I figured since the title here is "Scope-Tech" I might oblige with the "TECH" part of it.
Please note: I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but these are the tools and tricks I used. You probably don't have the same set of tools, but the ones you use may allow for similar techniques.
The Animated GIF
What you see up there is a series of 4 sequential pictures flipping by in sequence and looped. They are stored as an "animated GIF" file. My photo editing tool of choice is Photoshop Elements 7.
Save the GIF Online
This is the real trick to the maneuver. When I first used the picture, I skipped this step, and when I saved the post, the picture was converted to a static JPG file. And that pissed me off, after all the work I'd gone to to animate it. Now, if you compose in Blogger, you may not have the same issue, I don't know. Haven't used the Blogger editor in about 400 posts, so I don't know.
Load the Picture To The Post
I use Windows Live Writer to compose my posts offline, and then load them up to blogger when I'm done. But, the same can be done in Blogger.
And there you go. I don't know if this will help anyone or not, but I haven't posted much recently, so I thought I'd give this a go.
If you try it and it works for you, let me know.
I've been collecting a whole lot of random bits of fluff and goo around on my hard drive, meaning to share them with you.
I did that a little while ago [LINK], and here we are with round two.
CAR WARS – Back in July, my car hit 50,000 miles as I was driving back from a cousin's wedding. Big deal? Well, I back on THIS POST from 2009-04-27, noted that I'd just hit 40,000 miles. Yes, that's right, I put 10,000 miles on my car in a little over 2 years.
The Most Depressing Restaurant: EVER!
Certainly, this was a one-off to sell investors on the use for the space or some kind of crap, but still, the only tip you should give the staff here is "Run, Forrest! RUN!"
Target-ing Hispanics:
If you don't want the Spanish speaking population down on the first floor, just say so. (I've reported the typo in the lower right to them. 6 months later, it's still there.)
The Moaning Tree:
Wonder if it's a myrtle?
Define "Well Duh":
Going In-DOG-nito:
Shedd-ing Light On The Situation:
Saw this cool light fixture while we were at the Shedd Aquarium a while back.
The Amazing Spider-Scope:
Note the date on the caricature. I told you I was digging deep here.
In honor of yesterday's Blu-ray release of Star Wars:
As a guy of a certain age, you know this isn't my first Star Wars post. Here are some blasts from the past:
- Star Wars Day – Lame Joke
- Star Wars Day II – The ORIGINAL trilogy - Told in 2:13 – With Lego!
- Drunken Ewoks – Live on the Today Show
Have a good weekend, y'all!
Here's the picture that Blogger failed on me with yesterday.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!
Day 5 – Talk about a low energy day. There's one more scheduled sightseeing stop on the 702 mile par 5 with a dog leg to the right that we have remaining.
The Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD. The corn palace is really just the community gym/auditorium. But every year, they decorate the outside of it with corn. It's pretty neat, actually. Unfortunately, there was some kind of street fair going on, so we couldn't really appreciate it in totality.
 Detail of the front of the building |  Front of the building |
 Wednesday with the the Corn Palace mascot. |  An example of how they do it in a "paint by numbers" sort of way. |
 Yeah, they look like dots. Sorry. |  See, like I said, street fair. |
But my favorite picture from Mitchell is this one:
You see, my wife is… well… there's no way to put it… she's UNIQUE. (And I love her for it.)
The prairie sun had been wrecking havoc on her skin. She'd gotten a sunburn on her arms, and her hands had started to swell. So she cowering from the sun between two parked cars before "dashing" to the Corn Palace for pictures. And later, she donned a hoodie and a pair of winter gloves to battle that evil glowing orb.
But seriously, isn't she the most adorable thing you've ever seen?
As the morning drive continued, we crossed into Minnesota, where they were putting those prairie winds to good use.
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As the morning turned to afternoon, we passed two signs that symbolize Minnesota.
 We passed up the Spam Museum. I love the stuff, but the rest of the people in the car? Not so much. |  And the people responsible for sending Al Franken to the Senate are also prepared to roll over for our cybernetic overlords. |
I kept looking at the estimated time of arrival at home on the GPS (we call him "Croc" because we chose the Australian accent), and realized a few things:
So at a rest stop in Minnesota (thank you Whiskey Marie and the rest of Minnesota for solving your budget crisis that closed the rest stops earlier in the summer), Cora and I made a deal. Same deal as yesterday, only this time we MEANT it. We would find a place around 6:00, get a room, have a nice dinner, and re-freakin-lax for a few hours.
Crossing the Mississippi into Wisconsin, we set our sights on Tomah, WI as our destination for the evening. It was perfect. We'd get there around 6:00, we'd have about 4 hours of driving in the morning. And we could make "Kindergarten Cop" jokes all night.
(I also was thinking of "Troma", home of the Toxic Avenger movies.)
I loved this barn that I saw as we drove. I grew up on and around farms that had old red barns like this, and Wisconsin is "Old Red Barn" central.
And since it's August, they must be getting ready for snow.
At the hotel, we asked the desk clerk for her advice on a place to eat. She gave us a 10% coupon for the Ground Round. I wasn't expecting a whole lot of the Ground Round. I knew the name, but was thinking it was like the Sizzler (cheap steakhouse) or something. The food was surprisingly good.
After a relaxing night, the next morning was a snap. As we crossed the Wisconsin/Illinois border, I think the sign said, "Welcome to Illinois. Pay up." Ah, the toll road. A sure sign we are entering the Chicagoland metro area! Planning ahead, I'd taken my IPASS transponder with me, so I at least was paying the normal rate, not the double rate for cash. Every mile closer to home, things got more and more familiar, and changed from: "I drove up here once for a wedding" to "I used to go to that mega-cinema when it opened."
 I know it's hard to read, but the question is, "Why are there all the hazardous material signs on a GE.COM/WATER truck?" |  Our path took us past O'Hare, and Cora got a fabulous series of pictures. |
And finally, we were home. 2,233 miles, 8 states, 4.5 days, and 58 gallons (or so) later, we were home.
After unloading the car, we did what everyone wants to do when the get home from a vacation.
We fell upon our beds and took long, solid naps.
Random bits from the road:
For those of you attending memorials for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 Sunday…
Don't go playing "Angry Birds" on your cell phone during the ceremony.
Besides being rude, some people might not find this level situationally appropriate.
Day 4 – Gillette, Wyoming – Having heard that you should see Mt. Rushmore in the morning due to the lighting, we got up early and headed out. Well, after hitting the free breakfast at the Comfort Inn. (They had bacon & sausage, & mini-omelets with cheese!)
 Giving Wednesday a ride in from the car. |  And "Yes" that's pink racing stripes in Grandma's hair back there. Proof that when you reach a certain age, you don't give a rat's fat @$$ what anyone else thinks about you. |
We set out across the flat Wyoming prairie heading toward Rapid City. Rapidly. Our path would carry us near Devils Tower.
And past Devils Tower. At about 75 mph.
We'd talked about it, and it was about 30 miles off the highway. That was going to add about another hour and a half or so for a 5 minute photo-op just to say we saw it. So Devils Tower didn't make the cut. But technically, we did SEE it on the horizon.
 What we saw from the interSTATE, at speed. |  What we could have see (stolen from the interNET.) |
Our route took us thru Sturgis, SD. Home of the famous/infamous "Sturgis Motorcycle Rally". Luckily, we missed bike week by about 10 days. There were still plenty of people around the area riding their Harleys, but they were your typical bikers out on a sightseeing vacation ride with their wives and friends. (Heck, the "Old Faithful Cheeser" picture from the Part 3 was taken by a biker.)
Now, I've been to Mt. Rushmore. It was many years ago, but I recalled parking in a big parking lot, and walking up a pathway to a split rail wooden fence and seeing the monuments.
The place looks a little different now. Fancier.
The parking lot has been replaced by a parking garage, and the pathway and wooden fence have been upgraded, too. Here's a little 360° shot I did.
The weather was perfect. I don't think the sky gets anymore BLUE than that. And the sun was baking the two fair skinned members of my little tribe. Speaking of tribes, after we got home (don't judge), we watched the episode of "Kate + Eight" and they were there in July, and it was cloudy, and Kate kept saying it was Franklin D. Roosevelt up there (it's Teddy), and she bitched and whined about people taking their picture and Tweeting about them as they rushed through with their camera crew and entourage in tow. So glad that freak show wasn't there when we were there.
When we got to Mt. Rushmore, we did see a "Snooki-wannabee" (heretofore called
"B( . )( . )B Lady"). Let's just say Rushmore didn't have an exclusive on "manmade mountains" that day. But in the spirit of American kinship, we took her group's photo, and she took ours. With each other's cameras. Not with our own like she seemed to think at the beginning. (They posed but forgot to hand over a camera!) Then came our turn.
After Rushmore, we took the twisty turning road to the nearby Crazy Horse Memorial. This work-in-progress sculpture is pretty cool. What really helps it out are the orientation movie you can watch, and the huge Native People's craft hall. If it were just the statue in it's current state, maybe not so much. If they ever complete the sculpture, and since this is as far as they've gotten in 63 YEARS, it's a valid "if", I do want to come back and see it. I just don't see how the arm and the horse's hoof are going to do that.
One thing about Crazy Horse, the guy, is that while they are carving a statue of him, no one really knows what he looked like. Over there on the right is a carving based on "word pictures" that the sculptor got from some people who met him back, "in the day".
Guess they could pull up DMV records from that long ago.
And here's my impersonation of a "steadycam" on a tracking shot. There's some fancy footwork going over the little foot bridge, if I do say so myself.
After Crazy Horse, we drove back to Rapid City, and ate @ Perkin's. It's an inside joke with her father, but the food was pretty good, and we all needed to slow down a little, since it was about 3:00 in the afternoon and we'd been going all day. Earlier, Cora and I had a talk, and we agreed that we weren't going to try to kill ourselves driving over to Souix Fall, SD (about 350 miles away). We were thinking of calling it a day around 6:00 and finding a hotel and a nice dinner. We knew we were wearing out, and we didn't HAVE to make the drive in 4 days.
That plan didn't play out exactly as we'd hoped, as you will see.
Right outside Rapid City a little ways is Wall, SD. Home of the famous Wall Drug Store. We didn't really have time for much more than a pit stop & a few quick photos. We were losing our light, so we posed for a couple of pictures…
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And having learned our lesson from the day before, headed off for "The Badlands" well before dark.
For those of you who have never been, the Badlands are really spectacular. You're driving along through absolutely non-descript open grasslands and then, you're faced with something not of this earth.
(For more of Cora's pictures, go to her blog [LINK])
Eventually, we bid the Badlands "goodbye" and go back on I-90 heading east.
And crossed into the Central Time Zone, and lost another hour! R@T F@RTS!
But a funny thing happened. While it slowly became night, it stayed "dusk" for a pretty long time. Almost as if the sun was trying to make up for the stunt it'd pulled on us the night before.
We drove on until we got to Oacoma, SD. It wasn't super late, when we pulled in, but there was something horrifying going on:
MAYFLIES! OH!DEAR!LORD!IN!HEAVEN! MAYFLIES!!
There were swarms of thousands and thousands of them everywhere. We don't have them around here, so I didn't know what they were until the hotel manager told me. And then I relaxed, because I did know that:
We didn't get a picture of them because, well, they're still gnasty bugs flying all over and it gets a little freaky when they start landing in your hair, or flying up your untucked t-shirt and stuff, and we opted to run like the wind (Bullseye) whenever we were near them.
In the morning, one of the maids was sweeping up the piles of mayflies from in front of the entrance way. But better than the mystery stain!
Some surrounding rock formations.
More surrounding rocks.
Seriously, what would you do?
and curse the Fates?
3D to 2D fail, but trust me, slipping over the edge would make for a very bad day.
