St. Louis



This is a power station located in Springfield. I've told
many of my friends that I often stop and look at
them occasionally. This time I was stopped at a
McDonalds across the highway from it waiting for the rain
to pass.

 There was a project at work attempting to correct some faulty data in our reports. It was to dominate my life at work for about three weeks. I was seeing my opportunity to get out of town while the weather was warm quickly disappearing. I almost begged for some time off after we made the data switch. I asked for 3 days off, and they gave it to me, but on the condition that some other things were finished too. In reality, that meant I got two days off. One of the only perks you get for staying long at my company is that you get more time off. The problem is getting the chance to use it.

I packed up my things and put the saddlebags on bike and at noon on Tuesday, headed south.


The bridges over the canal. I-270 is the farthest bridge
and the closest bridge is the road through the park.

  The trip south was pretty uneventful. I encountered some rain near Springfield and did some interchange hopping. It seemed whenever I got on the highway, it started raining. Once I actually got south of the city, it was clear riding. Illinois is a long state and crossing it diagonally takes a good deal of time. I arrived at my motel at around 7:30.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast and headed about 10 miles west to the Chain of Rocks Canal. I had heard that they converted an old 


This is a single barge going through the Chain of Rocks
Canal. Notice the standing bow wave. The power it
takes to move these through the water is impressive.

 bridge across the river for pedestrians. I wanted to walk it. The bridge was used for the original Route 66 and it was unusual in that it had a corner about 2/3 of the way across. I'm not sure why it did, but it did. Info. I also drove down to where the lock was, but it was closed off for security reasons. I crossed the river on 270 and headed north to see the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. I am very interested in things that seem mundane to others. The merging of the rivers are historic and this is where many of the westward trails started, not to mention where Louis and Clark started their journeys. It wasn't dramatic, just two rivers getting together.


This is the original bridge that they converted to a ped
bridge. It was where Route 66 crossed the Mississippi.

I traveled south to St. Louis. I wanted to take a few pictures and pester friends with picture texts. I was impressed with the height of the arch. I'm not sure I would have been able to keep my sanity if I was asked to help build it. Just a bit too high up for me. I did lay down under it halfway between two ends. I wondered if this is where ideas came for Larry Niven or his illustrators on his Ringworld books. It was a very interesting experience. I hung around there, got a nice sunburn on my face and also visited the courthouse across the mall. I found that Dred Scott's trials were held there before the appeals headed him to the Supreme Court. It was pretty much the beginning of the Civil War on the legal front.



Confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

 I retired back to the motel room and prepared for my ride back. I intended to ride up the river road to the Quad Cities, but since I've done that in the past, if I needed to change my plans, I could.

I was met with a warm morning, and me with my warmest cycle jacket, and a traffic jam on the highway. I took an opportunity to get off the road and bypassed the jam and headed north. My clothes were wet with sweat by the time I stopped for gas in Alton. I adjusted things a bit, took some pictures of some caves, and headed to the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi river.



My ugly mug in front of the Gateway Arch.

 There wasn't much to see, other than just nature, at the confluence. It wasn't a stark end of the river, but a bunch of islands. There was a nice power station across the Mississippi and I would have taken a picture, but it was a 4 lane highway and nowhere to pull over. It was a scenic trip, and I enjoyed the river communities that I drove through, but no gas stations and I found I was in need of fuel. I finally went through Pleasant Hill and found a gas station.

I travelled north and saw a sign that I was to pass through Kinderhook. There was some people there that forged a few small plates and sent them up to Joseph Smith where he proceeded to translate them. There are alternative ideas about the incident out there too (see Kinderhook Plates) and the debate goes on in apologetic circles. It was a place that I didn't expect to find, nor had I ever looked where it was.

It soon became colder and as I headed through Hamilton on my way to Nauvoo, I experienced about one minute of drenching rain. Great. I took a cold ride up to Nauvoo along the river on the wet road. I'm glad that there wasn't a lot of other people on the road. I didn't want to feel pressed as newly wet roads are dangerous.



Kinderhook of the Kinderhook Plates fame. Not something
that the LDS Church talks about much for now obvious
reasons.

I pulled into Nauvoo State Park to dry off and get my liner in the jacket as it had become quite cold. After that short rest, I rode up to the temple. I've always wanted to take that curve and see the temple on a motorcycle. It wasn't as fantastic as I had imagined. I took a picture and headed north, trying to outrun the dark grey blob approaching from the west.

A stop at Montrose and checking weather.com on my phone verified that I needed to move to outrun the rain. I decided that diagonally on US 34 was the best way to stay dry. If I could get north of Mendota, I thought I would be free and clear. No such luck. I hit consistent rain north of Princeton and actually the worst downpours were north of Mendota. So much for my hopes.



My quick stop in Nauvoo, trying to keep ahead
of the rain.

In pulled in to home around 6:00pm. I could barely move after such a long ride through wind and rain. I had water pooling in my boots. By the time I got the cycle in the garage, I was shaking pretty bad. I took a warm shower, put on dry clothes and turned up the heat. Since it was obvious that Fall had officially arrived, I wondered when the next bike ride would be. Still not sure. This ride was the longest and hardest I have taken yet.

A nice bike ride...yeah right.

I decided to use the opportunity of a nice Sunday morning to take a few of my kids out for a bike ride down across the river. This was the first attempt at getting Ellie out on the roads since last year. Last year it ended badly. During that fateful trip, we entered the bike path and it angled down as well as a slow turn to the left. Unfortunately, Ellie had an old used bike that has seen better days and for whatever reason, she went down and badly skinned her arm and leg. Tracy played ambulance and came down to get the girl and the bike.  So, one of my two trips with Ellie last year caused her pain and bloodshed.

On a side note, a friend’s husband had just recently been in an accident and was fairly banged up. This brought into question my own love of cycling as well as my recent purchase of a motorcycle. I didn’t know what to think about it.

So this year, we purchased new bikes for the kids and the warm weather was a good place to start the riding season. Ellie wasn’t all that comfortable with shifting the bike yet and I had to tell her forcefully to “own the bike” and turn the shifter until that chain moved. We then went past the area where she spilled last year and she was proud of that. The trip to the river was pretty uneventful otherwise. We went across the bridge there just for the experience and then went to the north. Ellie said she wanted to go across the river and see where we had found Dave (our cat) and go along the paths there. Again, nothing eventful, except that she had a hard time keeping up, even though I was going as slow as I felt comfortable with. We crossed the streets going into South Elgin and I looked to the west and realized that we had to head home. The storms that weren’t expected until the afternoon looked like they were making an early appearance.

I must say that I did, once again, acknowledge that I absolutely love riding a bike. I have a cheap $80 bike, but I ride that thing hard. I feel so good with the burn in the legs and the crackle of dirt and gravel under the wheels. I could feel the arteries unclogging and the head clearing up. I wanted to ride for hours and hours just to feel that burn longer.

As we turned onto the road into South Elgin, I had to urge Ellie to move a little faster. Honestly, we weren’t moving much faster than walking. I was hoping to get under the bridge in SE before the heavens opened up. We did get to SE and the thunder was rumbling pretty strong. I decided that we could probably make a dash to home, as the edge of the clouds was visible. We crossed 31 and headed up the bluff. Then the lightning kicked in. It was directly overhead and Ellie was starting to become unnerved by the flash and noise. Then raindrops hit… I figured we couldn’t go on with Ellie in that state so I pulled up the kids into a nursing home’s porch to wait out the rain. I paged Tracy to come and get Ellie as she was clearly out of it at this point.

As I saw the downpour, I felt horrible to ask my wife to come out in this weather. Ellie had started to calm down once the lightning had moved on. A passer by drove up and offered to load our bikes and take us home but I told him that my wife was coming and thanked him for his consideration. Shortly after that, one of the aids came out and offered us to come inside. I felt that while I’m sure the residents would have greatly appreciated the company, I don’t think my somewhat shy kids wouldn’t take too well to being the center of attention of all those old people. Maybe if I had steeled them up to it before, sure, we could visit, but not on such short notice.

Tracy came and we realized that we couldn’t fit the bike in the van, and by that time the rain had tapered off. Ellie had settled down so we decided to ride the west of the way home. I thanked Tracy for all that she had gone through and apologized once again to Ellie for all the adventures she had when we went out for rides. She did cry once again on the way home so I told her how proud I was and that she was doing fine. By the time we got on our street, the second wave of rain was hitting and we did get a little wet, but otherwise we survived.

So much for a nice, calming, morning ride. I hope later rides are more uplifting.

Currahee!

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Donald R. Burgett

I’m going to do a quick review of “Currahee!” but it is actually a review of the series. The books were written by Donald R. Burgett. The series also includes “The Road to Arnhem”, “Seven Roads to Hell”, and “Beyond the Rhine”. The unit that Mr. Burgett was a member of was the 101st Airborn which is the same unit as Band of Brothers’ fame and mirrors the experiences in that book.
First, my impressions of the books themselves was that this could have easily been made into one book instead of 4 separate books. I think that was a market decision to obtain more money from the customers.
Mr. Burgett didn’t hold any punches. He was very matter of fact in his narrative. If he liked something, he stated and if he didn’t, likewise. Some of the circumstances were harrowing, and I guess when you have people trying to kill you while you are trying to kill them, it can lead to those kind of experiences. Some of the items that I found interesting are as follows.
In Market Garden, they were stationed at a house that was 1 foot underwater and for 24 hours, standing in that water looking for the Germans on the other side of the river. Also, what was pronounced was that he had to live on English rations, which were far from enjoyable.
The Bastogne book demonstrated how desperate the fighting was. Taking station in cold frozen foxholes with dense fog, fighting Tiger tanks to marching through snow covered fields and being ambushed by a German squad and shooting them at very, very close range. The most profound was probably when they were withdrawing and taking station in the trees and realizing that they were dug in right in the middle of germans doing the exact same thing.
The drive through southern Germany and liberating the concentration camp so near Landsberg Prison as well as rolling through Berchtesgarden on through Austria. The most jawdropping was their assault on a surrendered german officer for his racial rants and subsequent discovery of a train loaded with gold bars.
It was a very good book, very simply written by a man who didn’t have anything to hide. You can’t read American World War Two history without reading these books.

Double Date

On a recent “double-date” with good friends, I noticed a woman seated in the back corner. She had a black blouse with tattered sleeves. She had make up but not overtly so. She was texting away on her phone, no idea to whom. It made me think of my dating days, and how I would handle things differently if I did it today.  I was a nothing more than a dumb guy dating. I was miserly in my compliments and awkward in my demeanor.  I never have overcome the awkwardness, unfortunately. While I was watching, her date, I assume, returned to her table, she looked up with a smile that wasn’t faked or forced. I wondered if the man realized how she appeared to be happy at his return. Did he appreciate the time she took to look nice for him? From his dress, he didn’t seem to have taken much time in his appearance, being dressed in jeans and T-shirt. 

I looked at my wife and rejoined the conversation with our friends and once again had that surge of emotion that this woman has given up her life to be with me, and wondered if I am vocal enough with her, telling her how much she means to me? The evening, early as it was (I’m hoping it isn’t the onset of geriatric time) was soon over and we all entered the car for our trip home to our children. I leaned over to Tracy and told her how beautiful she was, that I enjoyed being with her. We have had few opportunities in the past decade for any kind of dating with each other, and I truly enjoy my time with her. I hope that now our children are getting older, with our careers firmly established, we can restart our courtship… Hopefully, she’ll still like me after all these hectic years.

Ten Items or Less

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Comedy

This movie starred Morgan Freeman, which is the sole reason I rented it. It tracks the day of an actor researching a role and how he connects with a supermarket clerk. Now, if you're going to connect with a supermarket clerk, make sure she is a good looking one. It really isn't all that insightful, at least I didn't feel that it was, but it did make me think about what it means to just fall into someone's life and have a really good time. I know that might be the essence of friendship, but this was done in the span of a day. I sometimes wish I was that spontaneous, and perhaps one day I will be.

This is a good flick. It wasn't a long movie, but it made its point. It still isn't "500 Days of Summer", but it is a good "relationship" movie.

Flowers for Algernon

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Science Fiction & Fantasy
Author:	Daniel Keyes

I’m somewhat of a packrat with some items. Not many, but a few. I’d list them but it might cause concern and psychoanalysis would then ensue. One of the things that I’ve collected are some science fiction magazines. I subscribed to them in the mid 1990’s and never got around to reading them. The mid 90’s were a busy time. Tracy and I worked on our master’s programs and adoptions and, well, life sometimes got in the way of my reading pleasure. So, I have a shelf in the basement with unread science fiction magazines. I’ve since unsubscribed and when I do finish a mag, I do get rid of it. Well, I’m on May 2000 now and my “new” copy of Fantasy and Science Fiction offered a reprint of “Flowers for Algernon”.

Considering that the story is now over 53 years old and one of the most widely read sf stories, why it has taken this long for me to read it is something of a mystery. Now, this is the short story version, the one that won all the awards, and the one that F&SFM printed so many years ago. It is rather hard to find and so they reprinted it to re-acquaint readers with the story. It also included a few chapters of the author’s (Daniel Keyes) story on what went into the story. I actually found that very interesting.

To summarize the story, the protagonist, Charlie, had a low IQ and was a test subject for a medicine that would increase his intelligence. Several previous studies were also performed on mice, one of which was named Algernon. Charlie’s increase in intelligence is chronicled by himself and it reflects how society and individuals deal with people at different levels. It also mentions his frustration and his loves throughout the period. In an eventual decline, the story ends with a very poignant line, one which took me by surprise in the reaction I had. I quote, “P.P.S. Please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the back yard...”

The creation story was almost as interesting as the story itself. This man struggled to find the right way to present his story, taking different angles and viewpoints until he settled on a narrative. He patterned Charlie after a student he had when he was working as a substitute teacher. He presented one of his employers, Stan Lee, with a version and he also worked on a few of the pulp magazines of the time. This guy probably had more to do with the stories that I love so much than I ever realized. The sleepless nights when he worked on this story also struck home to me. I know that creative process but instead of fiction, I work with algorithms. I now feel a little bit closer to those who agonize trying to get the perfect work published and recognized.

It is a very, very good story, well deserving of all the praise that it has received.

Motorcycle

Yes, if you didn’t know, I bought a motorcycle. My desires for a motorcycle go way back, but it was heightened by a recent trip to Utah. I had planned on taking a few roads that I’ve never been on, mostly fireroads, but I had read about a few that I really wanted to take. One was the Cottonwood Canyon Road, which turned out to be closed, and the other was Hell’s Backbone. This road was unique in that it was the first road into Boulder and the bridge was around 8000ft with sheer cliffs on either side. Going up, the road turned spongy, as it was a very wet spring, and as I turned around one switchback, a 4ft boulder was blocking the road. I squeezed by that rock and mumbled how I would have never had that problem on a bike.  After conquering that road, I took another road that I had taken a previous trip and on the downside of that, I was shifting down thinking that if I die would just be because the darn car weighs so much that I couldn’t stop in the mud. I took other roads too which I probably shouldn’t have, but that is the way it goes. The point was, I wasn’t having nearly as much fun as I should be having just because I was in a car.

I’m not sure the exact day I had the thought to finally get the thing. I remember coming up to Tracy and saying, “I’m gonna have a mid-life crisis, and it involves a motorcycle.” To my shock and amazement, Tracy said yes. So, I had asked some people at work about a nice bike to have, one that could spend most of the time on the road, but one that I could take on dirt and fire roads as well. I was suggested that a Suzuki V-Strom would fit the bill. I looked at one at a local dealership and it was a longer bike than I was expecting, but the clearance was higher and the engine was something I thought I could handle. Done. I debated on it for a few days and sleepless nights and decided to do the deed. I bought the bike after letting the family look at it and they gave their approval. They delivered it that evening.

So there it sits in the garage. Not doing much at all. The next day I looked at the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s site and found a number to call about their classes. One of my promises was to take a class before I hit the road and before I had my license. There were two more classes remaining and if I cared to walk-on, I could at least try. So that Friday night, I walked into the class, and sure enough, I got in. One of the advantages of buying so late in the season was a good deal on the bike and being able to take the class that most have to wait months for. The class occupied my entire weekend, one that featured birthday parties and assorted appointments and also a talk by my wife in church. I had to miss all of that. The good part is that I passed the class with a perfect score outside of a downshift that didn’t happen. I put my foot down on the machine, but it had a lot of shifting issues those two days.

My real reason for writing this was to let you know about my apprehension on this purchase. You see, being a motorcyclist, like being a bicyclist, means you are part of a group, with their own clothing, language and other cultural byproducts. I usually don’t want to partake. I want to wear normal shorts when I bike. I don’t want to become part of that sub-culture. I don’t want to talk about my bike or talk about the options or whatall. I just use things for transport and for this, just to enjoy it. So during the first night I met my instructors. One was a grizzled old gentleman who had some scars from biking that he didn’t mind sharing. The other instructor was a middle/youngish woman who had her arm in a sling and also had difficulty walking. She had a motorcycle accident two weeks previous when the power-steering on her bike (uh huh, power steering) and she slammed into the guardrail at 65 MPH. Great. I’m gonna die on this thing. What the heck am I thinking?

The next morning, we were on the grid and the helper came riding a motorcycle and she was wearing chaps. Now, I had to stifle any thoughts I had about “buttless” chap jokes that I had swimming around my head. I realize they serve a very good purpose, but again I thought about being part of this culture and all the stuff I had to deal with there.

Anyways, I will soon have my certificate, which will allow me to get my M-class on my driver’s license. Then I’ll be legal. Well, after I get insurance…gear…nerve…

I hope I don’t kill myself on this thing.