Out of State

In the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade", the father and son duo need to go to Berlin to recover the father's Grail diary.  As they watch a Nazi demonstration the Henry Jones comments to his son Henry Jones, Jr, also known as Indiana, "My son, we are pilgrims in an unholy land;" you can watch a clip of the here.  Travelling out of state often brings this comment to my mind, particularly when going into Illinois.

Chicago Skyline as viewed from Indiana Dunes State Park, in Indiana
Southern edge of Lake Michigan Author Photo, July 2018

Now, Illinois is not a bad place.  I have family members who live in that state.  But, for some reason, perhaps it is the traffic and the tollways, perhaps it is the machine politics, but that scene from teh "Last Crusade" comes to mind as I travel into Illinois.  It is not as if we in Wisconsin do not like our neighbors to the south, heck we even have an acronym for them:  FIB--which of course stands for Friendly Illinois Brethren.  This unholy land came to mind last July when having to travel through Chicago and the Chicago Skyway to get to points east.  Traffic was not too bad, until we were a few miles north of the intersection of the Kennedy as we traveled south on the Edens Expressway.  It was about 1:00 p.m. on that warm Tuesday.  Leave it to Illinois to devise a meaningless term--Expressway, when Parking Lot would be a more apt description.   

It is not just the traffic it is also the Illinois drivers.  When I was in the proper lane to access the Chicago Skyway, I was almost run into a barricade by a person in a large delivery truck who chose not to look at traffic around his vehicle and just move over.  The Chicago Skyway seems to well portray Chicago, the city of Big Shoulders, or the Windy City.  It runs through the industrial southeast side and goes above buildings.  On our journey into Indiana, the Skyway was littered with semi tire treads that one could not simply avoid. Heck, if I am paying a toll to use the road, one would think they would keep the road clear of debris, but not here.  Thanks to the transponder, my Chicago niece picked up for our trip, the tolls were not near as bad as they otherwise would have been.  As an aside, I have to say the Illinois tolls moved the best of the all the states we were in.  At least in Illinois we did not need to stop or nearly stop to get through the toll lane as most all other states required.

Green Bay Packer NFL franchise
Author photo at Pro Football Hall of Fame, July 2018

A great deal of truck traffic travels east on this route, and I noticed that the truck traffic remained heavy on I 80/90.  Chicago was loaded with steel mills and other industries from which its first quoted nickname evolved.  Of course, as the city evolved it became not just an industrial leader, but in architecture and other fields.  The Wisconsin architect Frank Lloyd Wright did significant work in Oak Park, IL.   Now my feeling could come just because Chicago is different for a person who is used to small cities and the rural areas of Wisconsin--you know rolling farm fields, forests and lakes.  As I wrote in a post a few years ago, Chicago also has a strong sense of community, which you can read here.  In that sense it is urban and urban is not necessarily bad.  Manhattan is said to be the most eco-friendly place to live in the United States.

What drew me to write this post at this time?  Well, my wife and I were in the Twin Cities area this past weekend, and Friday night found us in Joe Senser's  Bar, a sports bar in Bloomington near Hwy 494.  Looking at the bar I could tell I was not in Wisconsin anymore--purple Viking memorabilia. Being used to the green and gold of the Packers this was well, different.  Although my young niece made a relevant comment:  " A bar in Wisconsin would have a great deal more Packer stuff" than that bar had Viking stuff.  This even though I heard that the bar was owned by a former Viking player.

Viking Memorabilia at Joe Senser's Bar in Bloomington, MN
Author photo, October 2018

Traveling in Illinois is made easier by the responder to pay to heavy tolls, but that still does not get to the amount of traffic, or the Illinois drivers, nor the shoddy upkeep to remove tire treads littered over the road.  The next time, I may try to go around the city and urban area, even if it takes more time.  I would hope to at least continue to be moving and not sit in the Kennedy parking lot.

Enough Said

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about the Madison Metropolitan Nine Springs Treatment Plant. In the post I noted that, other than toilet paper, there is no such thing as a flushable wipe.

The so called wipes clog sewer pumps and this past Monday and Tuesday Charleston, SC had to send divers into the pump well to search, in the dark morass, for the clog.  Two large clogs were pulled up, others would come.  What a great Halloween costume.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, these pics from Charleston twitter feed (found on-line on 10/17/18) are worth 10,000 words.  As they say, besides toilet paper flush only #1 and #2.

Communication

The world today is filled with instantaneous communication.  With a global internet, one can send a message by messenger, email, or some other method of communication and it can be received in a matter of seconds.  The world is becoming more reliant on the internet.  You can contact a person by phone through voice over internet protocol on the other side of the globe for nothing but the cost of the internet service.  However, contact requires a person to take the lead.  It of course, also requires your internet to be working.  Two stories will show the need for an improvement in matters of communication.

On Wednesday, I agreed to be at a persons house who was having a new internet line installed.  The technician was to arrive between 8 am and 10 am. Ten was later changed to noon.  I waited until 1:00 pm, but no technician arrived.  At the house, I noticed the phone was not working.  As I was driving home, I came across a service truck of the provider at a gas station about two blocks from the house.  I pulled in, and coming out the door was the technician.  I inquired if he was the tech doing work for the address at which I waited.  He said yes, and I noted I thought he was to be there before noon.  He said he ran into a problem.  He explained that the internet level to be provided requires two phone lines, and that the house has two dedicated lines, but that the connections had corroded.  He explained that animals get in and chew at the lines and moisture then corrodes the lines. He said he had to find an additional pair out of 100 serving that area that would provide the service.  Unfortunately he said, the telecom provider does not do regular maintenance work on lines, rather going to calls as outages occur. He noted that if there was standard maintenance, he would likely not have had to spend so much time finding a working pair of wire.  He said it would likely take the rest of the afternoon to complete the line search.  He said he could work on it in the house Thursday at 8:00 am, but I had a meeting to attend that morning at that time so I could not make that appointment.

While waiting for the tech to arrive calls had been placed to the provider, but no one could give an idea of what was happening.  Customer service said to call tech support, and tech support said to call customer service.  The technician did complete his work on the lines later that afternoon.  One phone call could also have let us know that he was experiencing line issues and it would take longer than anticipated.  I also suspect that the tech support and customer service handle the whole of the service provider, and they have little contact with local technicians.  In other words, the chain of command is so long that messages are not communicated.  Even if communicated, with so many levels it could be like the game "Operator."

Whether a telephone, or internet we all want our devices to operate.  Last winter we noticed that only one speaker worked with our entertainment area, particularly the CD player.  As fall has now arrived and days are shorter, we are in the house more and decided it was time to try to figure out the problem.  It turned out that one of the audio outputs on our CD player (300 CD capacity), was bad.  Long and short, we decided to make the move to high tech for our music.  Hence last week we purchased a device on which to place the music, and a wireless blue-tooth speaker.  To date we have ripped our CD's to a portable hard drive, and now need to figure out the best way to get them to I-tunes and then placed on the new device.  However, we also know we can play Pandora radio on the speaker.  The directions for setting up the speaker is not by word but by drawings.  Last night, after the recommended time to charge, we wondered if it was charged.  No green light came on as one would expect.  The directions did not say, or have a diagram of how to determine if charged.  It di did not even come with an adapter, so we used a I-Pad adapter.  I went on line and there I found out that you push two buttons on the device and it will give you an idea of its charge level.  Would it not have been easier to have just simply said that in the directions?

I can understand why they wish to use a diagram, it avoids the use of different languages, and in the case of the speaker, the way to find out charge level would require the use of language.  The appropriate level of communication is important, and communication is more than a tweet or an email.  

Weather the Weather

The calendar moved to autumn almost two weeks ago, but meteorological fall began at the beginning of last month.  However, since mid-August the Dane County region has mainly seen clouds and rain.  The Weather Channel app on my I-Pad, has generally predicted rain 12 of every 14 days since mid-August.  The weather seems to be more variable with more clouds and more rain this year than I recall in the past.  We are having to weather the weather.

Mud along curb of Exchange Street from McFarland
High School Construction Project.
Apparently, the Village and Contractor feel sweeping the silt to the
curb is proper erosion control

I don't know what happened to what are supposed to be the nice days of fall with sunshine and high temps in the low 70's moving to  60's as September's shortened days take hold to October, and more night than day is upon the land, post equinox.  Before today, the last sunshine we had was two or three hours worth last week early Saturday morning. High temperatures, up until today, for the past several days have been about 10 to 15 degrees below normal. There was only just over one week in September that I can recall where we were rain free and that was from September 8 through September 17.  Interestingly, that stretch of good weather was timed with appearance of Hurricane Florence in the Mid-Atlantic region.

View of the Yahara River from the Exchange St Bridge
Notice the strong water flow, and flooding to left side

To put it in perspective, normal precipitation for September is supposed to be 3.13", but the Dane County Regional Airport received almost 5".  September ended wet and October began wet.  My home rain gauge recorded 3" of rain from Sunday night to early the morning of October 2.  As of 8:00 am Monday, there was 2" of rain.  This rain event raised Lake Mendota levels five inches.  But for a 1-1/2 hour period it rained all day on Monday, October 1, giving us the extra one inch.  Year to date precipitation is 43.54" with a normal just over 28".

Closer view of flooding of left river shore

The Weather Channel forecast for the next 14 days has rain in the forecast for thirteen of the next fourteen days.  This could be prime days to view the changing fall colors and instead the days will be cloudy, cool and rainy.  Of the next fourteen days of this long range forecast there is not one day predicted with good amount of sunshine.  Weather Underground is a little more optimistic, its ten day forecast has one day of sunshine (this Thursday) and rain four of the next ten days.  Rain was not predicted on either application Tuesday morning, but on my walk that morning there was some light rain. Today's "Wisconsin State Journal" notes rainfall tonight, and Friday through Sunday.  So, its five day forecast is rain free only for Thursday. 

Lone chair stuck in highwater

With all this rain, are we starting to become like Portland, Oregon in terms of rainfall? Although, Portland's October normal rainfall is less than that for the Madison area.  Many years ago I spent about two weeks in Portland visiting my brother and his wife.  The visit mainly was in late November, over the Thanksgiving holiday.  Two things struck me on that visit, first was that during my whole visit the only day it did not rain and the sun was out was on the day before I departed.  Second, I recall hearing on the radio sometime during my visit that the area had just set a record for most consecutive days of rainfall.  I am able to recall the forty days of Portland rain, as it reminded me of the forty days and night in the biblical account of Noah's ark.

Rain fall amounts have been so high that many properties are now are flooded, although not to biblical proportions.  Streets in Madison started to flood after the heavy rainfall of August 20.  However, watershed overload actually began on August 16 when an area from Waunakee to Watertown, which would include Sun Prairie, received 6" of rainfall overnight.  Rainfall is highly variable, I recall the airport, which is not far from Waunakee having recorded less than 2" during that storm event.  Rainfall is also variable within a few blocks.  Two neighbors have weather stations and during that event there was a variation between the two stations here in McFarland of about one inch even though their homes are 1,330 feet apart (as measured on Google Maps).

Lake Weed conveyor belt
Dane County was cutting weeds 24/7 since the August rains to obtain better water flow downstream

The variability of the weather makes it unpredictable.  Perhaps the Weather Channel app makes the forecast seem more dreary than it will actually turn out.  I think I tend to notice more when the weather is worse than predicted.  Take last Saturday for instance.  It was a cold morning for southern Wisconsin, and sun was predicted for the morning with clouds to move in during the afternoon. Yet, clouds moved in much earlier, at mid-morning-keeping temperatures down, and significantly below the forecast high in the paper that day. One thing is for sure, we do not have to be camping to see cool and wet weather.  It is just more bothersome when you are camping, particularly in a tent.  The long range forecast of wet and cold has ended our camping earlier than we had hoped.  I was hoping for a nice stretch of clear fall weather, but warm enough at night and early morning to not be freezing. 

 Author photos, morning of Oct. 3, 2018