Odds & Ends: October 25, 2022

 

We've had a string of sunny fall days with brilliant blue skies. But, this is also what an autumn day in Illinois looks like. We really need the rain, so it's all good.

Football

We're 7 games into the football season and the Bears are not dead to me. Who would have guessed that the Bears and the Packers would have the same win-loss record this far into the season?

Sturdy Shelter Brewery

It's raining out and 52 degrees. This is a perfect day to spend inside a nice bar and pretend to get some writing done. Batavia has the perfect place: Sturdy Shelter Brewery. They brew beer on the premises. They have food brought in some days, but not every day. In any case, Abby the bartender told me I can bring food in with me and order a beer and have lunch! A Big Mac and fries plus a delicious small craft beer sounds wonderful. The music is on, but not so loud you can't hold a conversation without yelling. The lighting is perfect. They have 5 tables along the windows on Shumway and more window tables at the other end of the building overlooking the river. 

I had a Robustacious Imperial Red and it was really good. I'll be going back. 

Odds & Ends: October 22, 2022

 

Here is today's Batavia Depot Pond picture. It's a gorgeous fall day here in Illinois. When I took this picture it was about 55 degrees. As I write this on my back porch, it's 79! We'll have temperatures in the 70s through Monday. Then it will turn cooler, but mid-50s is hardly anything to complain about. 

Writing Contest

A friend of mine, Cathy Kern, and I have entered as a team in a writing contest. The contest will give us a genre, action and word and we have 24 hours to write a 250 word (or less) story with those three elements. The first round of the contest kicks off November 18, so we have a bit less than a month to practice. The first two prompts we gave each other went well. (Cathy lives in New Zealand, so we're doing this via email and Skype with a pretty hefty time zone difference.) Then one of us thought we should tackle the "comedy" genre. Cathy got a couple done, but my productivity screeched to a halt. I stare at the legal pad, or the computer screen, and I have nothing, nada, zip. I'm overwhelmed with the idea that I have to write something funny; so far I have written nothing at all. I know I have to get past this, and I will. 

Sciatica

For years I went to a yoga class every Wednesday. I went because I got a cramp in my calf walking to my mailbox. My mailbox! I decided stretching might be a good idea and signed up for yoga. It worked. My flexibility greatly improved and I met some nice people that I still run into and chat with. When I developed some knee problems, I blamed yoga and stopped. My knees are better now, and I'm not sure yoga had anything to do with the problems, but I never went back. This summer I "got" sciatica. It's a nasty pain from your hamstrings all the way to your foot, on one side of your body (mine was left). It hurt so much! It hurt to sit; it hurt to get back up. I did the stretches I saw on the Mayo clinic website that turned out to be mostly the same poses we did in my yoga class and 12 weeks later my sciatica went away. I still do the stretches, darn near every night. I encourage all of you to stay flexible somehow - you want to avoid sciatica if you can, it is no fun at all. 

Batavia Depot Pond: October 15, 2022

It's chilly this Saturday morning. I ran a few errands this morning and picked up some donuts and coffee at Dunkin. I went to Sunset Park, but not a single train passed, so no train pictures this morning. I drove over to have more caffeine at Limestone and took this shot of the Depot Pond. 

Odds & Ends

Car Museums

I took a little road trip in September. My first stop was the Cadillac Fall Festival at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan. It was a beautiful, cool fall day -- perfect for wandering around outdoors and looking at cars. The museum is really nice, displaying more than Cadillacs. It houses a great collection of American cars. If you've followed me at all on Facebook (which I'm no longer on), you know I have a thing for 60s vintage Cadillacs. 

After spending a few hours looking at Cadillacs I headed south to Auburn, Indiana. I visited the Auburn / Cord / Duesenberg Museum. This museum is stunning. It's housed in the former administrative building for Auburn Motors. There is another museum behind it that occupies some of the manufacturing and R&D facilities. I'm not a huge fan of cars from the 1930s, but I enjoyed the museum anyway. I really liked the Cord 812 - the second front-wheel drive car produced in America.

Illinois Waterway

I took a drive to Ottawa, IL and visited the Illinois Waterway Visitor Center. It has a so-so display about the waterway, but it has an excellent viewing area to watch boats and barges move through the lock there. I first saw pleasure boats headed downriver to the Mississippi. There were quite a few in the lock. The boat nearest me was a sailboat and the couple aboard told us they had sailed all the way across the Atlantic from Sweden! They had been on the boat for over a year and weren't sure how much longer they would be sailing. They were headed south down the Mississippi - and that seemed the extent of their future planning. After the pleasure boats went through a tug pushing a barge headed up the river, toward Chicago. 

Today's Train Pictures

I went out this morning to Sunset Park in Geneva and encountered 3 trains: one eastbound Metra commuter, one eastbound and one westbound freight.