Bus Crash

Bus Crash

One person died. This wreck happened on Iowa State Route 4 about 6 miles north of my wife's hometown of Rockwell City, Iowa. Bus was carrying a community college baseball team to a tournament in Arkansas. The crash happened around 11AM, and as you can see, there is no snow or ice on the road. So what caused the crash? Tire blow out? Driver fell asleep? Heart attack? Who knows?

Iowa is pretty flat, and the roads are mostly straight. There are curves here and there. It's kind of baffling.

Jolley Curve - site of the crash

Yellow Submarine

Brian Betten stands in front of his “yellow submarine” — a propane tank painted yellow and decorated like the marine vessel in the Beatles song. - Messenger photo by Bret Hayworth

This 'submarine' sits by the side of US20 not far from my wife's hometown of Rockwell City, Iowa. The Messenger is the Fort Dodge newspaper. Got to wondering after I wrote 'newspaper', do they still print a real paper newspaper? Yes, they do. 

You can see an older version of the submarine on Google's Streetview:

Yellow Submarine, Google Streetview

It even has a placemark on Google Maps now.

The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
The Beatles

Here's the song that started all this. I really liked the Beatles music back then, but at some point I kinda got burned out on it, and kind of tired of McCarthy's relentless cheerfulness, and I quit listening to them. Probably happened about the same time that Lennon was shot.  Well, I didn't stop listening completely, I still listen to them occasionally.

Tornado

Raw video: Tornado forms near Rockwell City, Iowa
KCCI

This is just one of the five tornadoes that touched down in Calhoun County Iowa on Tuesday. Rockwell City is my wife's home town. Rockwell City has appeared here before.

P. S. No injuries.

Save Byron's Bar

Byron Stuart at his bar

Byron's Bar in Pomeroy, Iowa, is in danger of being closed down due to the condition of the building. The Storm Lake Times Pilot has a fine story:

We need an uprising of love for Byron By Art Cullen | Storm Lake Times Pilot

This might be Byron's theme song:

Friend of the Devil (2013 Remaster)
Grateful Dead

Pomeroy is not too far from Rockwell City, Iowa, my wife's home town.

Pomeroy, Iowa

I have not been there. I'm not sure I've even heard of Pomeroy before.

Charles Graham Boyd R.I.P.

General Charles G. Boyd

Charles Boyd passed away yesterday at the age of 83. I posting this because he was from my wife's home town of Rockwell City, Iowa. She never met the man, but her brother did. Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training has a 104 page biography. I've read the first dozen pages so far and it's pretty great. He was an F-105 pilot during the Vietnam war, got shot down and was imprisoned for seven years. He survived, returned and eventually became a four star general.

F-105 Thunderchief

Fire at Sparky's

Fire at Sparky's

There was a fire a week ago at Sparky's. I'm just now getting around to posting this because reasons.

Sparky's is a truck stop on Highway 20 just north of Rockwell City, Iowa. It's fairly new, I mean it wasn't there when we got married a zillion years ago. We've been there before.

Truck that started the fire

Rumor has it that the brakes on a semi-truck locked up and when the truck pulled in, the accumulated heat in the brakes set the tires on fire and as the truck was parked next to the building, one thing led to another and the whole place went up in smoke.

Jack R. Gray, R.I.P.

Jack R. Gray, 1927-2017

My father-in-law passed away two weeks ago.

Rockwell City – Jack R. Gray 90, a longtime attorney, passed away Thursday, August 24, 2017 at Holy Spirit Retirement Home in Sioux City, Iowa. Memorial services will be 10:30 a.m. Monday, August 28, 2017 at St. Paul's Lutheran & Presbyterian Church, Rockwell City, with Pastor James Hoover Mossman officiating. Burial of cremains will be at Rosehill Cemetery. Visitation will be 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27, at the Palmer & Swank Funeral Home, Rockwell City, and from 5:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at Twin Lakes Golf Club. In lieu of flowers memorials can be left to: Holy Spirit Retirement Home, St. Paul's Lutheran & Presbyterian Church, or Twin Lakes Golf Club.

Jack is survived by his son John C. Gray and his wife Di of Sioux City, Iowa; daughter Anne Pergiel and her husband Charles of Hillsboro, Oregon; 5 grandchildren, Joe (Stephanie) Canny, Ross, Kathryn, and John Pergiel, and Jack Calhoon Gray; great-grandson Calhoon Harold Canny; and other relatives and friends. He was preceded in death by his wife Audrey; son Todd Gray; his parents, Ross C. and Jennie Geist Gray; brothers, Ward, Lynn, and Dale Gray; and sister Jean Hull.

Jack Ross Gray was born August 9, 1927 at Rockwell City, Iowa. He graduated from Rockwell City High School, with the Class of 1945. Jack attended college in Iowa City and graduated from the College of Law at the University of Iowa in 1952. On September 7, 1952 he was united in marriage to Audrey A. Langland. The couple established their home in Rockwell City where Jack practiced law with his father, uncle, and brothers at the Gray & Gray Law Firm. He later practiced law with David Gidel at Gray & Gidel Law Firm. Audrey passed away in 2013, and later that year Jack retired from law. In 2014, he became a resident of Holy Spirit Retirement Home in Sioux City. Jack was a member of St. Paul's Lutheran & Presbyterian Church, Twin Lakes Golf Club, Rockwell City Rotary Club, and the Iowa State Bar Association. He was also past County Attorney, and past City Attorney. He enjoyed playing snooker, bridge, and cribbage. Jack collected nearly everything, and he loved his hometown.

Neural Net

Grain Elevators in Rockwell City, Iowa

All of Iowa is a giant solar energy plant. The entire state is covered with fields of corn. In every county there is a big, stone county courthouse and a giant grain elevator with half a dozen concrete silos. Next to every grain elevator there is a railroad siding. So, the entire state plants in the spring, lets the corn grow all summer, harvests it in the fall and stores it in the grain elevators. Then the trains start collecting the corn and hauling it off to the feed lots and the ethanol distillers and the bakeries. Actually, they probably never stop. Trains are running constantly collecting grain from one elevator after another. It takes them all year to drain all the elevators and then the whole cycle starts again.

Calhoun County Courthouse
Yes, I know it is obscured by trees. I took this picture because of the sizable radio antennas.

Look at all that infrastructure devoted to the collection, storage and distribution of one crop. All the grain elevators, railroad tracks, and railroad cars. That is some serious capital investment, with very thing margins. The only way it will pay off is if you keep using the same equipment over and over again, year after year.

Railroad lines in Northwest Iowa between Des Moines and Sioux City

Look at all the little towns scattered across Iowa. They are small because they don't need a lot of people to take care of the business of corn production. I suspect half of the people are there to provide a modicum of civilization to these remote outposts. Every town needs teachers and a barber and a sheriff. A grocer and a mechanic would not amiss. I don't know if every town needs a doctor, but every county surely does.

Colorful clouds after rain shower at one of the gatherings.

My father-in-law passed away a couple of weeks ago and I flew to Iowa to attend the service. There were several gatherings to commemorate the event. About a hundred people attended each one. Some were formal and subdued, others were more relaxed and even a bit festive. Quite a few people were from out of town, most of whom had grown up here and hadn't seen each other for years, so there was a lot of catching up to do.

At all of these gatherings there was great deal of chit-chat. Some people would call it talking, but talking to me is communicating information, and to me, chit-chat doesn't qualify. It is more like comforting mouth noises. Or is it?

All these people know each other, and have known each other for most of their lives. There is no real information that needs to be communicated, it's just chit-chat.

Neurons

But then I had a vision. You know how the neurons in your brain have connections to several other neurons? Information that is passed from one neuron to another is not a complete thought, it's just an ill-defined fragment. Only by having zillions of neurons operating in parallel are we able to think, reason and act.

A similar thing is going on at these social gatherings. It's like a hive mind thinking. Little bits of information flow across the room, information that has a different value for each individual, but by passing it repeatedly and in parallel you can be reasonable sure that it will reach those who need to know, even if you don't know who they are.

3-Way Stop

Intersection with 3-Way stop in Denison, Iowa

We encountered a three way stop on our way from Rockwell City to Omaha. I don't think I've ever encountered one before, so I thought I'd share.

Intersection with 3-Way stop in Denison, Iowa

Fallen Iron Curtain: A Diary of Operation Farm Ukraine 1993 by Weston Thompson

Fallen Iron Curtain: A Diary of Operation Farm Ukraine 1993 by Weston Thompson

In 1993 a consortium of agri-businesses sent a group of 100 farmers from the American Midwest to the Ukraine to teach modern farming techniques to Ukrainian farmers. Weston Thompson, the author of this book, was one of these farmers. He is from Rockwell City, Iowa, my wife's hometown, which is how we ended up with a copy.

Windmills

Click to embiggenate to get the full effect

Lots of windmills in Iowa. Saw this convoy carrying sections of a pylon at the truck stop on the new Highway 20 just north of Rockwell City, Iowa.

Previous posts on the subject, group 1.
Previous posts on the subject, group 2.

Iowa

My wife and I got home Saturday night after ten days and 3600 miles on the road. We drove to Sioux City, Iowa to visit her father at the Holy Spirit retirement center. Usually when she goes, she flies, but this time she thought she might want to bring some stuff back, so we took her car, a 2006 Mitsubishi Endeavor.

Decker Truck on the way to Iowa.

   On the way there, not far out of Portland, I spotted a semi-truck from the Decker Trucking Company in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Fort Dodge is only about 20 miles from Rockwell City, my wife's home town. We used to fly into the small airport there. So right off the bat we know we're on the right road. We saw the same truck several times over the next couple of days. I'm pretty sure it was the same truck. We saw another one on the trip home. This one had a shinier trailer, and once again we saw it several times over the three days it took it us to get home.
    Eastern Washington is the most desolate looking place on Earth. Nothing but dry, brown scrub as far the eye can see. Once we got to Idaho things turned green. It was nice. Not much to see but grass and cows, but at least the grass was green. Much more pleasant than Eastern Washington.

Harleys parked in front of the Holiday Inn in Sioux City

    We got to Sioux City on Saturday evening, a week ago. There is major road construction going on downtown, so getting to the hotel required some wandering around. Just when we think we've got things sorted out we find our way blocked by the biggest gang of bikers you ever saw. News reports put the total at 25,000. I know we saw thousands of motorcycles parked in the street. Getting to the hotel required more deviations. Sioux City isn't that big, downtown is maybe ten blocks square, and our hotel and the biker party were both there. These weren't your regular bikers, they had filled the hotels. There were probably a hundred Harley's parked at the Holiday Inn where we were staying.

Sioux City, the morning after

    After the big biker brawl in Waco (Warning: CNN takes forever and a day to load, not as bad as some others) earlier this year, and seeing that Iowa does not require helmets, I was expecting a blood bath. I got up early the next morning to look for evidence, but the street cleaners beat me to it. All the evidence had been washed away.
    Rockwell City is still hanging on. Grandpa was selling his cars to the local dealer, so we paid him a visit to take care of business. I was surprised to see that he had a lot full of new cars for sale. There must have been a hundred, this in a town of maybe 1500 souls. He seems to be doing okay. Matter of fact, the whole area seems to be doing okay. I suspect things have consolidated some and now there is enough business to support the reduced population.

    We covered 3600 miles, burned 140 gallons of gas, which works out to about 25 miles per gallon, which is pretty durn good considering we were cruising at 80 MPH for most of the way. South Dakota had the highest speed limit at 80 MPH. Normally I set the cruise control to 10 MPH over the limit, but 90 was a little unsettling. The car handled it fine, but there was something in the back of my brain telling me we were in dangerous territory. There wasn't much traffic, but there were still occasional incidents of people not paying strict attention. Besides, the little computer display claimed our mileage had dropped to 15 MPG, the lowest I had ever seen it.
    The trip cost a little over two grand, hotels were almost half of that. We ate in 'nice' restaurants mostly, so our food (and beverage) bill was a little more than the gasoline. Premium gas (required by our high performance utility vehicle) averaged $3.29 a gallon, but we saw places where it was only $2.65. We only ran into one place that did not have premium, but there was another station a mile up the freeway that did, so it wasn't a problem.
     We saw a lot of Minervas. We ate at the one in Rapid City twice, and also at the one in Sioux Falls.

Thunderstorm

Rockwell City, Iowa. This went on for hours.

This isn't the gun you are looking for, Part 2.

Ceci n'est pas une fusil.

Even though it shoots a rifle cartridge, it is not a rifle because it looks like a pistol, which means you can use it for hunting deer in Indiana. There was a gun shop in Rockwell City, Iowa for a while, and the owner had several similar items, that is, pistols that shot rifle cartridges. I thought it was kind of strange for the shop to be there since the town was so small, but I suppose the rent was cheap. I also thought the guns were a little odd, I mean why would you want something like this? But once you add in the bit about deer hunting it starts to make sense. Picture and caption stolen from View from the Porch.

Part 1 here, except stupid Blogger lost the picture.

Violence in the Streets

Rockwell City Courthouse, March 2013.

A police officer was shot and killed early this morning in my wife's home town of Rockwell City, Iowa. I suppose there might have been another murder sometime in the town's distant past, but maybe not. (Update: there was another murder back in the 1960's, and that's as far as my wayback machine goes.) There are only 1700 or so people living there now.
    Last night older son saw eleven Hillsboro Police cars heading North out of town, lights and sirens going. This report of a shooting is the only thing I could find that could prompt that kind of response.

Volunteers encourage reading

Local Iowa paper remembers my mother-in-law.

Volunteers provide one-on-one attention during a program sponsored by the Friends of the Rockwell City Library

    The Friends of the Rockwell City Library have a long history of encouraging reading among patrons of all ages. Several years ago, they expressed a desire to support the reading of elementary aged students, a group with which they had previously not worked directly. Ever-passionate about helping children read, Audrey Gray took the lead in developing plans for such a program.
    Through her volunteer work at the elementary school, Audrey knew that all students had independent reading goals that were set and monitored through a program called Accelerated Reader, or AR. She also knew that there were students who needed adult assistance or encouragement to meet their goals. In March, 2010, then, she launched a program called the All StARs, the “AR” a reference to the school's AR reading program.
    The program has continued since, and still operates at the SCC Elementary. Adult volunteers, or “coaches,” are paired with individual students. They meet after school for 40 minutes, twice a week, for three to four weeks each session. Each pair reads together, choosing books that are of interest to the students and at his/her independent level. As they finish a book, the student takes a brief quiz on the computer to demonstrate comprehension. These quizzes translate into points that count toward a personal reading goal.
    Audrey's passion, powers of persuasion, and winsome personality enabled her to recruit more than 40 adult volunteers over the years. Many of these were members of Friends of the Library, but she also called on others in the community. It's estimated that almost 100 children have participated and benefited. For some, participating in All StARs helped them meet their AR goals for the first time. For others, their “coaches” became mentors who took an interest in and encouraged their achievement.
    It was because of the success of the program that Audrey continued to look for ways to involve and benefit more children. She found coaches who could come earlier to work with first graders during the school day. She worked out rides for students who needed them. She ran the program during the summer before the district offered summer school. And she dreamed of helping volunteers in other communities of the SCC district to start a program at their local libraries.
Today, Audrey's legacy continues, thanks to the efforts of other Friends of the Library including Marlene Stacey. Mary Voith, and the dedicated coaches who selfless give of their time help children succeed at (and love!) reading.

My wife sent me a scan of the actual newspaper clipping. I used a free online OCR service to translate it. It didn't work too well. I think it might have been easier to simply enter the text manually.

Ammonia

From a Houston Post dateline: "As the sign says, the weather is fair, it's 83 degrees and the time is 11:17 a.m. The date is also May 11, and that white cloud in the distance is the toxic blanket of anhydrous ammonia fumes which resulted from a tank truck crash at Southwest Freeway and the West Loop which killed five persons. The Texas Air Control Board took the picture from its offices at 5555 West Loop South."

A post by E.B. Misfit prompted me to recall the great Ammonia Truck Explosion of 1976 in Houston, Texas. I used to pass that Pearl Beer sign on the way to work every morning.


View April 2013 in a larger map
The blue line is the route the ammonia truck took, heading North and taking the exit from 610 onto the Southwest Freeway heading West, except it didn't make it. I was working in the same building as Gilbert Plumbing (the green square) and I remember hearing the great big boom. Fortunately the wind was blowing away from me. It was a big deal when it happened. People died, people injured, freeway damaged. I remember hearing that the ammonia peeled the paint on a bunch of houses to the North East of the accident. And then there was the giant storage tank we came across in Iowa some years ago. As I recall we were on our way from Rockwell City to Sioux City, but for some reason we weren't taking the normal route. At one of the crossroads there was a giant circular storage tank. In my mind's eye it was 500 feet in diameter and a hundred feet tall, and it was full of something dangerously unpleasant, like ammonia or fertilizer or natural gas. I can't recall exactly, it was a long time ago. But it was so weird seeing this mammoth tank out in the middle of nowhere. Of course it makes sense to put it out there, I mean these things are dangerous, and you would not want to be around if it blew up. I went looking for it using Google and Google Maps, but no luck so far. Of course, I could be way off. Or it might have blown up, though I think I would have heard about it.
Update March 2016. Replaced 'red line' with 'blue line' on account of Google Maps changing the color of the line on the map without consulting me. Hmmph.

AUDREY A. GRAY

My mother in law.

ROCKWELL CITY - Audrey A. Gray, 84, passed away Tuesday, February 26, 2013 at the Paula J. Baber Hospice Home in Fort Dodge. Abiding by Audrey's longtime request, her remains were gifted to the University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine, in Iowa City. Memorial services will be 11:00 a.m. Monday, March 4, at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Rockwell City, with Pastor James Hoover Mossman officiating. Visitation will be 3 to 6 p.m. Sunday at the Palmer & Swank Funeral Home, Rockwell City. In lieu of flowers, memorials can be made to the Rockwell City Public Library, or the South Central Calhoun Elementary School Library.
Audrey is survived by her husband Jack Gray of Rockwell City; son John Gray and his wife Di of Sioux City; daughter Anne Pergiel and her husband Charles of Hillsboro, Oregon; five grandchildren, Joe (Stephanie) Canny, Ross, Kathryn, and John Pergiel, and Jack Gray. She was preceded in death by her son Todd Gray in 1988; and parents, Dr. Edwin "Doc" and Emma (Kirchoff) Langland.
Audrey Anne Langland Gray was born July 10, 1928 at Story City, Iowa. She graduated from Story City High School, with the Class of 1946, and the University of Iowa in 1950. Although she was then engaged to Jack Gray, she made him wait two years while she taught elementary school in California and traveled Europe. The couple married on September 7, 1952 and for the rest of her life she made their home in Rockwell City and Twin Lakes. Audrey left home to earn her Masters Degree in 1970 and to visit the world. She saw the 99 counties of Iowa, all 50 states, the seven continents, and nearly 90 countries. She went through eight passports. Audrey taught at the elementary schools in Lohrville and Rockwell City until her retirement in 1989. She instilled a love of reading in her classroom and, after retirement, at the men's reformatory and in the classrooms of others. Audrey started the Reading All Stars at the South Central Calhoun so that many more adults could help beginning readers. She was a longtime member of the Library Board, PEO, American Association of University Women, St. Paul's Lutheran Church, and to her husband's chagrin, the Democratic Party. - Des Moines Messenger

When Audrey & Jack came out to visit us at Christmas she was fine, and now this.

American Airline Torture, Part 2

Executive Summary It took us almost 13 hours from the time we left my inlaws house in Rockwell City, Iowa till we got home to Hillsboro, Oregon. Allow 45 minutes for driving and schlepping luggage at each end, and knock off half an hour because it wasn't quite 13 hours and I don't want to be accused of padding the numbers, means we were in the custody of the airlines for eleven hours. Total flight time comes to five and a half hours (5:30) which means we spent another five and half hours sitting in the airport or sitting in an airplane on the ground. Why is sitting and waiting on a plane so much worse than sitting inside the airport? Cramped seating perhaps? I don't mind when we are actually going somewhere, it's just when we are sitting on the ground. The absolutely worst part is when they have pulled up to the gate and door isn't open yet. This happened both times on the small hopper. We have landed and pulled up to the "gate", but now we have to wait for the ground crew to do something. Unload the luggage maybe? It wasn't long, maybe a couple three minutes, but it was really irritating. Same thing happened when the 757 landed in Seattle, though that could have been due to sitting in the back of the plane and it just takes forever for the 240 odd people in front of me to scurry out the one and only door. I think the TSA people were doing a better job than the last time I flew. Of course, there was virtually no line when I went through security either in Fort Dodge, which I expected, or in Portland, which I did not expect. The TSA folks have spiffy new uniforms, too, which helps their image. I had to pull my CPAP machine out of my backpack so they could run an additional test on it. I expected they were going to turn it on, make sure it was really what it was, but all they did was swab it for explosive residue. At least that appears to be what they did. Here's some photos.

American Airline Torture

(As opposed to Chinese Water Torture.) We flew back from Iowa yesterday and as usual it was a miserable experience. Nothing went really wrong, and the few things that could have been real problems seemed to work in our favor. So it wasn't really bad, like getting beaten with a baseball bat, it was more a death from a thousand cuts. In any case, today my body aches all over. We start with a flight from Ft. Dodge to Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP). It's 45 minutes late. We are there on time, but most of the other five or six passengers arrive AFTER the scheduled departure time. How did they know the plane was going to be late? We checked on the internet before we left the house in Rockwell City and at that time the plane was still "on time". I suspect collusion.

On the way to MSP we have to stop in Mason City. We had to stop in Mason City on the way from MSP. How often does this plane have to stop in Mason City? I suspect stupid routing.

When we get to MSP we find our flight to Seattle is delayed. This means we only have to spend an hour so hanging around the airport and not five or six days. Then they start calling people to board. This is a big plane, a Boeing 757 and holds about 250 people and they are all going in through one door. I don't like standing in line, so I start pacing the length of the local hall way. It takes ten minutes for the line to get through the boarding gate, so I've probably covered a half a mile with my pacing. Now we get to queue up inside the Jetway. It takes another 10 or 12 minutes to actually get inside the plane, where we have some kind of foul up blocking the aisle half way down. There is one stewardess in the thick of it. Another one gets on the PA and asks the dumbkoffs to stop blocking the aisle. It takes another 5 or 10 minutes to get to our seats.

Problem was there were two people assigned to the same seat. Well, we have two other empty seats, so one person moves and we are good to go. Right? Wrong. Some nitwit from the reservation desk has to figure out what happened before the plane can move. We sit there for another 15 or 20 minutes while "they" are supposedly sorting this out. Nothing actually changes inside the airplane. We just have to sit and wait.

Somewhere around in here the flight attendants stop calling it "Northwest Airlines" (NWA) and start calling it "Delta-Northwest Airlines" or some such. Did Delta and NWA merge during the five days we were in Iowa? Is that why we are having so many petty screw ups here?

The flight to Seattle is uneventful except for the threat of some turbulence on the last half of the trip. Nothing to see but clouds for most of the trip.

In Seattle we are late, again, but there are hoppers to Portland every hour or so, so getting home should not be a problem. The hopper terminal is at the other end of Terminal World from where we are so the first order of business is getting there. It's not too tough, take the escalator downstairs, and then downstairs some more to the subterranean automatic train. Which takes us to another train, and then another. We end up taking four trains before we get to our terminal. And when we get there, there is one single-person-wide escalator. No stairs. So everyone from the train has to queue up to get on this one stinking escalator.

We find the flight desk for the hoppers to Portland International Airport (PDX) and talk to the clerk there. She sorts us out and issues new boarding passes. I don't know what see is doing on her computer, but it's like she's writing a novel. I wouldn't be surprised if it took her a thousand keystrokes to sort this out. It's as bad as the computer system at my local Mom & Pop video rental store. I can understand that kind of clumsy system at a small operation, but I really don't understand why the airlines can't get a handle on it. Too busy paying bonuses to dumbkoffs, I imagine.

The next plane is somewhat delayed, and then delayed some more. Getting on is not too bad, though when we start boarding there is no plane in sight and I wonder if they are herding us all to buses that will take us to the Gulag where they ship all the surplus passengers. Turns out it's about 100 yards down the stairs, down the hall and around the corner to a very fancy airplane with twin six-bladed turboprops. Holds 160 (not 80 as previously reported) passengers, and they have two (!) doors for entering. The marked path (on the ground) to the rear door is blocked by the baggage cart, which may explain why most people went in the front door which left the rear door wide open, for those who could find their way there.


The Q400 aircraft has 40 rows of four seats each, long and narrow. Headrests were non-existent. Leaning my head back left me looking at the ceiling. Shorter people would probably do better.

So the plane is loaded, doors are closed, we are ready to go, but we aren't. Some kind of maintenance problem. Paperwork has to be signed. So we wait for another indefinite time. I've given up trying to keep track, and I can't get my notepad out of my pocket easily while my seatbelt is buckled.

We finally get going and here comes the drink cart. Beer, wine, apple juice or water. The stewards haul the cart from the rear to the front of the plane (one big male pushing, one slight female pulling and bellowing warnings to the passengers to keep their friggin' elbows out of the aisle. Most intelligent thing I have heard all day.). The cart is heavy, the plane is climbing, the guy pushing the cart is really leaning into his work. We are sitting in the very back of the plane, so it takes forever for the drink cart to get to us. They hand out little bags of crunchy stuff along with the drinks. No sooner are they done passing out the drinks then they are collecting the trash. They make a second pass and times up, chug-a-lug, we are landing in five minutes.

We can see the lights of Portland out the window. At least we think it's Portland. Maybe it's Vancouver. Then I notice the dark areas are clouds, not really just dark. So that was a little confusing. We have a left turn and then a right and now it starts to look recognizable. We are down and off the plane. We go inside through non-automatic doors that open outward and don't stay open into a part of the airport we have never seen before. A six mile hike takes us back to familiar territory and on to the baggage claim area. Bags start showing up immediately, but it takes ten or fifteen minutes before our bags show up, but show up they do, which is pretty darn good, considering all the changes we've been through.

Call Park 'N Fly and they send a shuttle over. PDX has a couple of people out patrolling the shuttle bus islands and directing people. I thought I remembered the instructions from the parking lot, but I must have got them wrong, because it took two course corrections from these official good citizens to get us to the right spot. From there it was only a couple of minutes till the bus showed. The driver loaded and unloaded our bags, and helped load them into the car. I tipped him five dollars because I was so glad to finally be away from airplanes and airports. Was that too generous?

It took almost 13 hours door to door to cover 1500 miles. That is an average speed of 115 MPH. With no traffic (and no speed limits), theoretically I could have driven it. 120 MPH should not be a problem on our Interstate highway system. However, I am only good for about 500 miles of driving before I need a serious break.

Nobody else in my family seemed to suffer any adverse effects from this trip. Ross was not able to sleep on the plane, but the girls were invigorated. Go figure.