Why We Didn't Go to the Mallards Game Tonight

 

As promised, tonight I am going to blog about Monday, and to some extent today. Our bed at the Graduate Hotel was super comfortable, so we slept really hard and woke up at a reasonable time even though we got in so late on Sunday. After getting some breakfast and coffee, we walked down to the lake. There was a little park with a pond there.

There were two fountains in the pond.

There was also a little island in the pond.

And there were planks leaning against the island for the ducks to walk up.

This beautiful building is part of the Northwestern University campus.

Out on Lake Michigan, we could see lots of catamarans with colorful sails.

And some parked in front of the campus.

Then we drove up Sheridan Road, which goes along the lakeshore. We stopped at Illinois Beach State Park, which was beautiful, but everyone in the state thought so too - it was so packed! So we drove to Lake Mills and swam at the wonderful beach there. It had been a very hot weekend, and I was a bit worn out after walking nearly ten miles on Sunday in the heat. We did stop at Rich's house for a cookout in his backyard, and by then the weather had cooled off enough that it was delightful to sit outside. Just as we were approaching our house for the first time in days, we saw this thundercloud in the distance. It was more impressive in real life, and I took a million pictures, but the only two that kind of turned out were these two.

You can see that it looks like the head of a wirehair fox terrier. We pulled over just before our house, and Travalon made a video of it because we realized that it had lightning flashing in it, but all you can see in the video are sporadic flashes of lightning. It seemed to be getting closer, and the wind was picking up, so we hurried into the house. Which was very hot, so we had to turn on the AC.

This morning as we were walking, my neighbor and I heard what I thought at first was a train horn, but she said it was just cars honking. One sounded deeper, like a semi, and we wondered what they were honking about - it sounded like someone just got married, but who would get married before 7:30 am on a random Wednesday? I said too bad I didn't have time to check it out before work, and she said, "I can!" and went to hop in her car. I walked to where I could see the train tracks, still suspecting it was something to do with them, and I could hear vehicles on the tracks. I saw a white pickup truck go by, then maybe five of those yellow track tampers. When my neighbor drove by, I flagged her down and told her what I'd seen, so she said that instead of driving toward where we heard the honking, we should drive in the direction they were heading. The tracks go under the road not far from our house, and from that vantage point we could see them on the tracks below us. I made a video that is just under a minute long, but Blogspot says it's too big (I thought one minute was its cutoff), so I had to throw it on YouTube, where maybe three confused people will watch it. Anyway, here it is:

My neighbor pointed out that they must have been honking right where the tracks cross the road just to the west of us, and of course they didn't have to honk when they passed under the road to the east of us, so unfortunately I couldn't get the sound. It was quite impressive! Imagine six vehicles with different horns all honking at once.

This evening Travalon and I were really looking forward to Negro League Night at the Mallards game - we even wore Negro League team T-shirts! The Mallards were giving out a packet of baseball cards of Negro League players to the first thousand people who came, so we decided that I would go right after work to get the cards, since if I waited for Travalon to get home, so we could go together, then we wouldn't get them. Then just yesterday they sent an email saying if you bought tickets then, you were guaranteed the baseball cards. Argh! I should have waited! I got to the game in a rain poncho that appeared to only have one sleeve hole, and I asked the guy at the front gate if I could get the cards. "Oh," he said, "we're not doing that promotion today. We changed it to a bobblehead." I said, "Isn't this the Negro League game?" and he said, "No, they rescheduled that to the 22nd." So I went to Customer Service, and they were super nice, letting me in out of the rain, giving me a glass of water, and letting me charge my phone while I waited to hear if Travalon wanted to go to tonight's game and buy more tickets for the new Negro League date, or if he wanted to exchange our tickets. He agreed that it was a cold, rainy night, and there was already a forty-five minute rain delay, so we would just exchange our tickets. So we went to the Mexican restaurant near our house and had shrimp chimichangas and tres leches cake. That was a perfect Plan B! Hopefully we can actually attend the game we wanted to see without a hitch - they rescheduled it because they were doing it in conjunction with an outdoor COVID vaccination clinic, and they couldn't do that in the rain. Let's pray the 22nd is a dry evening!

Famous Hat