20's Night at the Illinois Railway Museum

 

Yesterday I dressed up in my trainiest outfit.

Check it out: train hat, train shirt, train bracelet, caboose mood ring, and train tote bag. (It says "Train Nerd.") Travalon wore a train shirt too, and we drove to the Illinois Railway Museum. When we got there, I thought maybe I should have dressed like a flapper, because it was 20's Day there, and lots of people dressed for the decade. I should add, 1920's, not the decade we are currently living in, because in that case you could say that I did dress up for the 20's. Some women had amazing dresses. 

There were three trains running on the mainline, and we got to ride two of them. First we rode one with a steam engine and two cabooses - we went in one of the cabooses.

Then we went on this cute two-car red and green train that went a lot faster, so we caught a wonderful breeze. We went out into the surrounding countryside and saw a deer watching the train. (Sorry, no photo of that.)

Here's the inside.

We also rode two trolleys.

This cute open-air one from Veracruz is maybe easier to see in the video.

We have lots more videos so watch for a supercut at some point in the future. We took a walk around the grounds and took photos of cool stuff, like this crazy front of a train.

And this cool sign.

And this cute trolley that wasn't running.

And whatever this is.

And these crossing signals. Remember these - we'll come back to them.

In the evening there was a concert of 20's hot jazz by a band called Badass Gumbo. They came on the train we hadn't gotten a chance to ride, and then they played. Here's a tiny sample.

Meanwhile, a hot air balloon floated serenely overhead. Unfortunately Travalon was having technical difficulties with his camera, so we only got cell phone photos. Here is the best one.

Travalon had bought a soda from the taco stand where we got dinner, but the top was not a twist-off, and we didn't have a bottle opener. The woman next to us suggested using a spoon she had, and that worked! She had a middle school-aged daughter and a preschool daughter who was enchanted when Travalon and I made our new conductor hippo (sorry, no photo yet) and Niko dance, and when the concert was over, she hugged me and said goodbye. Then they told us we could all ride the train, so Travalon and I got on it with our lawn chairs, and when the little girl saw me on the train, she hugged me again! By then it was dark, and we saw fireworks from the train. What a magical day! 

Remember the crossing signals? Here they are at night.

And here's a video of one in action.

Today after Mass, Travalon and I went to the Venezuelan restaurant for arepas, then I had my Brazilian drumming class. We are going to be in the opening ceremony for the Atwood Festival, and to my delight we got to choose which drum we would play, so I chose the little tiny drum. We spent a lot of time clapping the rhythms of the various claves, so I felt a little like a preschooler, but it was a ton of fun. I have always had trouble with the basic Cuban clave, but the one teacher wrote the pattern of four different claves on the board, and then it kind of made sense. He wrote (1e+a) (2e+a) for one-ee-and-ah, two-ee-and-ah, but it looked like Leta Zeta, so I thought that might make an excellent name for something. 

We were going to swim at the health club, since it was so hot, but we wanted to wait a bit so the kids would clear out. We waited too long and it started to rain; we debated about swimming inside, but we just walked around the air-conditioned house until the rain cooled things down and we could open the windows again. It's really been hot so far this summer, so it's almost as bad as winter because you really don't want to be outside much. It's so hard to get exercise in this heat, but I did discover that lifting my Frankie the weighted cat up and down while I walked around is quite a workout. She's like free weights, only much, much cuter.

Famous Hat