Big Boy

 

This morning as Travalon and I were heading out, we heard the train at the crossing by our house. Sure enough, we could see it passing by, just a little train with a few cars. It seemed like a good omen. We drove to Janesville and stopped at the Menards there to get a new camping chair for me, since my old one had kind of died during our last trip to Rochelle a couple of weekends ago. Travalon said his was getting old too, so we got two - they're only $8 each and there's even a rebate (that you have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get, and then it's just store credit). Then we took a bunch of back roads to Malta, Illinois to avoid the traffic going to Rochelle. The last time the Big Boy came through, there were tens of thousands of people who flocked to the Railroad Park, and traffic was allegedly horrible.

In Malta we had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in a gas station, really authentic tamales (for me) and a quesadilla (for Travalon) and street corn (for both of us). Then we found the Lions Park, which had bathrooms and just about the only shade in town, where we hung out until about three, when we headed toward the tracks. There was a wide lawn area in front of the tracks, and a local couple around my age and her mother were standing under the shade of the single tree in the area, so we asked if we could share their shade. They said sure, so we set up our camping chairs and chatted with the family, which also included a couple of teenagers, one of each gender. We saw lots of drones flying overhead, and these two planes.

Remember them - they'll show up later in the video. More and more people began to gather, so it was like Benton when we went to see the solar eclipse - enough people to make it festive, but not a horribly large crowd. We kept seeing very long trains go by, and we hoped one wouldn't be passing on the closer track while the Big Boy passed on the further track.

The Union Pacific Big Boy is one of twenty-five colossal steam engines built in the 1940's to haul heavy war freight. It's currently the only one still running, and it apparently weighs 1.2 million pounds. (I'm getting this from Google AI, so feel free to double-check these statistics.) It is going coast to coast as part of the country's 250th birthday celebrations, and Travalon said it would be towing red, white, and blue cars and a caboose. Today it was supposed to get to Rochelle around three and stay there fifteen minutes, then head toward DeKalb with an ETA of 3:30. Travalon was tracking it, so we knew it was running about an hour late. I ran to the Historical Society to use their bathroom, and even though it was one stall for women, I didn't have to wait in line. (Though there was a line when I came out.) Meanwhile another train was passing by, and this one had the most beautiful graffiti ever, but unfortunately neither Travalon nor I got photos or videos, since the previous trains had been the kinds with double-decker cargo boxes that don't tend to have graffiti. We knew, from running into some Union Pacific employees at lunch, that Big Boy would be blowing by at 70 mph, so I shuddered watching kids (and adults) on the track. Finally we could hear the unique whistle sound, and Travalon and I got videos. Here is mine - you can see me flinch from the sound.

Big Boy is VERY big and VERY loud, and I forgot my earplugs in the car, but as the husband of the family we were hanging out with said, "The sound is part of the experience." You can see the wife in this video saying how loud it is, and you can also see the two planes pictured above, which had flown to the west before Big Boy came and then reappeared, following him to the east. I will edit Travalon's version and put it on YouTube with a link here soon. As you can see, there are no red, white, and blue train cars, nor is there a caboose. But it was still extremely cool. And loud.

After that we went to Rochelle, figuring the Railroad Park had cleared out quickly once Big Boy had left. To our surprise, an older couple asked us if the "big train" had already passed. This was an hour after it had been in Rochelle, and it was already an hour late, remember, so they were WAY late. We saw one very long, slow train start to go by, and I took some graffiti photos.

Then it stopped and started to back up even more slowly. A guy from Milwaukee told us there was a road that ends in a circle from which you can see the railyard, so we set off to find that and saw the slowly backing up train was holding up an even longer train with four engines, so we couldn't see much beyond the stopped train, but it did have one good piece of graffiti.

Here's a closer look.

Then we drove to Rockford and had dinner at what we thought was a Japanese restaurant, but they didn't have a public bathroom so first we had to go to the gas station next door, so then we had to buy some beverages there. The people running the restaurant were actually Indonesian, and when I asked for the hot sauce and explained my grad school roommate from Surabaya had introduced me to it, they said they were from Surabaya! Not that huge a coincidence, it's the second-largest city there after Jakarta, but we started chatting about Indonesian cuisine, and it turns out they had a dessert my old roommate used to make with tapioca and coconut milk and fresh fruit, so we had to get it. So delicious! And I still have half my coconut rice with fried chicken for lunch tomorrow. It was a fun way to end our adventure.

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Pa Hat's Funeral

 

Yesterday Travalon and I went to the closer, earlier Mass so that we would be ready when Richard Bonomo came to our place a little after ten. We caravanned with Tiffy and my other college friend, who does not have a name on this blog. If anyone can think of one for her, let me know. We drove and drove, stopping for lunch at a family restaurant in Tomah, until we came to St. Michael's Catholic Church in Pine Island, Minnesota. While it is very close to the town where I grew up, I don't recall ever being there before. It has a very cute, old downtown. Even though we were coming from halfway across Wisconsin, we got there before anyone else. I was wearing a very Irish shawl, earrings, rings, and a necklace... and then all my brother's friends who showed up dressed all Scottish, either in kilts or with tartan shawls. Since I have a tartan shawl, I could have worn that, had I known. It was like a scene out of a sitcom. When I made a comment about it to some tartan-clad people, one guy said, "We're all Celts. We're just the ones who knew how to swim."

The service was lovely, the Liturgy of the Word from a Catholic Mass, and then outside afterwards I was talking to a woman who said how she felt my father's presence in the church, and this bell tower rang:

She said, "Wow, did you hear that? It can't be a coincidence!" Then we all drove to a nearby park for a picnic dinner. There was a setup with photos of Pa Hat, and I loved this one of the two of us:

This must have been one spring in the Arboretum when I was in college. We look like partners in crime, both in red with beret-type hats and sunglasses. It may be my new favorite photos. Then again, there's this one, where you can tell I was a teenager in the 80's:

The hair! The earrings! The Billy Idol sneer! Ma Hat made this sweater, and it would probably still fit me, since it was so oversized. That was the style back then, and then you wore it over leggings.

Here is a more recent photo of the family:

I know that one's at a weird angle, but it's better than the straight-on photos:

Then we hit the road, and the ladies got way ahead of us, so we didn't coordinate our rest stops like we had on the way up. Poor Rich had to listen as Travalon and I sang to yacht rock. Just outside of Sparta, we saw what looked like a funnel cloud coming out of the sky, but it disappeared back into the sky as we got closer. We prayed a rosary anyway, just to be safe. 

This was on the way out, not the way back, but we stopped at a rest stop on the Mississippi and saw a long train going by. Travalon took some photos of the river and the bluffs.

On the way back to Wisconsin, we stopped at the Dino Stop in St. Charles, MN.

Travalon bought a hoodie. Here he is modeling it for you on our dock this morning.

My aunt and uncle from Colorado sent flowers.

And on each picnic table there were a couple of paper cups with annuals in them and a photo of Pa Hat on them.

Today I worked from home, frantically trying to get some mysterious credit card charges reconciled by the end of the day. In the evening I went to Moldy Jam, and there were a lot more people than usual. It was sort of the birthday of one member (his birthday is actually this coming weekend), so his wife made a lemon blueberry cake, and we sang him "Happy Birthday." Since there were so many people, I only had to call two tunes, so I called "Drowsy Maggie" and "Pig Ankle Rag," which is not Irish after I'd said I only call Irish tunes. But they swing it so hard that it's tons of fun, and I cannot get my band to swing it at all. There was another tune I'd had stuck in my head today, but I didn't know the name, and then someone called it!... but I still can't remember the name. At least I'm learning a lot more of these tunes, even if I can't remember what they're called.

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The Lobster Truck, a Gig, and a Yellow Warbler

 

Yesterday I worked from home, and the only noteworthy things were that Travalon and I walked at Jackson's Landing over the lunch hour, and in the afternoon a male rose-breasted grosbeak peered in the window at me for several minutes. I wanted to take a picture but was afraid he'd fly away if I got up to get Travalon's good camera, or even held up my cellphone. In the evening I talked to Tiffy.

Today I was supposed to audit our local's finances, but just before we were going to leave, the guy who looks like a leprechaun called me to say forget it, the audit's off because his car had died and they couldn't get the financial information to the Labor Temple. He asked if I was still going to organizing training from 12-2, and I said no, I have a gig at 2. Also, didn't we have all that organizing training last summer? What was the point of that if we just have to do it all again? So Travalon and I were heading up to Waunakee to find the lobster truck in front of a wine bar when the Leprechaun called me again to say the audit was back on. Since it was scheduled to start in two minutes, I said, "I can't get there!" He said they could wait until noon, and I said, "What about the organizing training?" and he said they could delay that, but I was like, "No, we're on our way to somewhere else now." At first I felt a bit guilty about blowing them off, but once we were sitting outside in the shade, eating lobster and drinking cherry vodka lemonade as yacht rock played, I had no regrets. That drink made me happy in a way that usually only infused drinks do, but I do remember being happy other times I have done day drinking, so maybe I'm just someone who can't drink alcohol in the evening. One drink at noon, and I'm super happy. Then we took a walk at Jackson's Landing, and we saw some blooming swamp irises. Here's a good one.

Travalon dropped me off a little early at my gig at a retirement community, so I sat outside in the shade, playing Irish fiddle tunes until some of my band mates arrived, including an emerita one who was wearing a T-shirt that said: "The Walleye Street Journal." The gig went okay, although I felt a bit like our leader was talking to the audience like they were the fourth graders she used to teach. Then I noticed that my FitBit was back down to 20%. What the hey? I had just charged it up all the way on Wednesday! Maybe letting the battery get so low that day has really ruined it.

Travalon and I went home, and I charged my FitBit as a yellow warbler peered in the window at us and sang.

I am not sure why birds are looking in our window two days in a row, but it's also been two days in a row that the coyotes are howling outside after dark. Last night they went really crazy when an emergency vehicle went by with its sirens blaring. Then Travalon and I went to my future parking lot to check out train graffiti and a mural.

Tiffy called to say she was in town, so Travalon dropped me off downtown and went to a World War II movie, while Tiffy and I waited in her sister's apartment for our other college friend. (She's actually Tiffy's high school friend.) I saw a swirly cloud from the apartment.

When our friend came, we went to the nearby Indian restaurant for dinner and joked about how we should all dress as pirates for my dad's funeral, since my brother said you can find him where the pirates are. I actually am not sure what I'm going to wear, so it's probably time to wrap this up and figure that out.

Famous Hat