Knee replacement went well, road trip was middling

Emily's father had knee replacement surgery Monday and came through okay, although she tells me he's having pain issues. She's going to be down there taking care of him for a week or two.

I drove her down Sunday, and drove back Monday, because there was quite literally no one to replace me for my whole work rotation. (Which isn't to say I'm irreplaceable--that's a different thing entirely.) It was right at 1,000 miles starting out Sunday morning, and getting back Monday afternoon.

We had a passenger part of the way. Apparently Pokemon are only visible in a phone screen..

A thousand miles in thirty hours is hardly a record, by any standards. Still, I'm getting a little, um, older for that. We listened to Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" on the way down, and I listened to podcasts on the way back, which made it easier ... but man, am I stiff and sore, and tired.

Beowulf wasn't overly thrilled either, especially when he realized we were leaving without Emily. It took half the trip to get him to drink any water, and as we got close to home I bought him a cheeseburger just so he'd eat something. Poor fellow hasn't gone a day without seeing her since we got him, and I haven't been separated from her that long since we got married. The difference is that I can stay busy to keep my mind off of it, and he's just moping by the door.

Not much of interest on the drive, except that I got buzzed by a biplane doing some crop dusting. It's startling to suddenly see a shadow pass over that's bigger than the car.

We passed this guy on the way down ... twice, after a rest stop. The military sometimes hauls its haulers.

Prayers and good thoughts requested for my father-in-law -- and for Emily, who's tasked with making him get up and exercise his new knee, something I'm sure he won't want to do.

A Little time Away From the Modem and Router Is a Good Thing

Missed the big wedding, heard rumors of a new comedy duo named Laurel and Yanni, spent some time on a major earthquake fault line along the Mississippi River (during a severe thunderstorm), hardly been online at all ...

I'm not sure which those should go into the good or the bad category of vacationing. But since we didn't get swallowed up by the river or hit by lighting (yet), I guess we're doing okay.

While looking out over the Mississippi at New Madrid I saw a small whirlpool, so you could say that New Madrid is both shaken and stirred. I say these puns are their fault.

 

 

"Hey, let's all go on the narrow pier over a giant river right on the spot where the land splits in two!"

Pointing toward the river. New Madrid is a small town of around 3,500, but they have a Port Authority office.

If this is the storm shelter, we're in trouble.

It's a-boat time.

Eclipse: totality worth it

I took a few photos when we were in Missouri to see the total eclipse, and I thought I'd pass some on. Not of the eclipse itself--the video I posted a few days ago is about the best I could do with that.

We were at the Meramec State Park near Sullivan, Missouri. You can learn more about it here:
http://www.meramecpark.com/

I've been describing it as central Missouri, but it's only about 60 miles from St. Louis, so it's really more east central Missouri. It has rugged hiking trails, caves, zero cell phone reception (which is both a good and bad thing), and it edges the Meramec River, so there's the swimming and boating thing. A really nice place that we're hoping to visit again something, a couple of hours from Emily's parents' house.

More about the park later--I have lots of pictures. But I didn't have the best camera there:

There was a good crowd, and we were thankful to have headed there in the wee hours of the morning, even though the roads there and the park itself were both pretty out of the way.

The park had a big awning up with activities and information, and even a board where visitors could show they were there:

As cool as the partial eclipse was, the wait for totality seemed to take forever, especially with the temperature hovering at around a million degrees while we stood in the sun and stared upward. Did I complain? I did not, having been convinced for weeks that it would be cloudy that day, wherever we were. The good thing about being a pessimist is that you're never disappointed.

Some of us were more relaxed than others:

Considering how much my neck hurt the next day, he has a point. But considering how little he moved throughout the lead-up to totality, I wonder how sunburned he got--we kept ducking back under the trees--and whether his eyes were sore later. At least he brought enough cigarettes.

As the eclipse advanced, we began to see a curious effect that's common with partial eclipses. The vanishing sun continued to shine through the trees, which produced a pinhole effect that allowed us to see the eclipse on the ground below:

As it grew darker, a dog that belonged to people nearby dragged his blanket out, pulled it into a circle, and got ready for bed. He was very confused when nap time ended so quickly.

And then: totality.

Yeah, that's totality. It's just that my camera couldn't handle it. Here's Venus coming out, beside a jet contrail:

Seeing some of the other cameras set up there, I'll bet there are a whole bunch of much better pictures. I took a few and then put the camera down. Emily and I just stood there with our arms around each other, taking it in. I've said it before: Even the best photographs, with the best cameras, don't begin to do a total eclipse justice. There's nothing like seeing it with your own eyes. And, although we certainly had ups and downs on that trip--it was totality worth it.

A video of the eclipse ... no, really an audio of the crowd

Okay, well, let's see if this works. It's the only video I took of the total eclipse, and it's a really lousy video--I didn't have the equipment, nor did I have any intention of trying. But what I want you to see, or rather hear--if indeed the audio works--is the crowd reaction to the moment of totality.

That's just the people who vocalized their reaction. That doesn't include the ones like Emily and me. I took a few shots, then dropped the camera and just stood there in awed silence. (And one little kid yelled, "best vacation ever!")

There are impressive videos and photos of this eclipse--but it's just not the same as seeing it in person. Our 1,400 mile trip (it wasn't just for the eclipse!) was totally worth it. More on that later.

(If you see this pop up and then it immediately disappears, it just means I couldn't figure out how to make it work.)

Tripping On the Weather

Have you ever looked back at something you did, and realized you’d been warned all along not to do it?

I don’t mean like when you were a kid, and your mom told you not to go out without your hat and gloves. Although come to think of it, sorry, mom: My mottled, aching hands tell me you were right. No, I’m talking about when you get those little signs, those portents that, in retrospect, stick out like giant stop signs.

Our plan was to go to southern Missouri, to see my wife’s family and visit with her friends. The friends are largely alumni of Emily’s Girl Scout camp, Latonka, where for many years she went as a camper and then worked. It’s the basis for (and receives half the profits from) my novel The No-Campfire Girls.

This trip required driving a thousand miles over a four day period in late December. What could possibly—well, you know something went wrong, or I wouldn’t have written this.

Spoiler alert: Emily did get to spend some time with her family.

I got the time off work, but felt guilty about it because right afterward one of my coworkers resigned, making scheduling a problem. Early in December, Emily got sick with what might have been a mild case of strep throat. Later my oldest daughter and one of the grand-kids came down with a much more than mild case of strep throat. (The other grand-kid came later.) A week before we were to leave, the dentist told me I needed a filling replaced as soon as possible, plus a crown on another tooth. Three days before we were to leave, I was cleaning my glasses when they literally fell apart. And I literally don’t use the word literally very often: They just broke into two pieces. Then my grand-kid got scarlet fever. Friggin' scarlet fever.

All the while I kept watching the weather forecast.

I’m accused of obsessing about the weather, and it’s true; but when you’re about to drive five hundred miles through three states in winter, then hopefully return, it’s a reasonable obsession. In this case, we had a one day window to get there, after which a winter storm would hit the whole region, clearing just in time for a one day window to get back.

What could possibly—ah, never mind.

Emily was better by then, and although it was a cold trip all the way down, that only counted when I had to get out of the car for gas or the dog’s bathroom needs. (As for my bathroom needs, I held it. Kidding! But I didn’t join the dog by a tree.) That was Friday.

On Saturday the temperature got up to 69 degrees in southeast Missouri. That’s not a typo, you northern Indiana people. We ran some errands before the party, and were driving around in t-shirts with the windows down. It was glorious, right up until about the time the tornado sirens went off.

Surely you expected that?

It even got a degree warmer than this.

 

There was a confirmed touchdown, although safely to the south of us. At about the same time, starting on a line twenty or thirty miles north, the rest of the Midwest was being socked in by an ice and snow storm. But we’d expected all of it—except the tornado—and although it was a little odd watching lightning in December, we really did have a good time with Emily’s parents and at the party.

This despite the fact that by the time the party started, the temperature had dropped thirty degrees. As the storm progressed south the temperature dropped close to fifty degrees in twelve hours, and if you think my car doors got iced shut, you’re right.

But we were there, and had some time before we had to go anywhere, and everything was just swell until Emily developed severe pain from a urinary tract infection. It was bad enough that we decided to go back a day early, which was totally not inside my weather window.

Still, a lot of dedicated highway personnel had the roads in good shape by the time we left Sunday afternoon. We passed some wrecks along the side of the road and, just to punctuate the point that we should have seen the “don’t do it” signs, we hit a discarded semi tire tread in Illinois. That was an exciting after-dark moment. But we got home, where at 9 p.m. Sunday night it was three degrees. For those who didn’t do the math, that was a 66 degree temperature change for us.

Sure, I got hypothermia unloading the car. But it was good that we’d traveled and charged up the car’s battery, because it got down to minus 9 later that night.

The sad part is that I've been colder.

It was a couple of days later when people who were at the party, including Emily and I, finished incubating our upper respiratory infections.

So, what have we learned from this? Don’t travel in winter? Be prepared? Watch for signs and portents?

I’m gonna go with all of the above.

Do these pictures bug you?

I miss summer already, and it’s still mostly summer out. Still, there’s one thing good thing about cold weather—no bugs. I’d really rather have insects than winter (spiders aren’t technically insects), but yeah, they do bug me.

Earlier this summer, while we were down in Missouri, we found this on the car windshield:

It’s a grasshopper, possibly mutated by radioactivity or fracking, because it’s bigger than the photo makes it appear. More the size of a Volkswagen bug. Maybe this view, from inside the car, will give you a better idea:

It’s monster movie giant! The bug that ate New York! Surely it got made into a 50s black and white SF thriller!

(The closest I could find was this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050294/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_30. That’s The Deadly Mantis—which did indeed head down to eat New York—but instead of hopping grass, it prayed. I recall it scaring the bug juice out of me on The Double Creature Feature.)

On the one hand, I’m not at all scared of grasshoppers. On the other hand, if that thing landed on me before I saw what it was—assuming it didn’t weight me down so much I couldn’t move—I’d have rolled my car over to one side and uprooted the nearest tree in my eagerness to run out of my own skin.