Pontiac has a lot going on in its downtown including a Route 66 museum, a bunch of mid-century inspired murals, a gorgeous courthouse, a car museum featuring Pontiacs (amazing, right?) and this life size statue of the state’s most important resident.
The Vermillion River yielded one nice bass and a couple of panfish to boot.
It’s raining today and we’re getting some routine maintenance done on the van. The garage I’m at in Pontiac, IL has embraced its location on the historic route of US 66.
The place is full of old school cars and stuff.
Nostalgia for a bygone era that probably wasn’t as great as everyone remembers. For example, all these cool old cars were spewing lead into the air while getting 8 mpg. And they were horrible death traps in a collision.
But they sure were classy, poison belching death machines. That’s completely absent in modern cars. Somebody slap some tail fins on a Honda or something! Ha, ha!
Who’d have thought? Despite all the Illinois license plates in Wisconsin Dells, turns out they have a “Dells” of their own. I only saw one water park, however.
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=41.30824,-89.04247&z=14&t=T
Matthessian State Park in Oglesby; the Vermillion River cuts deep into sandstone bedrock on its way to joining the Illinois River just upstream from an impressive, valley-spanning bridge on I-39. It is quite literally the only interesting terrain anywhere on I-39 in Illinois. Dozens of miles of flat vistas of corn and soybeans flank this one imposing place making its contrast with its surroundings all the more outstanding.
I stocked up on cupcakes from a place in nearby North Utica and had a very agreeable dinner at an inconspicuous bar and grill in downtown Oglesby called M.J.’s. Shabby on the outside, modern and welcoming on the inside. A framed portrait of Brian Urlacher and Aaron Rodgers staring each other down during the 2011 NFC Championship game graces the back bar:
(photo credit-http://www.tddaily.com/static/uploads/2013/05/Aaron+Rodgers+Brian+Urlacher+2011+NFC+Championship+xIUEkRI7xDwl.jpg)
No partisan rhetoric, just two outstanding athletes exchanging professional pleasantries between plays. And I saw it mounted on the wall in a bar in the heart of Bear Country. Now that’s some ‘love of the game’ type stuff right there. It’s like symbolism and junk.
-reporting from Exit 54 in Oglesby, Illinois
Today is a rainout so I find myself chillin’ in DeKalb, home of Northern Illinois University. Tried my hand at disc golf and shot +9 in the rain. It’s probably even more fun when the weather is nice.
The hotel is in adjacent Sycamore, but the two towns are united by a seamless commercial strip. This is some flat land around here. Don’t think I’ll get around town tonight as I spent most of the afternoon drinking beer and watching movies I’ve already seen. My Italian beef sandwich is ready so I shall commence mawing down on this beauty forthright.
Yesterday, we completed our work in the media market of Davenport, Bettendorf, Moline and Rock Island. Turns out you can get a good deal on a casino hotel room if you sign up for their player’s club crap. Here’s my view the last night from the Isle Casino in Bettendorf.
Those twin suspension bridges carry I-74 over the Mississippi between Bettendorf, IA and Moline, IL. (Super narrow, by the way; no shoulders and substandard lane widths.)
It might be easier and more descriptive if we were to combine all four cities into one called “Johndeereville”. I lost count of the number of facilities they have and the buildings and roads that use some form of the company name. Moline is the world headquarters for this ubiquitous manufacturer of tractors and you can tell. That was just on the Illinois side.
Moline has a decent downtown, much more so than Rock Island. Bettendorf has pretty much nothing apart from the casino. Davenport is the largest of the quartet, and I only drove through there once, but it seemed to have the most going on; including a casino of it’s own and the local minor league team.
Something about casinos in Iowa; apparently they have to be floating and they have to look like old paddleboats. Even though the insides look like any other casino. I only went inside to drink cheap beer and see exactly how these things work. Makes me appreciate how nice it is that indoor public smoking bans are in effect in most places. It was also my first experience with a casino buffet and holy cow, it is so easy eat way, way too much. You better believe I got my $14’s worth out of that sucka!
With the QC behind me, I’m looking at a few days’ work along the I-39 corridor and some places between there and the fringe of Chicagoland. By August 1, I could find myself back in Madison. I’ll keep y’all posted.
-reporting from Loves Park, Illinois (that’s a Rockford suburb)
Since that is the one thing everyone wants to know when you get a new job, I will provide an short explanations of what I do as a Field Systems Operator.
To start with, the company I work for collects information about roadways for state departments of transportation. The company has vehicles outfitted with specialized equipment involving lasers and digital cameras which can document the conditions of pavement, signage, vertical and horizontal clearances. The states use this information to prioritize maintenance, provide information to the transportation industry (aka trucking) and verify which segments of roadway do or do not meets various federal and state standards.
I am partnered with another FSO and we trade off driving the customized 15-passenger van and operating the equipment inside. The driving is pretty straightforward. Keep the van in the middle of the lane, follow the driving directions of the operator and don’t exceed the maximum speed for the equipment to function. That’s pretty much it. Oh, and don’t run into anything. That’s important too.
Being the operator means navigating the vehicle, engaging and disengaging the equipment at the start and end of a route, and making adjustments to the cameras to compensate for changes in lighting conditions. There is a list of routes that need to be collected and it’s up to the operator to plan the day’s travel so we can hit up as many of them as efficiently as we can. You need to be able to adjust your plan on the fly in case conditions in the traffic or the weather change. For a spatial thinker like me, it is an engaging daily exercise.
Much of the job involves documenting as much of what your doing as possible, so if something goes wrong, they can know if it was the operator, the equipment or the list of routes provided by the DOT and then the project managers can make a call about possibly redoing a route.
That’s the core of what I do. There is some other minutia I could mention, but it will only make this wordier than it is. In the future I might go into some more detail about some of these laser-based devices because they are pretty cool. Especially the LIDAR. I’m not working with that on this Illinois project, but that’s some awesome technology right there. It basically renders the environment in 3D in real time.
I hope that answers some of the basic questions you might have.
-reporting from Moline, Illinois
I’ve got a couple off days in this quartet of river towns straddling the Mississippi. Spent much of today doing some fishing in the Rock River. Lots of activity there! Pelicans, cormorants, herons, hoards of little minnows that would nibble on your feet if you waded in. I caught one drum, half a dozen wee catfish and this feisty little guy:
That’s a softshell turtle. I was able to unhook it, but he got to keep my worm. There were dozens of these things scooting around.
I was disappointed to see the local minor league baseball team is on the road this week. It looks like a nice little stadium there in Davenport. It’s a Midwest League team called the River Rats. I may see about procuring some swag tomorrow.
My hotel room has a nice view of the cloverleaf interchange between I-74 and I-280 by the airport. It’s one of only a handful of places where one needs to navigate a loop to follow the ‘mainline’ of an interstate highway. (One of the other ones is the next interchange east!)
I expect to be in this area for the next several days so I have plenty of time to explore.
Spent most of my day off today harassing little catfish in the Rock River below the dam in Milan. They are as adept at de-baiting a hook as any bluegill or perch. Also caught a drum and a softshell turtle.
Okay then, lets see what this looks like. I am currently trying to get a feel for this thing so if it looks a little plain and rough, that’s to be expected. It may look better by the time anyone sees it. We’ll see how much effort I want to put into it.
Just to catch up on the last week or so, I’m in NW Illinois. I’ve seen some cool places and a lot of boring places. Apple Valley State Park was sweet looking and Galena is a nice looking town. Was in Savanna over the weekend and apparently it’s a big hang out with the Harley crowd. They were all pretty chill at the motel. This is a motel that came with two happy hour beers with the price.
Think I’ll experiment with providing links to Google Maps or something so folks can see where it is I’m talking about like this.
Triplemultiplex.com 