The Carl R. Hansen Woods

Posted on May 11, 2020 by admin

Last weekend had both warm sun and cold rain, but this time around the warmth came first, on Saturday, so that day we went to the Carl R. Hansen Woods, which seem to be part of the larger Shoe Factory Road Prairie Nature Preserve. If you can’t go far, go near.

The greening continues.

I checked on the map, but the body of water in the area doesn’t seem to have a name.

Seems to be an artificial pond, or at least a natural pond extensively modified by people, since it doesn’t connect to Poplar Creek, and manmade embankments run along part of it. We walked roughly from Picnic Grove 1, where there’s parking, to the west side of the pond and then back, maybe a mile and a half.

Elsewhere in the woods, we walked along a creeklet, little more than a damp ditch, but I was pretty sure it flows into Poplar after rain. A small bit of the Mississippi Watershed, one of countless minor waters that combine into something very large, was right under our feet.

Bonito Flakes

Posted on May 6, 2020 by admin

A staple of Japanese cooking, bonito flakes look a little like pencil shavings, but are more delicate. We always have them around the kitchen, in packages large and small. The empty package I scanned is Futaba brand bonito flakes.
“Bonito is a kind of tuna, and Katsuobushi is dried, smoked bonito,” Japanese Cooking 101 says. “Katsuobushi is often used as flakes shaved from a piece of dried fish…
“Katsuobushi has a smokey savory taste that is a great accent for many Japanese dishes. Because dried bonito is packed with lot of umami (savory taste), it is perfect for making dashi (fish broth) with which is a crucial component for Japanese cooking. Katsuobushi also can be used as is, sprinkling on simple vegetables to give a deeper flavor instantly.”

I knew it first from okonomiyaki, an Osaka and Hiroshima specialty sometimes called a Japanese pancake, a term that describes the shape of the food, but misleads about everything else important: taste and texture. Okonomiyaki includes flour, eggs, shredded cabbage, and a choice of protein, and topped with a variety of condiments — especially a brown sauce we call okonomi sauce, and bonito flakes.

Bonito is also good eating as a regular fish dish. Especially in Shikoku, and even more especially in Kochi prefecture in the southern reaches of the island. I encountered it at Cape Ashizuri in ’93.

“The minshuku [was] our accommodation for the night, and completely fogged in. The evening meal made up for it by being excellent, especially the bonito sashimi,” I wrote about the visit.

Raceway Woods Forest Preserve

Posted on May 3, 2020 by admin

We’ve just had three warm days in a row, sunny and springlike. That can’t last, of course. Beginning tomorrow, days too cool to eat outside are ahead. We had our dinner on the deck this evening.

Earlier in the afternoon we went to the Raceway Woods Forest Preserve, which is in Carpentersville, Illinois. It sports a structure unique in all metro Chicago forest preserves, I’m certain.
It’s the Meadowdale Silo, and a nearby sign told me that it’s been in place since the 1930s or earlier. After the Meadowdale International Raceway was developed in 1958, the silo acquired a paint job advertising the race course.

If Wiki is right, the race track never established itself as a moneymaking venture, finally petering out in 1969. For whatever reason, nothing else was ever developed there, and second-growth trees returned to the site. These days Raceway Woods is part of the Forest Preserve District of Kane County.The walking trails follow the original path of the raceway. We started at You Are Here (near the silo) and walked around the northernmost loop: up the Uphill Climb, and it was up a fair-sized hill, down Long Straight, around Little Monza and along Greg’s Corkscrew. About a mile.

The Uphill Climb.
I wondered how wide the original raceway was. The current path is fine for walkers and bicyclists and the single skateboarder we saw, but it doesn’t look wide enough to be a raceway. I’d think that anyway, but I don’t know much about raceways, European style or otherwise.

The Long Straight, which passes over a creek bound for the Fox River, not too far to the east.
Nice views from the bridge.
From the bridge I noticed concatenate unpaved trails winding their way through the woods. Auto racing hasn’t been a thing at Meadowdale for more than 50 years, but mountain biking at the forest preserve is alive and well.

Meacham Grove ’20

Posted on April 28, 2020 by admin

On Sunday we took advantage of the warm conditions and went to Meacham Grove, which is part of the Forest Preserve District of Du Page County.

Been a while since we’d been there. Maybe this long ago. Ann said she didn’t remember the place. We walked around the Maple Lake, mostly following the gravel path.

The grass along side the lake is green. The trees just beginning to bud.
On the south end of Maple Lake is a small hill. You can walk on the path along the south side of that hill or the one on the north side of it. Or you can climb the hill. That’s what we did. A sizable hill for Illinois, but not really that steep.A scattering of people were on the hilltop, and on the trail around the lake for that matter. Easy to keep one’s distance anyway.

O’Hare is a few miles due east of Meacham Grove. In normal times, planes would fly over every minute or two. These days, it seemed to be every three or four or five minutes, though I didn’t keep an exact record.
Still, there’s no doubt that traffic in and out of O’Hare is way down.

Around Mallard Lake

Posted on April 20, 2020 by admin

Another Sunday, another longish walk with the dog. Yesterday, with all the snow melted and the sun overhead, we went to Mallard Lake, which is part of the Forest Preserve District of Du Page County.

Considering the time of the year, it didn’t look so much different from this visit. One difference was the number of people. With fewer out-of-house diversions now, people seem to be visiting parks and forest preserves more than before. A fair number of them came to fish, while others like us had their dogs along, or were just out taking a walk. Even so, there was plenty of room to keep at a good distance from everyone else.

The entrance is on Schick Road. I marked the entrance with a red diamond.

From there we drove to the parking lot, circled in red. Then walked clockwise on the white path (gravel) around Mallard Lake, 1-2-3. A mile, maybe. Between 1 and 2 are two small islands connected by footbridges, and the rest of the path partly hugs the shore.

Nice walk, except for a while the wind kicked up and blew across the still-cold lake, dropping temps a good deal. Without much wind, it was an early spring day; with the wind, it was a late winter day.

The Former Rex Theatre, Amarillo

Posted on April 19, 2020 by admin

Our back yard view, Friday morning.

Enough already, I cried to the heavens. Not really. It was more of a mutter. Yet I seemed to get an answer, because the snow melted by Saturday and today we enjoyed a fine spring day.

I even heard people out mowing their grass this morning. The flush of spring hasn’t quite inspired me to yard work, however.

Two years ago, when I spent about a day and a half in Amarillo, I took a walk along Sixth Ave. the evening I arrived. It has the distinction of being part of U.S. 66 at one time.

“The U.S. Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District comprises 13 blocks of commercial development in the San Jacinto Heights Addition west of Amarillo’s central business district,” the NPS says. ” Developed as an early 20th-century streetcar suburb, the district was transformed by the establishment of a national transportation artery running through its center.

“The U.S. Route 66-Sixth Street Historic District is Amarillo’s most intact collection of commercial buildings that possess significant associations with the highway. Featuring elements of Spanish Revival, Art Deco, and Art Moderne design, these buildings represent the historic development phases of this early 20th century suburb and the evolving tastes and sensibilities of American culture.”

I’d read about the street, but more importantly at that moment, I was looking for something to eat. I didn’t find anyplace I wanted to eat, but I did see some of the historic buildings on the street. I was inspired to take a picture of only one of them. A detail of one of them.Skulls. They’re on a wall of the 6th Street Massacre Haunted House. Note also the plaque. It says that the building is on the National Registry of Historic Places. This is a wider view.

It was once the Rex Theatre, which opened in 1935 and lasted until 1956 as a movie venue. It’s a little hard to see it as a theater building from Sixth Ave. The view around the corner shows it better.

A movie palace, it probably wasn’t. Just a neighborhood picture show. I think that makes it just as interesting, historically speaking, as one of the palaces, but not as nice to look at.

Along Poplar Creek

Posted on April 14, 2020 by admin

Another Easter activity of ours: a long walk. Lots of people can say that. The pandemic has done more for getting people out on the sidewalks than anything I can think of, at least here in a suburb that has sidewalks.

Easter Sunday happened to be warmish this year, especially when compared to Easter Monday. By late in the evening on Monday, it was already down around freezing, headed for a morning low today of 28 F. Bah.

At about noon today, there was snow. At least it didn’t last long and it didn’t stick.

Back to Sunday. In the afternoon, we went to the Arthur L. Janura Forest Preserve, also known as the Poplar Creek Forest Preserve. All of us, including the dog.

That’s only one section of a much larger property, which is part of the Cook County Forest Preserve District. Fortunately the state hasn’t ordered such places closed, though various events in the district have been cancelled. Such an order would be nonsensical, considering how much social distancing you can do in such a large expanse, but some jurisdictions don’t seem to have much sense.

A modified version of the map.

We walked from the parking lot (circled in red) along the paved path (in white) until we got roughly to where I’ve put a red octagon. From there, we headed overland to the banks of Poplar Creek (the next octagon) and then followed the creek along its curve, reaching roughly the position of the third octagon. We returned more or less the same way. Looks long, but I don’t think the walk was more than a mile and a half round trip.

There on Poplar Creek, it’s hard to believe you’re in a metro area of 9 million or so — except for the traffic on Golf Road. Not visible, but audible, even if the sound is a little diminished in these pandemic days. The creek, fairly full from spring rain, gurgled along.

Poplar Creek is a tributary, ultimately, of the Fox River, which feeds the Illinois River. That in turn flows to the Mississippi. So the water we saw was destined, mostly, for that mighty river and the far-away Gulf.

The route was muddy and sometimes strewn with fallen branches and rocks. The grass and weeds and other foot-level plants are greening nicely, while the trees and bushes are getting their start, but haven’t caught up yet.

I think dog thoroughly enjoyed her walk, tramping through the mud, sniffing everything she could, and chewing on blades of grass when we paused. We didn’t have such a bad time either, momentarily away from shelter in place.

British Air ’88

Posted on April 5, 2020 by admin

In early April 1988, I visited London for a week, which included laughs in the basement of a pub and time at the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum and a lot more. A good trip.

To make the trip a reality, some time earlier I called a travel agent. The agent who also booked tickets for my company, whose office (I think) was somewhere on Michigan Ave. For me, the ticket buyer, her services cost nothing. Hard to imagine now. I’d call her even for ordinary domestic tickets. The last time was to book passage to Japan in 1990.

I told her where and when I wanted to go, fully expecting to pass through New York to get to London. That’s what you did to get across the Atlantic. Get to New York first, as surely as Lindbergh did.

I reconstruct the conversation:

Agent: We have a flight leaving at x, arriving at Heathrow at y.
Me: Leaving New York?
Agent: No, it’s direct from Chicago.
Me (a touch astonished): Really?
Agent: Oh, yes. So is the return.

A pleasant surprise. I bought a package: RT air tickets, a week’s accommodation at a middling hotel — but very well located near Paddington Station — and a week’s pass on the Underground. Good value.

British Air was the carrier. That too was a first for me. In fact, still the only time I’ve flown that airline. Flew across on a charter in ’83 and on the upstart Virgin in ’94.

A souvenir of the flight. A menu.
I don’t remember what I had, and I’m not going to bellyache about how much better flying was then compared with more recent times. On the whole, that might be true, but I suspect the differences are exaggerated. Jumbo jets have always been pressurized cattle cars. You put up with it, enjoy the view if you can, and get where you’re going in hours. Worth a little discomfort. Now that air travel is mostly gone, maybe it will better appreciated when it comes back.

Downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade, 2018

Posted on March 29, 2020 by admin

I fell asleep to light rain and occasional thunder on Friday night. A comforting sound. During the hours when I was dreaming odd dreams — damned odd, but it all made perfect sense at the time — the rain must have picked up its pace, since large puddles had formed in our back yard by Saturday morning, as usually happens with inches of rain. But not quite this much.

Two years ago we went into the city in mid-March and found ourselves near the Downtown Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade. We were going to visit the Art Institute that day, and the parade was passing next to the museum, on S. Columbus Dr.

We walked over to see it, but the crowd was so thick that we never really got a close look. Often enough, the view looked something like this.The crowd was festive, with many dressed for the occasion.

We stayed for a little while and saw what we could.

The solid-waste industry was well represented. Downtown Chicago St. Patrick's Day Parade 2018

Some participants were off to the side. I suppose they were finished and watching the rest of the parade.

Crowds thronged in front of the Art Institute and elsewhere.
No social distancing in evidence. It would have been weird if there had been. No wonder the parade was cancelled this year.

Yakov

Posted on March 26, 2020 by admin

Though not particularly warm today, we took a mile or so walk beginning at about 5:30 this afternoon. Just an afternoon stroll. There’s still traffic on our suburb roads, of course, but in volume it was more like a Sunday afternoon than a weekday rush hour.

One more item from the early 2000s. I didn’t realize it until today, but everything this week has been from that period, except for Sunday. An unconscious choice, probably, signifying — like all that sound and fury — nothing.

The first time we ever passed through Branson, in 2001 as a short detour on the way to Dallas, I picked up a Yakov ad pamphlet. Probably at the restaurant we ate lunch, which was the only thing we did in town.

Why? We weren’t planning to see the show. I think I’d heard of him, maybe even seen him on television by chance, such as his beer commercial, though I didn’t watch much TV during his heyday.

I’m sure I picked up the pamphlet because of the billboards we’d seen between Springfield, Mo., and Branson, which amused me. There were a lot of them advertising his Branson show, which he did from 1993 to 2015. The billboards looked a lot like the pamphlet, if I remember right. A big Yakov face promising a wacky Soviet — that is, Russian — comedian.

For the record, Yakov Naumovich Pokhis — his stage name taken from the vodka, apparently — was actually from the Ukraine. He’s still touring, or presumably was until recently, and probably will be again sometime.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There