Wow, guess it's been a while

Thursday last week we were busy getting ready for our camping trip this last weekend. I got a free t-shirt from Valvoline today! That was a surprise! Can't wait to get the oil and then need an oil change! Here are some pictures...



Here is the container it came in, what looks like their old oil canisters:




I also made myself a t-shirt for my fantasy football team. Here is the shirt I made:



My neighbor was flying home from France that afternoon and we had a pretty major storm come through. I'm sure you're guessing where this is going...Have you heard those stories on the news where entire flights-full of passengers are kept on planes for hours on end and not let off? Yea, that's where this story is going.

He was scheduled to land at O'Hare airport around 3 pm and just prior to that the storm was moving through the area. This was a very strange storm with wind gusts in the 80 mph range and lots of torrential downpours. Just at our house I noticed when I looked out the window that it was blue skies and sunny on one side of the house and these dark black clouds on the other. The clouds obviously overtook the house, but it was just strange to see. So they kept his plane circling a large circle up into the upper peninsula of Michigan a couple of times and then the plane was running out of fuel and had to land. Consider they've just finished a 17 hour flight over the Atlantic Ocean and just want to get off the plane.

During this time, the flight tower at O'Hare was evacuated due to the high winds. So any chance for them to land at O'Hare had been diminished to pretty much nothing. They had a few choices of places to land including Green Bay, but chose Milwaukee for some reason. Keep in mind that Air France doesn't normally land at this airport and they have no terminals or ground crew to help them. After they landed they were third in line to be re-fueled. This alone took over an hour. Shortly after that the air conditioning stopped working in the plane and they couldn't get it to come back on. They tried turning off the engines and restarting them and that didn't help so they called Air France and they said to turn off the engines for 15 minutes I think and then re-start and everything should be alright.

Unfortunately after those 15 minutes, the engines wouldn't restart. Since they have no grounds crew to help them, they waited until the military could come over with some type of contraption to start the engines. This obviously took some time as well. So now they've restarted the engines and everything is working fine and probably O'Hare is re-opened, but the flight deck crew has run out of time for flying. They are only allowed to be behind the stick (as it were) for so many hours and their time is up; they can't fly the plane any more. The flight crew that was going to fly the plane back to France is at O'Hare along with the other 300 passengers that are waiting to go to France.

During all of this, he contacted NBC in Milwaukee and was actually interviewed on air during the 10 o'clock news via his cell phone. Then after they got off the plane CBS interviewed him too. So he got to be famous in Milwaukee for a day!

So now their only real option is to deboard the plane but remember there are no Air France grounds crews here and no terminal or gate to use. Plus this is a small airport that wasn't expecting any international flight arrivals, certainly not a plane this large, and had sent all of their customs workers home. So they had to find a gate to tow the plane to, call all of the customs workers in to work to run all 300 passengers through customs at what is now around 11pm or midnight. So he wasn't ready for me to pick him up until between midnight thirty and 1 am. I picked him up around 1 and got him home just before 2 am. Then he had to drive 5 or 6 hours to get to his work. And then he wasn't going to have much time between then and when his work started, so I don't think he got any sleep for probably close to 40 - 48 hours.

During all of this I was putting the bike carriers on my Escape and getting the bikes up there to see how it all worked. It was so nice! I tell you if you are considering buying a bike carrier and a roof mount is an option and you can afford it, it is so worth every penny! We had rented a trunk mount bike carrier for a trip we took last year and by the time I was done yelling and cursing and finagling everything I didn't even care if I rode my bike. With this Thule roof carrier it is so easy. All I needed was a step stool and I didn't even need any help. I could do it all myself. I didn't yell or curse even one time and I wasn't even tired when I was done. I was actually test driving the car when my neighbor called and said he was going to be ready soon. So I just left the bikes on there because I thought it would be a great test before our trip the next day (next day being relative considering it was after midnight.)

I was driving pretty fast at some points and honestly the wind noise wasn't even that bad. Nothing appeared to move or rock or anything. I was really impressed, it's a very high quality product and I highly recommend it to everyone. I just wish I would have bought the wheel holders that can hold your front wheel on the roof since I got two fork-mount bike carriers for Julie's and my bike.

Friday:
Just that little bit of room being taken up inside the car by those two wheels prevented us from taking the trailer with us so that we could ride a long distance with Grace as she can't go too far on her little bike. If I would have had more time to try and stuff it into the car maybe I could have gotten it in, but we had to get going because we were supposed to be down in Yorkville by 1 pm and as it was we were leaving late plus I needed to stop at the Chiropractor on the way because my foot isn't healing completely like it should.

So we got down there about an hour late Friday and we helped stuff goodie bags for all the ride participants for two or three hours. Then we set up our tent and went out for dinner (at Culvers - surprise!) because we were tired. Then we pretty much just came back to the tent and crashed. We set our travel alarm clock for 5 am for me and 6:45 am for Julie and Grace and went to sleep.

Saturday
All was fine until 3:15 am. RAIN, RAIN, RAIN. It rained, it poured, it did it all until around 6 am. I was supposed to show up to the registration area by 5:30 at the latest, but sitting in that tent with the rain coming down, I just didn't want to get up at all. I was waiting for the rain to stop, but it wasn't stopping so I finally got up and went over there. About the time I came out of the tent the rain stopped and I drove over there.

So I did registration until 10:30 when it ended and Julie and Grace came and helped to around 8 I think until 10:30. Then we pretty much just enjoyed the expo area and relaxed a little. I helped out with various jobs when I was asked to and Grace was really enjoying clown Sally and Ranger Rick whom was there. She got her face painted and kept getting balloon animals that she kept popping.

Since this ride was to benefit Illinois' environment, most of the vendors in the expo area were about or in some way related to the environment. REI was there and they are opening a new store in Schaumburg in November. That was exciting to find out. But what really piqued my interest was a thing called a "rain garden." I had never heard of it before then. It's a pretty cool concept where you select an area in your yard where you can improve the soils drainage and basically form a shallow pond. You then plant native plants that love water and are naturally found in wetlands. We already have a drainage area in the back that I wanted to convert to a dry river bed but the more I think about that, it will probably affect my neighbors because I'm thinking a dry river bed with a downpour will just become a river and more water will be diverted away from our yard into our neighbor's yards. I don't want to disturb the balance we've got going now, I want to improve it. So the more I think about it, a dry river bed is probably not going to work.

So now I'm going to research just how to do this and how much work it is. I looks like a lot of work, but maybe it's something I can do myself or with not too much help and with this, prevent any flooding in my yard and likewise in my basement. Plus like I just said, it should help my neighbors and it would help the actual wetlands in our subdivision because that's where all of this water goes right now.

Oh, one of the vendors was Ford because they were one of the sponsors, and they brought from Michigan...guess what? Yes, a 2008 Escape Hybrid. They should have called, I was there with mine! He wouldn't have had to drive all that way. But seriously, I talked to the guy and he seemed nice. He had noticed my car and it was good to see quite a few people actually looking at his car. I wanted to park mine next to his, but I didn't, nor did I ask. The one he brought was that green color that's in all the advertisements and he said the biggest question he was getting was 'what other colors does it come in?' He kept saying "well there's a blue one over there..."

Sunday morning we got up and basically just broke camp and came home. Then we were unpacking and stuff and then I had my first fantasy football draft. I am really excited! I think I have a great team this year. Only time will tell obviously, but I really like my team. I have another draft this weekend, but it isn't a live draft, each team just ranks the players and the computer does the rest. So I'll be ranking players up to the draft time this weekend to make sure I have everything just right.

Monday/yesterday was a hectic day. I had another chiropractor appointment in the morning. For some reason the bone that's out of place in my foot wants to stay that way. Then Grace had dance class. We tried those "natural" hot dogs and they weren't all that. We won't be having them again, but it was worth a try. They weren't horrible, they just weren't really hot dogs either.

Today was busy too. It was Grace's first day of senior pre-school. She's an old pro at this because she didn't skip a beat going there at all. It was like she had been going all summer long. I rushed home and started mowing the grass because it's really long and it's supposed to rain tomorrow. I wasn't finished yet, but it was time to pick Grace up. After I picked her up and came home, the mail had been delivered and I got my case of oil from Valvoline today! Yea!

I'll add more pictures tomorrow.

No Rain!

We actually didn't have any rain today. Can you believe it? I can't. So I took advantage of that fact and got the lawn mowed this evening. I actually was able to mow the lawn before it got super high and needed special attention to be mowed. So that is out of the way and I can rest easy over the weekend when we aren't here that the grass won't grow too much. Ha-ha; watch it grow 6 inches while we're gone.

Grace and I pretty much just hung out at home today. She slept in so we had a late start anyway. We didn't finish breakfast until 11 and then we had lunch at 2:30 or 3 so the whole day was a little off. But we did manage to get over to the village hall and buy some yard waste stickers so they'll take my grass clippings this week. Then we went over to the Fox Lake Menards and bought our new sump pump and battery backup system. It didn't include the battery and I didn't see one sitting there by the backup systems so they are either out or I have to buy it somewhere else. So that's another thing to add to my to-do list. We checked the recessed lights they were selling there and I wasn't too impressed. I'll have to try the Home Depot or Lowe's or an electrical supply company.

After Menards we stopped at the park near our house on the way home. We didn't have much time because Julie was going to be home from work soon. As it turns out she got home about the same time we got to the park so Grace only got to play for 15 minutes. She wasn't so happy about that even though I told her when we got there that we only had 15 minutes. The trials and tribulations of a 4 year old...

So then we came home and I made dinner - quesedillas - and then like I said I mowed the grass. After a shower and a shave I paid our bills and now I'm writing this. Did you hear that the space shuttle landed safely today? I'm so glad nothing bad happened when they re-entered the earth's atmosphere. I really was afraid it had been damaged too much. I know they do this anyway, but they had better check everything out now to make sure it doesn't need further repair besides just the heat shields now that it's been subjected to those extreme temperatures.

Oh the bike trip we're taking this weekend is called "Rolling on the River." It's down in Yorkville, IL which is 55 miles southwest of Chicago. That's 85 miles from here and will take us almost 2 hours to get there. It's a two day event to benefit Illinois' Environment. Since we've been trying to do little steps in helping the environment this sounded like a good thing to do. We'll be camping and helping with registration and hopefully riding in the event too. We're just hoping it doesn't rain the whole time and that our campsite isn't completely full of mud!

I'll talk more about this later - I've got to get to bed.