Spring Training

We were making travel plans to Canada right before the pandemic hit. Plane ticket prices had plummeted, and we snagged three round-trip tickets for about $260 each. We didn’t get to use them of course, and those tickets turned into flight vouchers that were about to expire. 

Plane tickets cost much more now, and we couldn’t fly anywhere fun for our Spring Break with the vouchers unless we spent a lot more. I was wondering if it would be smarter to just stay home and let the voucher money go.

Daphne, my hero, had a better idea. We could still use the vouchers, go somewhere fun, and not break the bank. 

Daphne’s plan was to leave her car at the Des Moines Airport, drive my car to Osceola, and we'd ride Amtrak’s California Zephyr to Chicago. The train trip would take seven hours and only cost us $125 in total. We could then buy passes for the CTA buses and trains to get around the city. To get home, the voucher money matched the cost of the flight from Chicago to Des Moines. That sounded great!

None of this would have occurred to me, and that’s why I let Daphne plan our trips. 

You need to arrive 30 minutes before your departure time in case the train is early. Our train was running 20 minutes late, but that’s how it goes. The gals are on the left. Char's playing a game, and Daphne's checking the train's schedule.

The California Zephyr is pretty impressive. It’s a big train, and I didn't even film all of it arriving at the station:

The assigned, coach seats are also big when compared to what you get on an airplane.

I spent a lot of my trip in one of the observation cars. These seats are not assigned, so if you shuffle your feet, you could lose your seat. 

It was fun trying to take a decent photo through the glass window as the train whipped through the countryside. 

Flying can be really stressful for me. I know that turbulence is normal, but a shaking plane still scares me. When the trains shakes, however, I’m not afraid we’re going to crash into the ground like a lawn dart. 

This is what it looks like when you cross the Mississippi River. 

We arrived at the station just a little after our estimated seven hours. Not bad.  A 20 minute bus ride got us to our hotel at 4:00, and a 7-11 across the street helped us get supplies for our room. 

It was really cold on that Friday in Chicago, but we braved the frigid winds to eat at a Shake Shack. 

Char ordered a vanilla shake despite the low temps. 

The high on Saturday was 20, so we opted out of attending the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. 

It was cool to see the river dyed green. But I'll readily admit I was relieved that I didn't have to drive a car in the aftermath of the Paddy's Day Parade. There were people everywhere, and the streets were packed with honking vehicles and weaving pedestrians. 

During our three full days, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry, The Navy Pier, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The 60s 727 on display at the MSI was cool to walk around in.

The Swiss Jolly Ball machine at MSI was also really fun. 

Riding the Centennial Wheel at the Navy Pier was a fun experience, and a little bit scary for me.

I was glad to step out of the enclosed gondola when the ride was over. 

Daphne and I enjoyed seeing the famous paintings at the Art Institute, but Char... well, she put up with it.

I think it's a visitor requirement to visit Millennial Park and take pictures of yourself in the reflection of "The Bean" (aka "Cloud Gate").

With the help of Daphne’s navigation skills, we were able to visit a Goodwill store! I love that Charlotte is now excited to go thrift shopping, but Daphne... well, she puts up with it. 

This a great way to sell excess DVDs.

Char picked out two hoodies and a Squishmallow octopus named Veronica. 

But belive it or not, GoodWill was not my highlight from our vacation. My highlight was a fast-food lunch.

I've written about White Castle before on the blog, so I'll just quote myself:

    "My mom was excited to get Chinese takeout when we visited my Great Aunt Elnora (we called her Grandma) in Minneapolis. Mom always ordered chicken chow mein. I thought that was grossest looking stuff ever. Dad would bring back hamburgers from White Castle to make me (and him, I suspect) happy. These were memorable for multiple reasons. 1) There are no White Castle restaurants in Iowa. 2) These burgers are kid-sized, and I felt pretty grown up because I could eat more than one. 3) At 37 cents a piece, Dad would buy as many as I wanted" (Plus, they taste good!).

I was a little worried about what Charlotte would think when she tried her first White Castle slider. She's been eating some of the plain hamburgers served at school lunch, so I had a hope she wouldn't hate White Castle. We placed an order for 10 sliders, and I mentally crossed my fingers. 

After removing the pickles from her sliders, we all dug in. Pretty soon Char looked at the pile of empty slider boxes and asked, "They're gone? How could we have already eaten ten? Daphne pointed out who ate what (I ate the most), and it added up to ten.

I asked, "Wait. Are you saying you want more?" Char nodded her head, and I couldn't have been happier! I popped up and hurried to the counter. It is such a great feeling when your kid appreciates something that you do, too. 

"White Castle is the best!" - Charlotte Monson

The flight home was uneventful. We were only in the air for 50 minutes. (I will be so happy when I can take indoor pictures of my family's full faces...)

I'm glad we were able to fly home and use our voucher money, but next time I think we'll just take the train to Chicago and back. It's easier, cheaper, and there's a lot less stress. 

“Trains are wonderful.... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches, and rivers, in fact, to see life.” - Agatha Christie.

The Urbandale School District's spring break is ten days long. We spent five days traveling, and five days hanging out around home. We agreed that it felt like having two separate vacations. I'll have to try and remember that for next year.

Nah, I don't have to remember that. 

Daphne will.

Thrift Store Show and Tell: Catch and Release Edition

Per Char's request, we stopped by Goodwill last Saturday. Although I had zero expectations, I checked the record bins out of habit. I was surprised to find music that wasn't religious, country and western, or Ray Conniff. I picked up nine LPs for 89 cents each. They aren't all winners, but finding a "modern" LP in decent shape in a thrift store is now a rarity. 

This Van Halen record is listed in Esquire's "The 75 Albums Every Man Should Own." Extra points for Fair Warning being in the David Lee Roth era. (1981)

I'd prefer Men at Work's Business As Usual, but Cargo has "Overkill"on it, so that's cool. (1983)

The artwork on The Power Station's 33 1/3 just screams 1980s. This super group had Andy Taylor and John Taylor of Duran Duran, Tony Thompson of Chic, and Robert Palmer on vocals. (1985)

I didn't appreciate how beautiful Annie Lennox is when I was a kid. I think her short haircut threw me off.  Be Yourself Tonight (1985)

This Maxi-Single with "Sweet Dreams" on it is from France. How did it get to an Iowa thrift store? (1983)

I didn't enjoy The Fixx's Shuttered Room as much as their second record, Reach the Beach. Weird thing is that this is an European release, too. Who donated these records, anyway? (1982)

I wouldn't have bought the Thompson Twins' Here's to Future Days, back in the day. Now I find it interesting. I guess the title is prophetic. "Don't Mess with Doctor Dream" has fun stereo effects. (1985)

I picked up a used copy of Shabooh Shoobah when I was in college. I bought this LP in case it was in better shape than my other one. It isn't. (1982)

Joni Mitchell's Blue came out in 1971, and this is the first issued release. Joni's folk music doesn't really fit in with the other rock and pop records, so I think some kid growing up in the 80s raided their parents' LP collection. 

Not a bad haul for $8.01. The records cleaned up well, and they sound good. But I don't need to keep them all. Fair Warning rocks and Blue is collectible, so they're staying. I'm on the fence about Men at Work and the Thompson Twins. The rest will be catch and release. 

There are times when finding something you want is actually more fun than owning it.

So, We had a 2-hour Delay on Twosday 2/22/22...

But then, 2 hours later, school was cancelled. 

Favorite Strip Joints

Strip Mall - "A long, usually one-story building or group of buildings housing several adjacent retail stores or service establishments." - Merriam-Webster

In a recent episode of Samantha Brown's Places to Love, Samantha said, "Whenever I travel in the United States, I always seek out and want to eat at a strip mall restaurant.  I love them. Even though the strip mall themselves, the appearance of, leave a lot to be desired, the restaurants that are usually in them are exceptional. They are unique. They are family-owned, and they make the best home cooking."

I questioned that idea at first, but then I quickly realized that Samatha is right. Some of our favorite places to eat are in strip malls. I just hadn't thought of it that way. 

Both the Wisco Grub and Pub and Louie's Wine Dive are located next to a grocery store.

 Tasty Tacos and Flame the Taqueria are both next to a chiropractic office.

The La Mie Bakery is next to a tattoo parlor. 

ShortE's BBQ is next to a martial arts school, and Monterrey Mexican Restaurant also near one. 

The Waterfront Seafood Market is next to a beauty supply store. On the other side is the Ohana Steakhouse.

Daphne remined me that Tsing Tsao West, Palmer's and Hurts Donut Co. are also in strip malls. 

These businesses take a lot pride in the food they serve. I overheard an owner at Wisco proudly tell a new customer, "We put a lot of love into our food."  

The service can also be more personal. When Tally's was open (sandwiched between a Beaverdale music store and a yoga studio), a year-and-a-half-old Charlotte got really fussy, and a waitress went out to her car to get a few of her son's toys for Char to play with. That's not going to happen at an Applebee's.

Daphne and I hope to do some traveling in 2022. I'll still research the "Best Of" lists for the cities we visit, but I'll be checking out their strip malls, too. 

Fill In the Blanks fo the "First Roadtrip of 2021"

Let's write a blogpost together. Consider this the blog equivalent of a madlib.

First we need an introduction: ________________________________________________________

Where we are: ____________________________________________________________________

Explain the expression: _______________________________________________________

Explain this close-up: __________________________________________________________

Describe what Char has:________________________________________________________

What and where: _____________________________________________________________

Comment on Daphne's sweatshirt: _______________________________________________

Explain: ____________________________________________________________________

Describe the reaction: _________________________________________________________

Describe the meal: ____________________________________________________________

Make a comparison: __________________________________________________________

 Mic drop comment: __________________________________________________________

You did it! Great job. Now you're a blogger, too!

My Tenth Year Anniversary...

... for the blog is March 27, 2022. 

Charlotte was only 19 months old when I started this blog. A lot of life has happened since then.  I could make an event list, but I guess I don't have to. The events are all here on the blog. Well, not "all." I left out the ugly bits. Life can be messy. 

I've published 1,136 little stories here (including this one). I also have 151 "draft" stories that I didn't finish or chose not to share for one reason or another. But I'll admit that lately I have been slowing down. 

The repetitions of 2020 took some wind out of my blogging sails. I'm still writing posts, but some days it feels more like a chore. I've actually begun to leave my phone in my pocket when we're out and about. Charlotte and I recently had two daddy-daughter thrifting days, and I didn't take one picture. It didn't even occur to me. Somebody take my temperature. 

I do take pictures, though. Charlotte was in her first middle school play last week. She had two parts in 15 Reasons to Not be in a Play. The drama club couldn't afford streaming rights, so the performance wasn't available to watch online, and I can't post videos.

When the play was over, Char proudly shouted at Daphne and I, "I didn't stutter once!" We knew. We had been holding our breath in the audience for last 40 minutes. That's real drama. 

I was hoping that we all could got home right afterwards, but there was a cast party at Culver's. I tried to console myself with an order of onion rings, but they arrived stone cold. 

Oh well, you can't win them all.

Recycled Audio (Part 1)

One of my favorite places to visit with my dad when I was growing up was Lems Auto Recyclers in nearby Doon, Iowa. Dad would go to Lems if he needed snow tires or if he wanted to replace a broken mirror. 

You would walk into the office, tell the man behind the counter what you were looking for, and then someone else would either go into an adjacent building or out into the yard to see if they had what you wanted. This was before they had computers, so I would have time to wander around the garages and between the rows of wrecked cars. Inside, the garages reeked of cigarette smoke, oil, and gas. The country music leaking out of an old radio was inaudible over the cacophony of clanking metal, power tools, and men swearing. So cool. 

Before I was old enough to drive, I took a few trips to Lems with my friends on our ten-speed bikes. Most of the time you could travel the eight miles and only encounter a few cars.

Allowing kids to run around an auto yard unsupervised would never fly today, but this was the '80s. Times were different. We jumped from car roof to car roof to car roof, and no one said boo.  

I vividly remember sitting in a rolled '70s Monte Carlo SS that had no doors or a hood. There were keys in the ignition, and the dirty 350 engine looked solid. Curious, we moved a car battery from a Ford that had been rear-ended into the Monte Carlo, and the engine slowly turned over until it roared to life. We drove it 50 yards before a guy in a skidloader cut us off. "What in the hell do you think you doing?" he yelled. 

I was sure we had gone too far this time. We nervously jumped out of the Monte, and I explained what we had done. He took a long look at the car and then turned to us with a grin, "I didn't know that motor ran. Hell, the tranny might be good, too. Put it over by the gravel hill, and I get it across the street later to look at it." We drove it over there and that was that.

When I could drive myself to Lems, it was usually to get another tape player for my car. Cassettes ruled at that time, and I had learned that quality contol was pretty low for affordable, aftermarket car audio. It wasn't long before the tape players would either break or start "eating" all of your cassette tapes. It was cheaper to get a used stereo from a wrecked car than it was to get your current player repaired.  

I had figured out that the cheapest tape players were usually the most reliable by the time I was in college. The less functions the stereo had, the less there was to break. A garden-variety Kraco tape player like this one cost about $15 at Lems and would usually last for a year or two.

There was only a fast-forward button. To rewind the tape, you had to eject it, flip it over, insert it, and then press fast-forward. That was a hassle, but it worked. I'm not sure why you would need a "muting" button next to the volume knob, though.

I'm thankful for modern stereos, but I still have a soft spot for for bare-bones equipment that works well.

Recycled Audio (Part 2)

I think my appreciation for bare-bones audio equipment drew me to the YouTube video "The cheapest CD player ever made is surprisingly good."

I was intrigued with how VWestlife described this JC Penny CD player from 1988 as, "One of the first CD players to cost less than $100. It lacks many features, but actually has several things in common with much more expensive CD players."

I really enjoyed this video. VWestlife made fun of the player while also praising it. He pointed out that it was built in Japan, and most of the chips on the circuit board were actually made by Sony. When the music played by this unit is analyzed on a spectrum analysis graft on a computer (shown at the12:30 mark), you can see how the sound is de-blurred to allow for a much more "analog-like characteristic."  

Yes, it's a very simple player that is big and clunky. There are only six buttons that perform ten functions (including eject and power). That's not much, but then there's not much to go wrong, either. 

Each day was basically the same for us during the summer of 2020. Videos like this gave me something new to think about / obsess over. In short, I really wanted to play with one of these CD players. I checked all of the internet hideouts that I could think of (eBay, Etsy, Craiglist, ect..), but I came up empty-handed... until last month. 

While browsing shopgoodwill.com, I spotted this:

It's almost embarrassing to admit how excited I was. That's it! That's the player from that video! I can't believe I found one for sale! I dug around to find that "old" YouTube video to comfirm that I was right. Not only was this player the same model in the video, it was even manufactured in the same month of '88!

I suspected that this was going to be a revival project, though. I didn't believe the item's description: "Tested for power only, no further testing." Give me a break. You can't tell me that the people working at a Goodwill store couldn't find a CD to test in this unit. 🤥 Still, I went for it and won the auction.

The player didn't work when it arrived, of course. The player would spin the CD, but it couldn't produce music. The laser mech was stuck in place because the worm drive (long threaded piece at the top of the picture) and the rails (parallel silver poles in the middle) were gunked up with dried grease. A little nudge with my finger got it going, but the player had to be cleaned.

I cleaned the drive, the rails, and the laser lens with isopropyl alcohol and Q-tips. I then added too much white lithium grease to the rails and the drive, and had to clean all that off, too. Everything is a learning process... 

The rewind button didn't work, and the play button needed a lot pf pressure to operate. I sprayed each button's contacts with DeoxIT D5, pressed the button 50 times, and now they all work with a light touch.

CDs play all the way through, but I'd rate this project at 98% complete. Once in awhile the laser mech hesitates and fails to return all the way back to the "home" position by a millimeter or two. Then it requires an encouraging, light tap. I'm betting that the problem is mechanical: it's either unseen gunk or the belt needs to be replaced. Or it might just fix itself with some more use - you might be surprised how often that works with vintage equipment. Who knows how long this has sat dormant?

The CD player sounds really good, and it's currently pulling duty in my classroom. I appreciate how its design has become unique. There's not too many players out there that are the size and shape of a shoebox. (But there's also a reason for that...)

I like how the front-loading window allows you to see Jack and Meg hanging out in there.

Action shot: watching the CD spin is an added bonus.

The player does fine with burned CD-Rs, and it also played my scratched-up copy of The White Stripes' De Stijl without missing a beat.

Is this really the cheapest CD player ever made? That's doubtful. But it might have been one of the cheapest CD players sold in 1988.

Handwritten on the back masonite panel, presumably by a store clerk, in descending order is: O - 199.95, N - 99.95, 69.99, and 49.99. I assume those are prices.

Since the last price was not crossed out, I also assume someone bought this player for $49.99. That would be quite a deal for a brand-new CD player back then. 

Even I paid $2.89 more than that.