Hello dah'lings, you still hanging in there? Ready for some open threading?
We dragged our droopy tails back into Prague yesterday. It was a long day. Well, a day and a half what with the time zones we crossed. My little family and I had a rather packed couple of weeks of vacation. I've just begun to sort through the 700-ish photos I took.
I wasn't really looking forward to this trip, but good things happened anyway.
Sitting in the airport, watching our plane being prepared, I was captivated by the variety of specialized vehicles that were swarming around. I watched a towbarless tractor position itself under the nose of the plane and lift the front end of the whole plane, preparing to push it away from the gate.
We flew from Prague to Amsterdam and didn’t have too burdensome a layover before our connecting flight to Chicago. However, the good folk at passport control didn't have their act together and there was an absurdly long line of increasingly nervous people waiting. They’d opened a fast lane for people whose flights were leaving before 8:20, but as 8:15 came and went, a few people in the slow queue began to speak up. Eventually a whole new section of self-check stations was opened up and a rather entertaining young man herded people into the area. When some people began straddling two lines in the hope of taking advantage of whichever line turned out to be faster, the man began calling out, “Stand in front of something, don't just stand anywhere!” He was right; people needed to queue in an orderly fashion. There wasn't space for idiots with "wide stances” when there was close to a thousand people who needed to get in line. He nudged a few of the more clueless people into place.
We got to our gate in plenty of time. And the flight was uneventful, which is always good. In merry old Chicago it was my turn to organize our expedition. We needed to get to a regional bus and thanks to my having just done this same journey last year, I knew that we needed to take a train to the Multi-Modal Facility— which is still not listed as such on the illuminated signs on the platform which indicate the direction and stops of the trains. Parking? Rentals? Terminal 5? This way, please. Regional buses? No? Nothing? Last year I wandered outside where the buses had always stopped until I found a tattered sign that mentioned the buses being moved to the MMF. Then eventually thought to ask a helpful airport employee stationed on the train platform where the heck this MMF thing was.
This year, I was the hero. Getting our luggage took an absurd length of time. Well over an hour we stood by the baggage carousel. Eventually our bags trickled out and we managed to breeze through customs and catch the train to the MMF in time to catch a bus just as it was finishing loading.
Then we had an unexpected transfer of buses that our driver had failed to explain to us, but we got to Madison, Wisconsin safely. Yep, Madtown, my old hometown and a friendly face was waiting for us at the Park and Ride.
We took over a friend’s whole house and the friendly face lent us her car for the rest of our stay. The hospitality of these people was a bit overwhelming.
The next day, our plans to visit my sister-in-law fell through so we did a little shopping and went for a long walk along part of the lake shore that I'd never explored before.
Governor's Island
The view of downtown Madison from Governor's Island— Mendota is a good sized lake.
There were deer peeking at us in the woods and expertly avoiding my camera.
Once out of the park and walking through the Juvenile Housing area of the Mental Health Institute on our way to visit an old stomping ground ( my dad's old neighborhood), we saw a bit more wildlife.
Wild Turkeys!
I'd never seen a wild turkey before.
I was told by one of our friends, a retired DNR Warden, that wild turkeys were reintroduced to southern Wisconsin in the late 1980s and early 1990s— just around the time I was packing my bags for Europe. No wonder I hadn't seen them. Now they’re all over the state.
A whitetail doe crossed the road and I caught a quick pic— too quick, her fawn followed just a minute after I took this.
I’d forgotten just how invisible the rabbits think they are.
Well, as you can imagine, I’ve got a ton of things to get done after my vacation, so this installment is a bit short. I will be around for the comments though, as jet lag allows.
Thanks for stopping by.
This is an open thread.