Day 2: Lockport Illinois

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

Lockport Illinois - Visiting Neil.

I met Neil in the 7th grade at Woodrow Wilson Jr. High School in Northeast Philadelphia, PA. Since we were in Jr High School in 1977, that means we have now been friends for... gulp... 33 years.

Neil resides in Lockport Illinois and is a high school English teacher at a local High School. He is a published author of Never Too Old to Teach... which I've read and highly recommend. It's revealing and entertaining while still delivering the message that, well, basically you CAN teach an old dog new tricks. Sorry, my friend, but it is what it is.

Today we went to Fry's. Fry's is simply put the largest electronics store I've ever seen. I'm not sure but I'd guess it has it's own zip code. Not quite, but it is really large. Without a doubt I can tell you that the area that houses the 76 cash registers (!) is larger than many stores I've been in. I bought an extension cable for my headphones so I can sit in one seat of the train tomorrow and have the computer on the other seat and still use my headphones.  I also got a new game called Spore. In Spore, you create your own life forms, then place them in a world and watch them evolve. Sounds like fun. I also got a USB hub, that makes one USB port into 4  USB ports. I already HAVE 4 USB ports, but now I can put all my USB devices into the hub instead of having cables sticking out all over the place.

After Fry's we lunched at Panini (spelling?) and I had a wonderful sandwich. Nice place. Good food. Who knew?

I'm almost embarassed to say, but after lunch we went trainspotting. There is a rural rail crossing not far from Lockport where a south and north bound track from Chicago to St Louis crosses a gravel road out in the middle of nowhere. If you want to see the place click here. Within 5 minutes of getting there we saw our first train. In about 2 hours we saw 8 trains. Twice we had trains coming from both directions at once. It's a really active line, as it seems to be the only north/south line in the immediate area meaning that all or at least most of the trains heading from St Louis to Chicago and vice versa must pass this point. I shot several videos but most are much too large to post here. You'll have to wait until I get home to see them.

After trainspotting we came back and had chicken, rice and zucchini. That's right, I ate zucchini! Of course it was loaded with butter, salt and pepper, but I still ate it so I get credit for that. It was pretty good actually, but I didn't like the texture of the seedy part. I'll have to get one when I get home and see what I can do about that. We watched a few short movie scenes on Netflix and a documentary on Yellowstone Park, then called it a night.

Tomorrow, I have a 2:34 train. I can't wait!