Over Peoria. Blue goo.

June 28, 2011

I was in the air southeast of Peoria, looking down on the City.  I must have been wearing one of those human kite outfits because I was gliding, not flying under power.  I noticed the high bridge over I-74 and had the thought that I had always wanted to stand up there and look out over the city, so it would be a good place to land.  I swooped down towards it and while the glide gave me enough lift that I wouldn’t crash into the ground, it also gave me way too much forward speed to land running.  I noticed a semi with an empty car towing trailer going the same direction I was.  It must have been on the interstate because it was going nearly as fast as I was, although I don’t know when my focus shifted off the high bridge.  I glided down onto one of its outside top rails and skidded to a standing stop. 

The semi swerved over next to a retaining wall that was at the same height as the top of the trailer and a white panel truck drove off the top of the wall onto the top of the trailer, which was still moving down the highway.  The driver of the truck did not want me there so he drove it to the front of the trailer to force me off.  I grabbed a hose that was attached to the front of the trailer and dropped over the front edge, hanging down in front of the semi-tractor, right in front of the grill and windshield.  The guy in the truck on top of the trailer hopped out and started to spin the hose reel that held the hose that I was holding on to.  I was able to climb the hose as fast as he reeled it out so I managed to stay where I was and not get dragged under the semi.

June 29, 2011

I was in a flat, open field covered w/ bare dirt.  Someone was interested in landscaping the site, but wanted to know what was under the surface to see what would grow and/or how much topsoil they would need to add.  I stuck a soil probe into the ground and just below the surface, about 3 inches down, was a layer of sky blue goo.  It was about the consistency of pudding, maybe a little thicker, but it seemed way too soft and wet to support us walking around w/ just a thin layer over it.  I didn’t know what it was, but it had to be something unnatural.

Bunker Hill Road

I was on Bunker Hill Road heading toward Mooresville.  I came down the hill past the house with the ghost tree to the bridge at the outlet of John Moore’s lake.  The bridge was broken down and people were out on it looking around, so I got out to see what had happened.  The main bridge had rusted through and collapsed on the east side and a strange wooden structure had been built adjacent to it on the west.  As I went down into the collapsed area there was a wooden wall with a door in it that opened into the area under the wood framed expansion, which had also partially collapsed.  On the west side of the room under the bridge was a wooden dam wall with the lake right at the top of it at about my eye level. 

My old enemy Jim Bowyer and one of his cohorts were there and they were looking around talking about what could be done.  An older couple was picking through pieces of broken concrete, rusted corrugated metal pipe that had been covered with concrete, scraps of wood, expanded metal, and gravel that had all been part of the cobbled together bridge expansion.  They asked Bowyer why this hadn’t been fixed right.  Bowyer said something about budgets and trying to save money.  They weren’t buying it.  They said (correctly) that someone had spent a lot of money building the ridiculous little room that rebuilt John Moore’s dam, and if they’d spent it on the bridge, everything would still be working.

I thought about jumping into the fray by saying the reason he’d done what he had was because John Moore had been a long time shoddy developer who had probably helped get Bowyer elected and most of the people in the Mooresville area had voted against him, so Moore got what he wanted and Bowyer gave Mooresville what he wanted to give them, which was nothing.  But, I remembered that I was long past that fight and there wasn’t much I could do now, 14 years and 120 miles removed from being involved there, so I kept my mouth shut.

Later I pulled into an angle parking spot in front of a school.  I wasn’t planning to park, just turn around, so I didn’t worry about the handicap parking sign at the head of the spot.  As I was pulling in Sallie Thomas came up to the front of the car shaking her finger at me.  She thought I was going to park there and she was ready to let me know what she thought of it.  I told her I was just turning around, but she gave me a look that said, “I don’t believe you”.

On the beach

Ruth and I went to the ocean shore.  There was some sand, but most of the area was covered by big areas of limestone that was full of holes like Swiss cheese.  There wasn’t a flat level space anywhere.  We were climbing around and came across a woman in National Park ranger uniform.  I asked her if bicycling was allowed, just being silly because there was no way a person could bicycle there.  She didn’t get it and gave me a serious “no”.  Then I said, “This would be a great place for a baseball game.”  At this point she caught on to my joke and seemed to lighten up.

There was a gap about four feet high in a limestone wall that opened into a cave.  I went inside and was walking around on my knees in the sand.  I noticed the ceiling above me was perfectly flat, in fact too flat to be natural.  As I investigated I saw a few pieces of expanded metal exposed where some of the covering had come off, so I realized the ceiling was made of concrete, not limestone.  At this point I noticed Ruth wasn’t with me.

I went to another opening and climbed down a short steel ladder back to the ground outside.  Now I was at a wide, flat beach covered with sand and gravel.  There were dozens of people with baskets and shovels.  They were digging through the sand and gravel to get to the chunks of coal that lay underneath.  I found Ruth and she had a shovel and a basket already partly full of coal.  She was excited about getting free coal, but I wondered what we wanted it for.

A load of hay & a chiropractor's office

June 12, 2011

Don Sweeney was driving a flat bed truck loaded with my hay through town.  He missed a corner or something because he decided he needed to back up.  The hay blocked almost all of his mirrors so he was pretty much backing blind.  I was standing beside the road so he asked me to let him know what he needed to do.  I told him it was all clear and he started to back up.  The street had a curve in it that I couldn’t see very far around, and just after Don started backing a semi came around the curve fast.

I yelled to Don to stop and get out of the way, but I don’t think he heard me.  He kept going and just a couple seconds later the semi hit Don’s truck square in the back.  A bunch of the hay flew off and the truck started careening forward with the momentum of the semi.  It pushed on past me swerving more and more wildly as it went.  Don decided he needed to bail out so he opened the door and jumped, landing on his feet but then rolling down the pavement.

Just after he jumped the truck flopped over on its side and unloaded the hay all over the road.  Don was back up and seemed OK, so my next concern was that my hay was being scattered all over the place.  Kids had come out from the neighborhood and were jumping around in it and riding bikes through it.

Later I was talking to a big time executive who was sitting behind his desk.  I was telling him that he was too focused on his work and needed to take some time for some of the other, more important things in life.  He said that when the stress got to be too much he would just go fire someone and then he felt better.

June 13, 2011

I was in a chiropractor’s office, trying to watch a video, but there was a group of people who kept walking back and forth in front of the TV, hauling boxes in and out.  They unloaded one of the boxes on a counter and it was full of little sample tubes of toothpaste.  I thought about grabbing a couple of them, but decided that since I wasn’t a customer I really didn’t have rights to them.

Breakfast and a junk pile

June 2, 2011

I was in line for breakfast at a cafeteria, debating about whether to get a small normal meal like a bowl of cereal and some fruit or something larger like bacon, eggs & pancakes.  There was one section that had plates full of things that I wasn’t sure what they were, but they were colorful.  I was examining a bowl on the plate that had little 1” diameter balls that were brown on the outside, like they’d been fried.  I was trying to determine, without touching, whether they were rice or maybe sticky oatmeal or grits.  The plate had a piece of meat and several brightly colored fruits.  While I was deciding I had walked up to a corner in the line. 

I thought I would go around the corner and continue, but I saw that the people on the other side of the line were coming to the same corner and paying there.  I realized I would have to choose quickly or lose my place in line and start over, so I thought I would go ahead and try the sticky oatmeal balls, but when they set the plate on my tray all it had was several pieces of lettuce.

June 8, 2011

I was standing above a gulley that had been dumped full of junk.  As I looked at the junk I realized that while it was ugly, it was not without value.  There were dozens of rolls of ¼ inch round rod stock that all had been a little banged up, but the scrap value alone had to be hundreds or thousands of dollars.

I started walking down in amongst the junk and gradually I was no longer in an open ravine but inside a factory.  The junk was piled in one area adjacent to a newly remodeled area that I had been familiar with before the remodeling.  I was surprised to see how much the remodeled area had been cleaned up.  It had huge machines like the older areas, but everything was bright and clean and had the latest high tech gadgetry.  I was up against a wall and there was a multiple sheaved pulley directly over me that was dipping down like it was going to pick something up by me.  I couldn’t see the cables that were holding it up, but it moved up and down just like there were normal cables there.  I moved around it to get a view from different angles, but never could see the cables.

I walked over to another part of the building and now was in a gathering of people who were standing around eating plates of breakfast.  I realized I didn’t have a shirt on, and even though these were construction/factory workers who probably didn’t care how I was dressed, I felt under dressed.  I found a pile of what might have been clothes or might have been rags and looked for something to put on.  Several times I found shirts that I was sure were mine only to find them full of holes when I put them on.  Finally I found a pullover that had just a couple holes that were probably below the belt line if I tucked it in, so I put it on.

I started talking to an older man about the project we were working on.  It was enjoyable to be able to explain to him what we were all doing there.  I remember thinking that he was impressed by what I knew and that I liked that he was.

Bicycling in Tremont

Dave, Scott and I were bicycling on the bare ground alongside a railroad going east out of Tremont IL.  There were two tracks and on each track was a locomotive engine going about the same speed we were.  They were apparently checking the rail conditions because I noticed several sections of deteriorated rail where the engine would slow down and just crawl over it.  At one point the top portion of the rail was completely broken away, but the engine was able to roll on.  I backed off so I wasn’t right next to it for fear that it would derail or flop over on its side, but it didn’t.  I was surprised at how well the springs on the wheels kept it from wobbling.

I looked up ahead and could see the I-155 overpass, meaning we were well out of town.  We decided to turn off the tracks and cross the property between it and the road and ride back into town on the road.  The property we had to cross was a fertilizer storage & distribution company.  There wasn’t a patch of green anywhere on it.  Everything was either crushed stone or white fertilizer.  As we rode into the place there wasn’t a clear path through to the road so we guessed and went down an opening between two buildings.  The space had pallets piled roof high against both walls and it soon narrowed down to one lane wide. 

There was a man standing near the far end of the alley, waving his arms at us and looking very angry.  He said that we couldn’t be here and that he was going to have us arrested.  We weren’t on bikes any longer so we went with him down a set of stairs into the lower part of one of the buildings.  He took us into a cafeteria/break room where several workers were sitting around eating and relaxing.  He went off to look for something and told us to wait there.  Some of the workers came over and wanted to know what was up.  We told them and they said not to worry about him, that he’d be gone a long time and we could just leave.  They asked us if we wanted a beer, but we said no because we were on our way to church.

Later I was sitting at a table talking to Mary Sumpmann, who I knew in Minnesota and hadn’t seen in thirty years or so.  I was curious where life had taken her and hoped to have a good talk.  A young woman came up and sat on the edge of my chair between me and Mary, pushing me over a little.  There were lots of other empty chairs at the table so it was strange that she wouldn’t take one of them.  I sarcastically asked her if she would like to join me in my chair.  She said yes she would.  So I scooted over till we each had half the chair.  She was a large framed person – not fat, just big.  Thinking about it afterwards I thought she was probably Mary’s daughter and wanted to insert herself between her mother and the strange man she was talking to.