Category: Travel

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Illinois Wind Turbines

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One big change in the Midwest landscape I’ve seen on my occasional visits over the last decade: Lots of wind turbines are being installed (hundreds and hundreds of them in Illinois so far, with many more coming). I shot this pair–just off Interstate 80 on the southern outskirts of Geneseo–as we blasted past (my brother Chris was driving) on Labor Day on our way from Iowa City back to the Chicago area.

Chris asked “how much power do those things put out?” My researches have uncovered the following: These two turbines are Vensys 77‘s, each rated with a generation capacity of 1.5 megawatts. How much is that? The math isn’t straightforward: how much power is actually generated depends on weather conditions; the turbines need wind, of course, but they’re apparently also sensitive to high temperatures. In practice, the generators at this site might produced enough power for about 1,000 homes. The city of Geneseo, population roughly 6,500, said before the turbines began operation in October 2009 that it expected the turbines to provide between 12 percent and 15 percent of the electricity the town needs.

And: How big are those things? Big. The rotor diameter, which I take to be the diameter of the circle swept by the turbine blades, is 77 meters. About 240 feet. The top of the tower is about 300 feet.

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Road Blog: Iowa City Side Trip

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Eastbound on Interstate 80 in north central Illinois after sunset this evening. The trip: My brother Chris was taking his son Max back to the University of Iowa after the holiday weekend. His other son, Liam came along. Road trip came complete with a stop at Iowa 80 (“World’s Largest Truckstop”), where we stocked up on beef jerky for the long, grueling trip back to Chicagoland. The day’s drive, including or so back and forth to Chris’s house from my sister’s place on the North Side: over 500 miles. Chris drove the entire Tinley Park to Iowa City roundtrip.

P.S. We also stopped in West Branch, Iowa, to check out Herbert Hoover’s birthplace and boyhood environs.

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Chicagoland Cemetery Report

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On the eve of Dadfest (his ninetieth birthday, tomorrow), I took him to a local barber for some tonsorial attention. With that seen to, we stopped at the Steak ‘n’ Shake drive-through, then headed north to intercept Sheridan Road on the North Shore. We wound up in Lake Forest, where I happened to notice a sign for a beachfront park: “Parking Entrance for Lake Forest Residents.” OK–I wanted to see what being a Lake Forest resident gets you.

I wound down a steep drive to a beautiful little beach and well-kept park and parking lot that was guarded by a young guy lounging in a lawn chair. I signaled to him we were just going to turn around and did that. I stopped and asked the guy about beach parking access. Yes, it was for residents, who could park for free. Could non-residents park there? Well, only if they have a season permit. How much is that? About $900 (and looking into things a little further, a season parking permit at the southern end of the park is $1,400). The city’s brochure on all this explains that non-residents are welcome to park at the train station in downtown Lake Forest, a mile west as the crow flies (and they’re welcome to use the beach, too, but need to pay ten bucks a head on weekends and holiday). And one last welcoming touch: Anyone who parks along any street east of Sheridan Road–close to the beach, in other words–will be ticketed and fined $125.

My beach curiosity satisfied, we continued on. Down a street marked with a “No Outlet” sign, I saw a massive gate and decided we needed to investigate that, too. It was the Lake Forest Cemetery. It’s well-tended, and many of the graves–for instance, that of 19th century wholesaling titan J.V. Farwell–are lavish.

The site above grabbed my attention. It’s the resting place of Frederick Glade Wacker, son of the man for whom Chicago’s Wacker Drive is named, and his wife, Grace Jennings Wacker–the latter once a Brooklyn Heights debutante. Their marriage in 1912 got some serious New York attention–both in The New York Times (here: New York Times wedding announcement) and in more detail in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (here: Brooklyn Daily Eagle). Mr. Wacker didn’t reach 60. Mrs. Wacker died in the 1980s at the great age of 95, if her headstone is to be believed.

The Wackers did have children. There was a Frederick Jr., a businessman and motor sports enthusiast who died in 1998. HIs obituary in the Chicago Tribune lists three children and a grandson as survivors. Not mentioned is a brother, Charles Wacker III, who happened to be out of the country when Frederick Jr. died. Perhaps he went unlisted because of the circumstances of his absence.

In 1993, Charles Wacker III, who had made a name for himself as an owner and breeder of thoroughbred racehorses, was indicted on 16 counts related to an alleged tax-evasion scheme. Here’s how the Trib summarized the case:

“In its 50-plus-page indictment, the government alleged that the 72-year-old Wacker spent a decade creating a network of dummy corporations and hidden bank accounts from North Chicago to Hong Kong to shield himself from the IRS. Federal officials also alleged that Wacker defrauded his mother, Grace Jennings Wacker, and her estate of more than $500,000.

The story notes that the government accused Wacker of running his shell game to dodge $5 million in federal taxes and–how times have changed–says that it was the most massive personal tax evasion case in the history of the federal Northern District of Illinois. Other news accounts noted that he didn’t show for his first court appearance in Chicago. He was in England, where he ran his horse operation. His lawyer told the judge he was too ill to travel.

You see something sensational like that, and you want to know more. Whatever happened to CWIII? Is he languishing in a federal penitentiary somewhere, a la Bernie Madoff? Did he beat the rap?

Well, I couldn’t find a single news source that reported the denouement of the Charles Wacker III tax-fraud saga after the accounts of that first hearing. But I did dig up something from an online federal court file.

In 2002, the U.S. attorney for the district went to court to dismiss all charges. Why? Well, Charles was a fugitive, and prosecutors said he couldn’t be found. Also, the witnesses–Wacker’s accountant and Frederick Jr.–were deceased. And at the time the charges were dismissed. Wacker was 80. The Department of Justice motion (here: Wacker dismissal) doesn’t expand on that last fact except to imply, “What’s the point of going after him now?”

Charles Wacker III will be 90 on October 21, if he’s still living. I can’t find an obit for him. But I do find mentions as late as 2007, when he would have been 85 or 86, that he was still active in the horse-racing world.

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From the Air: Green River, Dinosaur National Monument

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On Thursday’s flight from San Francisco to Chicago. Above: Just east of Vernal, Utah. The view is to the northeast, across Dinosaur National Monument. Brush Creek flows down from the left (northwest to southeast). The Green River is the main stream snaking through the center of the picture. It flows from the upper right to the lower left in this picture. At left center, the river goes through Split Mountain Canyon. At the top of the image, you can see we’re looking through a dirty window.

Below: View is to the north. The Green River flows from right to left (east to west) through Split Mountain Canyon. Split Mountain is the high, cleft behemoth on the far (north) side of the river. I can’t find the name of the dramatic ridge in the foreground; the river is just visible flowing around its left (western) end. There’s a campground right there where Kate and I had a sandwich dinner we picked up in Vernal while driving across the country in 2007.

For reference’s sake: The river at this point is at about 4,800 feet above sea level. The peaks of Split Mountain are in the 7,300-7.400 foot range, and the unnamed foreground ridge tops 7,000 feet. The portion of the ridge in the closeup is about three miles long.

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In-Flight Entertainment

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I prefer a window seat when I fly, because watching the landscape and skyscape, not the movies or seat-back TVs, is my in-flight entertainment. On my trip back from Newark earlier this week, the only window available was over a wing. Not ideal, but better than nothing. This shot is while our 737 was queuing up for takeoff.

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Brooklyn: Apartment View

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Shot from my brother John’s place, a 15th story apartment in a publicly owned co-op building on Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn. This view is to the north; the roadway in the left foreground is the Brooklyn Bridge approach/exit; the girdered structure in the middle left is the Manhattan Bridge approach/exit (and train lines); and the East River is beyon in the left distance.

Top row: Saturday night, Sunday morning. Bottom row: Sunday night, Monday morning. It was warm and humid Saturday night, with a temperature hanging around 75 even at 3 in the morning. Sunday morning: warm and humid. Sunday night: thunderstorms and more thunderstorms. Monday morning: pristine air, much cooler, much dryer. (Click for larger images.)

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Road Blog: New York at Night

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Assertion: New York is a city meant to be seen after dark. Well, you could say that about a lot of other vertical, well-lit cities. Tokyo comes to mind among those I have eyeballed. Chicago maybe. Paris? No–there’s so much texture there that’s lost at night. In New York’s case, the city’s night-time allure is partly about lighting and partly about the fact you encounter other walkers everywhere you go at all times of night.

The thought about New York occurred while my brother John and I went out for a stroll that turned into a three-hour hike: from his place near the Brooklyn Bridge to the Manhattan Bridge, over that span to Manhattan, past the government center and the World Trade Center site to the Hudson (I never knew before tonight that there is a memorial over there commemorating the Irish Famine), then back across downtown to the Brooklyn Bridge to John’s place. Something was up on the bridge as we started up the walkway from the west side. Traffic was halted and didn’t start moving at all until we had nearly finished our crossing. It turned out the police had shut down the bridge because of an abandoned SUV and a body that had been found in the roadway. Or at least that’s what we heard from walkway kibitzers viewing the scene.

We got back the apartment about 2 in the morning, and now it’s insanely late. More later today. Or tomorrow. Or whenever it is.

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Road Blog: Sandy Hook

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After spending a shocking portion of a beautiful summer day inside, we went out to Sandy Hook. That’s the hook-shaped peninsula that juts north toward Long Island from the top of the Jersey Shore. It wasn’t a long, complicated visit. We walked a little way up a paved trail that was clearly meant for bikes, not pedestrians, then crossed over a park road to a beach area that faced out to Sandy Hook Bay. Along the way we encountered a memorial to a dozen British sailors and a couple of their officers who died at the conclusion of the Revolutonary War trying to bring back deserting crewmates who had decided they would rather stay in the United States than continue service in His Majesty’s Navy. But for the most part, we just noodled along the beach until we found a nice square timber to park ourelves on. I was not above posing the above broken shell for a brief spate of New Jersey landscape photography.

Later, we picked up Eamon and Sakura at the train in Hazlet–they came down from New York–then drove back out to the shore for a (mostly fried) fish dinner. We sat out on a deck adjacent to the Highway 36 bridge over the Navesink River, and were out there when my brother John called to alert us that the International Space Station would pass over in just a few minutes. We got a nice long look at it, finished dinner, then drove back to the city.

Conclusion of the foregoing.

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Road Blog: Home to Brooklyn

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We flew out to New York from the Bay Area on Sunday. It may be the last 6 a.m. flight I ever take, because I have so poorly mastered the logistics of an early morning departure that I wind up getting almost no sleep the night before I leave. In the current instance, I wasted much of the eve of the trip screwing around with entirely gratuitous family history stuff; task avoidance if I’ve ever seen it, and believe me I have. The net effect was I was up until after two in the morning doing all manner of stuff I had planned on doing earlier and which I was convinced had to be done. I got about an hour of real sleep (Kate got a bit less), then got up for our cab ride to the airport. We did manage to sleep some on the plane.

Then we landed at Newark. Eamon and Sakura drove bravely through the rain from Brooklyn to pick us up and take us back to their place in Brooklyn (Cobble Hill, just down Court Street from the Borough Hall). We walked out into the storm to eat at a place on Atlantic Avenue, splashed back to the apartment, where I napped for an hour. Then, since the rain was still pounding down, we all took the subway to my brother John’s new place next to the Brooklyn Bridge. He and his wife, Dawn, had lived in the same apartment in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood for 20 years but just this past year landed a spot in a big co-op-type apartment building. We all hung out for a couple hours and checked out the new digs. Outside it had finally stopped raining. the Cobble Hill contingent walked home.

Next morning: No rain. We met John and his kids (Sean and Leah) for coffee and a post-breakfast bagel, then walked to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and up to the new park at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Kate and I later cleared out and came down to visit her family in friends in what I describe as the northern Jersey shore area–Holmdel and Hazlet townships in Monmouth County. But let’s stay in New York for a minute: The strangest thing for me about our arrival wasn’t the sleepless haze that enveloped parts of the first day but the feeling that I’m visiting a place where my family, through John and Eamon, has put down roots. It feels like home territory, though my zip code still begins with a 9.

(Photo: east tower of the Brooklyn Bridge, shot from Evert Street outside the headquarters of the Watchtower Society (a.k.a. Jehovah’s Witnesses.) You think of the Witnesses as quaint fringe Bible thumpers? You probably won’t after reading about their immense and hugely valuable Brooklyn real-estate holdings and the part they’re playing in local property wheeling and dealing (involving that same new park I mentioned above.))