Category: Travel

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Road Blog: Mendocino Vineyard

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Back home in Berkeley tonight. But at noontime today, we stopped on our way south at Toulouse, a vineyard and winery along Highway 128 in Mendocino County. We went into the tasting room and bought some wine, then walked up through the vineyards briefly. One bird note: We see robins down here, of course. They’re everywhere, right? But up at Toulouse today, their presence was a little more than we see around the city. hundreds if not thousands of robins filled trees around the harvested vineyards. Checking one Mendocino birding site, the county seems to be a major wintering locale for American robins (Turdus migratorius; yes, “Turdus”; it’s Latin for “thrush”; you know there’s a whole story about why it’s called “robin,” but some of us can’t stay up all night to tell it).

A general explanation for the robin swarm around the vineyards comes from Cornell’s Birds of North America: “The diet of the robin is … highly variable, changing from primarily soft invertebrates, especially earthworms, in spring and summer, to primarily fruit in autumn and winter. During the nonbreeding season, large flocks of hundreds or thousands of immature and adult birds migrate to lower elevations and latitudes, where they form roosting aggregations from which they track sources of berries.” Cornell also notes that the robin is a relatively recent arrival in much of California west of the Sierra foothills, not pushing into other parts of the state until irrigation and well-watered lawns (and thus a richer supply of earthworms near the surface) made it possible for the bird to extend its range. And one more note from that Mendocino County site: robins (and some other abundant songbirds) are favored prey of some raptors (peregrine falcons and sharp-shinned hawks, among others).

The sound of the birds near the vineyard was remarkable enough I recorded some audio and will try to post that later.

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Road Blog: Fort Bragg Xmas Extravaganza

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We drove up to Fort Bragg with a plan of driving someplace in the interior of the county–Montgomery Redwoods State Reserve, near Comptche in the back of beyond, was one candidate. But in the full light of day and looking out at the coast right outside our window, it seemed to make a lot more sense to just hang here. So we went for a long walk up a coastal trail to MacKerricher State Park north of town, then back. The Dog, for one, was delighted. Then we went and had a bowl of clam chowder down by the Noyo River harbor. We started back to town, then Kate remembered a plaque about the local salmon fishery she wanted to show me. The plaque was on the outside wall of a restaurant at the harbor. When we pulled into the parking lot, there was a pickup truck parked there towing a dory festooned with Christmas lights. A woman wearing a Santa hat was standing next to it. “Making your rounds?” I said. “Yeah, I start early,” she said. Then she told me that the boat was decked out for the town’s annual Christmas parade, starring local working vehicles like logging trucks and yes, a few boats. “Seven o’clock. You should come out. It’s a big deal for our little town,” she said, adding that it has been going on for something like 75 years. So after going back to our room, taking a nap, watching part of the Wisconsin-Michigan State game, we walked across the pedestrian trestle from our motel into town and found the parade. The vessel pictured (at the corner of North Main Street and East Redwood Avenue) is the one we saw down by the harbor.

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Road Blog: Asti

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Headed north on U.S. 101 for a couple days in Mendocino County, I pulled off at Asti, just south of Cloverdale. The wine valleys are full of fall color. Today’s bonus: Despite my earlier post on drought anxiety, it must be said that today was incredible. In the mid-70s in Berkeley and everywhere else around the Bay Area; new records were set in San Francisco, Oakland, Santa Rosa. Up here, on the coast, it’s supposed to get down to the mid-30s tonight.

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PM Getaway, Holiday Eve

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I almost never drive to work in the city (San Francisco) at regular commute hours. I go in at midday, usually, and return home well after the last of the evening commute. But today I drove because it was the day before the holiday and the morning rush hour was light. I waited a little too long to start home, till almost 3:30, and this is what happened: a long (but standard) jam on the western approach to the Bay Bridge. The stop-and-go and merge after merge after merge slows you down so you can reflect on why you love living here.

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High Country: Carson Pass and Beyond

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Since the automobile-borne traveller can’t and doesn’t want to do straight-line trips in the Sierra (lots of river canyons, ridges, peaks, valleys, and rocky defiles of every description in your way), our trip last Saturday from the Calaveras County outback to the alpine embrace of Hope Valley was roundabout. Employing our usual late start, we made it to Carson Pass (elevation 8,573 feet) just as the sun was setting. Just east of the pass on Highway 88 there was a turnout, and we pulled over to take in the scene. Above: looking north: Red Lake Peak (elevation 10,063). Below, looking east, across Red Lake (elevation 7,800); I think the mountain in the left-center distance is Hawkins Peak (elevation 10,024).

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Web Billiards: Alfred, Lord Tennyson Edition

Kate (the Redoubtable One) related the following:

A teacher colleague of hers, a published poet, has started a poetry blog. On said blog, her colleague had written a post on Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses.” It’s a well-known and widely quoted work, and I’ll lay odds that you’ve encountered this conclusion somewhere before:

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Kate encountered one line she was wondering about: “… To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars. …” What exactly does “baths” mean in this context? Like so many of us do for so many hours of the day, she went looking for an answer online. One of the potential answers returned in her search was the following, on a site called Cruiser Log. I kind of think Odysseus would have taken this guy on as a crewman:

Title: To Sail Beyond The Sunset, And The Baths Of All The Western Stars (Or the other way, that’s cool too)

Home Port:Venice Beach, CA
Location Now:United States
Posted 15 August 2011 – 01:21 AM

I’m looking to crew on any boat going any place. Deliveries/passages/cruising/shakedowns/adventures/surveys/secret missions/artistic escapes/jail breaks are all copacetic.

I’ve sailed across the Pacific, in the Caribbean, and all over North America. I can stand watch, tie a bowline, converse pleasantly, get the job done, and grill. My (non-grill) cooking leaves much to be desired (but not my cleaning).

I sail for free, unless you are a commercial operation or a paid delivery. (Don’t ask me to crew for experience on a paid delivery, please.) I can’t contribute to food costs, generally.

I’m based in California. I’m 21. I’m blond. I can fly anywhere to meet you (miles, baby). I’m experienced, and free. I’m resourceful, and listen to how you want to run your boat, regardless of my previous experience. My schedule can be tossed overboard: your’s is what matters. Talk to me. …

Harry

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A Falcon’s Journey

islandgirl.jpg Thanks to Marie, who posted the link:

The online diversion of the day is the Falcon Research Group, an independent raptor study center in Washington state. The group has satellite-tagged and tracked peregrine falcons that migrate over very long distances. Right now, they’re watching a falcon they’ve named Island Girl, who is in the midst of a journey from Baffin Island, northeast of Hudson Bay, to southern Chile (here’s the map of the migration so far). She left Baffin Island on September 20 and last night apparently crossed Louisiana’s Gulf Coast. If she was a straight-line flyer, and she’s not, she would have covered 2,600 miles in 11 days. One of her stops this past week was apparently atop the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield.

The research group blogs the migration here: Southern Cross Peregine Project. The account of the bird’s journey, informed by both experience with her life history, peregrine biology, and GPS data from a mini-backpack the bird is carrying, is both fascinating and sort of gripping. For instance: This is the third season the project has tracked the bird south. One post notes she has begun the migration inside a 24-hour window on September 20-21 each time (her northward migrations are similarly precise, occurring around April 12). Of the challenges peregrines face as they cover a vast swath of territory, the blog says:

Peregrines (and other long distance migrant hawks) can make a living catching their prey over a wide range of habitats. They must be able to do so if they are migrationg across such varied territory as the Arctic tundra, the Canadian boreal forest, the farmlands of the Mid-West, cities large and small, the sub-tropical regions of Mexico, the tropics of Central and South America, the intense Atacama Desert and the pine forests of southern Chile.

They must be adaptable enough to survive in each of these situations. They must have a flexible approach to hunting in different situations. They must be able to recognize, hunt and catch new prey species (do peregrines eat toucans?) and avoid all of the ever-present mortality sources.

Are these “slow migrant” peregrines that we have discovered during this study taking their time so that they can become familiar with these habitats and how to hunt them? Are they “familiarizing” themselves with their migratory route and what they can find there? Is this advantageous to them?

The complexity of peregrine migratory behavior is both deeply impressive and humbling. What a remarkable organism to fit into all of this and flourish.

Where’s Island Girl now? When last heard from, she was headed out over the Gulf of Mexico southwest of New Orleans. As the blog notes, the falcon may “attempt to fly across the entire Gulf of Mexico. It has been done by other satellite tagged peregrines in the past. However, taking this route means committing to the very exposed crossing of 500 miles across open water to Yucatan. Some tagged raptors have disappeared on this crossing. … If Island Girl does go and if she has a good tail wind, she is capable of making it. Keep in mind that there are also a lot of oil platforms out there to rest on and we know that peregrines show up on them during the fall migration fairly frequently. There are also lots of ships in the Gulf so she may have assistance there if she gets into trouble with a headwind.”

Six thousand miles to home. Go, bird, go.

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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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