Friday, November 23, 2007

Travel: Winter Blues

Nothing says cold like frozen flowers. Temp is about 20 degrees.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

Winter is coming

I saw a bunch of geese yesterday. They were flying rather low. I was thinking, maybe they decide to fly south just about the time the trees went bare. Later on, I also saw quite a few of them chilling out in a little pond. The pond was really quite full of them geese.

So, why do they do that? Why not sleep in some bushes somewhere? I mean, it was just a little pond. It doesn't take much to just pounce them in the water like that.

I also saw quite a few dead deers on the side of the road. I wonder just how many generation does it take for the deer to evolve enough to learn crossing the street safely. And just how long does it take for people to learn to stop hitting these deer?

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Trip Quincy, IL

I think it was Kino who said that 3 days and 2 nights are good enough to know everything there is about a place. Personally, I disagree about that, but that doesn't mean that I didn't get anything out of it.

My hotel is located to Washington Park. I took a picture of a wall there, but when I loaded my blog, I noticed an extremely large loading size. Obviously, the pictures taken by my camera phone (a Treo) clocks in rather large. Ideally, I should use a photo retouching program to shrink the image size a bit. I remember when 9600 bps modem was the rule, I ended up resizing the pictures to 20 KB. Obviously, picture quality suffers greatly. Ah, well. I'll just skip posting that picture.

I ate in a Sushi restaurant by the park, called Sho Mi. The prices are reasonable, and the food quality is rather high. I ended up giving them a good sized tip. I really like their salmon roll. I was surprised that they cooked the salmon. Breaded salmon. But it affected the taste only slightly, although I can tell the texture is very different than what I expected from a sushi roll.

Also, a few blocks down, there is supposedly some dangerous corner when several people have been seriously injured or killed near a bar. Apparently, the bar is a haven for some fight loving patron or something. I did see some kids playing skateboard around the place, and some people just hanging around there doing nothing. Loitering, so to speak.

There is a very nice church and a Mason building as well. I took some pictures of it, or rather a video. The lens isn't wide angle enough for a picture.

The hotel that I'm staying has a restaurant, and I'm kind of surprised to see a priest is eating there. Their price isn't exactly cheap. Whatever happened to the vow of poverty? I'm not saying you can't eat good food. I'm just saying that maybe a little cheaper fare would be better. Eating in a hotel is rather expensive. Personally, I prefer Dennis, which is having a $3.99 Grand Slam special right now.

The weather is cold and although there wasn't much wind, I still feel cold even though my jacket is lined with fleece. Maybe I should be gearing up for cold weather gear. Hycreek Sportsman clothes is supposedly good for winter. I'll have to look into it.

There was also a chinese restaurant, but although the food is better than fast food, it isn't incredibly better. Say, above average. Generous portion, though, so I can't complain. I also ate at Hardee's. It's great. There was some pictures of polo girls on the wall. Also a poster exhorting generous people to donate dead and tagged deer to the local Salvation Army chapter. I guess they'll take just about anything. I wonder, though, just how they'll price the deer. By antler points, maybe?

Quincy: population 40,000. Small town wth some amenities. Some bikers, with girls who love them. The girls would find a cool looking biker and honk the horn on their car. Hmmm. Maybe I should get some cool bike riding gear.

Well, that's about it for Quincy. I can't say that I'm too excited about it. It does have good points. The old architecture is especially interesting. Fascinating, even. However, the future looks bleak. Except on the main road, I see various stores are closing. Abandoned. Not many people are traversing the area I was in. Looking at so many closed storefront saddens me. That gets me thinking: what would it take to revive a city? Shall we tore up this old place and put on a Mall? Or would a nudie bar be better? The way I hear it, there's not one within a hundred miles. Personally, though, I don't think plopping a mall bigger than the existing Quincy Mall will help. Just because you build it, doesn't mean people will buy it, especially if it was build by ripping local resident's life long housing. They don't need new mall, they need new mayor. Someone with business acumen who can balance the budget and attract customer.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Trip to Quincy, Il

Leaving Denver. Will stopover at St. Louis. I was thinking going through I-80, but since I'm riding a bus, I'm going through I-70 instead. It's been a while since I'm riding a bus. Schedule says leave at 11 am, but the bus is just leaving now.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Staying late at the library

So here I am staying late at the library. Basically, the Wifi connection is free. I don't really have Cable or even phone line at home. I do have an Internet account for on the road, but the one on the library is faster and cleaner.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Just a little picture I like to share. Yes, it's about chess.

First Post is Always the Hardest

Hey, is there no spell-checking on this thing?

I caught this on a chess competition. :)