Vertical Clouds

[Kellemora]

Under Trump were were out from under the crude oil import business. But Biden screwed that up royally!

Burning fossil fuels to make batteries is still polluting the air, probably more so than running gasoline cars.
And then burning fossil fuels to create the electric to charge the electric cars.
There is nothing green about them, especially the pollution when they burst into flames.

I converted one of my vans over to Propane fuel once. It had no power at all, even after several adjustments.
So I converted it back to gasoline. Two things I didn't like about the propane, even though the tank was large, I had to get it refilled more often than I did with a tank of gas, and also the engine ran a lot hotter.

The cheapest tires we found so far are Cooper Brand, which I do like, but they are 330 bucks each installed and balanced.
We used Cooper tires on our fleet trucks, and never had a problem with them, plus they stopped on a dime. Not at all like Michelin's which let you slide for a mile before deciding to let you stop.

The price of used vehicles seems to have skyrocketed exponentially this last couple of years.
Debi's cousin sold his car a couple of months ago, and got double the price his 2 year old bluebook showed it was worth.
Then he checked the current bluebook and found the price in there even higher than he sold it for.

Makes me wish I could have kept all of my 1960's through '70s cars. Every one of them would be worth more than ten times what I paid for them new.

[yogi]

When they were handing out free money during the pandemic, we had enough to buy new cars. New to us but both were previously owned. I traded in a 2007 Saturn with 88k miles logged on it and they gave me $4000 cash for it. I nearly fainted when I saw that number because the St Charles County assessor claimed the Saturn was barely worth $1000 to him (or her). The newer Saturn, a 2009 clone of the old one, sold for 10k dollars, which means I only paid $6000 out of pocket for a 12 year old car. That newer Saturn only had 36K miles on it, which was the deciding factor for the purchase. The trade-in value was basically the wholesale price at that time and the ten grand for such an old beast seemed unreasonable. Now and days after the pandemic and facing new car costs in excess of $30k, I would say I got a very good deal with the Saturn. I'd probably make a profit if I sold it in today's market.

I used to use nothing but Goodyear tires on the old Saturn. Here in Missouri Goodyear is not unknown, but it generally involves special ordering them. So when I needed tires for that Saturn I got Coopers. They were pretty expensive but about the same as were the Goodyears, and they performed just as well. I'd buy Cooper again based on that last experience. Oddly enough the Saturn I recently bought also came with Goodyear tires. I'm guessing they are the originals because the car has such low mileage on it.

Chicago used to run some of their buses with propane. It stank to high heaven if you had to follow one.

[ocelotl]

Lithium batteries have two main limitations:
- Useful life. Is the same as in any cellphone. 3 to 5 years and 1000 to 1500 cycles. If batteries with 10,000 cycle or 250,000 hours of total useful life can be manufactured, it will be a game changer for electric cars. I've read that research is being done to manufacture batteries based on sodium which may be plentiful since it can also mean a sub product of seawater desalinization plants.
- Mineral abundance. While lithium is an abundant mineral in the universe, it is not exactly very abundant in Earth's surface, it may be that the circumstances of the Earth's origin put most of our lithium in the Moon, and less in the Earth's crust. Given the bureaucratization of Lithium exploitation in both Mexico and Bolivia due to nationalization and state controlled enterprises, I don't really see a take off of Lithium industry in this continent.

I've read many people advocating as an alternative that North America as a whole must develop mass transit as it is implemented in Europe or Japan. The main reasoning behind it is that an Electric car uses the same space as a gas powered car, and that they won't solve the traffic jam issues that exist all over the US and Canada. A side reasoning along that line is that the highway development and single family house zoning implemented throughout the US and Canada since the 50's made the cities so spread out that people can't move anywhere outside of a car, making bus, tram and subway systems useless outside NY, the core of Chicago, DC, Montreal and Toronto.

[Kellemora]

Cooper tires are normally low durometer rated tires, meaning they are softer rubber, which makes them safer, but they don't last as long as harder rubber tires. Michelin tires have the highest durometer rating, which is why they slide so easily in the rain. Most of my cars, I had Goodyear Tiger Paws, which are also soft rubber like Cooper Tires.
I miss the good old days when I could swing into the Goodyear store on Manchester Road and get a new set of tires for only around 250 to 300 bucks, balanced and installed. Sometimes less than that if they had a sale going on.
All of our fleet trucks were serviced by Pete Mertz at his Mobil Gas Station, and major work was done by his cousin Whappelhorst in a garage behind the gas station. Between those two, they always kept our trucks in top running order.
And the best part was, the price was always more than fair, and much less than anywhere else too.

One of the reasons I could afford a new car every year, or in some cases, every six months, was with a trade-in, I rarely if ever paid over 600 bucks to get out of my old car and into a new one, which was usually a dealer demo anyhow.
Besides my normal full-sized cars, I got into sports cars as a phun car to go on sports car rally's. My first was a used Bug Eyed Sprite, but after that I bought Fiat 850 Sport Spyders. The first one, in 1969 I think it was, only cost 850 bucks brand new off the showroom floor, not a demo model either. The second on in 1970 only cost an even 1 grand, and in 1971 my next one only cost 1200 bucks new. We had a lot of phun in those sports cars, seeing the countryside going on hare and hounds, or on touring games. But then with a new little bombino in tow, I sold the sport car.

The trouble with public transportation Oceloti, is it never goes where you need it to go when you need to get there.
Of the years I worked downtown, I did take a charter bus for about 8 months. It was no faster than driving, and in fact slower, if it had to make two other stops after I was on. But the worst part was, when I had to work overtime, I then had to take a cab home, and that was expensive. When the company switched to a lot of overtime, I went back to driving, and even with paying a parking garage, buying fuel and maintenance on my car, it was still cheaper than taking the charter bus.
There were also the Bi-State Bus System, which I tried instead of a taxi to get home after working late. I was lucky enough to catch the last bus heading west, and still had to make one transfer in the county, then get a taxi for the last 4 miles to home.
They tried light rail, and I gave it shot also. They had a fenced area to park your car to take the rail, but it was geared to hit the colleges, before making it downtown to where I worked, and it was still a 10 block walk from their loop to my office. Here too, I didn't save any money, and also my car was broken into a couple of times while I was at work, despite the fact those lots were supposed to be guarded.
Where I currently live, the closest bus stop is over a mile away, and mainly runs between the Projects to Downtown and that's it really. Now once downtown there are trolley's paid for by the retail establishments that run all day and half the night going around to the businesses from the three primary bus stop locations.
I think what needs to be developed is a Transporter like they use on Star Trek, to scatter our ions, hi hi.

[ocelotl]

The problem is the way public transportation is implemented, Gary, from what you're telling, it is centrally planned up there where you have lived, without regard of offering citizens a usable system. Down here, the four avenues that mark the limits of the neighborhood where I live are also main bus routes. I can count from the top of the head at least a couple bus stops on each avenue within the limits of the neighborhood, and all of them are within 800 meters or half a mile from home, being the nearest a quarter of that distance, and I'm 23 km or 15 miles from zocalo square, out of the second ring of the city. So, I can't assure I'm pampered due to being near downtown.

Urban bus lines here are concessions from state governments that compete for passengers and profits, within the government approved fares, so I can get to multiple stores, offices and subway stations using any of the different routes that pass nearby. According to official statistics, two thirds of metropolitan area Mexico City commutes are done using public transport. A 10 block walk is possible anywhere, but seldom needed, if you know the bus routes well enough over here. That's the difference, here bus routes are run as a business and must offer attractive and efficient routes if they want profits.

And, there is a channel that has done the comparisons...

Top 10 Cities for Bus Rapid Transit in North America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH0XdrD7Gnw

Busiest streets in North America (the streets have the most people-moving capacity)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE-cyJypmMY

Top 10 Regional Rail Networks in North America.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fVmQR1GONk

North America's Best Airport - Transit System connections:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYQdA2-eJ6g

Cities in North America with the least amount of freeways:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F3lZwG-BWk

Top 10 Key Stations for High Speed Rail in North America:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpdz6HcZj84

¿Am I biased? You bet I am.

[yogi]

There is no doubt that Americans have a love affair with their automobiles. I'm not sure what the driving forces are for that particular bias, but a lot of it has to do with public planning, or the lack of it. Until about age 23 I lived in the City of Chicago proper and had no need for an automobile. Anything I needed I could get by walking to the local shop or taking public transportation. There were buses, electric (elevated) trains, and the familiar commuter railroad routs. The city did a fairly good job of planning public transportation, but most of it's citizens preferred private automobiles. When the population of Chicago migrated to the suburbs and surrounding counties, that is where public transportation fell apart. The railroad did go out to distant suburbs which provided many of those suburbanites with a means to work downtown if they chose to do so. But most people found work outside the city and used their cars to get around because few suburbs had any public transportation at all. A lot of this poor planning had to do with crossing political lines and tax bases. It wasn't all funded by the state in Illinois. Many European countries, and probably Mexico as well, are not as spread out as we are in this country. That more condensed population makes planning public transportation a necessity.

[Kellemora]

Nashville, TN has a decent transport system, if you are there with someone who knows how to use it the best. Mainly it is designed around all the tourist traps, and major shopping areas. Sorta like our shopping district Trolley's we have here. But the ones in Nashville hit the major parking areas, so you can park once and go nearly anywhere there is for entertainment, shopping, or tourist attractions. But as far as getting the populace to their place of employment, unless you work at one of those places along their many routes, it is not feasible to take the bus.

If you check most of the bus lines here in Knoxville, they are geared to get low income workers to downtown major employers. In other words, they run between the Projects and Downtown Industrial and Big Business areas. And really, that's about it. A separate bus line runs from the college to the dorms, and from the dorms you can catch a trolley into the shopping areas easily enough. The Trolley system is privately owned and funded by the businesses from what I understand, which is why the Trolley system is free to ride, but it only goes from store to store.

When I was up in the Chicago area for six months on a job. We used the EL (above ground subway) to get to a lot of places of interest. While workers who needed to go downtown from certain suburban areas used a commuter train.
Some guys I worked with downtown St. Louis, lived clear out in Herman, MO. They would take a train from Herman to Florissant, where they had a Charter Bus waiting for them every morning to take them downtown. And the reverse every evening after work. I wonder what they do now that the trains no longer run?

Every job I've ever had, barring perhaps one, I've needed my car for sure. Even though I worked in office buildings, I often had to make runs to various services we used, such as the photo copy company, blue print company, to the Currier or post office. And sometimes head to the airport to catch a flight on the companies private planes which took us to the job sites.

[yogi]

I correspond with a woman in Brussels, Belgium. She does not own a car and feels no need to get one. While she is a widow now there was no need for a private automobile while her husband was alive and working, and while they raised a young girl into adulthood. She worked for many years but is now retired, and still does not need an automobile. Her mom lives in Germany and she visits with her mom several times a year via the railroad transportation system. Her mom lives alone and also does not need a car. Then there is the lady who helped me with this website in its early days. She lived in England and never got a drivers license because she never felt she needed one. Her husband was an OTR truck driver and they did own an automobile, but the family used that car only on special occasions. She raised two boys who both attended university without owning an automobile.

The above is a mere two samples of Europe, but I think it represents the difference in thinking when it comes to public transportation. Maybe part of the reason they don't do automobiles as much as we do is the fact that they pay as much for a liter of gasoline as we do for a gallon. Then, too, we live in a swimming pool of crude oil while they import it all. Transportation is certainly something needing public planning, but the final implementation seems to be a matter of attitude. We need cars, but the rest of the world see them as optional. The attitude in Tennessee is to nourish the business community. Thus it makes sense for the transportation to cater to that community's needs.

[Kellemora]

Growing up, we technically did not need a car.
The grocery store was right next door to our neighbors house. A half a block away on the other side of the road was the hardware store. And before you got to the hardware store, you passed Grupps Place a tavern with food, where grandpa would send me with buckets to get him the warm Boch Beer, then after that the Mercantile Store. If you crossed one small street I was to the barber shop, another store I don't remember much about, then another tavern.
As I was a little older, to our east past the greenhouses was a meat market, and a new small shopping center, with a hobby shop at the far end, so I was there a lot, hi hi.
Across the street from the greenhouses was the ice cream shop, and next to them a pharmacy, and down across from the hobby shop was the donut shop.
Plus, dad walked to work every morning, and home again every night. About the only time we used the car was to go to church on Sunday, or for him to go play music at some gig. But then he often used a truck since he had so much stuff to bring if it was for his big band who got a large gig.
I rode my bike to grade school, and all around the area, just like the rest of the kids did. Sometimes we would ride our bikes all they way into Kirkwood to go to a movie, or shopping there.
But once I started high school, I rode the bus the first year, then after that I drove my own car. But dropped by brother and sisters off at their schools on the way, and picked them up on the way home. Our school system was set up such that high school started after grade school and ended before grade school, because most of us kids who drove had to pick up our younger brothers and sisters from their schools. Once my brother got his drivers license, then I was able to do after school things.

Even here where Debi's parents lived. Back in the 1940s and '50s, within three blocks of their house were things like a grocery store, beauty shop, barber, shoe store four blocks away, along with clothing store and other stores.
But as time marched on, all of those businesses closed down, usually because the owner died or retired, and the area was zoned residential, so no new commercial businesses could open up where the old ones were. What used to be the grocery store is still standing, and has been a house every since around 1958 or '60. Even so, there were still some folks who did small businesses out of their house, like the hairdresser Debi's mom used, and the lawn more repair guy across the street from us until he died. Now it is a duplex house, same building though. Down at the east end of the street where there were stores, two of them were turned into churches, which were still allowed to be in a residential area. Holy Roller, and Buzzard Baptist with a loudspeaker, hi hi.

[yogi]

The neighborhood you grew up in could have been just about any urban center during the 40's and 50's. I grew up in a similar neighborhood. The people I mentioned above are 21st century denizens. They live in Europe and have somewhat different ideas about public transportation. It's way more important and developed on that continent than it is here in North America. I can only guess at the reasons why it is the way it is.

The old neighborhoods we grew up in had to change because of population density issues. The big cities are like the small towns of our youth, but on a larger scale. What used to be a neighborhood store is now a strip mall because instead of serving several hundreds of customers there are now tens of thousands of people needing groceries. It's a shame things are not as convenient as they used to be, but that's an indication of success and progress. At some point there will be too many people to accommodate them all. I think we are already seeing food and water shortages in certain places. Once the energy supply can't keep pace with the growth that is the point at which civilization certainly will go into decline.That's probably how past civilizations grew and then went extinct. They ran out of juice.

[Kellemora]

Most of the European Countries are not much bigger than each of our States. Add to that, they are over 200 years ahead of the U.S. of A. in growth and development. Most of the U.S. of A. is still a vast open wilderness, except in the major cities which each year are more and more condensed. So much so, not many people live in the major cities anymore, they moved to the suburban fringe which kept getting wider and wider. So then the big city annexes a part of that suburban fringe so they still have people living within the city limits, and/or they designate certain areas in the city as residential only, which is another thing that drives out the little mom n pop shops from the residential neighborhoods.
Population Density in most of the European Countries is unbelievable, compared to our individual states.
We have Land lots of land, with starry skies above, don't fence me in. Well the fences have gone up!
You can drive the entire width and breadth of our country, unrestricted. In Europe, you are basically like being stuck in one state here, without proper authorization and documentation to travel to another Country.
You should see Debi's sons passport booklet, visa booklet, and papers folder he needs when traveling abroad. And as he said, believe me, they check your Papers at Every Checkpoint, no matter where you are going.

I know I mentioned this once before. Back when I was working for Sverdrup & Parcel in their Highways and Planning Department. The original designs for the Interstate Highway System were far different than what the actual construction drawing ended up being. In the original designs, there was to be rapid transit, like monorails down the center, and bus lanes on what would be just outside the entrance and exit ramp lanes.
But when it was built, all of that was ignored and just two separate ribbons of concrete were poured for the cars and trucks.
Only in very few places did you find a separate lane for the entrance and exit ramps in condensed areas, and no trucks only lanes in the center on either side of the tramway line. Between the highway and the outer roads was supposed to be bus lanes also. But as you can see, none of that ever came to fruition. Just the two ribbons for cars and trucks.
And in some places, they've added so many driving lanes in the middle, there is no median area anymore.

What we know as the Sahara Desert, at one time was a lush green forest, before it became dry and barren.
We've seen similar things happen here in the U.S. of A. as drought plagued central states turned into dust bowls.
But today we have the technology to keep our farms going strong, irrigation to overcome drought areas, huge machines to keep the cost of farming massive expanses of land at a minimum, but we pay the price in quality of foods too.
This is one reason I was so active in hydroponic farming techniques and getting rooftop greenhouses started.
All of them showed a nice amount of profit for the owners, so there were no complaints in that regard.
What hurt them the most was imported produce at such low cut rate prices, which crops were not available when I started many of these greenhouses. We had one greenhouse that was raising only head lettuce in the most efficient way possible, and although he made an excellent profit, and paid his few employee's well, it is hard to compete with mass produced produce, even though the home grown tastes much better, bigger, and looks nicer than the commercially raised stuff.
The two greenhouses that raised tomatoes always did well, because people would pay a bit more for tomatoes that looked and tasted like tomatoes, instead of the bland cannonballs they sold in the stores.
Little by little, either the owners retired or sold out, and the greenhouses got used for other purposes. I know one became a restaurant, and another was used to raise exotic pets, mostly birds. And a few were changed to raise flowers.
The longest lasting venture I was involved in were the strawberry growing, hanging gutters, in a few area restaurants. They were still going strong when I moved south 20 years ago, but I don't know about today at all.

[yogi]

It's hard to believe there was a time when Interstate highways did not exist. I think it was president Eisenhower that headed the effort to install them in this country. Being a military man, Ike thought having a system of cross country highways would be great logistic planning in the event we had to mobilize our troops. Those highways were built because the money was made available to do it. All they were intended to do was move troops around, but a need to do that never materialized, thankfully. Once that system was in place it had to be maintained and possibly improved. That's when reality showed its ugly head. There was no huge demand for mass transportation and the money it would take to implement it could be better spent elsewhere. Until the current regime came up with an infrastructure plan of its own, I don't recall any mass effort to improve the highway system or transportation in general. Now, all of that will be addressed. But, to what extent? There still is a limited supply of cash and many other things are just as important, if not more so, as is transportation. There seems to be a lack of long term planning. Transportation in this country is ad hoc, and the current mess in the supply chain is evidence of how that works.

Food, on the other hand, would seem to have top priority. Hydroponic farming will likely be the main source of food in the future because the earth we currently use is being polluted so heavily, not to mention climate change effects. It may be possible to live off our own land again with a hydroponic farm in our garage, or basement. I have to agree with you about the taste being much better than commercially grown and processed foods, but the costs of home grown are still higher than what agribusiness can manufacture.

[Kellemora]

FWIW: Less than 20% of the intended Interstate Highway System, excluding the optional add-on's in the original plans.
But of the Roadways proposed as the two ribbons of concrete, less than 20% were ever built. And the ones that did get built, did not follow the paths of the original designs either. At least they stayed consistent with the numbering system for the major Interstate Highways, but made changes to the secondary loops that were only partially constructed by the states who needed them. Interstates were Federally funded, but the Loops were supposed to be State funded by those cities who wanted them.
And then they later decided to change how those are numbered. Especially the 2xx series of suburban loops. 1xx loops were intended for the fringe area as a loop around a city who wanted to install same.
But then they came up with more loops inside the 1xx series and called them Innerbelt loops, and some are not loops at all.

One of the reasons for changing the numbering of the 2xx system was because people did not understand how simple it was. Perhaps it was too simple for them to understand, hi hi. Both sides of a section of the 2xx Interstate system would have different numbers, and should have been read this way To I-55 on one side and To I-44 on the other side, for a 2xx highway running between I-55 and I-44. It made sense because when you got on at an entrance, and you were headed toward I-44 you would be on I-244. If you were on the opposite side at Manchester Road as an example, going North you would be on I-270 because you were going To I-70. What could be simpler? But no, they changed the whole Loop to I-270 I think, although all of us locals still called it I-244 the original name in our area.
Then they came out with the 3xx system which was never a part of the original plans at all. Well it was, but not how you think.

Outdoor farming, whether large or small, still had to use tons of fertilizer of which most of it is simply wasted in the soil. And the downfall is, some of those fertilizers do come back up to burn up plants, and/or leach down into the water table.
In Hydroponics, the nutrient is recycled and only what elements were depleted somewhat were added back to the solution, so it was always in the perfect balance for the plants being raised. And today, with low cost LED lighting, it is a whole lot cheaper than back when I was doing it, which is why we used rooftop greenhouses instead of indoors, so we could take advantage of the sun, and only supplement the light on cloudy or short days like in the winter months.
Ironically, even in greenhouses you had to cover some crops because the summer daylengths were too long for them, hi hi.
This is why you see so much black cloth in floral greenhouses. Mum's and pompons won't bloom if they get too much light, or bloom at the wrong time of year, hi hi.

I agree with VOLUME producers can do so much cheaper, but the equipment costs to be able to do that are astronomical too.

[yogi]

My recent trip back to northern Illinois was interesting for more than one reason. The first point of interest was I-39 which was nearly a direct line to where we were going. Google recommended it instead of the normal I-55 path we take to Chicago. Then again, we were going to a suburb considerably west of Chicago. While I-39 was a straight line for a good part of the trip, it was nearly two hours longer than the around-and-about road because of all the construction going on. However, Google did in fact provide what was asked of it. On the return trip the same query produced different results. That I-39 path was shown as an alternative, but a note was added to say not to take it. Too much traffic. There was construction on the return path too, but that trip was done on Sunday. None of the construction was in progress and the drive was very pleasant.

Approaching St Louis we turned onto I-270 instead of going into the city itself. In Missouri I-270 meets I-370 and I-170. I think it's no less than 8 lanes of traffic at that point and if you are not in the correct lane you will end up on the wrong Interstate, albeit a variation of I-70. That's what I did. I was in the wrong lane and ended up on I-170 instead of I-370 (which is a rather short path back onto I-270). I-170 was 6 lanes divided and what appeared to be a loop around Lambert International. There were quite a few industrial storage buildings but we were literally the only traffic on that route. I realize it was Sunday, but apparently no shipping or truck driving is allowed at the airport that day. It was truly amazing. Eventually we found our way back to I-270 and that took us to I-70 which is a hop, skip, and a jump from where we live down the road a piece.

I now know of what you speak about the numbering of the Interstates. There probably was a good reason to merge all three of them at a single point, but if you are in lane #1 and need to be in lane #8 ... good luck with that.

The second point of amazement was Illinois farmland. It's called the Prairie State because of all the prairies used to grow wheat. To be honest I don't know if I saw any wheat at all along the entire length of I-39. There were miles and miles of corn as far as the eye can see for about 75% of the road. They were out there with combines harvesting but I don't think there are enough trucks in the whole state of Illinois to transport that corn from the fields to their storage areas. There always was some corn in those fields, but what I saw was extraordinary. All I can think is that is a lot of potential ethanol because there aren't enough people in the entire world to eat that much.

Unless something I don't know about is going on, I don't think corn can be grown hydroponically. I do think we can feed ourselves using that method and go a long way toward saving the water supply and the soil. I can't think of anything better than growing strawberries in the rain gutters of my house. LOL

Wedding Venue

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The above is the venue in which the wedding took place. The photograph does not do the place justice because there is quite a bit that cannot be shown in a single photo. It's about an acre of garden cut out of farmland in the middle of Nowhere, IL. The actual ceremony took place in that gazebo-like structure. A lot of potted plants are in this photo and there are many more scattered about the grounds. There is also a lot planted in the shade alongside an artificial stream that snakes through the terrain in back of that gazebo. I thought of you and how you might have engineered something like this. One man started the project many years ago, but obviously a lot of helping hands came along in the interim. The garden/park is publicly accessible, but we had this section reserved for the wedding. Apparently this is an extremely popular venue for weddings. I don't know what it cost to make that garden, but I am sure it all was paid for in the first year renting it out for weddings.

[Kellemora]

My old Garmin allows me to set it for the Fastest Route, the Shortest Route, and a Scenic Route, plus if I paid for the traffic part, it would avoid areas of heavy construction or slow downs.
The newer Garmin Debi has, only has Fastest Route, and Shortest Route, with an option to avoid Detours.
But she actually likes the one on her cell phone the best. I don't know how, but warns her if a light ahead is due to turn red, hi hi. What she likes most about it is, it lets you know how many seconds to the next exit and which lane to be in long before she gets there. While my old Garmin may let me pass an exit because it only shows the exit not exactly to scale either. Not as good as the newer ones do. Mine is so old half the time it don't work right at all, hi hi.

The Loop Interstates were not meant to be complete circles, unless they just worked out for a city better than way.
But their location drawings did form a circle around a city for the 1xx, and the location varied from city to city, as to whether it was inside the city limits but just outside of the downtown area, or if it was out closer to the suburban fringe. The 2xx were supposed to be a circle segment way out beyond the suburban fringe and run between the major Interstates. And the 3xx were Links between the 1xx and 2xx Loops. But they never turned out quite that way, hi hi.

From the Mississippi River going East through Illinois, is all Popcorn Fields, not regular corn, after you get away from the populated areas. You have to realize that with Corn, most stalks only produce one or normally two ears of corn per cornstalk. So what looks like one heck of a lot of corn stalks, the actual yield of ears of corn is quite small for the space they take up.
Sweet Corn is the kind we eat, and it normally only has two ears per cornstalk. But Horse Corn, Flint or Waxy Corn, is used for livestock feed, that kind is a larger ear and usually has three, sometimes four, per cornstalk.
Cornmeal can be made from either Yellow Sweet Corn, or White Flour Corn, which is not sweet, but not horse corn either, hi hi. Albeit, some of the Cornmeal I've had made from White Corn tastes like it was Dent Corn Horse Corn.
Ethanol is usually made from Dent Corn, which is also used as livestock feed.

Corn is a water HOG, but cannot be overwatered, nor will it grow well in most hydroponic systems. Corn does do well in Aeroponic Systems though, and in some Mist Systems, I've raised some corn in Flood and Drain, with long pauses between watering cycles.

Now that's a really nice looking place for a wedding!
I hope you enjoyed it!

[yogi]

From what I read the average yield per acre of corn is 85 bushels or 849 pounds of kernels. I have grown corn myself many years ago and do realize that only a single ear can be expected from each stalk. What I saw amounted to thousands of acres of corn at nearly 1000 lbs of corn per. And that was only a small segment of north central Illinois. I've seen corn on many of my trips to Iowa to visit wife's relatives, but there never was so much concentrated in a single area as I saw in Illinois this year. I was truly amazed. And, by the way, I buy popcorn from an Amish farm near Indianapolis, which is just east of southern Illinois. I didn't know so much popcorn was grown in Illinois, but then, there is a lot I don't know about corn farming.

I've been using the app Google Maps to navigate unknown territories. It's pretty good and warns me of speed traps, which are only visible half the time. I don't know how they know where those coppers are hiding in the first place, but that is one feature of Google Maps that I like. Sometimes it gets the instructions wrong telling me to turn left when I should have turned right. But, fortunately, that is a rare occurrence. Google seems to strictly adhere to the definition of "shortest route" and will send me through some off the main road paths. I guess I can't fault it for doing that because, after all, that is the shortest distance between two points. My Garmin did similar things but didn't offer alternate routes. Maybe that was due to me having the less expensive model. My TomTom GPS was better in that regard and kept me on the main highways most of the time. The app Debi uses on her smartphone sounds tremendously helpful. Could you possibly get me the name of that app so that I can go to the Google Store and download a copy for myself. That feature telling me which lane to be in is an absolute necessity in Missouri. They are not as good as other states in marking routes and often force me to exit when I don't want to.

Loops are another Missouri specialty that I never ran into back in Illinois. There is a so called loop (Mexico) road around the Schnucks in town and as far as I can tell it's just an exit on the opposite side of their parking lot that normally would be a street with a name of it's own. The Loop does end at the main street but so do a lot of other roads which are not loops. It's crazy. The mess I ran into on I-70 is something I navigated successfully many times before. This last pass I just happened to be in a lane too far from where I needed to be and my co-pilot didn't give me any warning. Then, too, I've not been on that route since before the pandemic. It's not second nature to me.

[Kellemora]

I only know about heading east from St. Louis through about 1/2 of Illinois before turning south. And most of the farms I passed had signs showing they were raising for Orville Reddenbacher or Jolly Time commercial. But it turns out, they never knew which buyer would get their corn until after it was harvested and graded, so I imagine Orville got the best and Jolly Time commercial got the rest. But none of the popping corn is as good as it was even ten years ago. The most expensive gourmet popcorn is about the quality of the grocery store packaged Jolly Time, regardless of who's name they stick on the package.
Pop Secret owned by Campbell's Snacks is the largest domestic seller of gourmet grade popcorn, followed by Orville R. now a part of ConAgra, followed by Jolly Time commercial. Weaver Brand Popcorn is the biggest of them all if you include international popcorn sales.
FWIW: Jolly Time is the oldest popcorn distributor in the entire world.
And here is a little HINT for you. The largest popcorn with very little husk is called Butterfly Popcorn. It is raised in Illinois, Nabraska, and Missouri. But it could have any brand name stuck on it. About the only places that buy Butterfly Popcorn are Movie Theaters, Movie theaters also normally use Coconut Oil to pop the popcorn in, and/or Flavicol as the oil or as an added ingredient. Personally, I like Flavicol Oil for popping corn in. Debi gets some from Ace Hardware, they don't sell it, but let her get a pint when they open a new gallon for their popcorn machine.

I doubt if Debi knows the app, but it is the same one that was on her Android Phone as on her iPhone she has now. Or should I say they both looked and worked the same. But I will ask her to look at her phone and see if she can tell the name of the file that runs the GPS part of her phone.
Speaking of her iPhone, she has found apps installed she didn't even know were there. One is a LEVEL and it is dead on accurate too. When she discovered it, I got out my electronic level, put new batteries in it, and did some checking. Both gave the exact same readouts to two decimal places. I was amazed a cell phone could that.
Now in her Android Phone, she had a program that is not in the iPhone, where if she was at one of the larger malls, she could use it to locate the particular store in the mall she was interested in. Before they closed down the big mall near us, she found it to be very useful, because even in the parking lot it would show where in the big building the store was, so you knew which entrance to park near. She misses that in her iPhone, but then that Mall closed down.

Most of the Interstates were not yet built when I started driving OTR. And even after they were built, I often took the old highway I was familiar with, and sometimes came out ahead by doing so. But that had a lot to do with familiarity too.
But after the Interstates were all over. I used the Loop Interstates as often as possible. In the old days before the Interstates, many of these were simply called ByPasses, and would get you around a city without getting into the heavy city traffic. But come Rush Hours, and all the roads were packed, because folks knew the fastest routes to get to work and home again. When I worked downtown, I would only take Hwy-40 as far as the Zoo (Forest Park), then I would swing over to Clayton Road to get past the slow down at two places before Brentwood Blvd. which were on both Hwy-40 and Clayton Road, but I would turn and go up to Manchester Road which was OK, until you got close to Kirkwood, then I would cut back to Clayton Road to Hwy-141 and make the rest of my trek home going through a couple of subdivisions.

There is something unique about the Interstate highway system as you near every major city. And even if they do not have an Interstate rated Loop, there is often a major road that helps you bypass the city with ease, most of the time. Like going from here to home, I normally would have to go through Nashville, but I found two different routes that not only bypass Nashville, one of them also bypasses 90% of the rush hour traffic, so that is the way I would usually take going between here and my old St. Louis home, or to my parents or brothers.
Not to Brag here, but Debi was more than surprised I found a lot of these shortcuts by intuition or just dumb luck in some cases. But she was even more surprised when I started taking her to really neat places near her home here that she never even knew existed. For me it was a challenge to find these places too, some were awesome, some not so great, but regardless Debi thought they were interesting to go see. Especially when we stopped to talk to people who were more than friendly and told us all about the places that might be closed or no longer there, but since many were on private property, they would often go out of their way to show us what we came to see, no charge, and sometimes the owners wife would bring us sandwiches and a drink. Most were pleased someone was still interested in what they had to show, although there were never enough visitors for them to keep them open and on the tourist maps.
I only wish I was still able to go out and see those places, but I'm stuck at home, in a chair, connected to medical machines.

[yogi]

The best popcorn I could buy in the local shops is a brand called O-Ke-Doke. Little did I know until I moved down here to Missouri that it's made in Chicago by the people who make Jays potato chips. The O-Ke-Doke I liked best was their white cheddar cheese version and it retailed at $3.79 for around 7 oz of popped corn. About every six weeks or so they sold that popcorn at 2/$5.00 which is when I would buy 6-8 bags to hold me over to the next sale. But half way through the pandemic O-Ke-Doke became scarce. You know, "supply chain" issues. That's when I decided to create my own supply chain to see if I could duplicate what I liked about O-Ke-Doke.

There are many places that sell popcorn kernels and pre-popped, but most of them are distributors. A few are actually farms, or so they claim to be. It didn't take long to discover that popcorn isn't as simple as it sounds. There is yellow, white, blue, and red kernels which end up in various sizes and shapes. I know of one place that sells "mushroom" popcorn because that is what it looks like when popped. I don't recall seeing butterfly corn, but you can be sure that I'll be looking for it now. LOL The Amish Country farm has a large variety of popcorn and I've been buying from them lately. I have tried one of their white hulless varieties, and it's close but not exactly what I could buy at Schnucks. I have a feeling that O-Ke-Doke is a special variety available only to Jay's, but I have a lot to sample yet before I can draw that conclusion. Regardless of what popcorn I pop, it has to be done in coconut oil. I've not seen Flavicol offered by anybody so that it probably is for commercial use only. In addition to using coconut oil it is also necessary to use popcorn salt. They are all pretty much the same but Amish Country offers one with butter flavoring added. That is great stuff.

I decided to try my hand at caramel and chocolate coated popcorn. I've not done the caramel yet, but the chocolate coated popcorn is excellent for the most part. I've not found a way to keep it from burning the kernels at the bottom of the pot. That's where the liquid is hottest and does not all get used during the process. It turns into burnt chocolate molded onto burnt popcorn along the bottom of the pot. The top layer is fine and tasty, but the price to pay for that is a lot of waste. I suspect the caramel will be about the same because the instructions for making it is identical to chocolate.

All smartphones have a list of apps installed somewhere in their settings. If Debi can look for that list and pick out the navigation software I'm interested in, I will be very grateful. Android phones typically use the Google Map service for GPS and navigation. It's possible she has that standard software with a few add-ons. In that case I'd need to know which add-ons provide all those wonderful options. But, I also realize it can be a chore discovering that kind of information. If it's easy and intuitive to find, then it's worth her time. Otherwise I will just be happy with what I have.

I'm very familiar with the "bypass" routes around Chicago. In fact that is how we get there from here. We don't actually go into the city, but we do turn onto the bypass (some version of I-94, I think) to get to the western suburbs. I suspect there is something similar going on here in STL land, but being a noobie and slow to pick up on such things I am not familiar with the highway system. Plus, as I stated earlier, Missouri has it's own way of making highways and marking lanes in spite of the standardization inherent in the Interstate system. That plus not knowing much about the big city makes my head spin when I have to make an instant decision about what lane to be in.

[Kellemora]

I used to buy O-Ke-Doke cheese flavored popcorn when I was a kid! It was very popular back then and nearly every store carried it. Once Dierbergs began selling those BIG BAGS of pre-popped corn, that was about all we would buy. It was big kernels and few husks.

Long before the frau came home with Flavicol, we used Crators (sp) popcorn oil and salt, because that is what most of the traveling carnival places used, and their suppliers carried.
After Debi and I moved down here, I bought her a 50 lb bag of commercial gourmet popcorn, and she put it in glass quart jars and vacuum sealed them, so the popcorn stayed fresh. We gave away about four or five jars, but she used up all the rest much faster than I thought she would. Now what popcorn she gets, she gets from where she works at Ace Hardware, they buy in bulk for their popcorn machine. Her boss lets her snag a pint or two of the Flavicol oil, but we still have Cretors salt left.

Oh my Yogi, you need to make a tumbler for coating popcorn with chocolate, caramel, or any topping.
If your BBQ grill has a Rotisserie motor, you can use an old stew pot on its side or tilted up a bit if you plan on popping the corn in it first. Then you cool it down and add the flavorings while the motor is turning.

I worked at a Drive-In Theater when I was younger, and we had huge popcorn machines. But we did not bag the popcorn right out of the machine like you see many places do. Unless they have the screen bottom and don't pop a lot at once.
We had this fairly huge drum, looked like something you would pull Bingo Balls from, hi hi. But it was made from I think quarter inch welded wire fabric, could have been larger like 3/8ths inch. Our big popcorn machine at the Drive-In was designed for use with a tumbler. After the popcorn stopped popping, you pulled a handle which dumped the popcorn from the machine into wide trough. Then you picked up this trough and dumped it from the end into the tumbling machine and closed the hatch. This would turn slowly and filter out all the small popcorn and kernels and husk remains into a tray below the tumbler. From there the popcorn was dumped into the bag filling hopper from a door on the end of the tumbler. Some of the popcorn was put into Buttered Popcorn Cups and when a person ordered a Butter Corn, we held the cup under a spout that poured a serving of real butter over the popcorn. We had to charge a nickel extra if they wanted a double shot of butter. That was way back in the early 1960s.

She did look it up on her phone for me last night. I played with it a bit again. It was under the icon named Tools, not Toolbox which is system settings. When you click the Tools Icon, it opens a menu that at the top says Handy Tools and in smaller letters underneath it said for your home or workshop. The tool was found under Measurements, Level and Grade. Open it and it says Level and Grade V1.0.1 and you have a round scale with a bar through it sorta like a clock. At the top under the Title is a Display window showing the degrees of angle. At four points around the round scale are green lights. Basically at 12, 3, 6, and 9 O'clock. When you are perfectly level two of them light up green, either 3 and 9 O'Clock or 12 and 6 O'Clock if using the phone on it's edge. I could not find a way to get into the file storage area for where these programs are stored. I'm sure you can, I just couldn't figure it out, although I did get a window with tons of folders in it. Most of them were just numbered folders, except for the main ones like DCMI and others.

I found these two instructions on-line and neither match how it works on Debi's iPhone.

Use iPhone as a level
Open Measure.
Tap Level, then hold iPhone against an object, such as a picture frame. Make an object level: Rotate the object and iPhone until you see green. Match the slope: Tap the screen to capture the slope of the first object.

A level feature is built right into the iOS Compass app through which you can gauge the angle of a surface. If you want your phone to do more, you can grab any number of apps from the App Store, like iHandy Level and Bubble Level for iPhone.

You think the roads are crazy in St. Louis, you should come down here. They have so many roads that are illegally marked when compared to the laws, it unfathomable.
Every once in a while, someone will take a photo of one of our impossible signs to obey and post them on-line.
Some of them are downright crazy too. Like a sign will say "Truck Route next right," so you make a right turn onto the Truck Route and the next sign you see is "No Through Trucks."
They finally took down the one that said, "No Left Turn" which was mounted right under the Left Turn Signal for a lane with Left Turn Markings on the roadway, hi hi.
The ones we joke about the most down here are the Illegal Signs. For example: The LAW IS Keep Right Except to Pass.
You'll pass a sign that says "Lane Ends Keep Right" and immediately following it a sign that says "Merge Left."
Or you are driving down a two lane highway, and suddenly and without warning, you are in a Right Turn Only lane.
Another Crazy one is, you are on a two lane road where it opens into three lanes and has a sign over the road, Left Lane for West Exit, Thru Traffic, and Right Lane for East Exit. You get into the Right Lane and it doesn't have an exit at all, but if you keep going, you will get to another exit to go West but from the new right lane exit ramp. You have to stay in the Right Lane, not the exit lane, and eventually you will get to the East Exit, which is very easy to miss because there is no exit lane, it simply veers off from the lane you are in, so you can still go straight or exit without changing lanes.
Want to drive your GPS CRAZY, go up one of the mountain roads with all the switchbacks, hi hi.
Or how about this one. You are Traveling South on a highway, but the signs on the side of the road say you are going East on Hwy 33, and right under that sign is one that says West on 441, hi hi. I know why that happens, but it is still funny to see yourself going East and West at the same time you Compass shows you are going North or South, hi hi.

[yogi]

Flavacol can be purchased from places like Amazon or even WalMart. They sell quart containers of the stuff. The most popular brand is Gold Medal, which looks like the same people who make baking flour. The flavored salt seems to be a separate item and does not have any oil in it. The oil can be purchased separately. This is all very interesting but that salt would last about 32 years and I don't expect to be around that long. As Fortune would have it, the Amish people from whom I buy my popcorn kernels also sell 4 oz bottles of butter flavored popcorn salt. My guess is that it's Flavacol, and I must add that it does provide a great taste to the popcorn.

There seems to be several techniques one could use to pop your corn. Almost all the reviews I've read say coconut oil is mandatory, but canola oil can also be used. I dunno about THAT. There is no comparison between those two oils, and coconut definitely has the flavor edge. It's not a consensus but it looks like 2 TBSP of oil should be used for popping 4 oz of popcorn. I've read where you should put the salt into the oil and I've also read where it should be added later after the corn is popped. Regarding coatings, they are supplied as a powder. When doing chocolate or caramel the quantity of oil goes up to 5 TBSP and then 4 TBSP of the powdered chocolate is added to that. The powder has to melt before you put in the popcorn which is where I believe the problem of burnt popcorn arises. In order to melt the chocolate the oil has to be at a higher temperature than the kernels will tolerate. There is some merit to this method, as opposed to a tumbler, in that the coating of chocolate seems to be fairly uniform and no intervention on the part of the consumer is necessary. However, as noted previously, it's all sitting in a pool of hyper heated oil for a period of several minutes. Not good.

One of the popcorn vendors in Tennessee I believe also sells a popcorn pot that has a wiper type blade that rotates on the bottom of the pot. I thought this was too extravagant for simple popcorn, but it might be what is required for coated popcorn. It's nearly $100 for the pot if I recall correctly, and I'd be hard pressed to justify such an investment. Then again, I do have birthdays and two daughters who are always looking for things to get me ... .

I truly appreciate you going through the trouble of looking into Deb's smartphone for an app I would like to have. After reading your report, however, I see two problems. First of all I was hoping to discover the name of the app for driving navigation. I already have a "tools" app that includes a level. It's not nearly as sophisticated as the one you describe, but it does work very well. The second problem is that I incorrectly assumed Deb is using an Android phone. Some apps do appear on both iOS and Android, but those would be third party apps. What you found were the default system apps Apple supplies whether you want them or not. If there is an icon that Deb clicks to start the navigation app, that icon should have a name. It's the same kind of thing you find on Linux or Windows desktops. Icons have labels which generally reflect the name of the app. If you can get THAT name, I'll be glad to look into the Google store on my phone to see if there is an equivalent.

I don't know about illegal road signs in Missouri. If they exist I have not recognized them yet. However those exit ramps are a pain the the buzzatski. Sometimes, and there is no consistency here, the far right lane will make you exit the highway. If you drive like I do and stay to the right except to pass, then you will be forced to exit at some point in the middle of nowhere. They want you to merge left instead of staying in your lane. I don't know who thought of that "brilliant" idea, but it's rare to see that kind of exit on Illinois highways. My recent side trip around STL was due to the fact that there were TWO left lanes that force you to exit, which I have learned to intuitively avoid here in Missouri. Well, in my case I should have exited in one of those two choices, but I was in the right lane and didn't get any warning about what was happening. So, I took a side trip around Lambough International. Those so called illegal road signs in Tennessee certain have to be frustrating as well as humorous, but they apparently won't force you to go to places you don't want to be.