Relaxing in the mountains..er, foothills

Ahh, North Carolina. Why does it feel 20 degrees cooler here than in Lexington? Must be the close proximity of the mountains and the rivers that feed down from them. Or maybe it's the massive abundance of green, leafy trees that overshadow the deck that I'm sitting on as I type. Who cares....I'm just glad it's cooler!

We're in Tryon, NC for the weekend right now. One of my wife's co-workers owns a small house here in the foothills of NC. We jumped in the van yesterday (because it's 5, yes 5! miles inside of NC, and I can't drive the Blue Streak outside of SC unless I'm on business) and drove up. My wife drove and I read a book. Reading is the only way I can avoid "helping out" with the driving duties. I didn't even have to read a map, due to the awesomeness that is GPS. My wife just listened to the voice coming out of the box and we found our way here with no problems...except for the slight detour that I caused by not paying attention to the map on the GPS. But that was easily solved by turning around and getting back on the right road. Once again, GPS rules.

The house is pretty small...any more of us and we'd be tripping over each other as we walk around. The back deck is good sized, extending out about 8 feet from the back of the house, and going the whole length of the back of the house. If you lean over the side, you look down into a stream that runs along behind the house. It's very soothing. Much better than listening to airplanes landing at Columbia International Airport. The next door neighbor even has wireless internet! Ask me how I know. The house is fully furnished; stove, fridge, washer/dryer and all that stuff. The bathroom is just big enough for one person to in and TCB. No sharing the mirror in the morning here! The water's hot, and there's plenty of it. There's one bedroom, and the living room has a pull-out futon.

When we got in yesterday (Friday) and got unloaded, I sat down with my four-year-old and watched The Golden Compass. I've got to be honest...I cheated and read the book when the movie first came out in theaters, so I knew basically what was going to happen. I didn't really like the book, and I didn't really like the movie. They were both just ok. Kinda like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe...just ok. At least the kids in TGC didn't whine like the babies in TCN. Man, what a bunch of sissies! The thing that got me in TGC was the accents. Normally I can get past most English accents, but this was difficult! I know my kid didn't understand a word they were saying, but she remembered the polar bears! That was the coolest part of the movie. Armored bears stomping around squashing evil doers like bugs. Awesome! After that was over, I perused the selection of movies that was already at the house. From that, I picked out Casino Royale. What a great flick! I'd seen it before, but man, I could watch that movie again and again. And I'll probably watch it tonight. Oh, I forgot to mention...there's no TV. By that, I mean we don't have cable/rabbit ears/satellite. So no local news, weather or anything like that.

After the movies we went to Sidestreet Pizza in Tryon. Excellent pizza. In fact, I've got about half of the one we ordered last night in the fridge. Guess what I'm eating for dinner tonight? In addition to pizza, they do subs and general Italian food, i.e. lasagna, pasta etc. By the time we left, about 7-7:30, the place was packed and people were waiting for tables. Since we parked about a quarter mile away, we walked the downtown area and checked out all the shops that were closed. And then we had to find a place that sold shorts, cuz I forgot mine at home. We found a Dollar General in Landrum (SC), and I bought a pair of sleep pants from a very inquisitive clerk. Since I'm outta state, and because I try not to panic the locals, I was wearing my black biker shirt over my shoulder holster. Well, the shirt is black with two flaming choppers on the front, and I get a lot of looks when I wear it. This guy just had to know where I got it, how much and all that other stuff. In reality, my wife won it at some bar we were at when we used to ride a lot. It was way too big for her, so I just took it. I don't think the guy believed us.

We all slept like logs last night, and when we got up this morning it was nice and cool. Oh yeah, there's no A/C in the house. Didn't matter cuz it was 60 degrees. I fixed bacon and egg tacos for breakfast, and we decided to go to Pearson's Falls. Since everything's so close, we were there right after they opened at 10am. After parking the van, and ignoring the No Concealed Weapons signs, we headed up the trail. It was a quarter mile, uphill to the falls. The four year old almost ran the whole way, exclaiming "I see the water!" everytime she saw the river. Which was every turn. The trail up was very easy...it's a trail, maintained by volunteers. It's even got handrails and steps. Easy. When we got to the top, my daughter said, "We came all that way for a big water fountain?". But at least the butterflies were cool.

Coming down was as easy as going up, and we decided to go see the horse show that was going on this weekend. My daughter was all excited about riding horses, until we explained that we were going to watch the horses, not ride them. Letdown number 2. She was pleased with the butterflies, though. Oh yeah, they had a park she could play in, and another river to watch. I think it was the same river, different location. She didn't care. After the park, we decided to get some Bar-b-que for lunch. Off we go to Landrum again, to Southside Smokehouse and Grille. The picture in the magazine made it look really good, and when we got out of the van, it smelled really good. Maybe I was just really hungry. The meat was dry. The pork, the chicken and the sausage...all dry. There were less than a dozen folks in there at NOON. Four of those people were waitstaff. To make it short, I was not impressed. The butterflies were nice, though.

McCrone, Day 5, 5.5, 6....what, huh?

Day Five of PLM at McCrone started much the way the previous four had…except I had to haul all of my luggage over to the parking garage and load up my car. The street that the hotel is on is a one-way affair, and the openings for cars to get in and load up are not openings…they are an OPENING (singular). And it’s next to a bus stop. So I actually began the day on Thursday night by taking stuff I really didn’t need over to the car. In the rain.

Checkout was simple. Gave’em my room number and they said I was good to go. Got my parking violated, I mean validated and I was on my way to the garage. As I went to pay my parking, I noticed that the machine didn’t take Discover. What an interesting discovery. Luckily I had my handy-dandy Visa. $95 later, I was pulling out of my space and onto class. Traffic was light and I didn’t have to use the siren or anything. I’ve got some pictures of the Institute itself, but not anywhere near a computer, so that’ll have to wait.

Friday was sample prep day. Don’t ask me why the last day of the course is the first time we learn how to make slides. It’s not my course. But it was informative and interesting. I made some cross-sections of fibers, and learned that having a good stereo ‘scope and a sharp razor can do some good! Around noon, we called it a day and everyone headed out, almost all to the airport. Not me….I was hitting the road in the Blue Streak. Traffic was really light until I hit the second tool, I mean toll plaza. The attendant in my lane closed it down three cars ahead of me. I think the car that was in the lane broke down, cuz there was a butt-load of fluid underneath it. As I waited for a break in the line that was steadily building beside me, I pondered what would cause someone to leave their car in the toll plaza and not try to move it off to the side where the plaza was closed? Ahhh, far be it from me to try and apply common sense to the situation. Eventually I made it through the plaza and was steaming forth into Gary, IN. Bleah. It was one of those days where it’s too cool for AC, and not too cool for vent or open windows. So I drove around Gary with open windows. Bleah.

The drive south on I-65 was as eventful as 200 miles of open, flat farmland can be. I made it through Indianapolis before rush hour, even given that I gained an hour somewhere on I-65. I didn’t make it to Loiusville, KY before rush hour, however. And there’s only one lane on the bridge that goes to I-64 east. So I pulled a “rush ahead and cut someone off in the exit lane” maneuver. I hate it when people do that to me. About the time I got through Louisville, my headache that started in Gary got worse. So I stopped at the one restaurant that I had not been to since the start of my PLM odyssey. Waffle House. My favorite on the road place to eat. As I ate, I noticed there were several hotels in the immediate area, and called home to say that I thought I’d stay in Louisville for the night. Ahhh, but little did I know that my second favorite travelling companion was about to kick in. Right before I started eating, I downed an orange goody’s powder. Right as I was finishing my headache started to ease, so I thought, “I’ll put in another hour or so, and cut off some time that I have to travel tomorrow.” So I pushed on. Two hours into my “hour” I realized that I was more than halfway home, so I might as well keep going. Then I ran into traffic in Knoxville. I have no idea why two of three lanes were closed, and as I moved 5 miles in one hour, I still didn’t see why. Eventually (10 miles in) I saw that the lanes were closed. Good on ya, Tennessee DOT! It’s all good, though. The iPod was going, I didn’t have to fill up on gas, and HOLY COW I HAVE TO GO UP AND DOWN SOME MOUNTAINS! Luckily for me, I found favorite travelling companion #1 at a rest stop in NC. Wild Cherry Pepsi. That 20oz of heavenly flavor lasted me all the way to Lexington, SC. Never mind that I had to stop twice more to stretch and move around to stay awake. But I made it home at 3am Saturday. I’m guessing at the stats, but here they are anyway: Total time, 14 hours and change; driving time, 12 hours and change; average moving speed, ~70mph; average overall speed, ~60mph. Number of troopers seen: less than 5. I’m not including sheriff’s deputies, but I saw about a dozen of those, mostly in TN (around that traffic backup).

Stuff got: a really good class on PLM, appreciation for mid-sized towns, respect for Chicago cab drivers, a cool black messenger bag, several buttons, a beanie, a harmonica and a key chain from House of Blues, a cool black polo shirt and sleep deprivation.

McCrone, Day....4? Yeah, 4

Welcome to Thursday! Class was good today, we started by looking at the rest of our natural fibers and using the PLM to characterize them. Then we got some unknowns. My slide had 4 unknowns on it, two fibers and two minerals. Fibers are cool. Minerals suck-ee. I finally figured out what they were, but it took me a while. Plus I had to find the dang things. And lots of minerals look alike, so if you try to compare them, you lose whichever rock you were looking at to compare! The coolest thing we did today was microchemistry. Basically it's chemical tests on a microscope slide. Very neat!

Tomorrow's the last day, but at least it's not a full day. That would truly suck, having to leave here the same time everyone else in the city is. And on a Friday. Hopefully by the time 5pm rolls around here, I'll be in Kentucky. Headed back to SC and ground that I'm comfortable on. Not that Chicago hasn't been fun. I've walked up and down the same streets for four days and I still see things that I didn't see the day before. Shops, restaurants and alleys. There's just so much to do.

Well, I said yesterday and the day before that I'd post some pictures, so here they are:



You can't see it, but my hotel is on the other side of the Starbucks. The awning is right under the American flag. Both streets in this picture (and most in the downtown area) are one way. Guess which way my car is? That's right, off to the left, down another one-way street and three floors up. Guess how many cars will be parked out in front of the hotel tomorrow morning waiting on people to check out and leave? Bunches.

If you turned around to face the other way and walked down a couple of blocks, this is what you'd see. It's the Chicago Institute of Art. I don't know any of those people.

I don't think they mean $300/month.

This is Donald Trump's new building. It's right on the river. You can't see it in the picture, but the top's not finished. Kinda like tha Donald's hairdo.

Chicago HD. I was pleasently surprised to see a good amount of bikes on the streets. Lots of riders not wearing helmets. It's your choice, but if I were riding in this city you can bet I'd be wearing one!

It's hard to see, but that says Chicago Police on the side of that boat. I thought about vaulting over the side of the bridge, but I had forgotten to wear my eye patch and puffy shirt. No pirate action for me.

This is the video I took on State Street, near Wacker (I think). Yeah, Wacker Blvd. I can't make this stuff up. I don't know who those girls whose voices you hear in the video are, but as soon as I was done shooting the video, I tossed them off the bridge. And there was no Police boat around to save them!

McCrone, Day 1.5-Observations on Chicago

I took some pictures of my hotel room, just to give an idea of how....compact it is. Here's the desk/tv/computer/office space.



Here's the view from the window beside the bed


Here's the view from the entrance. I'll get some pictures of the city up tomorrow. But first, some observations on Chicago:

I had dinner tonight at Ditka's. For as much as I spent, which was basically all my per diem for the day, I would have expected MUCH better food. It was just good. I had the NY strip, looked like it was about 12-14oz. At the restaurant, you buy the food items separately. So the fries were extra. $7 extra. Good thing that I've almost stopped drinking soda at restaurants! I have no idea how much they were, but I'd guess that they would be about $2.50. The water was free. I checked. The steak was cooked correctly, medium, but didn't have any...flavor. You know how steakhouses always season their steak with something? Not here. Don't get me wrong, it tasted really good, especially after I walked almost 2 miles to get there. But it wasn't $38 good. While I was there, I think Johnny Damon came in. Sat down at the table next to my booth. For about 2 minutes. Then they (there were 3 in his party, and I didn't recognize the chick and the other dude) got moved into the banquet section of the restaurant. I'm 90% sure it was him. So there's my brush with fame for the day. Maybe I'll see O-prah or O-bama tomorrow. Well, probably not Obama...he's fighting with Hitlery over Pennsylvania tomorrow. Too bad it's not gladiator style.

As I walked down the street, I noticed that probably 4 in 10 of the people I saw walking alone had i-Pod headphones in their ears. No i-Pods visible, but definitely the white ear buds that go with the iPod. Probably 8 in 10 men had some type of messenger bag or backpack. I tried to talk my wife into letting me get a Maxpedition jumbo Versipak, but noooooo. "It looks like a man-purse!" Bah.

Lots of women who listened to their fashionista friends when they told'em that, "That outfit looks great on you!". Oh, honey they lied! Those oversized sunglasses make you look like you got in a fight with your meth-cooking-trailer-trash-boyfriend-of-the-moment, and you had to cover the black eye he gave you when you told him to get a haircut and get a real job. Never mind the short skirt and mid-calf boots. You're not Mariah Carey. More like Harry Carey. Enough of the fashion report.

Lots and lots of cabs. Mostly old Crown Vics, several mini-vans and some Lincolns. I guess the limos come out at night, cuz I didn't see them earlier. There sure were a bunch of them out tonight. Lots of public transportation. In between the El, the subway and the busses, I may have to give one of them a try. I can ride a bus in SC, so the train it is!

The magnificent mile is interesting. All the shops you could want in a mall, out on the street. Saks 5th Avenue, Nordstrom, Crate and Barrel, Nike, Disney, blah, blah, blah. No gun stores. No Bass Pro Shops (there's one on the way home). So Chicago's not all great. Panhandlers on every corner. None of them were actively begging for money, but danged if they didn't all have cups out with some loose change in'em. I saw three guys playing saxaphone, a duo with flute and bongos (hippies!), and a blind guy with a harmonica. He was asleep, though. Enough for one day...

McCrone, Day 1

Before I get into the whole report on the class thing, let’s discuss my hotel. The people who put this shindig on (National Institute of Justice, using the President’s DNA Initiative grant) chose the Club Quarters hotel on Adams Street in the heart of friggin’ Chicago. I think I’m about 3 blocks from Michigan Ave, the “Magnificent Mile”. Subway, the El and bus routes are nearby as well.

The hotel is a private hotel…which means that AAA doesn’t review them. They cater to business people who basically need a place to sleep and that’s about it. The room I’m in is pretty small, about two steps across and less than 10 steps deep. I’ve got a queen sized bed and no tub…just a shower. There is a closet, cable TV and as you can tell from the blog postings, free internet (wired and wireless). The elevators have been really fast, so not much waiting. There’s a good sized exercise room on the 3^rd floor, with dumbbells (not just the ones you lift), a couple of treadmills, an elliptical machine and a couple of stationary bikes. There was no one in there at 6am today.

There’s a thousand restaurants within walking distance. Literally, 1000. A Starbucks on every other corner, and McDonald’s on the others. “Hey Goose, this is what I call a target-rich environment!” I have no idea what I’m eating for dinner tonight, so I’m going to walk down Michigan Ave until I find something that speaks to me.

Onto the class. Today was lecture, ‘scope, lecture, ‘scope and so forth. We got into the basic working of the PLM (polarized light microscope), calibrating the ocular micrometer, and a little sample prep. Pretty simple stuff so far. Luckily they have a very well put together textbook and a nice “lab” book for working with. I imagine we’ll have some adjusting to do tomorrow when we get back to the ‘scopes. Nothing too hard, just pretty tedious. I also got one of the cool McCrone Research Institute bags. Very nice messenger type bag, and in black no less!

Most of my classmates are in the Trace sections of their various labs. One lady is in the Firearms section, but I won’t hold it against her. There are two NYPD forensics folks, one from Washington state, one from Missouri, two from Jackson, MS (city crime lab), and one from Virginia. And then there’s me. The lone commissioned (non-civilian) forensic person. No one has much experience, at least at Trace-type stuff. A few of them came from drug chemistry type backgrounds, and I don’t blame them at all for getting out! There’s only so much meth, weed and coke you can identify before it all starts to look the same. Oh wait, there’s prescription pills and Ecstasy to break up the monotony!

So class went by pretty fast, and I didn’t fall asleep in my chair. Mainly cuz it was way uncomfortable, and I couldn’t wait to get back to the ‘scope. That chair is way comfortable. As long as I can figure out which buttons and levers do what, I think I’ll be ok. The ‘scopes here are way simpler than the one back at the lab, but PLM is PLM. How hard can it be? Famous last words, I know. Now off to dinner!

Driving to Chicago...McCrone Day Zero

Blogging from the Windy City!

So I deleted the first post…so what? It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to!

I’m in Chicago all this week, attending the McCrone Research Institute’s Forensic Polarized Light Microscopy class. Yeah, you try and say it fast. Anyway, this is supposed to be a graduate level microscope class all condensed down to one week of headache inducing, neck straining, contact lens blurring fun. Yay for me! I’ll post on the particulars of each day’s fun, almost right as it’s happening…well, after I get some dinner that day, anyway.

So I drove up to Chicago from Lexington (that’s SC, not KY). According to Garmin, 810.3 miles, took me 12 hours, 26 minutes total. I stopped for a total of 1 hour 17 minutes, giving me a driving total of 11:08. I averaged about 65.2 mph overall, and about 72.7 mph for my “moving” average. Not too bad, I think. So in approximately 19 years of legal driving, I can count the number of deer I’ve seen on the road (including the stupid one I tagged in ’05) on one hand. Well, I could until today! I saw at least 5 deer on my side of the road, alive and grazing, before I got to Spartanburg. I saw a pair and a three-some, about 10 miles apart, and it scared the crap outta me! None of them even moved toward the road, but they all looked up as the El Rakeman Express came rolling through. Oh, I forgot to mention that I left at 4:30 AM! So all these deer were seen before 5:30 am, as I tend not to waste time on the highway. In addition to the grazing herbivores, a medium sized cat tried to commit suicide-by-Rakeman…I say tried, because he got ½ of the way across the road, headed toward my wheels, when he thought better of it and saved 8 of his 9 lives by going back. There’s no coming back when you get struck by the Blue Streak. I made my way through South Carolina and some of North Carolina in the dark. Since I’ve seen the I-26 stretch that moves through SC from Charleston to Spartanburg, I wasn’t too disappointed. The piece through NC and Tennessee was very pretty, even in the misty gray dawn. There was almost no traffic to speak of, and I only saw ONE trooper through both states…and there wasn’t even anyone inside the vehicle, just an SUV on the side of the road. In fact, I didn’t see any highway patrol until Indiana, and they were all on the other side of the highway.

I came up thru TN and Kentucky, where the grass was really green, but not blue. Plenty of horse farms, once I got through Lexington. I made the turn north in Louisville, and entered Indiana. Wow. That has got to be the most boring stretch of interstate this side of the Mississippi. I saw a wreck on the Chicago side of Indianapolis which highlighted the necessity of cable barriers…sedan vs. minivan, with the sedan going thru the median and stopping in the oncoming traffic lanes. Nice.

At least the drivers were decent. If someone was moving fast, the folks in the number one lane (fast) moved over and let them past. Since I-65 is almost all 2 lanes, it was a nice change to be able to go 78 mph, rather than 60 like on I-95. Which is also 2 lanes, but is so chock full of DBs and DAs, that there’s no way to even approach the speed limit. If you can’t figure out what a DB is, use your imagination…what sound does a water truck make when it collides with a vinegar truck? As for DA….I’d rather be a smart one than a dumb one…

So Indiana was flat and boring. There was major construction going into Gary, which stinks just a tiny bit worse than Pasadena, TX, but as I made the turn onto the detour my Garmin said, “Recalculating!”, and proceeded to tell me how to get the crap outta where I was. Not that I was panicking or anything, since I knew where I was. Yep, I can read signs…even the ones that are clustered together with 18 other ones listing how to get back to where you want to be. But it was nice to not have to double check the paper map, and to listen to that sweet voice of reason…my (wife’s) Garmin GPS…Awsome!

As I made the huge loop that was my detour, I entered onto I-90…the DA toll road that leads into Chicago. You’d think with all the traffic on it, it would have paid for itself by now, but nooooo. Right after I got on the Dan Ryan Expressway (yeah right!), the traffic thickened. And all those people that were good drivers must have continued onto Wisconsin or Detroit, cuz they weren’t with me! Luckily, the Voice of Reason was there to help me. “Exit right…stay right…turn left…arriving at destination!” Once again, awesome! I love GPS. What did we do without them…oh that’s right, we waited until our kids were old enough to read, then we gave them a map and asked, “We’re at mile marker 75, how long until we get to….” Oh, wait…maybe that was just my family. At least I learned how to read an interstate map. It’s all good.

Since I’m on Central time now, I can stay up an hour later! Not likely, as 12 hours in the Blue Streak has just about worn me out. Now I get to look forward to 9 hours of microscope. Once again, yay for me. I’ll put some stuff up tomorrow after class, and I’m going to try and hit up Wrigley Field for the Cubs v. Mets game tomorrow. Which will also be my first ride on a subway. Not the sandwich. Oh well.