Wind In My Face

Posted on 29/11/2022 by Grumpa Joe

I sit here wondering what I will write about as Lovely and I just returned from a late morning walk and are tuckered out. The wind is out of the south and very strong. Yahoo weather claims it to be between 19-21 mph. Yes, that is strong. I remember the days when I still rode a bicycle to commute and on the way home from work I faced a south wind that often stopped me dead. Even though I have granny gears to climb steep hills they sometimes aren’t enough to ride head first into a stiff wind. God forbid I have to restart when the wind is that strong. Starting into the wind becomes downright impossible, and many times I turned around to start with the wind at my back and then made a U-turn to return to the direction I needed to go. Balancing a bike when riding into that strong wind is a lot like walking a tight rope, progress is slow and wildly unsteady.

The gusts this morning hit hard enough to stop us from moving forward. I told Lovely to walk behind me so I would break the wind for her. Thank goodness it is only three blocks to the Old Plank Road Trail which is flanked by trees and the wind is cut off. We finished our 1.5 mile walk in thirty-five minutes and were glad to enter into the quiet stillness of our home.

Lovely always complains about the wind. This morning the only conversation she braved was to ask me to move to a place where there is no wind. “It doesn’t exist” I told her. Even in places that are warm during the winter months there is always wind. I remember once coming out of a movie house in Peoria, Arizona during early afternoon, and the sky was beige. It kind of looked like fog, but it was sand. Visibility was limited and there was stinging in our eyes. It wasn’t pretty.

As a ten year old kid, my cousin Joe, who was a lot older than me, and who had kids that were the same age as me, telling us a story of one of his cross country driving trips to California. He described traveling in a desert sand storm so violent that the visibility was only a few feet. There were no places to stop to rest, he had to keep moving. When the storm finally finished the paint on his car was gone and the engine needed an overhaul. I couldn’t imagine such a fury. Dad didn’t drive further than Michigan. That afternoon coming out of the theater I recalled Joe’s story and finally believed every word.

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PSA-150529

Posted on 29/05/2015 by Grumpa Joe

It is important that I provide service to the community, and therefore, I issue Public Service Announcements like the one below. No need to thank me, just hit the like button.

The Importance of Walking

Seniors walking

Walking can add minutes to your life.
This enables you at 85 years old
to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing
home at $7000 per month.

My grandpa started walking
five miles a day when he was 60.
Now he’s 97 years old
and we don’t know where he is.

I like long walks,
especially when they are taken
by people who annoy me.

The only reason I would take up walking
is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

I have to walk early in the morning,
before my brain figures out what I’m doing..

I joined a health club last year,
spent about 400 bucks.
Haven’t lost a pound.
Apparently you have to go there.

Every time I hear the dirty word ‘exercise’,
I wash my mouth out with wine.

The advantage of exercising every day
is so when you die, they’ll say,
‘Well, he looks good doesn’t he.’

If you are going to try cross-country skiing,
start with a small country.

I know I got a lot of exercise
the last few years,……
just getting over the hill.

We all get heavier as we get older,
because there’s a lot more information in our heads.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

AND

Every time I start thinking too much
about how I look,
I just find a Happy Hour
and by the time I leave,
I look just fine.

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A Three Pour Evening

Posted on 29/11/2012 by Grumpa Joe

A bottle of Argentina Malbec

A bottle of Argentina Malbec (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This day has been interesting. Yesterday, I discovered a cabinet on the wall of my garage falling down. The contents were too heavy for it and the fasteners began pulling out of the wall. Although, I didn’t want to tackle the job, I did. I removed the cabinet before it fell, and dragged it down to my basement workshop. There, I added new wood to reinforce the weak spots. Then I dragged the cabinet back upstairs and out to the garage. The plan was to remove the sister cabinet and to rework it before it too became a problem. A closer look at the sister cabinet changed my plan. It was very secure and already strengthened. I added more wood to it while it stayed in place. I also added a cleat under the cabinet to give it more foundation. There is no way I want to have to do this again. I finished the job, cleaned up the work site, put away my tools, and headed for supper, and some serious pain killing beverage.

The wine of choice this evening is Malbec from Argentina. I enjoyed a nice pour while heating my frozen pepper steak and rice dinner. Another pour with dinner, and a third with my dessert of pumpkin pie. By now my mind was somewhat numb, and I felt no pain. I donned my heavy jacket and left the house for a walk in the darkness, except it wasn’t dark. My neighbors have decorated their yards with hundreds of mini-lights on their trees, shrubs, gutters, and houses. It was not dark, it was beautiful.

I didn’t walk fast tonight, I kind of stumbled along. The sidewalks were somewhat uneven and I stumbled from side to side in a jerky rapid fashion. Kind of like I was trying to keep myself from falling down. I needed to make a sudden fast moves to stay upright.

The streets of my neighborhood seemed magical. A few years ago, the President of the local Homeowners Association talked everyone into decorating their parkway trees with the same colors, green lights on the tree trunks and white lights on the branches. The sight of a long curvy street lined with trees glowing in green and white lights is absolutely beautiful. The tradition continues and only those houses that are empty or those that are newly occupied do not follow the formula. They are obvious since they are dark and break the chain of diamonds glistening in the night air.

A full moon accompanied by cold crisp air added to the beauty of the evening by contributing a special aura to the electrical lights. By the end the walk my steps were less tenuous and my side to side wandering narrowed to a smooth slightly wavy line.

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Frankfort Chili Cookoff

Posted on 30/01/2011 by Grumpa Joe

Today, I walked into town around noon. That is much later in the day than usual. The sky was a weary gray, the temperature in the thirties, and a wind blowing from the North. I was glad to reach town so I could relieve my morning coffee at the Trolley Barn.  Usually, these walks are solitary. I don’t see anyone, and there are only a few cars on the roads. Today, as I entered town there was activity everywhere. One look at the Breidert Green, and I remembered that Winter on the Green was sponsoring a Chili Cook Off today.

The Breidert Green is named for Burton Breidert, a long time resident now deceased, who owned the B & L lumber yard, which became Fox Lumber, and is now My Sisters and Me, a dress shop.  I never met Burton because he was dead before I moved to town twenty years ago. I learned of him during my research for the Lions Club. He was a prominent Lion and generous community  member. He is credited with the town plan and insistence on keeping the business community central rather than spread around. At least a portion of his fortune came from supplying the building material used to construct the Prestwick sub-division. I lived in Prestwick for fifteen years, there is a minimum of four hundred houses there. Not one of them is small. That’s a whole lot of lumber to sell.

The Green is now a community park which is used for many functions. During January, it is Winter on the Green.

The place was jumping today. The focal point is a structure referred to as the Frankfort Station. It is on the spot that a real railroad station existed many years ago when a real train ran through town on what is now the Old Plank Road Trail. The trail borders the Frankfort Station. The Station is a source of electricity and it was supplying the chili cooks. There were a number of amateur and serious cooks vying for bragging rights to their chili.

The public is invited to attend and eat chili on this day, but I was a half hour too early to try any. Based on the crowd that was already there, it promised to be a succesful event.

I took pictures and went about my walk. I did finally stop at the Trolley Barn to relieve myself. The Trolley Barn was jumping too. The guitar shop was loaded with students learning how to play, the Children’s Museum was crawling with kids, the Deli was busy with a lunch crowd, and the upstairs coffee shop and book store was busy too. The Barn got its name from the building itself. It was used for maintaining diesel-electric railroad cars back in the nineteen-twenties and thirties era. During that time a commuter line ran between East Chicago and Joliet, It played a key role in transporting people from town to town in the far south suburbs. The building remained empty for years until an entrepreneur bought it and converted it into a mall for small businesses.   The Trolley Barn replaces the Grainery Building which was a major tourist attraction. The post and beam building burned to the ground in the nineteen seventies.

Frankfort is a great town established in eighteen fifty. It retains the charm of that era while it grows into a major modern suburb with a thriving population of sixteen thousand people.

The Chamber of Commerce does an outstanding job in keeping the character of the business area thriving while maintaining the character and history fo the town.

Next Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and most of us will be watching the interview between our president and Bill O’Reilly while the festivities on the Green take place. The following week  a Turkey Bowl  is the final event in the series.

Here are some photos from the Chili Cook Off.

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Lions “Strides Walk For Diabetes Awareness”

Posted on 13/04/2008 by Grumpa Joe

Finally, I am coming down from an adrenaline high. The high is the result of helping to organize an event with my local Lions Club. It’s been years since I participated in an event that involved getting the public to come and have fun. Talk about baby steps and motivation. I committed by suggesting the event. Never suggest something unless you are willing to “walk the talk.” When I talk, I am ready to follow up with action too. This walk was no different from the many scouting events that I organized and participated in.

The weather was crappy, although none us who worked noticed. We were too busy having fun to care. The baby steps planned in advance were unfolding and moving forward by many people.  We had a good turn out of Lion members, local Boy Scouts, and the area hospital. We marked walking trails of three lengths, put up sponsor signs, erected a tent, set up tables for registration, had 200 goodie bags prepared, and ready to go. In the week prior to the event today, four area newspapers, and the local TV channel gave us publicity. All planning and organization was  done by  a three man team. Our objective was threefold:

 1. Make people aware of Diabetes and its complications,

 2. Promote walking as a healthful tool to manage diabetes, and

3. Raise money for the American Diabetes Association.

In spite of the weather we accomplished all three of our goals. A beautiful side benefit is that our Lions Club is considering the walk as an annual event. 

Our day was a drizzle, forty degrees, and windy. Amazingly, we registered 23 walkers. On a nice day, the same trail would have seen several hundred walkers from the town. We think the 23 should be honored as heroes for coming out to support us in such hypothermic conditions.

I can’t begin to count the baby steps that we took to get this event off the ground. It took constant communication, and brainstorming to identify the steps. After logging the steps, it took energy to take action to make the steps happen. With regular meetings, e-mail, and the phone, the planning made it come to fruition.

We started on March 4 with the idea, and excuted it on April 12th. We visioned a successfull turnout of two hundred walkers. When someone warned us about poor weather, we saw the day as being warm and sunny. 

The vison was realized!

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