Monster Storm

Don't know how many of you have been through a real perfect storm in your lives, but we had that experience on our drive home from Chicago (this one is different from the tornadic winds that came through our neighborhood in May - see Destruction and Construction post in May). We watched the lightening in the distant clouds for about 60 miles as we headed by car southeast out of Chicago. We kept wondering if we would actually miss the storm or go through it. Well...............here are the videos. Hang on to your hats as this is the biggest gully washer we have ever been through in our lives...........and in a car, on the highway, at night!!!!!!! We just kept hoping a big tornado wouldn't come down to really wreck our evening as we were out in the middle of nowhere in the DARK!! Auntie Em!!!!!

As we headed towards the storm from just south east of Chicago.

So, this is when it starts to get REALLY scary. We haven't been driving at night in one this scary since moving to the midwest over 10 years ago.




We both gave a huge sigh of relief once we came out the other side of this storm. It took a total of about 30 minutes from entry to exit of the really bad stuff, even though we watched it for at least 1 hour before we even entered it. The car radio finally told us there had been over 3 inches of rain in less than an hour and we were right in the middle of it. 4 more inches were expected throughout the night! There were flash flood warnings for exactly where we were. Good thing we were up on the highway and not on a surface road or we would be under water in this flat farmland. Never a dull moment here in the Land of Oz!

Late summer fun coming next..........if we survive this weather :o)

Chicago

Who doesn't love Chicago. Fabulous food, fabulous people, fabulous views, fabulous architecture, fabulous art and science, fabulous shopping. We just recently made a road trip there so Rowan could discuss science at a conference and I could go out and see some at a museum.

We were lodged at the Chicago O'hare Airport Hilton. A very nice hotel, but right across the street from terminal 2 in the airport. The conference was being held at this hotel, so there we were.  I loved spending one morning looking out of the window of our 10th floor window,  drinking my coffee and imagining where all the airplanes were taking all those people as I watched the planes take off from the main runway. I also got to watch a tremendous thunderstorm pass through the airport, and close it down for over an hour. Rowan absorbed science for 2 days while I hung out with our good friends Ed and Cristen. The whole time I was there, I kept asking myself........how will we all survive without Oprah????? :o)

On to the photos.

As we traveled north by car through miles of very flat farmland in Indiana, we came across this huge wind farm just southeast of Chicago in Benton County, Indiana. There were hundreds of windmills along a roughly 10 mile stretch of corn fields. This is the largest windmill farm I have seen in Indiana. Go here for a cool video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STZATr4Fhtg
I grew up just outside of the Altamont Pass Wind farm in northern California, still hosting the largest concentrations of wind turbines in the world. Go here to learn about that wind farm: http://www.eoearth.org/article/Altamont_Pass,_California  Here is the Indiana farm.

 It is so refreshing to see that folks around the country are coming to their senses and taking advantage of green energy like this.

Once we arrived in the greater Chicago area, we made our way around the city and out to the Chicago O'hare Airport - a city itself! One morning I was treated to a tremendous thunderstorm rolling through the airport. Watching it roll in from the 10th floor windows in our room was pretty cool. It is amazing how quickly they can close down an airport. Notice the lights of an airplane in the sky (on the left). The plane is trying to skirt the storm and squeak in for a landing before everything is shut down. I bet that was an exciting landing for the passengers!

Notice the scary funnels at the back of this cloud. I was nearly looking straight at them from the 10th floor windows. YIKES!

This photo is taken in the same spot as the first one in this series. Notice how the runways have completely disappeared. The rain was in sheets!

Auntie Em!!! Sure glad we weren't trying to fly anywhere today :o)

Believe it or not, once the storm passed, our dear friends Ed and Cristen drove from Oak Park through flooded streets to come and get me for a day of fun at the Museum of Science and Industry: http://www.msichicago.org/
I had never been there so was very excited to go and learn some new stuff. An added bonus is that I will be there with Ed. He is the most hilarious man and keeps me in constant bent over laughter no matter where we go.
When we entered the museum from the parking garage, this is the first thing we saw. Yes, it is the ass of a real giraffe. The exposed ass, muscles, organs, the whole works, with no skin on. It is one of the Bodies exhibits (see the museum website above to learn more about this exhibit) and if you have never seen this traveling Bodies show, it is a must! You can learn way more than you ever imagined about how bodies of all sorts are put together.

 You can imagine how we burst into laughter when we looked up and this is the first thing we saw. We laughed for 15 minutes. Here is Ed and his poor hysterical wife Cristen below the rumpus maximus. Ed looks like Moses, don'tcha think? Or maybe Osama Ed Laden? Santa? Maybe could be in the band ZZ Top? A Rabbi? The possibilities are endless :o) So how does one seriously pose below something like this! Just one of those moments in life you can't pass up.

After we regained our strength from our laughing fit, we made our way further into the museum. If we continue to laugh like this as we go along, we will have to crawl out of here.

They have whole airplanes in the aviation section of the museum. 

 We went on a little coal mine adventure too. They take you way down in the ground by elevator below the museum. When the doors open you are literally in a coal mine. Coal is a huge industry here in Illinois (and the region) so they really talked up the clean coal thing (yeah, right! clean coal. Hmmmm). They explained in great detail what it takes to run a coal mine and how the coal is used to benefit our lives. Here is our guide, who is also a stand up comic in his night job.

 Our guide with Ed. Another benefit of going somewhere with Ed is he is always asking questions and engaging people in interesting conversations. We stayed back at the end of the tour and learned more about our comic. He was a very funny guy.

A photo from the recycling exhibits.  Nuff said. 

The weather exhibits were just fantastic. I took this cool movie of the avalanche dynamics piece. Really cool to watch it happen.

Here is a clip of the science tornado. A horrifying reality in these parts.

We made our way over to the most incredible train set landscape I have ever seen. The exhibit took up one whole end of a huge exhibit hall. The trains ran all around and through the city of Chicago, out through the Great Plains and on to Seattle and the great Northwest. There were some amazing details that I captured in pictures and video.

The Chicago city scape

Here is a video of the train coming into the city of Chicago. This whole thing really brought me back to when I was a kid and we used to set up my brothers Lionel train set and play with it for hours on end. This of course being the ultra deluxe model of that!

So here is a detail in the landscape that is just hysterical. Cristen pointed out these things to me as she is a native Chicagoan and has been here a bazillion times. Notice the bear and it's cub scaring the poop out of this family. The family running away and the child right in front of the mother bear raising it's hands in fear. This little scene was in the rocky mountains. Hilarious!

 Here is a lumber mill in the rocky mountains. Notice the trailers and cabins in the foreground. Clothes hanging to dry on the clothesline and everything.

 And the train finally gets to Seattle.

The wacky science magic throughout the museum is so great. Here Cristen is causing the falling bubbles to fall down her arm and miss the child. This is all projected on a screen and somehow a person can control where the bubbles go by moving their body through them. Crazy!

 We came upon a whole section of the museum on the circus (many traveling circuses have come from these parts).  Silly, I know. But we had to. Cristen and I had such a laugh looking at ourselves in the crazy mirrors that turn your body into crazy shapes, that we almost had to be rescued by medics. We laughed so hard we cried and sprained our bellies. It was FABULOUS!

 There is an entire submarine in the museum. It is a U-505 German sub from WWII captured by the Americans. Go here for the details on the history: http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/u-505/

It is an amazing story.

 Here are the guys who were on the American ship USS Chatelain who captured the German sub. Too cute!

 The Apollo 8 command module. Launched Dec. 21, 1968, Splashdown Dec. 27, 1968.

I remember watching this happen on TV when I was a kid.

Inside the Imax theatre where we saw a chilling movie on storm chasers chasing tornado's around the Midwest. Uplifting (pun intended!) :o)

 The Chicago skyline. I love this city.

Ed & Cristen's house in Oak Park (a burb of Chicago just west of downtown) is in the district famous for it's large concentration of Frank Lloyd Wright homes/buildings. Wright's studio is here and we toured it a few years ago. There are also many homes in the neighborhood designed by him. A worthwhile trip if you enjoy architecture.

Ed & Cristen's castle.

Ed & Rowan in their front yard.

This plaque is laid in the cement walkway as you enter the path up to Ed's house. Yes, it is true. Be prepared to laugh your ass off if you go through the front door.

 Believe it or not, I have known this man since the late 1980's. We used to travel the same trade show circuit as sales reps back in our past lifetime. The most fun I had in my life mainly because of running into this man who made me laugh constantly as I traveled. How we ended up living a short drive from each other later in our lives is simply fate. :o)

The perfect storm post is next...........and it is a doozie!