From the Passenger Seat

When Gary is driving, I have more time on my hands but what to do with it?

I began by starting to keep track of the birds we saw, but it was a cold day so there weren't a lot around.  Still, by the end of the day, I had thirteen on my 2012 list.  By the time we reached Appleton, a bald eagle swooped over the highway.  Soon after we passed a farm whose silos were dotted with rock doves.  Many birds were commonplace: herring gulls, starlings, crows and geese, but when we passed the border into Illinois, there were lesser scaup.  They won't be back into our part of Wisconsin until late March at the earliest.

We always keep track of the big semi trucks we pass, glancing at the doors to see where they came from. This day a lot of Manitoba trucks were heading into Illinois, so Canada is still exporting to the USA.

We talked about keeping a running score of all the people driving while talking on cell phones, but there is no sport in that since it soon was obvious about every third driver was endangering others that way.

We took Highway 2, the drive along Rock River, which I had remembered from years past as one of the loveliest roads in Illinois, but sadly it has been "improved", widened with passing lanes.  This required removing many trees.  It is probably safer, but now monotonous.

Happily, Maxson's is still there. This restaurant has superb food with a view of geese, a riverboat and the statue of Blackhawk across the river.  Gary later said in Illinois they slaughtered the Native Americans then erected monuments to them.

We stopped to see Gary's Aunt Shirley, but she is stone deaf and takes an afternoon nap.  We knocked and called with no result.  We'll see her tomorrow at the funeral.  Aunt Shirley is almost 92.  We're attending a funeral for his Gary's father's cousin who died at 98.  Meanwhile, his great aunt Alice is 96 and living with her younger paramour in Colorado.

Gary is likely to outlive me with those genes, so I don't worry about his pack rat ways, since the odds are against my outliving him.  Someone else will have to deal with the mess.