With Wings As Eagles: Craig P. Steffen's Blog

An awfully long drive just to sit on a couch

2011 December 13 00:21

I took a road trip this weekend (including Monday) bewteen two weeks of training. I drove 526 miles up and 538 miles back today. It seems like a long way to drive just to sit on a couch.

Getting on I-39 where it begins at Bloomington. Driving dead north--NOW we're getting somewhere!

There are a couple of big wind farms along I-39 in northern Illinois. Here's a side shot. The camper is a random occurence; the "bend backwards" stance amuses me. I presume it's because of the way the camera raster-scans the image.

For quite a while here, it looks for all the world like the road is goin to go between those two wind turbines, like the Gates of Argonath from the Lord of the Rings.

But the road turns eventually.

Some closer shots of turbines:

This is either a Unicycle built by B.S. Johnson of the Discworld novels, or else a new power line pillar with wheels for running the new wires.

I love the mural on the back of this truck.

In Wisconsin, I-90, 94, and 39 run together for a while. I-39 continues to the north, but I branch off to the west with I-94 to head towards Minneapolis/St. Paul.

It's been cold farther north. There's still snow on the ground.

And finally, at the end of the drive up, here's the river as I cross into Minnesota. Yay!

The primary reason for going on this trip was to surprise my brother by showing up to his 30th birthday party. Here's photographic evidence. I'm on the left, my brother Dave is on the right. Would you trust your computer to these guys?

The other reason I went was I visited Chippewa falls Monday (today). One of my stops there was the Chippewa Falls Museum of Science and Technology, which contains an extensive exhibit of vintage Cray hardware.

I'm sitting on serial number 1 of the Cray 1 Supercomputer. The computer parts are in the tall cylindrical section behind and above me. The wider part, that I'm sitting on, houses the power supplies. It was awesome seeing this museum. The early Cray systems defined the very idea of a Supercomputer, and were marvels of engineering and computing design. (At the left of the picture is a display with three floppy disks illustrating how storage has gotten bigger over time.)

The end-of-trip obligatory speedometer shot.

I bought this car just about exactly 2 1/2 years ago, and I've already put almost 55,000 miles on it. In a bit over 5,000 miles from now, it will have passed even the extended warranty that I bought for it.