We started getting some pretty heavy snow last night, with a promise by the weather folks that the “lake effect” snow, or as I understand it precipitation that is caused by the evaporation / condensation off the lake then dumped right back down as snow, would continue and be at its worst during the morning commute. Fortunately the snow stopped in Chicago sometime overnight, leaving us with blue skies and just a couple of inches of pretty, fluffy snow this morning. I took the above photo this morning from my parking space at work — note the band of dark clouds just over the buildings on the left — that’s poor northern Indiana getting pounded by lake effect snow still! Very cold here this morning.
This was of most interest to John and me… but there are train tracks that cross North Avenue just east of the Chicago River, going from an industrial area along the river to the north over a small railway bridge and onto Goose Island on the south. In 18 years of going past this spot, neither of us have seen a train use these tracks… UNTIL YESTERDAY! Miles and I were stopped by a train there — it was about 8 cars long and contained a tanker car and several loads of long pieces of wood.
No photo of this, but only about 30 minutes previously I had been stopped near the zoo to let a gaggle of geese cross the road. It was a real “Make Way for Ducklings” situation except they were geese and all adults, and no police had to get involved, but about 40 geese slowly, single file, walked across the road.
OK, then in the third photo-worthy (though readers can be the judge of that!) scene from the weekend, we were walking past the corner store that is just across from the community garden, a block south of Flying Saucer. Just for emphasis, I’ll go ahead and state that we have walked by this store hundreds of times. There are pretty generic looking ads up on the outside of the store, a collage of not very attractive photos of food that this store may or may not sell (I thought the store sold mostly cell phones). Anyway, John noticed something funny about the photo of the Corn Flakes box.
What??? So weird! It’s not a satirical decal on top of the banner, it’s part of the overall piece. Why is this here? Do the owners of the store even know that this is there?
Interesting pictures from winter in Chicago. It shows that Arctic air and snow does not stop you and your family. Being a slow eater, I have a problem with soggy corn flakes. I am wondering about the “Bimbo” bread. Is that for real?
Well, we don’t really have a choice but to go out in it! Hopefully we are at least halfway through the coldest part of winter, though. Both our memories and the statistics show this is the coldest and snowiest winter since our first one in Chicago 20 years ago. Bimbo bread is a real brand. I thought it was more a Latin American brand than US, in fact the coloring on the package had made me assume it was kinda like the Latin American counterpart to Wonder bread, but looking at their website it doesn’t say anything about that. I know when we were in Mexico we got not only Bimbo bread but Bimbo toast. Toast all wrapped up in a plastic bag and ready to eat!