Dad's Route 66 Blog

Discovering Normal Rockwell's America

Racine to Chicago

Written By: trevixan - Jun• 30•11

Today’s post is brought to you by the Motorola DroidX. I’ll explain that later.

After a nice couple of days with family, we left Racine. It’s been 16 years since I saw my aunt, 29 years since I saw my cousin, and this is the first time I met her son. Being shown around Racine, the lake, the diner, other places, was really relaxing. This morning, my cousin was talking to her mother mentioning that her sister and son are in the paper. It seems they have opened a consignment store. I haven’t seen either of them for 16 years as well. So .. I get this idea. Why not show up at their shop before I leave Racine? Well .. that’s what I did. So, giving her a plug for her new store.

I’d post the picture of her and her son, but I don’t know if she’d want that. Since she has her own consignment store, and I knew she also has an estate sale business, I just had to ask her if she watches shows like Storage Wars, American Pickers, Pawn Stars, and other like that. The answer came back a resounding yes. She mentioned that Cash & Cari is about as real as it gets. Anyway, it was good to see her and her son again.

After we left there, we went on a covert mission and ended up in a dark alley. Ok, it was 1pm and the alley wasn’t dark. This is where we went.

It was pretty cool. Secret doors, levers to pull in order to get in. It’s actually a restaurant. They didn’t have their normal menu, but they did have a Mexican buffet.

Please take special note of the wonderful salad I had. Here are some pictures after lunch.

There are 10 points for the one who can identify what’s wrong with the above picture.

And this is the alley entrance I was mentioning.

After the Safe House we traveled down to Libertyville. I tried to update the software on my DroidX and it failed. Then the battery died and because of the current state of the phone, it wouldn’t charge. So, that’s how I ended up in Libertyville. There’s a Motorola site there with people I work with. Anyway, they got the phone working again, so I was happy.

Then off to Schaumburg. That’s where we picked up our 3-day Go Chicago cards. This gets us unlimited entry into some 30 places. Some of these places are the Museum of Science and Industry, which is one of my childhood favorites, and the Willits Tower. This is formerly known as the Sears Tower. There is an observatory on the 103rd floor. Now, Trevor and I both have a fear of heights in buildings, so it should be interesting. I’ve been there before and did not have a problem. I am hoping this time will be the same. However, they have a new feature in the observatory. They have these class bump-out rooms. They extend like four feet outside of the building. Entirely made of glass (or some other clear material). Anyway, the walls, ceiling, and even the floor is clear. It should be like walking on nothing. I’m hoping to force myself out of my comfort zone enough to get some pictures. We picked up our cards at the Legoland Discovery Center. They have some sort of exhibit that is also included in the card, but I didn’t want to go there because the cards get activated on first use. I didn’t want it to start Wednesday.

From there we went to a place that I knew would have free wi-fi to look for a place to stay. It’s a whole-in-the wall foods place. Here’s a picture of it.

So .. not only do I eat my salads, I also shop at Whole Foods Market! :O)

We finally made it our motel. We’re staying at a TraveLodge in some city about 15 miles from the city. Our first criteria for picking a place to stay is free wi-fi. If it has that, then we look at price and availability. That’s how we found this place. Close enough to the city that it’s easy to get into it. Far enough away that we don’t have to pay the high prices. Well, we check in and guess what, the wi-fi doesn’t work in our room. I go to the front desk and run into the manager of the hotel. He says that last Saturday there was a micro-burst right over the hotel which knocked out the computers to the entire place. They got their IT guy in and he was thought to have fixed the problem. Evidently not. It works in the lobby and any wired computer they have, just not the rooms. The owner is new, the manager is new, they don’t really know what the setup is. They didn’t even know where their access points were.

Warning .. geek talk follows
I was walking back to my room to get something and I noticed a box on the wall that didn’t really belong. Hmm .. there’s even an ethernet cable running into said box .. hmm. I flip open the box and what do I see? Why, there’s an access point right outside of our room. I tell the front desk and soon enough the manager comes and tries to reset the access point. Now, I know enough to unplug the access point and plug it back in. That usually gets it working. But not this time. We see the access point and can connect to it, but it doesn’t assign an IP address.

So .. our current theory is that there is a miscommunication, pardon the pun there), between the access point and the actual router/modem. It could be that the router wants to assign all the address and the access point is trying to, or the router wants the access point to assign all the addresses and it isn’t. What they need to do is to get at the configuration of the router/access point for the lobby and use that same scheme for the rest of the hotel. There are three room access points per floor and that would make 12 access points.
End of geek speak .. thank you for our patience

We were using my DroidX as an access point for a while, but Verizon cut us off after a while. I don’t think they liked the amount of data we were uploading. Hence, my opening comment about this post being brought to you by the Motorola DroidX. So, I am currently in the lobby finishing up this post. The IT guy is supposed to come out at 8pm today. Go figure, he has a day job and does this on the side.

Well .. it’s off to Chicago soon. Don’t know what we’re going to do, but I’m hoping the Museum of Science and Industry will be on the list.

See you in another post.

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6 Comments

  1. Annette Thorsen says:

    Sean Connery was not in the casino royale movie. That was daniel craig was it not? ( Of course you know I got a little help with that answer.)

  2. Annette Thorsen says:

    I love the backdoor alley aspect and personality of the place you went to! Now, about that Whole Foods picture. Did you really go there, or did you Photoshop or import that in from somewhere else ?;-.

  3. Rose Hernandez says:

    Hi you traveling duo, love the pics, the signs remember,’ no shooting within city limits’, lol. I think it would be cool to take some pictures of some of the locals you know candid pictures, it will also bring up some nice memories. Soooooo on the road again..singing this song is on my mind 🙂

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