Jan 13

Can I backdate a passport?

Posted on Wednesday, January 13, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

This sounds interesting:

Through the new Scenic Byways Passport, travelers can check in at 12 scenic byways and more than 100 unique attractions and local businesses. Each check-in to a location on the passport earns travelers one entry into a monthly drawing for a prize package valued at about $200. Prize packages include an overnight stay, gift certificates, and more.

The website requires a smart phone. I signed up via my desktop only to get an e-mail telling me to click a link to “put link on home screen”. The instructions say “there is no app to download” but it creates something very app-like, probably directing to a specific browser page. (There is a separate “Iowa Culture” app from the Department of Cultural Affairs.)

The catch for me is, I’ve already been to so many of those places! The Lincoln Highway sites, especially, as shown in this story from WQAD. The second catch is promoting something travel-related when so many people are reluctant to travel. However, many of the “check-ins” would have to be outside anyway.

The passport is all about the Scenic Byways, so large swaths of north-central and south-central/southwest Iowa don’t have any special locations, nor about a 40-mile radius of Muscatine. If the recently minted Jefferson Highway Heritage Byway gets some stops, that will change a bit.

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Jan 11

‘Rehab’ on IA 28, Sioux City pages

Posted on Monday, January 11, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

“Pavement Rehab” is a line often used in DOT five-year plans regarding construction projects. That phrase makes sense for what I’ve done on the IA 12, Business US 20 (Sioux City), the combined IA 12 South/Business 20 East, and IA 28 pages.

As Jason Hancock reported, the transfer of jurisdiction on Virginia Street in Sioux City between Gordon Drive and the new I-29 exit resulted in the hidden designation of IA 12 being relocated and part of Gordon Drive being renumbered secret IA 812. I do not agree with this designation at all. If the “12” connection had to be kept, IA 912 didn’t live longer than two years and its road is now gone, so confusion would be nonexistent. On the IA 12 page, I try to walk through both that change and the routing history of the segment east of the Riverside Boulevard exit, including some tweaking of the endpoint table.

The Virginia Street exit and 812 issue also affect Business 20. Business 20 remains signed on Gordon Drive, so it and IA 12 now technically run separately for a while. The issues of eastbound and westbound Business 20 becoming separated and eastbound Business 20 not being signed from I-29 remain, though.

As for IA 28, I don’t know how recent the project was but its south end in Martensdale now has LGSs and IA 92 has new concrete. I also added clarification regarding the Beaver Creek bridge and its effect on the north endpoint.

On the US 77 page, I integrated photo dates and hope I’ve arranged the photos such that comparisons can be made in the past and present configurations of the I-29 exit.

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Jan 08

Allamakee Freedom Rock has a roof over its head

Posted on Friday, January 8, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

The Allamakee County Freedom Rock was painted in Waukon City Park this summer and dedicated on Sept. 11. It has something other Freedom Rocks in the state do not have — its own shelter.

A story and pictures at the Waukon Standard show the large, lengthy rock and its red-white-and-blue steel shelter. The shelter was donated and installed by a Waukon High School graduate who now has a business in Wyoming.

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Jan 06

My books of 2020

Posted on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

This stack is a little thicker than 2019, but my DVD list is massive.

IF

The only fiction title in there is Self-Care. It is a satire made for those of us who are Extremely Online in certain parts of the Internet, with an ending that’s a twist yet so obvious at the same time. Altered States is a alternate-US-history take of sorts, covering states and territories that might have been. Jennifer Fulwiler is a comedian and podcaster; One Beautiful Dream is about her family and the ups and downs of writing her previous book.

I redacted a couple of titles, for now at least, for … reasons.

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Jan 04

My photo for the year: 2020

Posted on Monday, January 4, 2021, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

October 9, 2020

What you see here is what I came across at the end of my only large vacation of the year. (I did not completely stop traveling. I wore a mask when I was around people.)

Neither the menu nor the newspapers outside the entrance to the King Tower Cafe in Tama had been touched for two months. The King Tower, like so many restaurants across the country, had been brought to its knees by the coronavirus pandemic, which took out the Big T Maid-Rite in Toledo. The derecho that swept through Iowa on August 10 was the killing blow. The cafe’s owners announced August 18 that the King Tower was closed for good.

The papers had already begun to pile up. The three copies of the Des Moines Register show Vice President Mike Pence at a campaign stop in Iowa, wearing a mask; a short notice about the derecho below a story that the Big Ten was preparing to cancel football season (but would later uncancel it); and the word “unconventional” in a headline about a Democratic National Convention being held mostly online.

In full journalistic disclosure, you can see a mark where I had slightly moved the stack before realizing how much the jumble conveyed. I moved the papers afterward to photograph the King Tower’s entire menu.

This photo references the economic toll, political standing, and Iowa’s biggest disaster of the year. (If I posted a paired #2 and #3, they would be the political signs across the road from the now-closed North Winneshiek school and on a lawn in Windsor Heights, each with the assortments you would expect for rural and urban Iowa. The #4 would be of the massive power poles in Cedar Rapids snapped by the derecho that cut my electricity for more than a week.)

It may not be my “photo of the year” in terms of “best” but it’s a photo for the year, or about the year, as I experienced it. Maybe I’ll retroactively select ones for previous years.

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Dec 29

I see you, KYOU; and other TV station notes

Posted on Tuesday, December 29, 2020, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

Back in June, I uploaded new TV station maps and county-by-county listings. One of the prompts for making the update was finding out that KYOU, the Fox station in Ottumwa and the only standalone Fox station in Iowa, had added NBC as a digital subchannel.

The main effect of this addition, besides creating a gray area in “what counts as coverage”, is filling a space in the Ottumwa area for NBC programming. It’s on the fringes of multiple markets, and the counties in the area had been orphans for a while. I got the map from a video weathercast, and for some of you the graphics might look familiar. KYOU doesn’t have a weather desk, and it’s actually the KCRG team doing the weather for them, as the stations are now both part of Gray TV.

I updated and uploaded the graphics, figuring I’d get a blog post out sometime — and then things went pear-shaped for me computer-wise. The good news is, my iBook still works as long as it’s plugged in, and that’s the refuge for the few things that must be done in an application that stopped being updated nearly two decades ago.

I have taken the “opportunity” to start from scratch by doing a full evaluation — not just the minor tweaks I made in June, but building every network map from the ground up and catching any changes I may have overlooked. One of those other changes was also on the fringe, as Sioux Falls’ ABC and NBC stations merged in a first-of-its-kind operation. KGAN threw me for a loop: Its regional radar and county-outlines-only forecast map are slightly different!

A note also must be made of coverage champion Carroll County, currently 9-for-9 on station maps in Des Moines, Omaha, and Sioux City. The full county-by-county station-by-station listing is here.

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Dec 25

Traer UMC Christmas Eve Service

Posted on Friday, December 25, 2020, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

I have missed Christmas Eve services for work but the service was always there. This year, due to rules set at the state level, Traer UMC did not have a Christmas Eve service, but it was recorded and placed online.

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Dec 24

KOEL back to 92.3

Posted on Thursday, December 24, 2020, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

KKCV-FM, 98.5 “The Hog,” was a new country music station in the Waterloo area in the 1990s. Throughout my school years, that was my most frequently listened-to station. I even spent a job-shadow day there learning about the radio programming. (The radio industry nowadays is subject to lots of job insecurity and increased nationalization, but I ended up in the field of journalism, which is totally different.)

In 2003, the KKCV call sign and “Hog” branding was discontinued. The much-longer-lived KOEL-FM took over 98.5 while its old home, 92.3, changed formats.

Earlier this month, the quarter-century of country music on 98.5 came to an end with a direct swap of KOEL and “Q92.3”. The latter is now “Q98.5”. (Source: Radio Insight) The new place has a greater reach, which is good. However, instead of 1990s country, it’s playing 2010s country, which aside from a few exceptions I have little taste for.

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Dec 22

Key ramp at I-80/380 opens this week

Posted on Tuesday, December 22, 2020, at 10:00 AM by Jeff


March 12, 2007: Eastbound I-80 at I-380. I probably have a better picture of this, but archive searching isn’t what it used to be for me.

The most important inner loop ramp of the I-80/380 cloverleaf interchange is being replaced with a flyover ramp this week, according to a press release from the Iowa DOT (story/reprint: Gazette, KCRG). The shift should be done by Christmas.

The flyover ramp is the Des Moines-to-Cedar-Rapids connection, and has been a bottleneck for a while. The ramp from eastbound 80 to southbound US 218, which needed to move outward a bit for this ramp to open, has been in use for a little while.

In conjunction with the flyover’s opening, two inner loops will be closed permanently: The EB-NB loop it’s replacing and also northbound 218 to westbound 80 underneath. To go from, say, the Melrose Avenue exit toward Des Moines, a traveler will need to go up to the Forevergreen Road exit and turn around.

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Dec 21

I was wrong

Posted on Monday, December 21, 2020, at 10:00 AM by Jeff

December 31, 2009: Insight Bowl, Tempe AZ. Iowa State beat Minnesota 14-13. I thought it could be the start of good years for ISU football; instead, it kind of was a high-water mark of the Rhoads era. It’s hard to believe this was a decade ago — and the 2000 Insight Bowl two decades.

I am on record as believing that if Paul Rhoads could not figure out Iowa State football, no one could. (We can’t know what effects Conferencepocalypse had on his tenure.)

I am on record as being unsatisfied with Matt Campbell’s off-field demeanor, including if not especially the “Team Out East” stuff, and for that matter with his early on-field demeanor.

I am on record as believing in the immutability of Iowa State football as the universe’s plaything — its last conference championship nearly as close to the Louisiana Purchase than the present day — and its saga against a football blue-blood as Sisyphean.

I am on record that I hate hate hate hate hate hate LOATHE wearing outfits that do not represent the cardinal and gold of Iowa State University.

However.

Campbell has led Iowa State to three eight-win seasons, two wins against Oklahoma including the first at home since 1960, a bowl game against Notre Dame, its second and third AP Top 10 rankings ever, its first regular-season finish atop conference standings in modern college football history…

…and now, its best bowl game ever (the 1977 Peach or possibly 2018 Alamo the previous title holders). Iowa State will be playing in the Fiesta Bowl, in a January bowl game. That’s a sentence I never thought I would type.

I can’t argue with that.

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