Michael Ehret took some photos of IA 86’s new alignment at the state line. One I ran on the blog earlier.
There are also some older photos that I’ve finally gotten around to placing, with former IA 91, former IA 403, and Business 60 Sheldon. There are also a few related to the new end of IA 163 at the Mississippi River, but I left the heavy lifting for that to the US 34 page.
Blog posts will resume after the weekend.
A simple side remark about the name “Tracy” apparently didn’t go over well with the Internet. It probably takes more time to explain than the occurrence itself. The video from Wednesday is here, if you can tolerate a 15- or 30-second ad for a 1-minute clip.
In September 1895, the Iowa State College football team boarded a train for its first game outside the state of Iowa, a matchup with Butte Athletic Club in Montana. The team lost. Later in the month it played its first “real” college football team out of state, Northwestern in Evanston, a 36-0 win — the game that gave the Cyclones their nickname.
Since then, the Cyclones have played football games in 33 states including Iowa. The most recent additions were Connecticut in 2011 and Idaho in 2002. When the Cyclones play in Morgantown on Saturday, that will make West Virginia the 35th state, and one that will be returned to every other year for conference games.
For comparison, the Iowa Hawkeyes have played in 24 states plus DC. Next year’s game at Maryland will add that state to the list.
The closest state to Iowa that the Cyclones haven’t played in is Indiana — which is the Hawkeyes’ third-most played-in state behind Iowa and Illinois.
Fox Sports had the easiest place to catch up on non-live college football scores. One page had nothing but the week’s scores, in a simple text format, listing which team was the home team.
Until now.
Welcome to the all-new FOXSports.com (Nov. 20)
Things look a bit different. New layout. New scoring products. New device look and feel. All wrapped in a fully responsive architecture that puts mobile at the heart of our design. … Everything filters through a mobile-first lens.
I don’t WANT something that “puts mobile at the heart of design.” I am on a computer. I want a WEBSITE. I don’t want gobs of pictures with few links visible at any given time.
How in the world does dividing up the scores into Top 25 or conferences-only, in a layout that takes up more space and graphics and code per item, more user-friendly? For any device?
Web designers, please stop sacrificing desktop usability for a “mobile experience”.
This photo from Chris Ehret shows new IA 86 at the Minnesota state line. If “Dickinson County” had been white on green and on the top of the pole, it would look like an older style county sign, but this is nonstandard. The highway opened Thursday.
The road was rebuilt from IA 9 northward, something that had not been done since the state originally took over an existing county road in the early 1980s. It is now a major corridor from the Iowa Great Lakes to I-90.
Instead of two quick, sharp curves at the Minnesota border, the road now gradually angles northward from a mile south of the line. (This means I have to go back and re-travel it. Ack!)
KTIV has a short story and pictures of the new road, including a distance sign to I-90. This is, to the best of my knowledge, the second appearance of I-90 on a mileage sign in Iowa.
In the past 12 hours, the National Weather Service has downgraded the expected temperature at kickoff in Ames again, to single digits. The previous record low kickoff temperature was 17°. This means that 2013 will have both the coldest and hottest games in Jack Trice Stadium history. (The hottest in Ames was in 1955.)
Des Moines will likely tie its mark for the second-coldest high temperature for Nov. 23; the airport recorded a high of 20° about 2 AM, which was also the high in 1970. (Record: 13° in 1898).
Today is also the coldest game in Hawkeye home football history. The Iowa-Michigan kickoff was 17° with a 21-mph wind; the previous coldest game was 23° in 1926.
The coaches’ interviews at halftime could be one word: “Brr.”
UPDATE: Officially 8° at kickoff and 1° at the end of the game.
ISU’s 34-0 win against Kansas is the Cyclones’ first conference shutout since 2001 Baylor. For a second, you have to go all the way back to a 24-0 blanking of a pre-Snyder Kansas State in 1978, when Earle Bruce was coach and Dexter Green was in the backfield. This game is also the second shutout win in the Paul Rhoads era (2010 UNI).
November 22, 2006: This intersection, where the Lincoln Highway turns southeast, will be removed under the preliminary plan for a US 30 expressway.
I was unable to make Thursday’s meeting — having a quarter-inch of ice covering the car will do that — but things related to it have been published online promptly. Two PDFs and a short presentation are on the PIM site.
The entire existing route of US 30, which runs on a section line, would be obliterated in favor of a new four-lane running a short distance to the north, about the width of a regular interstate median. The road won’t be a pure straight line, but very slightly wavering. As you may imagine, all the houses on the north side of the road will have to be removed. The plan does not include a bridge over the former railroad at the extinct village of Gladstone, instead leveling the land.
Current intersections with gravel roads would be maintained but the E66 intersection would not. Instead, R Avenue, a mile to the east, would be the (paved) connecting road and E66 between current 30 and R Avenue would be a mile-long dead end.
The expressway would come back to the current road west of IA 21, where there is a slight bend in the road for a bridge. That’s where this work area stops.
This is merely the environmental assessment part of the project. There is no funding set aside to do any of this. The Benton County portion is scheduled to be graded in 2016 and paved in 2018.
EDIT: I forgot to publish this post! That’s rectified now.
Don Bosco won its first state championship in eight-player football. Iowa City Regina is on a 56-game win streak. Sioux City Heelan had a perfect season and broke or tied 13 state championship records.
Friday afternoon, Carroll Kuemper beat Waukon on a 39-yard field goal that bounced off the crossbar. Dowling and Xavier play at night.
The only public school to win a football title this year was West Lyon. In a postgame interview, West Lyon’s QB thanked God, his coaches, and his offensive line, in that order.
In volleyball, four of the five classes had a private school in the final, but all lost.
The Congressional Gold Medal was awarded yesterday to the Meskwaki (Mesquakie) Indian tribe of Tama County, among others, for their work in World War II.
This sentence about the training, though, makes you go “hmm”:
They received jungle warfare training in Louisiana and code talker training in Scotland and England before being sent to North Africa.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette also has an article.
Speaking of things destined to be built Real Soon Now, WQAD reports that construction of a new I-74 bridge across the Mississippi River is expected to begin in 2017 and won’t be done for another five years. All you will see for the next few years, though, are vacant parcels of land cleared for future construction. So, while it’s programmed, it’s still closer to “believe it when you see it” territory.
The spans will be 85 and 61 years old in 2020.
