Episode 1: Illinois
There’s no easy way to put this, other than to just come out and say it. As I’ve began working on this podcast, I’ve learned that I’m not good at doing things that seem to come naturally to pretty much every one else.
For example, I think most folks these days are pretty good at taking pictures of things, particularly when they’re on road trips or visiting some kind of point of interest. Foolishly, I assumed that I was built the same as everyone else, and just gathered media kind of consciously but also very casually on the trips that ended up comprising my first few episodes.
Now that it’s time to get this thing off the ground, I sat down to post some pictures from my travels, expecting to find a thousand shots. I’ll have to sort through so much clutter to find the good ones to share. It’ll be a veritable visual buffet, plates and cups overflowing with pictures.
And this is not the situation I find myself in. The multimedia aspect of the first few episodes will be a little thin, but this may end up being a blessing in disguise. Through realizing that my instinct is not to take pictures or videos of interesting things, I now know that I have to be proactive on that front in future adventures. It’s all about figuring out the stuff you don’t know you don’t know, as far as I know.
With the launch of the show today, I do want to share some of the things I captured. To give you a sense of how underwhelming this is going to be, I forgot to take any pictures of The Big Tree, but to be fair, the internet is full of pictures of that tree.
My buddy Burger did take one picture of me hugging the Big Tree, so that can give you some scale. Please ignore the untucked undershirt.
The Humansville water-tower stands mightily over the local Phillips 66 station, where the price of gas may have timestamped when I rolled through town.
The Leaning Tower of Niles stands mightily over the reflecting pool, which I would have called “shabby” until very recently. The bar has been lowered for reflecting pools. Also visible in the picture is the plaque that claims that the tower contains very old bells, which I chose to trust.
A closer look at the plaque that claims one of their bells was made in 1623. A plaque has no clear motivation to lie to me, but it seems so impossible that this tower would have a 400 year-old bell in it and no one would care.
A mini Leaning Tower that someone decided to build right near the larger mini Leaning Tower. A “hat on a hat?” Definitely, but one of the rare instances where two hats feels right.
The Leaning Tower of Niles stands mightily over the mini Leaning Tower of Niles, in a display that really drives home the strangeness of this place. Five feet to the left is a CTA bus stop.
Alternate angle of the Tower. In the background you can see the sign for the hot dog joint across the street, and on the left side of the picture, you may notice fencing behind which was the empty lot that may have formerly been The Y. I am not certain if the Do Not Enter sign is intentionally slightly leaning, or if that is just a coincidence.
