We slept in a little this morning and had a leisurely breakfast, then Diane and I took a walk through Galva. We passed Galva City Hall (in an old school) and saw the Galva Goat (a gift from Galvë, Sweden, which has a celebrated goat with an interesting history).

Desi had told us the story of Carl Bates, a Galva farmer whose neighbors brought in his final harvest; we walked over to see the mural the town had had painted to commemorate the story. There was another mural on the same wall honoring the Hayes Pump and Planter Company, which had been a local manufacturer earlier in the 20th Century.

Galva is a fairly small town, but it’s a giant compared to Bishop Hill (population 150), which was founded as a religious community by Swedish immigrants in 1846. We had a very nice lunch at PL Johnson’s (originally a hardware store), then wandered the town for a few hours. We walked past the Bjorkland Hotel (now a museum) and the Steeple Building (also a museum).

We stopped at H Wyatt for excellent chocolate chip ice cream sandwiches and a little shopping, as well as visiting a few other merchants housed in historic buildings. It was a nice way to spend Sunday afternoon.

We came back to Desi’s house and rested for a little bit, then walked over to Wiley Park for tonight’s Levitt AMP Galva Music Series concert, featuring Seth Walker and Kings and Associates. I enjoyed the music and the atmosphere; there were a few hundred people in the park and everyone seemed to be having a good time.

We picked up our rental car from Hertz this morning to drive to Galva, Illinois and visit our friend Desi. She had warned us not to let Hertz give us an electric car because we’d have a hard time finding a charging station in her area, but she needn’t have worried – I didn’t see a single EV on the Hertz lot. I didn’t see many cars, either, so we took one of the many SUVs on offer, a Honda CR-V, which seems perfectly acceptable.

We let Google Maps and Yelp guide us to a lunch stop at Toni’s Cafe, a little south of Springfield; the food was fine, but I was taken aback by the free newspaper available in the lobby.

I guess I should have taken a copy to see what was in the paper, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

We reached Galva a little before 3 and spent a couple of hours chatting with Desi before she drove us to the “big city” of Geneseo, about half an hour away. We wandered around the downtown for a while and enjoyed the nicely-kept buildings (note the Fletcher’s Castoria ad in the background).

We took a walk through a classic car show (somehow, none of us took any photos) before going to the Geneseo Brewing Company for beer (of course!) and dinner (which was much better than what we’d had at Toni’s!).

We came back to Desi’s house, took a short walk around Galva, and called it a night – we didn’t go to the town fireworks display, but we sure heard it!

We’re at SJC, on our way to St. Louis to visit a friend and take an Ohio River Cruise. As everyone knows, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single sandwich – today’s sandwich was a pastrami Reuben at the only remaining Gordon Biersch restaurant in Santa Clara County, the one at the airport.

When we got to the gate, we were greeted with an announcement that they were going to try to leave a few minutes early; boarding went smoothly, and we were ready to go when suddenly, the captain came on the PA to tell us that there’d been a small miscommunication and the ground had dropped power to the plane before the APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) had been fired up. So the computers had all crashed and needed to be restarted – as he put it, it’s like hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del.

They’ve almost finished the reboot (the screens are showing the Delta logo), and he just said we should be ready to go in two-and-a-half minutes.

Onward!

Our two-year Comcast agreement will expire next week, so I called them to see what they could do for me. Two years ago, the agent I got was able to increase the speed of our Internet connection (in both directions) without changing the monthly bill, which was a surprisingly good result.

This year, I went in with a different objective: stop giving any money to Fox News. That meant switching to the “Choice” package, which includes all the local channels, a few shopping channels, and not much else. The call to the agent was straightforward. He did try to sell me on Comcast’s “NOW TV” streaming package for $20/month – it’s got a lot of channels I used to watch (and no Fox News), but nothing that I watch actively these days, so I passed on it. The whole call took about 25 minutes, and I was happy until I got the confirmation note, which said that they were going to cancel the CableCard in my TiVo which I did NOT want to happen.

I called back and got a different agent. I explained the problem; he checked my account and said “oh, they forgot to add the video code”. Two minutes later, he asked me to turn on the TiVo and check a few channels. The local channels were there; the channels I’d discontinued weren’t. And the Internet and phone continued to work as expected. I think I’m set for another year.

Today was, of course, Independence Day; there’s been a bike parade through the neighborhood for about 15 years (except 2020), and it’s fun to see the kids (and adults) out for a ride.

It’s been a busy week (and a bit), but mostly filled with mundane occurrences, so when bedtime approaches and I’m faced with the choice of writing a blog entry or going to bed, I’ve chosen the latter.

Probably the most interesting thing that happened this week was being given “permission to operate” our solar system by PG&E; it’s been operational (and sending power to them) since late May, but now we’ll start getting credit for the power we send instead of donating it.

It’s been very hot this weekend, so we’ve been giving the new heat pump (air conditioning) its first real test, and I’ve been happy with how it’s working. Our family room gets quite a bit warmer than the location of the thermostat, so I have to set the thermostat to an absurdly low temperature to keep the family room comfortable, but that’s why we put in solar. And the heat pump doesn’t use a lot of power in cooling mode – as best as I can tell from the info I can get from the system, it tops out at no more than 1500 watts (usually a lot less). In comparison, our whole house fan draws 1100 watts at full speed (fortunately, it draws less than 350 watts at the speeds we usually need).

And there’s good news on the toilet front – the “fix” I wrote about on June 11 didn’t actually fix anything, so I called Korky and they sent me a larger flapper (their model 3060, which seems to be doing the job (i. e., not leaking)). I hope writing this doesn’t jinx it….

There was a Shir Hadash event far up in the hills overlooking Los Gatos on Thursday night; the view was wonderful (and so was the food, wine, and company). My term as Ritual Committee Chair ended yesterday; I’m glad I did it, but I don’t plan to repeat the experience.

On the other hand, I’m repeating my role as President of the Silicon Valley Storytellers; I was the founding President ten years ago. It should be fun!

Like I said, a busy week, but not one which makes for compelling blog posts.