CHICAGO HAS ITS TASTE, MILWAUKEE HAS ITS SUMMERFEST. My body was telling me to take it easy after last week's adventures (of which more, there will be travel guides and book reviews aplenty.) Byron, Illinois, where the Milwaukee Road once crossed the Chicago Great Western, has a somewhat smaller street festival that combines the eating and the live entertainment.


The festival operates on the tickets-only basis to simplify cash handling (and provide fewer targets for the sticky fingers?) The lines are a bit more manageable than Taste of Chicago, and the food is less expensive.


Does this refer to a pancake house run by Swedes or a pancake house that serves Swedish pancakes? (There is a difference.)


Might be worth a road trip to find out.

The Zipper continues to be an attraction at traveling carnivals.


Its design does not permit quick loading, which is why they aren't at amusement parks.


The operators were leaving some of the cars empty. Has some operations researcher figured out that one can make more money loading fewer passengers and offering slightly longer trips? In my experience, one spends a long time being jiggled up and down as the ride loads, then one gets about five rotations clockwise and five rotations counterclockwise, then one gets jiggled again on the unload.

Whatever the reasoning, there was a bit of a wait for the ride.


State Line kids understand the value of leaving a few things to the imagination. (We'll do a compare-and-contrast with California next week, to California's disadvantage.)

Portable fun houses still draw crowds. Brunnhilde and a slightly tipsy Kaiser if you know where to look.


The portable freefall ride offers theme-park-like productivity ... load twelve, hoist, drop, unload.


I'm getting the timing of this digital camera down ... hit the trigger as the car dropped.

East of Byron is this battle monument in Stillman Valley. It has the look of a northern Civil War monument except the uniform doesn't look quite right and (note the sun angle) the musketeer is not facing south, as is obligatory for Civil War monuments in these parts.


It's possible to lose a battle and have a community named after you, if you have the right friends. Reflect on this monument the next time you hear a reference to the "tribal areas" of the North West Frontier.


The monument marks the location of a battlefield cemetery. A captain named Abraham Lincoln was present at the interment of these troops. Language elsewhere on the monument suggests that at the time it was built, some people's emotions were still a bit raw over his subsequent murder by a different kind of insurgent.


The Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern's Iowa, Chicago, and Eastern (do they also aspire to buying Pennsy and Erie lines?) passes through Byron and Stillman Valley toward Chicago. These diesels are near Davis Junction.


Rochelle is not far away. After a taste of Byron, a bit of train-spotting. First up, a hot intermodal train on BNSF.


Union Pacific had this nearly ex-works 8487 on a stack train.


Severe clear, warm temperatures, a bit on the muggy side, the rains have not yet materialized.