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Merry Christmas!
Here’s wishing everyone in Easterday Construction’s extended family of past and present employees, suppliers and subcontractors, & decades of clients a Merry Christmas and a very Happy, Healthy & Prosperous New Year!
Larry Lindvall
Easterday Construction lost another friend from the past earlier this month. Lawrence “Larry” Lindvall, Jr. passed away.
I knew Larry as the salesman for Wickes Lumber in Argos when I started here. Wickes is no longer there and Larry retired from there before Wickes shut down.
Larry was the salesman that would find you anything. If Wickes didn’t carry it, he would find someone who did, set up an account with them and get it for you. If he found something for you and for some reason the supplier didn’t want to work with Wickes, he would go ahead and give us the contact information, so we could get it on our own. He wanted us to be successful. He was a bulldog about making sure his clients had what they needed and were happy. With most salesmen, after they have looked a bit, they give up and move on… usually without letting us know they’ve given up. With Larry, if I didn’t shut him down, he might pop up a month later with a quote for an item, saying, “I finally found this! How many do you need?”
His previous experience as a contractor often meant that he had advice (good advice) on how to do things. This varied from suggesting materials and techniques for completing the tasks or specific tools that made the job easier. He would not only stop here at the office, but also stop in the field to speak to the superintendents and try and address their needs. This was also valuable in that he was constantly learning. He would often ask what I had in mind and then say, “I saw it being done like this on So & So’s project. It looks like that might be a better option.”
In the end, Larry was a friend as well as a salesman. He occasionally came around to say hello long after he retired. He was always welcome.
RAGBRAI
For those of you that don’t know, RAGBRAI is an annual 7 day bike ride across the state of Iowa. It’s not a race, but more of an adventure/challenge. 10,000 riders are pulled from a lottery to participate each year, dipping their tire in the Missouri River on the west side of Iowa to start and finally in the Mississippi River on the east side of Iowa at the end. They estimate as many as 20,000 additional riders are on the road any given day. RAGBRAI stands for the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.
Becky (my wife) has been doing RAGBRAI for nearly two decades. (Our Sister-in-Law Toni has been doing it with her for at least 10 years.) Becky & Toni train (less and less every year) throughout the Spring. The ride is always the last week of July. Generally that means it’s hot in Iowa, but since they camp every night, sometimes that’s cold. Generally the shortest days are 40-50 miles while there are longer days of 70-90 miles. For those that want an additional challenge, they usually have at least one day where they add a loop that makes it a Century Day, i.e. over 100 miles. This year the mileage total for the week was around 460 miles.
Becky and Toni leave for Iowa on the Friday before the ride. They camp the first night in the ending town and then board a bus Saturday morning to ride across the state to the starting town. They camp Saturday night and the ride starts on Sunday. A charter truck moves their tent, luggage, etc. to each day’s ending town where they pick it up, set up tents and camp for the night. This year the last day was long and they didn’t get in until after 6. There are all kinds of ending festivities, but at that point they just want to get home and usually just hit the road.
If this interests you at all, there are posts at Becky’s website, Berger Audiology, where she has recounted some of the trip highlights along with pictures from along the way. Look for the blog titled Bergerology Blog on the ribbon under the logo.
I included her first post from the first day below:
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My sister-in-law Toni and I headed out for RAGBRAI today around 12:30 pm today. We had a few setbacks that lengthened the trip, but overall it was uneventful. We have gotten stuck in traffic in Chicago almost every year, so we decided to go cross country this time, since the start was farther south in Iowa. As it turned out, that put us on a lot of county roads, so we really didn’t make any better time. I drove and the Jeep isn’t the smoothest ride!
We had to get my bike carrier modified (Thanks Burt’s Body Shop), because both of our new bikes have frames that are too small for the carrier as it was made. There aren’t many options for Jeep bike carriers, so it was good that we could “fix” it. That seemed to work well for us. We both like the newer bikes (Mine from last year and Toni’s from a year or so ago), though I’ve been struggling to find a saddle that works for me. I’ve also been having some issues with my left wrist and Toni is still having some shoulder issues, so this trip could be more challenging.
Mary Ellen Rudisel Jordan
Thinking about a good friend of the Easterday Construction family on her Birthday. It’s hard to believe that Mary Ellen has been gone from us for 6 years. I think of her often.
I miss being able to ask her for a quick sketch. I also miss her quick wit and quirky humor.
Lost without GPS
The paper map industry has suffered the same fate as the fabled buggy whip industry. Technology has moved on and we no longer have a glove compartment full of maps in our cars as a record of our travels. Hmmmm… I don’t think I’ve ever in my life time seen a pair of gloves in a car’s “glove compartment”, so how does that continue to be the common reference? (I may have AADD. I should never have found out that was a thing.)
I’ve noticed that in the past few years since the advent of GPS mapping, I can’t give directions to anyone anymore. Even places I’ve been to several times, I’m unsure of myself without plugging it into a mapping app. Now that most of them factor in traffic and accidents, I’m often “punished” by trying to head out on my own on a route I know. As I sit in stuck traffic, the alternate route it suggested mocks me.
While I did think GPS was making me stupid, I wouldn’t have thought it was affecting me physically as the Dr. Oz article to the right suggests. I don’t need any brain shrinkage!
I seriously can’t imagine people blindly following it off the road as suggested here. It’s not that accurate with the “Turn here” advice, though it is improving.. (It better get perfected quickly though if those self-driving cars are going to rely on it.)
We had two cars with GPS Navigation built-in. On the plus side, it’s a bigger screen, turns down the radio when it speaks and includes heads-up display. On the downside, it is generally less than 6 months before it’s outdated and the last I checked, the subscription update cost more than a Garmon. But why even buy a Garmon when Google Maps is constantly updated and comes as free app for your phone? The last car we bought, we skipped that option. A $15 phone holder took the place of the $1,000 GPS option.
We still have a few maps and sometimes I find it interesting to pull them out and see where I am on a larger scale. The zoom out feature on the mapping software just doesn’t give you the same effect. On the other hand, my wife would be fine if she never had to look at a paper road map again! She’s directionally challenged and if the map is right-side up in front of her, then we’re always going north…
