Wednesday 10/21/09 Our travels today took us south through Clinton, Ia., the Quad Cities, and ended up anchoring just below Lock #16 at Muscatine, Ia. A bit of excitement at Lock #13 (which caused a delay for us) when the mule broke and nearly fell into the river. No it's not a four legged mule. A mule is a lare cleat on rollers mounted on a piece of rail that runs along the wall leading into each lock chamber. It's function is to pull the first section of barges out of the chamber so that the water can be raised or lowered to enable the second section and the towboat to enter the chamber and be brought to the same level as the first section. Many commercial tows on the Upper Mississippi are nearly 1200 feet long while the lock chambers are only 600 feet in length thus the need to lock through in sections. Once they fished the broken mule back up on the wall the towboat cleared out and in we went. Sorry. No pictures.
Pam found a new form of entertainment although in this case it's seasonal. Here in the upper Midwest come harvest time we are invaded by Asian Beetles which look just like a Lady Bug. The big difference is that when crushed they emit a putrid odor, leave an orange stain, and they occasionally pinch you. They love the heat of the sun such as is magnified by the eisenglass of our flybridge. Anyway Pam decided to take an almost empty water bottle and scrape them into it and then quickly put the cap back on. By the end of the day she had quite a collection. Every so often she would shake the bottle and rattle the dead bugs around inside it. I'm not sure if it was a warning to the bugs not to come around her or if it had a hidden meaning for me? Only time will tell. Meanwhile I'm sleeping with one eye open!
No comments:
Post a Comment