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Post date: Apr 06, 2017 2:32:9 AM
The saying is “whatever does not kill you makes you stronger” and today I got stronger. Last nights weather report was significantly scary with rain, sleeting snow, 60 MPH winds, and frigid temperatures all headed towards my intended destination of Chicago. This morning the storm had started to hit and compounded the problem with morning commute traffic into the city. From where I was staying some 30 miles outside of Chicago it would take about 2hours to get into the city due to the weather delays and traffic backups.
I decided to take a different tactic and instead of heading into the city to skip Chicago altogether and head due west. It would be disappointing not to see Chicago, as Wrigley Field and good Deep Dish Pizza were both objects of my desire since planning this trip. I consoled myself with the thought that I could always fly back to the city later, perhaps even with tickets to a Cubs game (not likely now that they won the series last year and tickets are hard to come by, but this is what I told my disappointed inner child)
Heading due West would allow me to do two additional things. One visit Joliet Junior College (see below) and two after visiting the college drive directly into the storm. You see, if I waited where I was it would be two days of bad weather, one day of rain and one of snowy cold. If I traveled directly west I might be able to skirt around the cold front and get to the other side of the storm with one wet day of travel. That was the plan anyways…
Joliet Junior College
Initially this college was not on my radar but after looking up some of the history of Chicago, I discovered it is the oldest public junior college in the nation, located in Joliet Illinois some 40 -50 miles south west of Chicago. The Junior College was established over 100 years ago as a low cost way to get students to go to college. The original college was set up in a high school when leaders in the Joliet community realized the reason many local residents were not attending college was they could not afford to move away to the cities where the colleges were. By bringing the college to the community they significantly lowered the costs of starting a college education by completing the first two years in the local community. Today we still deal with that same dynamic as some of our CCSF students come to us as their only economic option while they work or live at home, and some of my students are already enrolled in other colleges and come to CCSF simply because they know the classes are less expensive. What started as an assistance program to get students to he universities, Junior Colleges now seem to serve multiple sometimes-conflicting missions.
I was excited to see if any of this history was still in place at Joliet JC. As the oldest JC in the nation I was thinking history but the college I encountered was quite modern. With what seemed like all new buildings, the layout of Joliet is very flashy on the inside with glass walls separating inner hallways from offices and student spaces. Long inner hallways were filled with tour groups of high school students touring the college. I must have arrived on Joliet’s equivalent of CCSF’s FRISCO day. Students were everywhere being very comfortable in the light filled spaces sheltered from the rainy day outside. I almost wanted to snap photos of the board suite and administrative offices just to make our board jealous. The CSI treatment was not exclusive to admin though as all the labs and teaching spaces were just as modern and well thought out in design. What really stood out though was a small flyer advertising a specialized human anatomy dissection class. My tour is almost over and Joliet is the first Junior College I have visited that is comparable to CCSF in that they use cadavers in their human anatomy instruction. I was fortunate enough to find the instructor, who graciously gave me her time and a tour of their facilities. We had a wonderful meeting comparing notes and talking shop. The power of making this tour is being able to gather information not just on what other instructors do but how their practices got established and what influences their decisions. I am returning home with a treasure trove of granular perspective and comparative rationales, that will, in time, more than likely annoy my anatomy and physiology colleagues, but it is good to know we are not alone in our methods or standards of instruction.
As I left Joliet it was still raining. Continuing onto the interstate heading due west I did not avoid the worst of the storm, I drove directly through it. Rains got heavier and winds picked up. The 60 mph winds came from slightly different directions as I traveled through the storm, making staying in one lane an act of constant vigilance and reaction. Only a week earlier I had thought the bike too heavy and send items home with my wife. I now wanted the weight back. At one point I stopped to get some food and warm up. Checking the phone Doppler I saw the cold front had moved and it was now snowing only 20 miles north of where I was. Rather than pull over or feel defeated I doubled down on my bet. This was extreme weather but it was only weather and weather has been pushing me around too much this trip. It was time to do something about it…. I made a decision to focus on my destination, which at this point was not a spot on a map but the other side of the storm clouds. The storm front seemed to be moving in a giant swirl covering two states, but if I just pushed on westward into Iowa it did have an end.
By the late afternoon I could see hazy sunlight trying to pierce through the clouds. The rains lightened up and the winds lessened. As I pulled up to a motel in East Des Moines I was cold, wet, and tired, but this time the fatigue comes with a sense of satisfaction. Storm 0: Motorcyclist 1… I visited one more very interesting college, and I am about 300 miles closer to home under sunny skies…
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