So that Kalleh will be more familiar with this limerick site, I have chosen Moline. I pronounce it MoeLEEN, but there may a regional difference which she can testify to.

Send me your entries by PM ASAP PDQ SCDD (Same Crap, Different Day).

Definitely! And, BTW, I loved your "hash on" rhyme in the last limerick.

I couldn't get the pronunciation link to work in Wikipedai. But this site - http://www.forvo.com/word/moline/ - gives an audio pronunciation.

MoeLEEN it is.

I was there recently to give a presentation. Indeed, it is only 165 miles from Chicago, but I had to fly. The fare was more than $700 (and it was the cheapest possible, having made it 30 days in advance). I could have gone to Paris for that!

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Originally posted by Kalleh:
I was there recently to give a presentation. Indeed, it is only 165 miles from Chicago, but I had to fly. The fare was more than $700 (and it was the cheapest possible, having made it 30 days in advance). I could have gone to Paris for that!

You could have caught the California Zephyr to Galesburg and then the special connecting 'bus to Moline. Two and a half hours each way and just $105 return.

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it is only 165 miles from Chicago, but I had to fly. The fare was more than $700 (and it was the cheapest possible, having made it 30 days in advance). I could have gone to Paris for that!

I believe Wells Fargo still operates a stage line from Chicago to Napierville, change horses, then on overnight to DeKalb, and change coaches for the trip to Sterling, from which a jitney provides a short trip to center Moline. Prices depend on availability of suitable draught animals.

The rail service actually exists and is as I have cited it. Check it for yourself on the Amtrak site.

Sadly not only does the Wells Fargo service not exist but neither does Wells Fargo.

RE, I can't believe you dispute the existnce of Wells Fargo. If your claim is so easily refuted, then the existence of the Chicago - Moline stage line cannot be called into question nor your disparagement of its management condoned.

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You could have caught the California Zephyr to Galesburg and then the special connecting 'bus to Moline. Two and a half hours each way and just $105 return.

In theory, you are correct, Richard. However, the delays with Amtrak are disgusting, and then connecting to a bus? It would have taken three days!

Of course, I could have driven, but the timing just wasn't right.

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Originally posted by Proofreader:
RE, I can't believe you dispute the existnce of Wells Fargo. If your claim is so easily refuted, then the existence of the Chicago - Moline stage line cannot be called into question nor your disparagement of its management condoned.

I wish I could understand what you're talking about. The Wells Fargo stage line is long gone (the brand is now a bank) and I never wrote anything about Amtrak's management.

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Originally posted by Kalleh:

quote:

You could have caught the California Zephyr to Galesburg and then the special connecting 'bus to Moline. Two and a half hours each way and just $105 return.

In theory, you are correct, Richard. However, the delays with Amtrak are disgusting, and then connecting to a bus? It would have taken three days!

Of course, I could have driven, but the timing just wasn't right.

I agree that Amtrak's puntuality is not good but I doubt that the service would have been delayed by two days and 22 hours! The scheduled time was less than three hours and I reckon that's about how long it would have taken.

And I believe the 'bus was an Amtrak connection, not a regular service 'bus. I have used the Amtrak 'bus connection from Seattle to Vancouver and vice versa several times, and it has always been on time - even allowing for the massive waits at US immigration.

One reason why countries like the USA and Canada have such bad rail services is simply that few people ever use them. Fewer customers, fewer trains; fewer trains, fewer customers. Rail travel in the UK is now at a higher level than at any time since the War and the rail companies are making enough money to invest in new lines and rolling stock. And the same applies to much of the rest of Europe.

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The Wells Fargo stage line is long gone (the brand is now a bank) and I never wrote anything about Amtrak's management.

Who said anything about Amtrak? It's no wonder the stage line is in decline if travel agents constantly mix up their service with other modes of trasportation. Is it becasue Amtrak pays higher fees to agents than Wells Fargo (which is passing the savings along to its custmers)?

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Originally posted by Richard English:
One reason why countries like the USA and Canada have such bad rail services is simply that few people ever use them. Fewer customers, fewer trains; fewer trains, fewer customers. Rail travel in the UK is now at a higher level than at any time since the War and the rail companies are making enough money to invest in new lines and rolling stock. And the same applies to much of the rest of Europe.

I am fortunate to live in the Northeast Corridor, where passenger rail service is extensive and efficient. But then, the whole area is well-populated, similar to UK & Europe. Sadly there are many areas of the US which have become good candidates for expanded rail, but only a few who were able to add light-rail systems when economic times were better. Still, the US has very good stats on rail cargo, much higher than Europe's according to wiki.

Our commuter trains in the Chicago area are frequent, timely and very well ridden. I ride it every day to and from work. So it's not just the Northeast corridor, Bethree, where rail service is extensive and efficient. I was talking about Amtrak and only from past experiences. I shouldn't have commented on something I know little about. Maybe Amtrak has improved since I last took it.

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Maybe Amtrak has improved since I last took it.

No, it hasn't, and that's why the stage line is making a welcomed comeback.

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Still, the US has very good stats on rail cargo, much higher than Europe's according to wiki.

This is very true. Rail cargo takes precedence over passenger traffic in both the USA and Canada - the opposite to the situation in Europe.

I can think of several places I have been to in North America where there is a good freight service but no passenger trains at all.

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Originally posted by Proofreader:

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Maybe Amtrak has improved since I last took it.

No, it hasn't, and that's why the stage line is making a welcomed comeback.

Maybe they (the Wells Fargo Stage line) would do even better if they issued a timetable. It is now about a century and a half since Bradshaw invented the timetable, after all.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Richard English,

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Maybe they (the Wells Fargo Stage line) would do even better if they issued a timetable

We're Americans. Americans are robust individuals who have no truck with such effete British fancies as "timetables." We will stand in all sorts of inclement weather, hopeful that not only will the stage arrive and depart some time within our brief span on Earth, but that we have (through blind chance) stationed ourselves at a point where our required mode of transport will some day make an appearance. "Timetable", indeed!

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We're Americans. Americans are robust individuals who have no truck with such effete British fancies as "timetables."

Robust?
Try walking to the front of a queue of little old British grannies who have been waiting in the rain for the number 79 bus and you'll soon see who's robust.

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Try walking to the front of a queue of little old British grannies who have been waiting in the rain for the number 79 bus

A bus? Another British effetism. We ride in the backs of Jeeps and pickup trucks, immodestly attired and inadequately prepared for the rigors of minus-twenty deagree weather. There are pictures extant on the internet of just such people, most of whom live in or near Chicago.

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Originally posted by BobHale:

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We're Americans. Americans are robust individuals who have no truck with such effete British fancies as "timetables."

Robust?
Try walking to the front of a queue of little old British grannies who have been waiting in the rain for the number 79 bus and you'll soon see who's robust.

Bob, you must remember that Americans don't understand what a queue is. For some reason they call it a "line".

But of course. you're quite right. One of the very few times when an Englishman will speak to a stranger (except to apologise for letting the stranger bump into him) is if that stranger tries to jump a queue.

Don't know if anyone's written any Moline limericks yet (I haven't), but the discussion has been most entertaining.

We in Aus copy a lot of things American, but there's a few things I'm very glad we didn't copy, like their:

• Public Transport System
  
• Political System
  
• Healthcare System
  
• Penchant for making it easy for people to own guns

And I could go on

Yes, we really should get back to the original subject, which is limericks for Moline. I only have one so far.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
One of the very few times when an Englishman will speak to a stranger (except to apologise for letting the stranger bump into him) is if that stranger tries to jump a queue.

Oh please just one more chauvinistic anecdote! This one a true take on Canadian politesse. My son & a friend were in an outdoor line for a festival event, smoking, when the next in line coughed. They stamped out the cigarettes & apologized & the neighbor cried, 'oh that's all right! I was just about to cough anyway!'

I'll bet that story brings down the house in Saskatchewan, eh.

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Bob, you must remember that Americans don't understand what a queue is.

You're certainly right that it's more of an English word, but it is being used more and more here in the states.

I was at the DMV renewing my license the other day and I was in a hurry. I asked a woman standing in line which one was the license line. She told me "Four queue." I never did find that particular line.

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Originally posted by Greg S:
Don't know if anyone's written any Moline limericks yet (I haven't), but the discussion has been most entertaining.

We in Aus copy a lot of things American, but there's a few things I'm very glad we didn't copy, like their:
[LIST]

Public Transport System...

I was chatting to Jennifer Stewart - http://www.write101.com/ - a few days ago and she was complianing about how long it took her to drive from Brisbane to Melbourne. So I was going to ask why she didn't catch the train and I checked the timetable.

I then found out that, at least insofar as that route is concerned, Australian railways are no better the US and Canadian railways. I don't know how urban public transport compares, though.

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I don't know how urban public transport compares, though.

Not much cooperation between the States on public transport, but each State's own domestic public transport, at least in the capital Cities is pretty damned good. However there hasn't been much new infrastructure built for some considerable time, and the peak hour services are overcrowded and getting more so. Luckily I have usually been able to work it so that I miss the real peaks, but I use the public transport whenever I can.

My comment about the US penchant for guns that has been enshrined in their Constitution, was once again yesterday, responsible for the deaths of 26 innocent people, 20 of them toddlers. Some people in Power, such as Barrack Obama, and the whole of Congress needs to put the Gun Lobby in it's place and change their Constitution or it will happen again and again and again.

The comment about guns I do agree with.

I have nothing against guns and, indeed, shot at Bisley and won the school's shooting cup. But what I do take issue with is the easy availability of guns to anyone who has the cash to buy them. In the UK it is now very difficult to buy a gun of any sort, for any reason. And handguns are as near to impossible to obtain as makes no difference.

Whereas I do not in principle believe that governments should decide what people can do and what they can possess, in the case of things as uniquely deadly as guns I think that control is needed.

And the fact that gun crime in the UK is far, far lower than that in more "liberal" countries would seem to prove that this level of control is correct.

Let's get this discussion off the subject of gun control, shall we? It tends to arouse too much emotion in forums; please remember we are a word forum.

Politicians are afraid of the National Rifle Association due to the money it provides them and also for what they believe is its influence over a large sector of the electorate. The NRA's president is a fanatic, openly stating that Obama is trying to institute gun controls, even while O actually signed legislation allowing guns to be brought into national parks.

Last night, Rachel Maddow, an MSNBC jounalist, pointed out 74% of the NRA membership wants stricter background checks to weed out nuts and terrorists who want weapons. A similar number also want legislation to prevent those on the terroist watch list from obtaining weapons, which they can now do without hindrance. But the NRA is dead (pardon the reference) set against any sort of preventive measures.

According to reports, the killer's mother owned all the weapons he used, including two semi-automatic pistols and two others (one described as an assault rifle). The question is, what did a schoolteacher in Connecticut need such weapons for? And why did she have them in her house when her son reportedly suffered from severe emotional problems?

Another reason we don't talk about gun control is the right-wing media's insistence that no matter what the incident or the loss of life, there is never a "right" time to start a discussion about limiting gun ownership. It also doesn't help that their religious adherents refuse to acknowledge there is a problem, insisting as former presidential candidate Huckabee did yesterday, that we don't have a "gun problem, or a violence problem, but a sin problem since we took God out of our schools." Makes me glad he failed in his bid to run the store.

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Let's get this discussion off the subject of gun control, shall we? It tends to arouse too much emotion in forums; please remember we are a word forum.

OK Arnie, sorry I brought it up. One last comment though and here's the thing, I have lived in Australia for all of my 59 years, and the only guns I've even seen in my lifetime are in holsters on Police Officers' or Armed Security Guards' hips. The only person I know who owns a gun is my Police Officer nephew. I'm sure those of you living in the US know at least 10 gun owners, and if you really wanted to take your own life, you could probably get hold of a gun to do the job. I had a former Boxer brother-in-law take his own life recently, but not with a gun, as neither he nor anyone he knew owned one. Doesn't mean we don't have such shootings here, but they are so much more infrequent.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Greg S,

Only two limericks so far. Let's get on the stick.

There's no reason for anyone not to enter this contest. The Mayans screwed up and we're still here -- whether that's for the good is another matter.

So the Mayans were wrong, saving man
From an end to his life’s earthly span.
Just one problem for me,
I’d have met death with glee
To avoid Christmas Day with my clan.

Love it Proof. I know just what you mean. I keep swearing we are going to go a long way away for Christmas to avoid this, but it never happens.

Greg looks like you've already started your limerick:

Love it Proof, I know just what you mean.
All my cousins come up from Moline
With the mud from their tractors
And other such factors
It's sure hard to keep the place clean.

Cousin Jim has to show us he's smart;
Niece's dog rips our sofa apart;
Auntie Joan won't stop talking;
The babies keep squawking;
And Granny's just one giant fart.

Some poetic license used in the making of this limerick. May not be based on actual living characters. This retraction has been undertaken at gunpoint.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: <Proofreader>,

quote:

This retraction has been undertaken at gunpoint.

no comment

I really hate to interrupt this great discussion here, but are there any Moline limericks yet?

Still waiting for some more great submissions. You have until Jan 1, then I post what I have.

I tried to entice CJ to write one since Moline is not far from where he lives. But I am sure he has bigger fish to fry.