Studio711.com – Ben Martens

South Shore Train Crash

Have you ever been in a big new group where everyone has to go around and tell something interesting about themselves? For a while, my go-to-story was that I was in a train crash. That actually didn’t work very well. It was too serious and usually brought down the fun mood. But it’s a true story, and here’s how I remember it…

On January 18, 1993, our family decided to head to Chicago for the day to see the Shedd Aquarium. I had never been there before (and still haven’t.) There’s a little commuter train that runs back and forth from Chicago to South Bend and this was going to be the first time that I had been on the train. At 13 years old, I was pretty excited about the whole day.

When we got to the train station, I immediately headed to the front of the train. I had heard Dad tell stories about how the conductor would sometimes let you come up and see the controls and that seemed like prime seating to me. I wasn’t too happy when Dad insisted that we sit in the second of the three cars. For years I never knew why he did that, but I recently found out it’s because the front train sometimes gets unhooked part way along the journey and you have to move.

The train finally left the station and we were zooming off across the northern Indiana countryside. All of a sudden, I remember our train hitting the brakes extremely hard. We all slid forward, felt a rumble, and saw a big black mass fly past the windows. Whispers of “Did we just crash?” filled the cabin. Pretty soon a hysterical conductor came running back through the cabin in a panic shouting, “Is everyone ok!?” There were no injuries in our car so he continued back to the third car. We still didn’t know what had happened though so nobody was too concerned. One of the adults walked forward to the front car and came back with a white face, “No one goes in the front car. No one.” That was my first clue that this was more than a quick stop.

We sat on the train for over an hour (maybe two?) only knowing that we had crashed. For the first time in my life, I saw body bags in person. They contained bodies and were zipped up. Apparently the time spent waiting on the train was so that they could clean up the mess before we got off the train.

Only when they finally let us off did we see the extent of the damage. We had hit another train almost head on. It split our front car down the middle, bounced off the tracks around the middle car and bumped into the rear car on our train. The front car was quite bloody despite there efforts to clean. We later found out that seven people in that car had died and most of them were by decapitation.

They led us down a snowy slope to waiting buses and shipped us back to the train station we departed from. News crews were just showing up as we got there. Since we were the first ones off the bus, I was excited to be interviewed and get on TV. “We’re going home” was all my parents said to the reporters as we walked by.

I’m pretty sure it made the national news for a bit, but the local news covered it for quite a while. About six years later in college, I ordered the NTSB’s final report on the incident which is available through the Freedom of Information Act. The wreck occurred just as our westbound train was exiting a bridge. The parallel tracks converged for the length of that bridge. I’m oversimplifying, but basically the two conductors were playing chicken and they both lost. Our conductor thought he could make it in time but was clearly wrong. Both conductors were fired.

It’s difficult to find news articles about this online since it was pre-Internet boom, but here’s one blurb I found:

In the first passenger fatal accident since 1909, Train 7 from Chicago runs a red signal on the western approach to the Gauntlet Bridge, goes into emergency stop, and pauses for 5 to 30 seconds before being hit by Train 12 from South Bend. The lead cars, Car 27 Eastbound and Car 36 Westbound, slice into each other killing 7 passengers in Car 36, including a 10 year old boy. Most of the victims were decapitated. There were initial reports of 70 or 65 injured. (A 1998 TV report claimed 150 injured in a story about a lawsuit, as well as reporting an eighth passenger death from injuries sustained in the crash, but this report is not supported by other media.) A signal prior to the signal run had been reported defective in prior weeks, however the Gauntlet signals were working properly. A second bridge has now been added at the site and the Gauntlet is no longer in operation. The engineer of Train 7 was the dispatcher in the 1985 accident. NO CRIMINAL CHARGES WERE FILED, but both engineers were fired. (Car 36 apparently has been replaced by another car, or repaired, as it has been seen in operation. Based on video of the accident it would seem that Car 36 received the largest amount of damage.) [source]

UPDATE: You can download the NTSB report here.

benmartens April 17, 2009 Commentary

Hippy Loaf

Since we started making food together, Tyla has been talking about some crazy meatloaf that she had once before. On Saturday, we decided to recreate it. It’s a Bobby Flay recipe marked as Easy with a 20 minute prep time. There are a lot of ingredients, but I suppose no part of it is super difficult. It did take us closer to 45 minutes to put it all together though.

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 large zucchini, finely diced
  • 1 red bell pepper, finely diced
  • 1 yellow pepper, finely diced
  • 5 cloves garlic, smashed to a paste with coarse salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, divided
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme leaves
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley leaves, plus more for garnish
  • 1/2 pound ground pork
  • 1/2 pound ground veal
  • 1 pound ground beef chuck
  • 1 cup panko (Japanese) bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup freshly grated Romano or Parmesan
  • 1 cup ketchup, divided
  • 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Heat the oil in a large saute pan over high heat. Add the zucchini, peppers, garlic paste, 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper, to taste, and cook until almost soft, 5 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Whisk together the eggs and herbs in a large bowl. Add the meat, bread crumbs, cheese, 1/2 cup of the ketchup, 2 tablespoons of the balsamic vinegar, and the cooled vegetables and mix until just combined.

Mold the meatloaf on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Whisk together the remaining ketchup, balsamic vinegar, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl. Brush the mixture over the entire loaf. Bake the meatloaf for 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

We cheated by using thyme, parsley and parmesan that weren’t fresh, and we also used regular bread crumbs. The end result was pretty impressive! Chelsea and Tim came over to help us eat it as it makes enough to serve six pretty easily. We ended up calling it Hippy Loaf because it was so fancy. It doesn’t taste like meatloaf as I know it, but we’ll be making this again!

benmartens April 16, 2009 Food

Kawasaki Concours 14 Maintenance Videos

One hour of a motorcycle mechanic’s time costs about $80. Coincidentally, that’s how much this set of nine maintenance DVDs costs. They arrived in my mailbox this week and I already feel more confident in doing some of these basic tasks. Doing maintenance on a motorcycle always makes me a bit nervous since there isn’t much room for error, but having these videos to show me the way helps a lot. Oh, and as the site says, these are for entertainment only. Right. They aren’t professionally produced by any means, but they do the job.

Here are some of the topics these videos cover:

  • Oil change
  • Front/rear tire removal and replacement
  • Gas tank removal
  • Valve adjustment
  • Removing the fairings.
  • Coolant change
  • Brake/clutch fluid change
  • Brake pad replacement
  • Fork oil change

This actually seems like a great business idea. You could sell these for all the most popular cars and motorcycles.

benmartens April 15, 2009 Motorcycle

Speed

I’m still working through the break-in period on my bike. I’m at about 750 miles of the 1000 mile period so I’m getting into the more fun range but I still can’t really let it go. It boggles the mind to wonder what kind of speed is available in those upper RPM ranges.

I have a hard time communicating to people what it feels like to be on a bike like this. Tyla gets a peek at it when she rides on the back, but I’ll never really push it with her on the bike. It’s hard to find the normal car test performance numbers for a motorcycle because motorcycles don’t get reviewed that way. Someone finally pointed me to the December 2007 motorcycle consumer news review on the bike. Now this is the 2008 model, but it’s almost a carbon copy of my bike minus a couple small tweaks.

0-60:  3.01sec
0-100: 6.79sec
1/4 mile: [email protected]
60-0:  121.9′

To put that in perspective, this list shows the fastest production car quarter mile times. This bike falls sixth on that list. Now I know there is a big difference between a car and a motorcycle, but I think it’s worth noting that if my bike (which lists for $14,299) raced a $650,000 Enzo Ferrari (pictured) in the quarter mile, I’d win by almost half a second. And for those of you that rode in my Mustang, that car was 30% slower through the quarter mile than this bike. And for 0-60 times? You almost can’t beat 3 seconds. My Mustang was around 5.5 seconds. This site would put my bike third on the list of all production cars.

Get on the highway and you can break the speed on the interstate in first gear. Second gear puts you over 100, and you still have four more gears to go through. So while it might look a little deceptive with the bags on it, I’ll probably never meet a car on the road that is faster than me (and not many bikes are either.) It also seems likely to me that I’ll never actually experience those listed speeds since I don’t have a death wish (or money to pay for the ticket/jail time.)

Like I said when I borrowed Simeon’s bike, I’m glad that I have the opportunity to ride a bike like this. Now I can be resolute in forbidding any of my offspring from owning anything similar until they’re out of college.

benmartens March 25, 2009 Motorcycle

Park-N-Move

One of the first things I purchased for my bike was a new dolly. The old platform dolly was a bit unwieldy for this shiny (and heavier) new bike. I saw the Park-N-Move at the Seattle motorcycle show and thought it would be a good fit for this bike. It’s a small, but very sturdy, cast iron dolly that sits under the center stand. I made a little video demo of how it works.

benmartens March 18, 2009 Motorcycle, Video

Italian Style Chicken Breasts

Hopefully Mom doesn’t mind me posting her top secret family recipe. This is one of our family favorites. Two thumbs up!

On a side note, I realized that it’s kind of silly to have a ranking system for recipes that make it to the blog. Why would I post a bad recipe? I’m only going to be sharing the ones that we really liked. Also, I know there have been a lot of food posts recently, but that’s because we had a backlog of things to write about. This is the last of the backlog so I expect them to slow down going forward.

Italian Style Chicken Breasts

  • 2 whole chicken breasts
  • 1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs
  • 1/2 cup parmesan cheese
  • 2 eggs, well beaten
  • 1/2 cup margarine
  • 1/2 lb sliced fresh mushrooms
  • 2/3 cup white wine (Mom recommends white zinfandel)
  • 1 cup mozzarella cheese

Mix bread crumbs and parmesan on a plate. Beat eggs on a plate or flat bowl. Dip chicken breasts in egg then in bread crumbs. Make sure it is coated well.

Melt margarine in skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and brown on both sides. Remove chicken to a shallow baking dish (9×9 pan.) Add mushrooms to skillet and cook until almost tender, stirring frequently. Mix in wine. Pour mixture over chicken.

Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle mozzarella cheese over chicken. Return to oven uncovered and bake 10 more minutes or until chicken is no longer pink.

I made this for Tyla on Valentine’s Day and served it with a Caesar salad and baked potato. Baked potatoes taste excellent when you use cover them with the extra sauce.

Also, Two Vines Riesling is delicious! I bought it a few months ago and forgot about it. After that, Tyla was telling me how great this wine was. On Valentine’s Day, I pulled out a bottle of wine and discovered it was the one she had been talking about. Jackpot! Err… I mean… I planned it that way because I knew how much she loved it.

benmartens March 2, 2009 Food

Chicken Stuffing Divan

Tyla and I found this recipe in the Campbell’s Casseroles and One-Dish Meals book. It was so good we made it again the next week. Our only change was using chicken instead of the recommended turkey. It would taste just as good with turkey though. The deliciousness to effort ratio for this one is off the charts!

Chicken Stuffing Divan

  • 4 cups Pepperidge Farm Herb Seasons Stuffing
  • 1 1/4 cups water
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 1 package (10 ounces) frozen broccoli cuts, cooked and drained
  • 2 cups cubed cooked chicken
  • 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Celery Soup
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
  1. Prepare the stuffing using the water and butter according to the package directions.
  2. Spoon the stuffing into an 11×8-inch shallow baking dish. Arrange the broccoli and chicken over the stuffing mixture.
  3. Stir the soup, milk and 1/2 cup of the cheese in a small bowl. Pour over the turkey mixture. Sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
  4. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes or until hot.

That photo is horrible. We didn’t think to take a picture until we were into the second night of leftovers. Just make it. It’s fantastic!

benmartens February 25, 2009 Food

First Weekend

I promise the motorcycle posts will slow down once the rain returns, but the sunny days and shiny new bike in my garage have been dominating most of my thoughts lately. This past weekend I put a little over 250 miles on the bike with various rides. Tyla and I had our first adventure on the bike when we headed into Ballard to see Matt and Laura and then ran up to Everett and back down Highway 9.

I’m still in love with the bike, and I’m itching to get through the break-in period. For the first 500 miles I have to keep it under 4000 rpm, and then I can take it up to 6000rpm until I hit 1000 miles. After that I’m free to run it as hard as I want (redline around 11,000!)

I have a list on my computer of things I want to add to the bike and it is growing longer by the day. Here’s what I have so far in approximate order of priority from greatest to least:

I’m doing pretty well at holding off on the purchases as the priorities of various items rise and fall in these first days.

I did get some new photos, but only one that I really want to share. I pulled over to the side of the road to shoot some photos, and when I lined up the shot below, I noticed a hawk on the fence post behind my bike! Unfortunately I only got a couple shots before he flew off, but this one turned out pretty well.

benmartens February 24, 2009 Motorcycle

KIPASS

My bike is full of geeky engineering and technology. It’s going to take me a while to discover and understand a lot of it, but one immediately apparent gadget is the KIPASS (Kawasaki Intelligent Proximity Activation Start System.) It’s similar to the Prius key if you’ve seen that.

The basic idea is that the key always remains in the bike. There is a key fob that must be within 5 feet of the bike to turn the key or even take it out. I keep the fob in my coat. As soon as I walk up to the bike, I can start it without fumbling around for my keys. If the bike is turned on and leaves the radius of the key fob, the engine will shut off after about 10 seconds.

The system doesn’t really protect against theft because most motorcycle theft involves four guys picking up a bike and throwing it in the back of a truck. I’m also a bit concerned about locking myself out of the house since there is nothing stopping me from leaving with my house keys. Maybe I can get my house to unlock when I’m within five feet of the door!

benmartens February 20, 2009 Motorcycle

Economic Stimulus Package

I’m happy to announce that yesterday I enacted my own economic stimulus package with the purchase of a brand new motorcycle. It’s a 2009 Kawasaki Concours 14 ABS. The bike is classified as a “supersport touring” motorcycle. It’s based on Kawasaki’s top of the line ZX-14 sport bike but it has a few refinements to make it suitable for very long rides. The seating position is more comfortable, the windshield is bigger, it has a shaft drive instead of a chain, and there are bags on it. It has a 1352cc engine which puts out roughly 140hp. For those of you keeping track, that’s about 85% of the power that my Subaru has and it was less than a quarter of what my car does. Yikes! Needless to say, this thing is crazy fast. My Mustang ran the quarter mile in 13.9 seconds. This bike will do it in about 10.5 seconds. It provides all that speed and power while pampering the rider with smoothness, gadgets galore, and comfort. I compare it to a Bentley. It’s a ridiculous amount of power and luxury that no one really needs, but we all want it.

I got a few accessories with it. I ordered a larger windscreen since I’m a bit too tall for this one to work effectively (it raises and lowers electronically!) I also ordered a rear trunk for even more storage. I’m hoping that Tyla and I can take some weekend trips and have enough room to be comfortable. Each of the three bags will fit a full helmet with room to spare. This is a major upgrade from my last bike.

Thanks to Greg at Waldron Kawasaki for making this deal happen. They are fantastic people, and they have been doing maintenance on my Vulcan since I arrived in Washington. I chatted with a few of the dealers in the area, but they ended up matching my best offer and I was very happy to give them my business. Their service department is absolutely wonderful. It’s great to have a mechanic I can trust.

I picked it up yesterday after dark so I don’t have any good photos, but I have added some photos from my garage. The Vulcan was part of the deal so that is long gone. I have fond memories, but it’s hard to miss it much when I have this to ride instead. The first few trips will be part of the break in period but I look forward to really winding this up and letting it run. This will provide a lot of fun in the months and years to come! Are you ready to ride Tyla?

benmartens February 19, 2009 Motorcycle