A Website by Richard Feich

This beach is absolutely beautiful; great for swimming and snorkeling. Early morning we would see surfers catching waves on the other side out a bit where the waves break. In the winter the south shore [where Poipu lives] is generally calmer while the north shore roars with intensity, we have seen it. The sand on this beach is golden and very soft…you just love to wiggle your toes in it. Right now it’s about 5 degrees in Chicagoland, and it snowed almost every day this month so far. I want to go back to Kauai! This shot was taken in the morning just after an early breakfest at the Sheraton. For a better view, enlarge your browser window and “click it”.

“click-it for the big picture”

While in Kauai we stayed at the Sheraton which embraces the Poipu Beach on the south shore. The Poipu Beach is arguably one of the very best beaches on the island; totally user-friendly, especially in the winter. It consists of three beautiful crescents of golden sand accented with black lava rocks. The shot below was taken just near west edge of the beach; painted with a beautiful sunset accompanied by a warm tropical breeze while I enjoyed a Mai Tai…perfection! Today in Chicagoland it’s -25 to -30 degrees fahrenheit with the wind chill-factor — ouch!

Aloha. I recently returned from a fantastic vacation on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. This was my first visit; I fell in love with this place. This trip was a spiritually significant experience for me.

The photo below was taken while hiking on the Kalalau trail which provided a spectacular view of the Kalalau Valley along the Na Pali coast on the north shore of the island.  Please click the image for a larger view (900 x 602):

“click it”

The Ridges Sanctuary in Door County, Wisconsin is one of my favorite places visit with Mother Nature.

Here’s a shot I took atop of the John Hancock Building back in 2001 while enjoying a glass of fine champagne…it’s a good memory.

A remnant of the old Illinois Central train yard and still in use. Looking north from the Jaskson overpass. In the background is the Art Institute of Chicago (it’s backside). 

Chicago Train Yard

Here’s a shot I took back in 2000 [which seems like decades ago], from a slightly different perspective.

As we work through the dog days of summer, I can’t help but think about Fall and a place I love to visit.

Door County, Wisconsin

Welcome to a new development phase of my website at feich.com.  I decided to retire the old website and install a personal publishing system to allow me to maintain and update this website in a more timely fashion. I’m using a customized version of the very popular Wordpress…which I like very much. What is Wordpress? Here is a good description taken from the official Wordpress website:

Wordpress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

 I like Wordpress because it’s easy to use and customize, there are tons of themes and plugins available, and it has good support. Wordpress is really a Content Management System (CMS) geared towards blogging, however it can easily be configured for other purposes. In the last two years or so I have evaluated dozens of Content Management Systems…probably more then 35. I have used and extended many systems, and built a few as well. With this experience behind me, I selected Wordpress as my personal publishing platform.

I will continue to discuss the merits of Wordpress, as well as other CMS’s in later posts.

The Bean of Chicago