* Our headline of the day, from WIFR TV…

RFD to Add 400 Parking Spaces, Gov. Quinn Visits to Make Announcement

Parking is apparently quite tight at the airport…

Passenger traffic increased 15 percent in 2011 and March of 2012 is estimated to be 12 percent higher than March of last year.

This increase in demand cuts into the supply of parking spots and the lots are already consistently 90 percent full.

Still, it does seem like quite a trip to build a few hundred parking spaces.

…Adding… The governor’s office says that Quinn was in Rockford for a “business meeting.” The parking lot announcement was not the only reason for the visit, they claim.

* Photo from the event…

Caption?

* The governor also worked in a nice little shot at Wisconsin during his visit…

Heh.

* Dave Bakke interviewed Toronto Star travel editor Jim Byers, who wrote a favorable column about Gov. Quinn’s visit to that city the other day…

[Byers] described Quinn as “playing it up pretty good in a goofy, folksy sort of way. He said, ‘Did I mention the birds!!?? We’ve got birds!!!’ ” That was a segue into telling our friends in the Great White North that Illinois is home to more bald eagles than any other state other than Alaska. […]

And Byers loved Quinn’s Ronald Reagan joke, too. I’m not sure we’ve heard that one before here in the darker corners of the state — not enough so that it’s stale anyway. The governor was reminding the Canadians that President Reagan was from Illinois. He used a joke about Reagan being a lifeguard in Dixon and saving 87 lives.

“They were all women,” Quinn said. “Mostly the same one over and over.”

* And let’s wrap this up with an official Quinn administration video. The governor begins by having some fun cutting a cable in half. Then he goes on to ramble a bit…