Day 6 -- Bye Kansas City, hello Kansas, & yet another brewery

Oh, well, kind Reader, we come to the final day of our trip. ☹️

But not to worry, I’ve got a last bit for you – if not the burnt end of the trip, at least an after dinner nosh (this metaphor could get old, yet as I recall, Henry Fielding keeps it going for pages in Tom Jones. But I don’t need to tell you I’m no Fielding).

See, Hank, as his friends surely called him, never flew first class.!!!

You see, today K & I did from Kansas City. Woo woo. Our first time. & I even paid for – not one of those make up by the airline kind of things (I missed this chance on the flight to London on the student trip in 2015 – I was a day out of the hospital with the heart attack, which I feel isn’t as coincidental as you might construe).

Anyway, there’s something to be said about how the other half lives, or rather the other smaller slice of the populace.

First, you have to admire the room. As K &I pointed out, there was enough armrest that we didn’t have to elbow wrestle.

Then there’s the one & off thing. You’re first on, yet somehow also first off. No waiting. Which has always boggled my mind: why do airlines fill planes from the front first?  So everyone has to wait for the people in the front of the plane to put their luggage up, etc? Dumb.

Then there’s food and drink.  We were offered a drink before I was settled; then food as soon as we were at our flight altitude.

If there’s a downside, it might be the company.  One guy acted like he needed to be first on the plane, like it was a competition, or there was a beer flight waiting, or something.  I heard no one make an outrageous request, but the flight personnel treated you like you were moments away from asking for Baked Alaska or a butt wipe (sorry, they handed out warm, moist towels, so…)

But it was well worth the $128 I paid for the upgrade for the 3 plus hour flight.

Oh yeah and you have your own bathroom.  You know, the one they wont let the hoi polloi in the back of the plane near. 

As for our day, it began with a combination of burnt end and airline allusion.

We had breakfast with John & crazy woman.  In the search for where, K found this place google maps “4 minutes away” called Hangar 29.  You might remember (and if you don’t, here’s my blog write up) that the four of us found this brunch place in Nowhere Texas 2 years ago at Hicks Hangar.  Not making that up.  That place was great and John and Lanisa have been back several times.

This place specialized in the cute names and modest food.  The basic breakfast “twin engine eggs your way” the pancakes I had were the “perfect landing pancakes.”  Do you want or need me to go on?  One more though: luggage rack of ribs.

Of course they did barbecue.  Its Kc after all.  John, shockingly, didn’t have brisket with his eggs.  There was house made ghost pepper sausage, in case your internal organs wanted that at 830 in the morning. Here’s what he had — he claimed the toast and hash browns are in a wing pattern.  No he didn’t share whatever he was smoking.

We sobbed goodbye and they headed for Michigan and then Indiana by car.

We went to Kansas.

See, one of the “things” discussed often these last few days was the absence of Kansas (except for the Kansas City name, of course — and OC the name is Native American).  You see, we came down from Minny via I-35 all the way, and it turns out everything we did was in Missouri.  In fact, it seems, despite what one might think, most everything notable (say, the arena) is on the Missouri side.  At one point we were maybe a bit off target and we worried we might cross the Missouri River into Kansas.  We didn’t.

But today we went on purpose.  K had never been to Kansas.   She said, initially, it looked a lot like Missouri.  Writing this blog is a lot easier with wits like that around. 

We went to Lawrence and here’s a decent shot of the campus with football field.  You can think of the football field shot as ironic, as their football program is often cited as the worst in Big 5 football.  You’ll see no shots of the basketball arena, the famed Phog, not the least due to them beating the crap out of my beloved Boilermakers in the round of 16 a year ago. Bastards!

Then, back into Kansas City Mo because I didn’t think we had figured out how to make beer yet. ):  We took the Boulevard brewery tour.  Boulevard is a big deal, the 11th largest craft brewery in the country (you know you can look this shit up?), and the official beer sponsor of the Royals. As Greg, our tour guide, pointed out, that’s not helped this year — they are like 24-64.  The upside is that might increase beer sales at the park.

Their tour is nice.  The facility, most of which dates from 2005, is new, expensively accoutered and impressive.  I only took this one picture because…well, as John likes to say, my give a F was broken.

Let me just say, the founder story here sounds remarkably like the one of the founder of New Belgium, which we visited two years ago in Ft collins, CO.  Went to Europe in 80s, discovered they made beers beyond an American lager, found out how to brew belgium style beers, eventually funded a small (in this case 35 barrel) beer-vat and away they went.

I will say, from the tasting,  I really liked their unfiltered wheat beer.  Greg said a lot of people had a drunk on Tank 7 story because Tank 7 is a light saison (if you know your beers) with, get this, 11% alcohol.  K of course thought it was the bomb.

But Boulevard only charged $5 which only got you 3 4 oz tastes. Lakefront was more of a beer drinkers mecca.

Finally, on this, let me say, one of our tour compatriots was a young woman whose 21st birthday was today.  Well played.  Her parents took her up to the beer hall after tasting, clearly to buy her a Tank 7 drunk story 

We then were off to the airport. It is all over.  Sob sigh.  Another vacation come and gone.  We enjoyed this a lot, so it was good.  And only one of us has to go to real work tomorrow.

I have another blog started, my hotel and restaurant review of the trip.  Your give a bleep can be broken too but I have these thoughts and experience and I want to share.  If you like stories of poor service, flirty waiters, and stuff like toilets that don’t work, please read.

For now, so long, faithful Readers.

Day 5. Baked at the Royal game, & baked Italian

Alas, if you are still with us, we are running short of days.

Today was hot in Kansas City, I don’t care what the guy on Tv said.  If you wonder, it was 103 on John’s truck when we got in it for dinner.  You can’t make this stuff up.

Unbelievably (ar ar) none of us wanted breakfast.  We were all still trying to digest more meat than the local stockyards used to butcher.

After John & I taped the podcast, which came out well despite being taped in the women’s room in the conference center in the hotel here, we putzed around (for you Midwesterners, I think the equivalent term is juned) till we left for the ballgame.

K had already found a webpage (the glory of the internet) that indicated we weren’t NOT in the shade.  In fairness, there weren’t many seats in the shade at 1 PM.

The good news is the tickets I bought were great seats, like 5 rows, if that from the field, and had a parking pass that put us 2 rows from the street that you crossed to go into the gate.

One notable thing here: we had A LOT, like a brontosaurus worth, of barbecue last night.  And Kaufman Stadium, home of the Royals, has a lot of barbecue places.  Like bbq burgers.  BBQ brisket.  Hell, they had bbq brisket nachos in a helmet!     here’s John’s edition.

I almost gagged at the thought of more bbq.

Review:  Kaufman Stadium is nice enough.  The waterfall in center field is spectacular.  And the food seemed good.  Sheboygan sausages, bbq, a taco stand…

And I doubt there’s a bad seat in the house.  Here’s pic from our seats.

 But of the three places we’ve just been to, we decided it was third.  Not a bad third, but still.  I’d go back, but it’s not like it was a destination venue.

After not winning the 50/50 (we both played), we returned to the hotel to chill, literally, nap (also literally it turned out) then get ready for dinner.

K found a highly rated Italian place.  Those of you who have read this column before know I don’t like Italian.  But Lanissa did, so I was willing to sacrifice for her.  One review said they heard frank Sinatra sing there…many quips about how many years ago that was…

We drove John’s F150 to the restaurant.  Just riding it felt like compensating for something, if you know what I mean.

We looked at the menu, and Phil said he’d take care of us.  He did.

We started with the cheese ravioli in truffle oil appetizer.  It disappeared before I could get a pic.  Yes, yum…K and John used the excellent bread to sop up the remaining oil.  That good.

We ordered.  I had decided on the the three pasta house specialty.  It said ravioli, mocccacilli, and angel hair with your choice of sausage or meatball.  When I placed my order Phil said “you know that is a lot of food…more than the famous 72 oz steak in Amarillo…the biggest plate of pasta you’ve ever seen.  It’s 7 pounds of pasta!”  I said bring it on…half not believing him, half not caring.

Here it is.

That’s Lanisa’s  fist to show how big the meatball was.

Then Phil gave me this.

That’s kinda mean.  But necessary.  & shows I am not the first one to have this issue.  Splatter.

Here’s K’s meal, one version of their rolled, chicken special.

And K wanted their lemon cake.  It was nice and lemony and light.  I had ONE bite.

Phil packed it for us.

Lanisa decided we should take it to some homeless people.   We found you can’t really just google homeless people and find them.  Did you know that?

So, we came across a guy on a skateboard, pushing a shopping cart full of stuff down the street.

I’m not making this up (I am beginning to feel like Dave Barry).

I was driving (you know, to help compensate) and pulled up next to him, Lanisa rolled down the window and she asked if he wanted a hot meal.  He told her to fuck off and was she fucking crazy and go give it to someone who really needs it.

Ouch.

We found a policeman and he laughed when Lanisa said we couldn’t find anyone (hey, we’re from out of town) and she told him she got cussed at and he rolled his eyes.  But he took it.

And,  with that good deed, we ended our day.

Tomorrow John and Nis head out early, and we are doing things in KC, before a 330 flight home.  It’s been fun.  Oh, yeah…there’ll be a small surprise among tomorrow’s blog insights.

Day 4: KC beer & beef & bones & blues

So, today the first lesson was: when I say “I have been thinking”, someone should slap me up the side of the head so I don’t.

I decided the thing to do was order Panera “rapid pickup” from the one nearest the hotel, so we could get right out of Minny this morning.  The nearest one was at the Mall of America.  Err…”in” the Mall of America. After Google maps left me with “you have arrived at your destination” in the middle of a road outside the mall, no Panera in sight, I figured out it was probably IN the mall.

ICYMI the Mall of America is not small. Like quadrillion million square feet.

The good news is I came in the door just below it — in the food court on the third level (you don’t get a quadrillion million square feet by staying on one level).

I found it. As I was making the three mile trip,  I texted K to find the nearest Starbucks.

I bet you can see her reply coming.

“3rd level of the Mall of America.”

So was laughing like it was the fuckin funniest thing she’d ever said.

It also turned out to be be true. ):

If that wasn’t funny, we stop at the nearest real Starbucks (if you know what I mean) and what’s across the parking lot, within sight? No, I wont tell you.  No, it couldn’t be a Panera.

When we planned this journey, we knew we had travel days.  K looked at “things to do” between Milwaukee and Minny & Minny & KC.  That’s why we ended up in Chippewa Falls.  If that doesn’t tell you how much excitement there is between the cities.

Today was the 6 hours from Minny to KC.  There is little between them.  Des Moines.  The Bridges of Madison County (puke barf).

But we passed through “Silo and Smokestack National Historic Area” to which K said “but why?”  She was not impressed.

You now have a good impression of the trip. 

John & Labia errr Lanissa arrived shortly after we did at the hotel.  (Hotel reviews tomorrow…)

Maybe ‘pregaming’ suggests more drinking than was done before dinner, but there WAS drinking. Leinenkugel’s. 

Dinner was at Q93, which, according to the internet (which we know is problematic),is one of the best barbecue places in KC.

The highlight, despite the food, was our wait person, Steven.  When asked what was good on the menu, Steven said that their were ribbons next to various items & you might start with those if you didn’t know what to do.  So we started with the wings, which the description said were the best on the planet.

I have no picture.  We were skeptical, then we ate them.  They are probably the best wings I’ve ever eaten, and I order wings a lot.  They were meaty, the meat came right off the bone, & the sauce was a wonderful combination of tangy, then sweet, with a slight biting finish.

I ordered the other ribbon on the menu, the beef rib.  I didn’t come to a city famous for its cows to eat pig.  Here’s the pic, which is as impressive as the food.

John & K ordered the pick 2 platter, getting brisket, pulled pork and spare ribs (I wont mention that John didn’t know there was a difference between ribs ).  But here’s the line of the night:  for his sides, John said to Steven he wanted the white bean casselet and Cole slaw.  But he said he kind of wanted the baked beans, too.  Steven said “if you want to double bean it, well, it’s more on her (nodding to Lanissa) about your Dutch oven.”  OMG.

You can see the huge bone on my plate (you can see where this is going): John asked if Steven could pack it to take away.   I think the response was “I’m good with bone.”  Then he came back and John asked how the bone wrapping went and Steven said “I’m good with wrapping big hard things.”  Lanissa told him she wanted to take him home and he said it could be worked out. LOL.

I convinced them we should have the award-winning cheesecake.  Pictured.  It was good.

We finished dinner & K found a stain of bbq on her front, one of those things when you eat it.  I said I thought I had come out clean, but it didn’t matter because I had worn my “barbecue colored shirt.” (My new U Minnesota polo in their distinctive maroon).  My best line of the night...:)

And then we went to the car.  John asked what we are doing now and I suggested we hear some live music.  In a few turns we were in a different neighborhood — the highlight was a small black woman on a Harley in leathers playing music loudly — Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore (as a side note, we are not ever going to Kansas.  Most of the what we think of as Kansas City, including the hotel, airport, restaurant and ballpark, are on the Missouri side.  According to Wikipedia, cough cough, the city in Kansas was founded 20 years later and they decided to name their city the same as the one across the river.  WTF?!)

We had a drink and listened to a full set of jazz at a club downtown.  We discussed on the ride back to the hotel the cliched nature of the place: the guy outside who greeted and seated us with the white hat, the two button blazer, white pants, the woman behind the counter taking our money, and the jazz combo with the cool looking bass player (he even had sunglasses on), the piano player who reminded us all of Schroeder from Peanuts, the two sax players who stood on the side when they weren’t playing, eyes closed, moving to the music…they were good.  It was Matt Otto; I have one of his CDs.  Now.:)

And that, good reader, is day 4 of our adventure…tomorrow is a podcast taping (I don’t know if I can keep John from talking too much live), then the Royals game.  It’s supposed to be “only 92” and our seats are in the sun.  John said he might need a sweater (Ft Worth has been hot).  Till then…

Day 3: a Minny Day (pun intended)

Ah, back again, dear Reader.  You will notice there is a lack of pictures — the combination of the hotel’s wifi & Google’s shitty interface has left me in a spinning wheel of not upload.  I will do so as soon as technology allows.

I know where we are: Minneapolis.  The airplanes swooping overhead tell me that I am near the airport.  But I’m NOT flying out.  Car tomorrow to Kansas City.  Kansas City, here I come…(insert Muddy Waters)

Today was something of a travel day, so the recap:

Food:
Breakfast: at the inn, pictured (she did a nice job)

Lunch: a bagel at Einstein Brothers in UMn student union
Dinner: ballpark.   Chicken tikka rice bowl.  No I’m not kidding.  (see pic)

Breweries, none.  Wineries, none (there’s at least one story there).  One campus.  One ballgame.

Breakfast at a b&b is…well, some people like it, some don’t.  I don’t want to talk or think (I think they are related) before 10, so I find it problematic.

So, when asked at breakfast my name, by Sharon, after Karen, I said “Baron.”  The guy next to me was Meron. His wife admitted to being “just Jane.” There was a bit of repartee over our potato casserole.

Then we were off to the river.   We stopped and bought another Leinenkugel glass (see yesterday) and for reasons I don’t understand, K got it wrapped in bubble wrap and got an extra sheet of bubble wrap for yesterday’s.  I don’t get it.

The Mississippi River turned out to be quite a ways away.  But, almost 2 hours later, we ran along its banks on the Wisconsin side (have I mentioned that Wisconsins seem to think that their state is in the shape of an Indianhead (with headdress?). I can’t help you with that, but they do.  Here’s the money shot from Maiden Rock (myth is a Native girl threw herself off it due to her family not letting her join the man she loved back in the 18th c — hmmmm).

We stopped for ice cream for lunch.  This was only in part due to the fact the only thing we saw once we reached the river was this ice cream place.

Oh, yeah.  And, just after turning on the road heading north to Minneapolis, there was a huge winery.

I blew through the turn like Mario Andretti at Indy and by the time K was able to say “I wanted to stop there” we were two miles up the road and I was slumping my shoulders about the prospect.  If I had known the next possible stop was 90 minutes later and a Christmas tree farm with ice cream shop (you can’t make this up), MAYBE I would have stopped.

Then to the University of Minnesota.  There was not a word out of K about wishing she had gone to school here — I guess there was no warming lake   UMn has some nice buildings, but the “Knoll” looks a lot like Penn State’s quad, and the buildings are regular in their red brick with Doric (I act like I know the distinction, maybe I don’t) columns.

It became a thing today for K to sit in a big chair and want her picture taken.  Here’s the pair from today.  I have no idea why.

We were told at breakfast that the one thing we had to see if we had short time in Minneapolis is Minnehaha Falls.  (an added bonus was how Google Maps said it, like it was two words, Minny HaHa). Here’s the pic.

Call me cynical, but I’ve seen falls, and this wasn’t worth diverting to see.  Like, here’s an effin’ falls

Then to the hotel.

Context: we have watched the new Queer Eye.  So I am standing in line in the hotel lobby and the guy in front of me is in a tee shirt and cargo shorts.  I need to point out his tee shirt was not neat, so I know what brand of underwear he was wearing, which I wont share with you.  I look to the guy in the front of the line next to me and he, too, is in cargo shorts and a tee shirt.  His tee, btw, is long enough to cover his belt line.  The next guy in, and his son with him, are wearing cargo shorts and tee shirts.

I was mildly proud I wasn’t.  

On Queer Eye, they have had several guests who sport that look.  They call it the “Dad look.” & it’s not a compliment.  & they do away with it at all costs.  But it is damned near ubiquitous. 

The guy in the elevator with us was from North Dakota.  It was UND night at the Twins game and he was there for the game.  He spoke like an extra from the Tv series Fargo.

Funnier was the fact I started that.  Yuh know?  Where you kinda add an extra uh sound to a lot of things, to make it sound like everything is longer and slower? Yuh know?

Train to ballpark.  Good seats.  Not like crossing the Sahara as train dropped us right at a gate.

Lousy game. Twins suck.  Orioles, their opponent (obviously) suck worse.  We went back to the hotel before I won the 50/50.   It’s okay to find out tomorrow. 

Stadium review: K said “this park could be anywhere.” You can see the Minny skyline, but it’s not distinctive.   The distinctive part is they spent a bunch of money having it stone faced, in a yellowish stone you can see in the right field corner here.  That’s a nice touch.

But Miller Park on Wednesday, despite the conditions, is much more interesting, with the slide for the home runs, the glass window on one side and the retractable roof.

But I had Indian food at the park.   Food is an important part of the ballpark experience: I love Citizens Bank in Philly because they have Federal donuts there.  The best cake donuts in the world.  Still warm.  

We meet John and Lanisa (why does spellcheck think her name is Labia?Has her confused with a character from Shakespeare?) tomorrow in KC.  Podcast, BBQ, and a Royals game.  And probably, I’m just guessing, drinks.  Just guessing…

Till tomorrow.

July 18, Day 2: Life Lessons from Whisky

There are some commonplaces that are just true.

One is that you don’t actually have to do much to have material for a blog.

That, dear reader, is just one of the many things you are about to learn.

Let me start as much as possible in chronological order.  With this opening summary: there was no baseball; there was a brewery; and add one campus.

And if you want to know where we are: I don’t the bleep know.  And I drove. ):  More on that later.

To start, go back to yesterday: I always, yes, always buy a 50/50 ticket at the ballpark.  Hey, a guy can dream.  Right?

Yesterday, we were accosted still outside the stadium, as you may recall, in the Sahara desert, by 50/50 sales people.  K suggested I go ahead and buy and give us an oasis as we crossed.  So I did.  But she wanted $2 a ticket.  I asked what $5 got me and was told 2 tickets and a dollar back (these Wisconsins are literalists), since I wasn’t getting 3 for $5 (the usual), I bought 3 tickets.

We left the park, fried, you may recall, before whenever they called the number.

This morning it occurred to me to look.  I did.  The haul was $13,800.  Nice.  The number was 561094.

I look at my top ticket and it is 561…0…9…3!

I have two more folded under it…

I have 092 and 091.  The wrong way on the sequence.

I yelped “shit” and K came out of the bathroom asking what was wrong. I told her.  She told me to never play the 50/50 again…that was my chance. ):

We decided a) we didn’t want to pay taxes on that, b) we didn’t want to ruin our day figuring out how to collect the money.  So we left Milwaukee happy.  [note of bitter irony here]

But we went to breakfast.  I had little hope as the list of breakfast places K found started with Denny’s, then something like Stuart’s Pancake House.  We ended up at Blue’s Egg.

Here’s the monkey bread (these are for those of you who read this for the food):

And I had the lemon cheesecake filled French toast.

Both were excellent.

On then to Madison.

Madison sits on a lake.  In fact, if I inserted the right photo, you would see part of the campus of UW is on the lake.

K says to me “I might have preferred this to Purdue” and I said except for the weather.  She said “no, the lake would keep it warm.” I called bull shit.  When we got seated for coffee on the lake (only a coincidence that feels like irony), I looked up the average temp in Madison in January.  25/9.  West Lafayette? 34/18.  Uh huh, the warming of the lake 250 miles north (that was my guess).  Of course, yes, of course, I probably wouldn’t repeat this story if she had been right. 

The campus is lovely and quite grand.  I would insert pictures here, but K insisted that I include this picture.

About the campus, we noted the architecture is eclectic.  Not like some places, say James Madison, where the buildings are all the same blue stone.  There was red brick neo-gothic, the library is very modern minimalist utilitarian, the history museum with big Doric columns — a bit of everything.  It was quite a treat — with the lake a block away.

Add to that the multi-culturalism of the food trucks that stood between campus and the city.  Here’s my pic of the row — East African, thai (OC), empanadas, Peruvian, something healthy, …I can’t remember them all.  The joke on my campus is that foreign food in town is tacos.  Yes, really.

From Madison we drove west.

Three hours?

We arrived in Chippewa Falls, still in Wisconsin, around 330.  We found Leinenkugel (you did see the part about brewery?) and were on the 4 o’clock tour.

Okay, we now get down to the whole compare the brewery tour experience thing, and let me say,  people who drive all the way there, and it’s not near anything (it thinks IT is the thing in the region) are getting bleeped.

$10 for the tour.  You get either 5 small glasses or 2 “pints” (their pints are only 12 ounces, what’s with that?!) .  the 5 are 5 oz, which means they come to less than the 4 yesterday

The tour is an hour.   Longer than yesterday.  But the tour guide,as I said in ydays blog, is this thing.  And today’s must have been somebody’s cousin or something (the Leinenkugel family is still involved in the enterprise, which is 151 years old).

She monotoned her way through the hour, like the teacher on The Wonder Years who talked over slides like that… somehow she told the same hops joke on the elevator 3 times with the same tone.

Then there was the facility — unlike yesterday, you felt outside of things, and were — with lots of safety concerns (we wore goggles the entire time — I have a picture of K in hers to use when I need blackmail) and lots of videos of the process, but no real feel for the whole thing.

Their beer is good, though.  They still use the recipe from1867 for their original and their brewmaster still thinks it is their best beer and a tasting indicated he may not be wrong (btw, all their brewmasters for a century have been named John…this was part of the spiel, la di da).

Now, to the glasses.  Like yesterday, one of the things from the tour is you get a souvenir glass.  Today I was a bit cavalier with them as I put them in the back seat.  I was warned about not breaking them.   Note, I hadnt, nor yesterday’s either.  But I made one quick turn and the Leininkugel ones rolled on the floor and their was the shattering of glass!  Yes, I’m up shit creek, of course.  But it turned out one survived.    we can pick one up on the way out of town.  They start tours at 830.  If you can imagine that.

But, wait, if you thought that was good, I did one better.  I slammed on the brakes after dinner (I was trying to ignore a stop sign and someone screamed in fright) and rolled the two from yesterday onto the floor.   Crash!  I broke out in maniacal laughter.   when asked why, I pointed out there was no concern about breaking glasses for over 24 hours until she jinxed it.  Uh huh. 

I was told there was a life lesson here: don’t put glasses on the back seat.  

And now, for a long story for another life lesson: we asked the innkeeper for a recommendation for dinner and she suggested we go to a supper club.  She said it was a Wisconsin thing.

So, we did.

In case you want more than you are about to get, here’s a link:  http://www.grubstreet.com/2013/04/wisconsin-supper-clubs-faiola-slideshow.html

For the 2nd night in a row, we got ignored by the wait person.  Tonight, she literally never asked what we wanted to drink?  When she finally showed up with her pad, she wanted to know if we were ready to order our meals!

But first: it seems a supper club is like a place to eat that is like someone’s house.  The décor of this one was 50s church basement.

There was a vestibule bar, then through to the dining area.  We skipped the cocktail portion of the experience.

We were supposed to get a nibble plate with “something healthy” before ordering a side of cow or a whole bird.

When “Kim” finally brought our nibbles it was: a small bowl of cottage cheese (no, I’m not making this up), a small thing of an orange spread that turned out to be the equivalent of slightly hardened cheese whiz, a small thing of something that I took to be pickled herring (the kind of thing I thought only existed in John. Updike stories), and, get this, four small carrots, four radishes, four scallions and two ugly stalks of celery.  This came with a cracker basket with club crackers or bread sticks — you know, in the wrapper.

Tonight’s special was prime rib.  By the time Kim showed up, we had both decided to have a small cut.  We got what looked like a solid pound of prime rib.  And a baked potato the size of a junior league football.

In case you missed it, we waited half hour for Kim to come take our drink orders, which she never did, then the guy who seemed to be in charge brought our pickled nibbles.  Eventually Kim got around to bringing our drinks and our prelim, then, before we were done, because of the excellent service, of course.

K reminded me of another of life’s lessons: don’t piss off the person who is handling your food.

Did you know you could fuck up prime rib?  I didn’t.  Till tonight.  That cow had no taste.  Yum yum.

Ah, well, I had the experience.   I hear they are opening a Wisconsin-style supper club in NYC.  I guess they want institutional food served poorly in a 50s church basement setting.   Good luck to that.

Finally, we went into town, ironically, looking for beer.  In the parking lot came a couple.  They had matching buzz cuts around the edges (one had a hat on) and matching dyed blonde jobs.  They were almost the same heighth and the one wore leggins with a spaghetti strap top, in white, with a hint of sequins in the top.  Just that designer hint, you know.  And, K pointed out, her bra straps, of course not white, visible.  To add to this effect, of course, she had a cigarette in her hand, that she had to stop and finish before going in.  The “do not enter” door.  They held hands as they walked down the aisles.

KMN.

And on that note, with a big day of…maybe cheese, maybe brewery, definitely baseball, and another state! I big you good night and good luck.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Day 1: Milwaukee

Hello, again, faithful Reader!

I am back, this time with Karen on a new adventure.  This time it’s supposed to be about baseball and bonding, but we’ll see. 😃

You see, one never knows where the narrative is going to take you.

For instance, today.  Our flight this morning from Avoca (aka Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, but its 3LA is “AVP” because it’s in this little burg between) was vvvvveeeerrrryyyy early: 6 am.  We left the house at 4 for the flight.  Rough day.

But that’s not the story.  No.  The guy who stumbled into the seat behind us was.  !!!

K said she could smell the alcohol on him from her seat in front of him.  He kept telling the poor woman next to him (who he didn’t know till the flight) that he was supposed to be on the 538 flight “PM” — you know what they say about lying and details.  It seemed to exact to be made up.  And he didn’t know how he got on this flight with this huge layover to wherever he was going.

Within moments he had told the woman that he now wakes up on two legs where he used to wake up with three, if she knew what he meant…(work that one out, I know it’s not really safe for work, but…)

Then he told her the president was a lying c***s***er who was two faced and etc.  “Can’t be trusted.”

In case you think he was biased, he pointed out that he hated the Democrats, they had ruined the country.

He talked incessantly.  Constantly.  Every bleepin’ minute from the time he sat down till we got off the plane in Detroit, an hour and twenty minutes later.  And loud enough that neither K nor I could sleep all the way.

So, that’s story number one.

Story number two was a bit more controlled.

After a trip to the Milwaukee waterfront, which was lovely, though it was 86 when we got to town at 830 am, I waited for K to determine what to do.  She decided to go to a brewery tour before the baseball game. (I pointed out that one was scheduled for tomorrow, but she ignored that.  Hummmm)

We went on the 1 o’clock tour. This was Lakefront brewery, which is one of the 100 largest craft breweries in the country (they make over 45,000 barrels of beer a year, all on the site were we at), and K found has one of the best tours…I don’t know…but we went.

If the point of such things is to get you lit, Lakefront has it figured out.  For $9 you go the tour, but they gave you 4 wooden coins that filled a plastic cup they gave you at the bar (or the filling station along the tour — you know 45 minutes was too long to go without a refill).  As it turned out, K liked all of their beer, which, come to think of it should concern me, as should her enjoyment of pre-lunch drinking (I’ve seen this phenomenon before with wine tasting).  They actually had several pretty good beers, from my tastes (K thought she should help me with my 4 coins, rightly).

But, of course, the entertainment was the tour guide, Mike.  You know you are in for something special when the tour guide, at 1 in the afternoon, shows up with a beer in his hand.  Mike asked us all to say where we were from at once, because he “wanted to know where we are all from.”  He only heard “Chicago.” Yeah, he was a comedian.

Then he wanted to know if there were any home brewers there; “so I know to keep my mistakes to a minimum.”

I wouldn’t know if he made any; if I could do chemistry…well, I might not be an English professor. 😃

His big set piece was when we got to the yeasting vat.  “this is young beer; you know about teen aged boys…all they really do is eat, fart, poop, masturbate, and sleep.”  I was mildly offended for teen aged boys, and my younger self, but then he explained the analogy as the yeast eats the sugar in the new beer, then farts CO2, poops alcohol, then has sex with…oh, the whole thing seemed to make sense at the time.  Not sure it improved anyone’s desire to drink beer, but there you have it.

In the middle…errr…2/3rds of the way through…was the tap stop.  They “only” had 4 kinds of beer (you had to use one of your 4 coins — K used her last one there) at this stop.  Pity.

We finished at the bottling station, where we, no, I’m not making this up, sang the theme to Laverne & Shirley (if you have to look it up, don’t), and one designated woman did like Laverne (or was it Shirley?) did and put the glove on a bottle going through the line.  K of course knew all the lyrics.  SMH.

From that entertainment, to the suffering of the center piece of the day and the trip: the baseball game.  It was hot out.  The car said 91.  And humid.  The walk from the parking lot to the stadium at Miller Park (of course named for a beer, there’s a theme in Wisconsin ) was like marching across the Sahara.  And then our seats, which the picture on stubhub indicated were in the shade, weren’t.  ):  I needed someone to come and use a spatula and flip me every ten minutes.  I may have the grill marks. ):

As this is the centerpiece, a ballpark review is necessary.  K and I are in agreement on ballparks: #1 is whatever they call candlestick park in San Fran.  Can’t beat the architecture or the site, with McCovey cove right behind right field.  Arizona, San Diego and DC are favorites too.   We disagree on PNC.

Miller Park isn’t passing any of those.  It of course reminds one of Diamondbacks stadium, with the retractable roof.  The food seemed good —  I had bbq’d bacon Mac and cheese — heavy on the sausages, of course (Wisconsin, right?).

All and all, enjoyable.  A place worth visiting and even returning to, if things so transpired (this is my 3rd trip to Milwaukee, ever, two in last year plus; I am hard-pressed to imagine another any time soon).

The day finished with haute cuisine.  Or rather, haute dessert.  There is a Cheesecake Factory across the street from the hotel.  I had the 30th anniversary, pictured, which is a mix of their original and fudge cake.  The best of both worlds. 

And that is day 1.  I haven’t mentioned hotels…that will wait for another day, and, it seems, another brewery tour. Since that turn to b why we are here…are there breweries in Minnesota? Nah.  Like Starbucks, they must be hard to come by.

Manana