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.
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