I Want To Ride My Bicycle

I finally bought something that I wanted in a long time. This weekend there was a large bike expo at the state fairgrounds. Friday after work J and I went to the grounds to get me a mountain bike. I shopped around and eventually settled on a last years model Giant. It’s a nice bike with shocks and disc brakes, just what I was looking for. This bike expo was pretty big and while we were standing in line they had a stunt bike rider doing tricks on his mountain bike. This guy was pretty nuts and he was hopping all around on his bike. He hopped on some platforms, some skinny stands, and rode up and down some extremely steep ramps. He was ok but that’ll be nothing compared to what I’ll be able to do by summer’s end.

What better way is there to break in a new bike than to get out and ride it. So I got up Saturday morning and biked to Sheboygan. J didn’t want to go on the ride this time, and I needed a way to get back, so she drove up. I left at eightish. The ride was actually easier than it was the last time. It was a bit chillier outside than I had expected and should have brought a coat but the workout kept my blood pumping and kept me warm. I stopped at the same little hardware store in Belgium for some a beef sticks and Power Aid lunch. On the ride I saw a blue bird, a cardinal, and a hawk. I thought god had sent the frogs to cover the earth again because I saw and heard thousands of frogs in the marsh areas on the sides of the bike path. The frogs were so loud I could hear them through my sound isolating headphones. Being one with nature, and getting a good sunburn was great but getting to my brother’s was once again a relief. I knocked an hour off my last ride to ‘boygan. It took me 4:45 to go the 66.1 miles. I actually had a couple things to do up der in ‘boygan. I sold my brother Randy my computer (I built a new one hence the iRau outage) so I had to drop that off and I needed my brother Rich to check J’s brakes which are need to be replaced. So I got both of those out of the way and I was also able to pick up my Christmas presents at Randy’s. The real reason I was up there was to take my mom (4/1) and dad (4/5) out for their birthdays. We went to Schwarz’s in St. Ann’s. I’ve ranted and raved about this place already so the only thing I can say is my porterhouse was delicious as usual. We ran into my cousin Bobby there who said that there is actually a better steak house down the road. I find it very unlikely that not only is there a better steak than Schwarz’s but there are two unbelievable steak joints in the middle of nowhere a couple miles apart. Either way now we’re going to have to try this place called Blank’s down the road. After dinner I took my dad back to the farm and we checked out some of the baby goats and sheep. Once we got out of the ban and smelt like crap we decided the only way to get rid of the smell was to go to the Osthelder and sit in the smoke for a bit. We weren’t even in the door and we saw Mike B and Chad Neerhoff sitting at the bar. We sat there and had a few and then we headed down to The Other Place for Marti’s dad’s surprise birthday party. We stuck around there for a bit and talked about Chad’s trip out to Napa. Then we had to leave because I got the unexpected call of a lifetime. My mom called and asked if we were at Hops Haven so meet up. I had told my mom that we would be going there and that we should meet up but I didn’t expect it to happen. So we fled the party and met my godmother Terri and my mom at the brew house. We spent the remainder of the night there and talked with Terri and my mom. It was a great time. Terri also had an unexpected encounter. It seems her daughter Sarah dates a guy whose hangout is Hops Heaven. Go figure he was there and we ran into him. The guy was a little freaked out to see Terri there but he held himself together enough not to make too much of an ass of himself. So once my mom and Terri left we wrapped up the night and headed home.

Monday was opening day and turned out to be pretty much the some old thing. I would write more but I’m getting bored so here is the truncated version. Took off work at 11. Went to parking lot to meet Booze Inn guys. Did shotguns and listened to music. Went and hung out with Falls boys. Booze Inn bus got in gladiator type fifteen on fifteen fight. Cops came, eight Harley, eight bicycle and five mounted. Went to game. Found Graham and Luedke. Watched game. Went to My Office with Luedke after. Went home and ate a pizza.

Is That a Pre- or Post-Chili Glow

Saturday was the start of our weekend this week. Adam came over to watch the basketball games and drink a couple brew ha has with us. After the games the three of us went to the Metro for a couple drinks. I actually skipped the martini special this week and drank only beer. The last time I was there was the night we drank hurricanes and I got gut rot from all the sweetness of the drinks. After that we headed over to My Office and finished up the night there.

Sunday J, Adam, Stacey and I went to the chili cook off being held at Lakefront Brewery. They had a bunch of different kinds of chili from all over the MKE area. It was $3 to get in and then a dollar for a cup of chili. I forgot my chili tastin’ spoon at home but that didn’t prevent me from eating upwards of twelve cups of chili. It was a gorgeous day so we finished up our chili eating adventure on the outdoor patio at Lakefront and soaked up some of the spring sun. It was pretty much the consensus in our group that Koppa’s had the best chili of the competition. There were many other good chilies including Philly Way, Soup Station, Soup Shack, BBC’s, and the official winner Q who made their chili with BBQ brisket and gave you a tortilla with it. We all ate way too much chili and we rolled home and basked in our chili glow. Maybe a chili glow isn’t a good way to describe what we were basking in. Either way it was fun. Since a good majority of the Jocelyn’s family went to Illinois I have to give them my condolences for Monday’s hard fought loss to North Carolina for the NCAA basketball title. You’ll get ’em next year tiger!

Pickled Easter Egg Hunt

This weekend is Easter weekend. Friday after work I watched the Badgers play NC State. The Badgers comfortably won which was a refreshing change as opposed to their normal play. I met Luedke after the game at BBC’s on North Ave. I had a beer to celebrate the big win and headed home and got some sleep.

Saturday was a lot of fun. Luedke and Anna joined me for the Riverwest Pub Crawl. The crawl consisted of 19 bars and you could consume one free beer at each bar. The crawl was $30 and more than worth it. We got our free t-shirt and map and off we went to explore the Riverwest area. Riverwest is actually kind of a sketchy part of town but there were hundreds of people on this bar crawl and there were always groups of people around. All the details of the crawl would take way too long to explain so here is a bulleted list of the highlights.

  • Ate a pickled egg
  • Met two old ladies on the crawl who were wearing plastic cups on their heads and said they were so hungover after last years crawl that their hair hurt
  • Saw memorial to some guy that got killed in front of one of the bars
  • Saw Peep art
  • Saw crazily dressed band at a couple bars
  • got buzzed in through buzzer door by the bartender/doorman at a sketchy bar
  • Purchased old records from a yard sale
  • Ran into guys from Random Lake
  • Met Spike “the mayor of Riverwest”

The whole thing was very fun and I must thank L and Anna for going along with me. I had a good time and made it to 18 of the 19 bars. Easter I just stayed at home and watched basketball. I didn’t feel like going to Chicago with J so I just stayed put. I made a good ham and will have enough ham to eat for the next couple months. Unfortunately the Badgers lost to North Carolina. They played really good but didn’t have quite enough in the end. Happy Easter!

Celebrating The Irish In Me

This was one of the rougher weekends I’ve had in a while and it started on Thursday with a little bit of St. Patty’s celebration. After work I met Luedke and we headed to Sweeney’s for some Guinness and Jameson. Neither of us were really feeling the Irish vibe in there so our visit was short lived. From there we went to my Friday lunch spot the Ardor. The Ardor has great food and it didn’t disappoint on St. Pat’s. I had a delicious corned beef, cabbage and potato dinner there. After that was done we sat around and drank some $2.50 Guinni and played some vids. We were minding out business when out of the blue Schwenker shows up. He was wasting time waiting for Brad Mohn’s and randomly stumbled into our neck of the woods. So we sat, drank and played some dice while waiting for Brad. Finally Brad showed up but I was already deep in conversation with some random guy I met sitting at the bar that had a masters degree in art. He had just moved back to Milwaukee to interview to be a professor at a couple area colleges. His specialties were pottery and glass; he was a very interesting person. I was talking to him and everyone else had decided to go to another bar but I had just gotten a fresh beer and was talking to this dude. One beer turned into a couple and I ended up spending almost the whole night at the Ardor. This guy went to Madison too so we had all the college stories to share. Finally it was time to meet up with everyone else. I had gotten a text from Luedke saying he was at My Office so I made my way over there. When I got there there was no Luedke. Not wanting to look like a fool and walk in and walk out I sat down and had a brew. I ran into another character there. A black guy who claimed he was a true to life pimp and was waiting for one of his women. I was interested so I talked to this guy for an hour or so. His woman never showed up but I had had enough of this holiday and headed home a drunken solo Irishman.

Work on Friday was pretty tough and I know now why I don’t drink during the week. I went into work a couple hours late but it was no big deal because two of my three bosses were out and I didn’t have much to do. For lunch I went back to the scene of the crime, the Ardor and talked with the owners about the craziness of the night before. After what felt like sixteen hours of work was over I went home to get ready for the night’s basketball game. Luedke, Adam, Stacey, Chappy, J and I drove to Delahunt’s joint to watch the Badgers game. It was a good time. We ate fish fries, pizza and drank some brew to cure the headache from the night before. The basketball games were great and the Bucky advanced to the next round. There were some great upsets and all the games were close and exciting. One of those upsets was UWM beating Boston College to make it to the Sweet 16. The major highlight and upset of the night was Luedke, Dave O, and I defeating the salty crew of Adam, Chappy and Todd in three straight games of pitcher quarters. I didn’t think I still had it in me but I went three for three and was instrumental in destroying the salty three. Once the games were over we headed home around eleven and called it a night.

After what felt like my first rest in a week I was able to relax Saturday during the day. Marti had picked up Emily from the airport and they stopped over for a couple hours. They’re headed to the Sonoma Valley on a vacation so we shot the breeze about that and did some catching up. They took off and the Badger game started up. Jocelyn had just gotten home and Bucky was ready to kick some butt in the next round of the tourney. Luedke ended up coming over for the game and he helped get rid of some of my duty free rum. We drank some hurricanes, in the process getting 500% of our RDA or vitamin C, and watched the Badgers advance to the Sweet 16 with a victory over Cinderella Bucknell. After the game L went with his girlie to eat and J and I watched the next basketball game. The next game ended up being a double overtime game and L and Anna came back to our place to watch the end. After the games were over we went to the hotel Metro for a couple drinks and caught up with some of our friends there. Post metro we headed to Mykano’s for a gyro and called it a night.

Mountaineering Is Not As Fun As Spelunking

This weekend actually involved some travel. Friday night we didn’t do anything because on Saturday morning we caught a flight to Tucson for Jocelyn’s grandmother’s eightieth birthday. Our flight Saturday morning was delayed an hour due to the fact that our fresh water supply on the plane had frozen. They were unable to fix the problem so our flight wasn’t able to server hot coffee or tea and there was no water in the bathroom. Before we took off we also had to stop or a fifteen minute deicing, thank heavens we were going to AZ to escape this miserable cold. We flew Frontier airlines and it was pretty sweet because each seat gets their own LCD screen with twenty-six channels of DirectTV. This was very cool and made the flight go fast. We switched planes at Denver and literally sprinted to our connecting flight and made the flight with less than thirty seconds to spare. It was amazing that something actually worked out while traveling. The second flight was smooth and we arrived at about eleven to the 85 degrees of Tucson goodness. J’s mom was there to pick us up and drive us to her grandparents’ house. We stopped at Subway on the way and also at a grocery store to pick up some delicious Fat Tire Ale (great beer which you can only seem to find in the West). From there we arrived at the house and I greeted all the relatives and inhaled my sandwich. Our plan for the day was to meet Jeff DeBruin and his lady Kelly and go to a Brewers’ spring training game. So I called J&K, who were already on their way, with the directions to where we were. They picked us up and we drove to the Rockies’ training facility. It took us a little longer to get there than we wanted but we found a place to park and went to the game. On our way in I heard a “heads up” and looked up to see a ball. The ball was bouncing in the parking lot and I ran to pick it up. This was actually turning out to be a great day. The day really was perfect. I got to see a spring game where Brewers killed the Rockies, tickets were $2, we talked to some folk from WI who were sitting in front of us, had a couple Fat Tires from the tap at the game, I got to hang with my boy Jeff, and we enjoyed the high 80 heat. We couldn’t stay the whole game and had to leave in the fifth inning to go back to the hotel to change for dinner. J&K dropped us off and headed back to Phoenix. It was great to see them and I’m very glad they came down to see us. That night we went to dinner at a Mexican place. Before dinner we had a pitcher of strawberry margaritas and some fresh table made guacamole, the best. For dinner I had a chicken and baked cheese dish. The restaurant had a mariachi band and they sang songs to the birthday girl, much fun. After dinner we went back to the grandparents’ house and had some dessert in the desert. When that wrapped up we were all pretty much shot. We tried to watch Napoleon Dynamite but I fell asleep. We woke up and headed back to the hotel for some sleep.

Sunday we woke up early and got dressed for the birthday brunch. We went to the grandparents’ country club. J’s family had some professional pictures taken and I was forced to be in a few so I’m officially in the family now. I made sure to stay pretty close to the end so I can be cropped out in case of an emergency. After the pictures we had some delicious brunch and enjoyed the scenery with some mimosas and bloody marys. When the pictures were done we went back to the abode and watched Illinois beat the Badgers for the Big Ten championship. I was surrounded by Illini fans so my gloom was further enhanced but I am confident that we’ll get them in the real tourney. After the game we sat around and watched more TV and NCAA bracket selection show. Later that night we headed to the community courts and played some b-ball. It was a great four on four game with a bunch of the family and I knew I was going to pay the price the next day. After that we went back and ordered some pizza. We gobbled that up and headed back to the hotel to shower and call it a night.

Monday I woke up as expected, sore. Those atrophied basketball muscles were barking something fierce. We got everything together and checked out early. We dropped our gear off at the grandparents’ house and J, her mom, and I went to Catalina Mountain state park. We didn’t have much time but I did enjoy the hour and a half hike up the trail. We hiked to a set of pools and while we were there we ran into a guy that went to college with Brewers pitcher Ben Sheets. The guy also used to play for the Beloit Snappers. He saw our Brewers shirts so we talked with him a bit. We finished up our hike and when we headed out we ran into another Brewers fan from WI, we’re everywhere people! The mountains are very beautiful and we plan on doing the whole eight hour hike to the top next year. When that was through we relaxed the rest of the day in the sun at the house. Finally it was time to head back to reality so J’s mom who left on a different flight at the same time drove us to the airport. We hopped on our plane and made it back safely to MKE and the reality of cold.