Final Entry - 8/23

   

Pride of Baltimore

Bounty

Port Washington held its  Maritime Heritage Festival this past weekend . It was the last big event of the summer. In fact in the Ozaukee county guide to summer activities, it is literally the last event listed. It involved the same bands, the same food vendors, and the same arts and crafts vendors we have seen multiple times in multiple locations over the past three months. The fireworks switched things up a bit by having a different launch point, but we still watched them from the same location as always. The unique aspect of this festival was the arrival of the "tall ships". On Thursday four schooners and the HMS Bounty came to port. Two of the schooners had two-hour sailings into Lake Michigan several times a day. The other two schooners and the Bounty were available to board for dockside tours. One of the schooners, the Unicorn, boasted an all-female crew. This conjured up all kinds of images in my head that reality, of course, couldn't match. The Bounty was built in 1960 for the movie and was later seen in Pirates of the Caribbean and, my personal favorite, Spongebob Squarepants. 

Bounty

Captain Bligh

Deck of the Bounty

A Boat We Could Afford

With summer drawing to a close, at least this far north, we leave Friday to start back to Texas. Conclusions reached on this trip include that I like living in a small town. A certain threshold of restaurants, shopping availability, and activities must be reached, but beyond that point I gain very little. Having everything I needed within walking distance was very appealing. Also, I'm always unhappy starting a day's drive, but my mood improves greatly after reaching the half-way point. The total distance for the day doesn't matter. That means I'm happier having 350 miles left on a 700 mile day than I am just starting out on a 200 mile day. It's totally irrational but I find more happiness being on the downhill side of a long day's journey than starting out a short day's drive. The third is when on vacation I begin thinking about going home 2/3 of the way through the trip. The duration is irrelevant. On a three day weekend, I start thinking about heading home on the last day. On this over three month trip I started thinking about going home with about a month left. I began thinking about what I still wanted to do or places I wanted to revisit before we ran out of time. I started planning so I would run out of eggs, bagels, and frozen waffles at the same time. No matter how much I told myself how dumb it was since we still had twice as long as our normal vacations used to be, I couldn't help it. I'll just have to add it to my long and growing list of weird traits.

 

THE END

Mission Accomplished - 8/11

With visits to Gopher One and Foxy's I completed one of my objectives for the trip. I've had one beer (at least) at every bar in town. Having goals like this gives helps give my life a sense of purpose.

We visited the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc. The WWII era sub, USS Cobia, was the highlight. Interestingly, the SS Badger in the background is a car ferry for crossing Lake Michigan and is only eight years newer than the sub. Our tour guide said the Cobia suffered only one fatality during the war. He didn't mention any fatalities aboard The Badger.


Going through the hatches between water-tight compartments, I felt like I was being checked to see if I qualified as carry-on baggage at the airport. Terry felt at home in the crew's mess.

We went to the Luxembourg Festival in Belgium, WI. The only reason to do this is to try the mustripen, a sausage brought to the area by early settlers from Luxembourg. The primary ingredients are pig snouts and pig blood. After that they add some gross stuff. I think the only place in the world you can still get it is northern Ozaukee county. Even Luxembourg found it too disgusting to eat years ago. I could overhear the locals around me discussing it.
"Are you getting the mustripen?"
"Not me I can't eat that crap."
But to paraphrase the old Life cereal commercial, "Give it to Gary. He'll eat anything."

Culture & Carnage -8/2

Lots more of the same. I'll just note three things we did that were a little different. First, we went to the Port Summer Theater production of The Wizard of Oz at the high school auditorium. I'm not a big fan of the theater and musical theater least of all, but I was curious to see a small town production of a play I was familiar with. The woman sitting next to us said, "I picked this seat because my daughter said it had the best view of her. She's a Munchkin. Who are you here with?"

 "No one. We just came to see the play," I said.

She got a look of utter amazement on her face. It seems the play choice was made in part because about 40 children could play Munchkins, flying monkeys, etc., thereby guaranteeing a large turnout. They also switched up the various Munchkin roles for each show so parents would come to every performance. That explains why people waiting to enter the auditorium were carrying enough bouquets of flowers for a Mafia funeral. The production was actually quite good. They had someone who had worked on Las Vegas shows help with aerial stunts so there were flying monkeys and witches along with people and cows carried off by the tornado.

I felt the Wicked Witch of the West was the star. She played it pretty much as a straight copy of the witch from the movie, but was quite good and is only going to be a sophomore in high school. After the show I saw her with the rest of the cast and took her picture. Still in character she looked at me and said, "I don't like surprises, my pretty."  

We also went to the county fair for the sole purpose of seeing the demolition derby. I hadn't been to one in over 40 years and frankly in today's law-suit happy, airbag encased society I assumed this old county fair staple had gone the way of lawn darts, but at least one survives. The premise was the same though watered down a bit. The arena was long but narrow and intentionally soaked to create a lot of mud. This significantly reduced high-speed collisions but there were still enough smoke, flames, and mangled metal to keep everyone happy. They had eight heats scheduled with one being labeled as "amateur". I assumed this meant the rest were actually pros, but this wasn't the case. By amateur they meant 14 and 15 year olds - or too young to actually have a driver's license. I'm sorry but I have to question some folks parenting skills here. Many cars were sponsored and had a sign on their roof advertising their sponsor. I cheered for a self-financed guy who had a sign on his roof saying, "DRINK BEER. SHOOT GUNS. DRIVE 100." He lost.

My fellow patrons for the demolition derby were an interesting group. I don't know where they've been, but I haven't seen them in the prior two months. These weren't the same folks getting off their boats in the marina after motoring or sailing in from Sturgeon Bay or Milwaukee. These weren't the same folks I'd seen in the coffee shops in town. These weren't the same folks I'd seen at other festivals and concerts. These weren't even the same folks I'd seen in my personal Port Washington pub crawl. These were more like attendees at a cast party for Deliverance. When I had a beer at the fair before entering the derby, I found it interesting that they also sold pitchers of beer.

I thought to myself, "Why would someone buy that much beer at one time at a fair?"

In the derby grandstands I saw that "pitcher" simply meant "large beer". Many dispensed with the nicety of pouring from the pitcher into a glass. Folks just drank from their own pitcher. These were my kind of people.

We also went to Hollandfest in Cedar Grove. They had the same parade units, same midway rides, and same vendors we have become familiar with, but they had a unique pre-parade ritual. The mayor walked the parade route and pronounced the streets too dirty for a parade. You would think they would change whoever is responsible for this since the same pronouncement has been made for each of the prior 63 years. Then the town children in their Holland costumes and wooden shoes go into the streets to scrub them with water that has been placed strategically along the parade route. After the streets were scrubbed and reinspected by the mayor, the parade could begin led by wooden-shoed dancers.

A Busy Weekend - 7/23

Reserved Parade Seats

Last Saturday was Fish Day in Port Washington - the biggest event of the year. Folks set out blankets and folding chairs along the parade route two days early. Everywhere else I've lived that would meant you're donating blankets and chairs to whomever grabbed them first. Here it seemed to work. The other three parades in town followed a 1/4 mile route and took maybe 20 minutes. This parade followed a route of over a mile and was expected to last about two hours. Because the added length brought a steep hill into play, the direction was

First Prize Float - Red Hat Society

reversed and the extended route ran right by our apartment. We were near the very end of the route.

I didn't know how they could make it last two hours but two items made it possible. First, I think every fire department unit from every town in the county was there. I hoped there weren't any fire during the parade or it could have been big trouble. All the towns took advantage of the opportunity to publicize their own upcoming fire department fund raising events - brat frys, spaghetti dinners, etc.

Shriners

Second, every candidate running for public office from the county, state, or congressional level paraded  along with all the supporters they could muster. These alone made for a long parade.

Being near the end of the route, I noticed two things. One, the participants were pretty much spent by the time we saw them. Smiles were a bit less broad, waves were a bit less enthusiastic, and dancer's kicks weren't quite as high. It was a warm sunny day and I particularly kept waiting for the paraders in cartoon character costumes to just flat out collapse. Two, by the end of the parade the units had gotten spread out to varying degrees. At times they were as tight as they were at the start. Sometimes there were gaps of three minutes between units. The parade had to turn a corner about two blocks before getting to us and occasionally the next unit was no where in sight. People would just look at each other.

"Was that the end?".

"It seems odd the candidate for county clerk would be the last unit in the parade."

Then a band or something would show up.

The Obligatory Order of Fish and Chips

Living downtown on Fish Day worked well. We went early for the parade, fish, beer, the classic car show, and the arts and crafts show. Then we went home. In the late afternoon we went back for fish and beer. Then we went home. At night we went down for the fireworks display. Then we went home. We didn't ride any of the rides. Most of them looked like they had been built in someone's garage and the thrilling part was hoping they would survive your ride before flying apart spewing debris all over the midway.

Midway Rides

Arts and Crafts Sales

Classic Car Show

                         

 









  

Glockenspiel Show

Sunday was the end of Germanfest in Cedarburg. Most of the activities were Saturday so we missed the wife-carrying races, the beer bucket races, and the sauerkraut eating contest. We did see the glockenspiel show, a German band and singing, and, of course, German food and beer. We took a stack of German desserts home with us.

German Music

Desserts for the Road

Our First Bottle

Sunday afternoon we also bottled the wine we had made. Actually the yeast did most of the work and we just watched. Thirty bottles of Reisling is a lot, but we'll do our best to muddle through.

Success - 7/15

That Jared is one smart fellow. I stuck with my late breakfast and Subway early dinner plan and lost 11 1/2 pounds in the 10 days Terry was gone. I also managed to forgo stopping for a beer on my walks home from Subway which, I'm sure, helped the process. I'll likely gain some back as we hit the festival circuit again, but hopefully not all. Every day about 1/4 mile into my walk I thought, "I should have brought the MP3 player." A 1/4 mile is too far to go back. In fact if I had remembered at the bottom of the stairs, it still would have been too far to go back. As a result, for the next 30 to 40 minutes (in addition to the 30-40 minute return trip) my only entertainment was what went on in my own head, and let me tell you, it gets pretty bizarre up there. The most common non-weird thought was, "Really? All those damn clouds up there and the sun can't be behind just one of them?" A temperature of 80-85 is far better than 100, but a 3 1/2 mile round-trip walk in the sun can still take its toll.
 
I managed quite well without a car. The only difficulty was laundry. It wasn't that heavy, but a 10-pound laundry bag is an awkward bundle to comfortably carry a long distance. Once was enough. I also noticed when you omit businesses related to eating or drinking, which I avoided anyway, the only downtown establishments open after 6PM were the Holiday Inn, a gas station, and the library. Since I didn't need a room, didn't have a car, and don't read books my evening options were pretty limited. I went to a couple of concerts in the town band shell, surfed the internet, and watched a lot of streaming movies and TV shows on the computer.

The most "exciting" activity was walking down to the marina to see the charter fishing boats come in at around six. You would see a smiling group of fishermen with their 17 salmon lined up on the dock. The next boat over might have three. Those guys tended not to smile as much. The Captain would then fillet the day's catch. Now that was an amazing sight. He could slice up a fish yielding two perfect fillets in well under a minute. If I had the same fish, the same knife, and half an hour, the best I would end up with is bait.
 
Things start to pick up Saturday with Port Washington's annual Fish Day, billed as the biggest one-day outdoor fish fry in the world. Those qualifiers would lead me to believe somewhere there is a multi-day indoor fish fry that is larger but I'm too lazy to look for it on the web. Fish Day is the primary annual event in the town. Sunday we'll catch the end of German Fest in Cedarburg and bottle our wine. After that with 30 brand new bottles of wine, things will probably get a little fuzzy.

A Test - 7/5

Cedarburg Strawberry Festival

More of the same - festivals, concerts, watching boats come and go, seeing what the fishermen caught that day, and eating and drinking too much. Over the weekend a few parades and fireworks displays were thrown in for good measure. There will be two differences for the next 10 days or so. I've felt for some time now the ideal place to live is a small town where everything I need is in walking distance. Terry left this morning to visit her mother in Ohio and, since the car went with her, my theory will be put to the test. Everywhere I go will, by

Tuneful Tuesdays - Lunchtime Music in Grafton

definition, be within walking distance. I don't anticipate a big problem since this was planned to avoid her being gone during any major functions in nearby towns and I have more than adequate sources of amusement here. The only potential flaw is that a trip to the laundromat is unavoidable. The closest one is 1.6 miles away, so I'll be trudging through residential neighborhoods with my laundry bag over my shoulder. Hopefully there haven't been any home break-ins or I'll be viewed as a prime suspect. My other option would be to sneak in to the Holiday Inn down the street but I don't know what the penalty is for fraudulent use of a laundry facility so I'll opt for the long walk. At any rate I'll see if my small-town idea passes the test.

4th of July Parade - Port Washington

The second difference will be trying to recover from the havoc wreaked on my weight loss program by eating out every day with too much beer thrown in. I'm going with, what I call, a modified Jared diet. First I researched how he ate at Subway twice a day for a year and lost over 200 pounds. I'm going to have a late breakfast at home and only go once a day for an early dinner. He avoided cheese and dressing, but since his Subway was next door and mine is 1.8 miles away (recall that "everything is in walking distance") I'm going to splurge. I may also stop somewhere for a beer on the way home. I couldn't find that Jared included this in his plan, but since I couldn't find where it specifically said he didn't, I'll assume it was a vital part of his diet. Hopefully I can undo some of the damage of the past six weeks by the time Terry gets back.

Summer Solstice - 6/23

The summer solstice is important here because, being this far north and this close to the edge of the Central Time Zone, broad daylight comes somewhere between 4:00 and 4:30 in the morning. I'm hoping as the days get shorter it may stay dark until 5:00.


More of the same this week - free concerts and other community activities. We also moved our batch of wine from the bucket (primary fermenter) to a giant glass jug (secondary fermenter). There were three non-standard happenings this week. First, we lost water for about six hours one day. I suspected it would happen because a nearby restaurant had a sign saying they were opening late because the city was working on a water main. About an hour after we lost water our landlady knocked at the door to tell us we didn't have water and explain why. Another tenant had called her to complain.


"I'm sorry. I didn't know it was going to happen," she said. "The city didn't notify me. They knew the retail space on the ground floor was empty and they didn't realize people lived upstairs so they didn't leave a notice."


It seems at best we live in a building the city believes to be unoccupied. At worst it believes the building to be abandoned. 

My second activity was a search for a bar to have a quiet beer. The restaurant bars are always an option, but I wanted a place meeting my two criteria of cheap beer and a decent chance the bartender and I would be the only people in the place. From the exterior I identified five contenders, all occupying buildings between 100 and 150 years old that afforded little opportunity to tell what was inside without actually entering. I didn't want to go at night during what would be considered "prime-time" in a bar in case it was too rowdy and could actually pose a danger to newcomers from the wrong crowd. I don't know what my crowd is, but it's probably the wrong one. My plan was one beer per bar.

I started mid afternoon to maximize my chance of finding few other patrons and I had the foresight to use the bar farthest from the apartment as my starting point so I could just stagger home. Any fears for my safety were unfounded (as I knew they would be). One place did mimic a scene from the old west however. I entered a dimly lit bar with the bright sun behind me at the door making me only a dark silhouette to the people inside squinting from the intruding light. I heard talking and laughter as I turned the doorknob but all went silent as I went in. Every head turned toward me. For an instant I thought of saying, "Which one of you varmints shot my Pa?" I figured that would plant me firmly in the wrong crowd so I didn't.

The barmaid at another place said to come back a week from Saturday. They were having a birthday party for Whitey, one of their regulars. He was going to be 87. Whitey happened to come in while I was there. His drink and beer chaser were setting on the bar before he got halfway across the room. I was impressed both by the service and Whitey. I also won a free beer by matching a dice roll with the barmaid. This turned out to be my favorite place. Unfortunately it's also the second farthest from the apartment and at the top of a steep hill. We'll see just how dedicated I am.

We also went to the Giro d' Grafton. It is one leg of the Tour of America's Dairyland bicycle race. I'm not a big bike racing fan but I have lots of free time and Grafton is only about seven miles away. Also it's not like the Tour de France where they race 100 miles down a road. Here they keep circling a 0.8 mile loop through town. At the Tour de France a spectator waits two hours along a road to be able to say, "Here they come...There they go...Let's go home." In Grafton about every two and a half minutes I could say, "Here they come again."

The bike races were only my third favorite activity of the day. I found the four and five year olds racing big wheels to be more entertaining. I spotted several obvious strategic mistakes I could have helped parents with had they only asked. First, don't put your little girl out there in a dress. Even if they got the lead they completely lost their focus when the dress went billowing up over their heads. Second, wear a solid pair of sneakers. Every race the starter dropped the flag, little legs started churning, and flip-flops and sandals went flying through the air leaving a trail of lost footwear behind the racers. Someone in sneakers won every heat.

The highlight of the day was the adult tricycle races. Note this doesn't mean racing adult sized tricycles. These were adults on children's trikes. Terry wanted me to enter but I had three disadvantages. I'm old, I have long legs, and I have a big belly. I follow a strict three strikes and I'm out policy. It was exhausting just watching people pedal those bikes. I'm still seeking an athletic event designed for me.

An Uneventful Week - 6/15

Uneventful is pretty much what I was shooting for. We visited our bucket of wine to see how it was going. Terry looks much like a proud father at the window of a hospital nursery. Come to think of it the situations are pretty similar. They both involve new arrivals generating a lot of waste while all you can do is hope things work out OK.

We visited our first Wisconsin cheese factory. I briefly considered a cheese cowboy hat but thought better of it.

We went to the first of what will be many free concerts. The rock bands (like this one) always end up disappointed with the audience. Most people attending are either old geezers like us looking for free entertainment or couples passing the time while their kids work off energy in the nearby playground. Ultimately the young families leave early at their kid's bedtime and the geezers start to nod off - neither is a response the band was looking for.

Java Dock has become my coffee shop of choice. Some folks will realize how important this is. The upstairs room is usually not this empty. It was about 6:45pm and at 7 on Monday nights it's reserved for chess and Scrabble tournaments. My days playing games requiring that much thought are long gone so we left. If they ever have a Yahtzee night, I might consider it.

A three-masted schooner tied up in the harbor. Actually I have no idea what the true definition of a schooner is so it could be a sloop or a frigate. It could be a jet ski for all I know. I don't know who they were or what they were doing but I overheard they were just going to change crews and head back out.




A new city park opened about two blocks from us so I went to check it out. It's called Harborview Park. While you can see the harbor in the distance you have a much better view of a funeral home/crematorium and its associated parking lot. I noticed a 15' yellow circle in the driveway entrance. I didn't grasp it right away since it was upside down from my vantage point, but it was a giant, winking smiley face. I cropped and rotated it so you can see it better. I'm not sure what I would expect to greet me if I were pulling in for a funeral, but a smiley face would be pretty far down the list. The yellow face may be a custom somehow be related to Wisconsin cheddar cheese, but that's pure speculation on my part.

I'm not sure how often I'll be doing updates. You've pretty much seen what my life will be like for the next 2 1/2 months. Festival names and towns will change. Band names and venues will change. Other than that things will be about the same. I'll post some periodic updates, but I doubt they will be more than weekly at best.

Pirate Festival - 6/6

Port Washington's Pirate Festival (#2 in the festival hierarchy) was this weekend. I ran into my landlord during the week in a coffee shop and asked if she was going.

"Oh, no. We used to but it's gotten a little wild. With some of the costumes the women wear - well we have a 13 and 14-year old and they just don't need to see that."

My expectations soared. A Key West Fantasy Fest would be too much to hope for, but maybe it would compete with a good old-fashioned New Orleans Mardi Gras. As it turned out she had no need to worry. It was much like a Renaissance Fair along the shoreline - music, food, bands, stuff for sale, beer, shows, fireworks, and a lot of people who took their costumes WAY too seriously. I had a good time although I ate too much, drank too much, and the weather was less than cooperative. I've reached a point, though, where 9:30 is a late night so I couldn't get in too much trouble.

A pirate ship invaded the port with cannon fire. The militia responded with shore batteries and muskets.

 

 Anyone dressed like a pirate could participate in the Sunday parade.