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.