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.