We wanted a direct flight when flying to London, didn’t want to transfer. Of course, no flight is truly direct. Here’s what we went through to get from A (Lake Geneva, WI, USA) to B (London, England, UK). Drive to Harvard, IL (40 minutes) Our travel day started with a drive into Illinois. We had been staying with my mom in Wisconsin. She was nice enough to get us through [...]
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No Comments We had just under three weeks between our last day in the mountains and our flight to London. We spent it all, seemingly, eating. Here’s where we ended up: The Best Lunch Deal in Kansas City at Extra Virgin Happy Hour at Extra Virgin in Kansas City is amazing. But here’s the secret: it starts at 11:30AM, lunch time. It’s a lunch deal too. Many of their tapas are 50% [...]
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Fun fact: Wisconsin drinks 1/3 of all the brandy Korbel makes: “Wisconsin is our number one state,” says Margie Healy, director of public relations for the California-based Korbel. “We export 385,000 cases a year, and 139,000 go directly to Wisconsin. That’s one-third of our total production.” Fake fact: 75% of all brandy consumed in the US is consumed in Wisconsin. (Not true, sadly.) Growing up, my grandmother always had a [...]
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We’re at Red Rock Saloon in Milwaukee with our friends Archibald and Bunny and two other friends (names have been changed to protect the innocent). Archibald and Bunny like spicy food. They like it so much that they grew habanero peppers this summer and have about a bushel of them at home in their kitchen. It’s a supply for 13 lifetimes. Red Rock Saloon serves wings. Their spiciest non-waiver-required version [...]
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Sorghum whiskey … um. Well. I’ve had sorghum beer – don’t really like it. I have gluten-free friends – like them OK. Sorghum whiskey? I’m impressed. First, it’s different. Distill booze to uber-proof, age it in an oak barrel, and water it down to selling-strength – you’d think the essence of the original grain would be pretty much demolished at that point. But corn whiskey still tastes corn-y and peat-smoke [...]
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Last week we learned that people in Northern Wisconsin call people from Illinois FIBs — F*&#ing Illinois Bastards. Last night I was working on a post about the Angry Minnow, a brewery in Hayward, WI, when I inadvertently discovered that their website is infected by a Trojan that then proceeded to infect my PC. Coincidence? Luckily, I’m surrounded by computer geeks, so rather than giving some talented idiot my credit [...]
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The Concrete Park in Wisconsin is bizarre. Here’s the brief, brief history (long version here): In the 1950s, ex-lumberjack, Fred Smith, creates a shit-load of sculptures over 14 years in his 60s and 70s. They’re concrete, decorated with glass bottles, shells, and other objects. In the ’70s, he dies, the Kohler Foundation purchase the site, and the Wisconsin Arts Council starts restoring the sculptures. The sculptures are creepy, beautiful, impressive, [...]
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Winter came down to join us the other day at Sara Balbin and Gary Crandall’s place in the north woods of Wisconsin. Sara is an artist who works in many media — metal, oil, leather, fabric — but the theme that runs throughout her work is a sense of motion, of fluidity. Gary runs the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival — an annual mountain bike race and festival. Gary and Sara [...]
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As we’ve mentioned, it’s not fall anymore in northern Wisconsin. It’s winter, and there was some weather moving in across Lake Superior a couple nights ago. And some from somewhere else too. There were maybe 10 layers of clouds overlapping for the sunset. It was gorgeous. We don’t watch enough of these.
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After a bonus week of fall weather in the 70s, we thought we’d be able to loop up to Lake Superior and rough it a few days, but temps have droped into the 40s and we can’t hang at that level. We’ll be here a couple days, then we’re on our way to New Mexico and the desert. Our first views of Lake Superior were very much pre-winter instead of [...]
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