Good morning. A brief
travelogue.
The only
time in my life that 12½ MPH has terrified me was riding full speed on a
Segway. Kathy and I took a few days to
visit friends in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, and then to stay in Door County. While we were in Door County, we took a
guided Segway ride in one of the state parks.
Kathy had ridden one before; I had not.
Our instructor and guide was fabulous:
a woman perhaps late 50s, funny, intelligent, kind, and a great
teacher. Of the six of us on the tour (3
couples), three had ridden Segways before, but she made all six of us go
through the initial instruction. Then on
the path in the park, she stopped us and made us go full speed down a
straightaway in order that we'd feel the handlebars press back on us. I learned how that happens—and then went 8-9
MPH for entire rest of the ride. (Our guide
was amazingly adept at riding and maneuvering Segways; at one point she was
riding two simultaneously, to move them from one place to another before our
ride began, and she could zoom up to any of us and spin around to a stop to
talk to us. I would have ended up in the
hospital if I had tried what she could do without thinking about it.)
The Segway
tour was an interesting little sociological study. Somehow the six of us got to talking about
where we lived, and it turned out that all three couples were divorced and all
six people had kids by earlier marriages.
(I don't know if the other two couples were married; they were not
wearing wedding bands, which doesn't necessarily mean anything.) The difference between the other two couples
and Kathy & me is that we live together (and are married); the others live
in separate houses because their kids are mid-way through schools and they
didn't want to make them change. A
reflection of the fact, no doubt, that we were also probably 20 years older
than the other couples.
That same
topic, sort of, came up when I was riding alone with our instructor. I guess Kathy had mentioned we had met on
match (dot) com, so she—our instructor—asked me about it. I told her how I'd gotten on it (a couple of
faculty friends told me they'd met their partners on match, which led me to
conclude that "OK, this is not just a bunch of losers") and what she
should do if she wanted to try it. I
assured her that from what I knew, it was a safe way to proceed, although women
probably need to be a little more careful than men (unfortunately).
We
thoroughly enjoyed spending Friday evening and the weekend with Scott and
Connie in Wauwatosa (which meant spending much social time in Milwaukee). Besides having a good time in their company,
we got to see bits and pieces of Milwaukee, a place that neither Kathy nor I
had ever spent any time in. We hooked up
with Scott & Connie's son and daughter-in-law for a BBQ dinner and met the
grandbaby June. A cute and happy
infant. It is not clear if Kathy & I
will have that experience (of having a grandchild, that is).
The Milwaukee Museum of Art is an
iconic building and has a wonderful collection (well, some of the contemporary
art I could do without) of both art and the decorative arts. I was struck by the fact that the museum had
a substantial number of paintings by European artists I've never heard of. I'm certainly not an art history expert but
I've been in enough art museums over the years to have learned about most of
the European painters. But these
paintings seemed to me to be of just as high a quality as those by the known
masters and I commented to that effect to Kathy. She responded that it's a puzzle why some
artists become extremely well known and others do not, even though their work
seems to be of equivalent technical quality and appeal.
I haven't had cocktails in a
rooftop bar for a very long time. The
four of us had a fun conversation while overlooking part of downtown Milwaukee
and Lake Michigan. A lovely view. I also hadn't *paid* for cocktails at a
rooftop bar for a very long time.
Yikes. I was mostly satisfied
with my salary at the University during my career, but I was never paid as much
per hour as we spent in the hour we were in that lounge. (The lounge is in Pfister Hotel, one of those
grand old hotels that are not being built any longer—the Palmer House, the
Waldorf-Astoria, and the Mark Hopkins come to mind—with half-acre lobbies,
carpeting three inches thick, heavy drapes, sculptured 25-foot ceilings, large
potted plants, a concierge stand, a bellhop stand, crystal chandeliers, sofas
and chairs for coffee/drinks, etc.
They're the kind of hotels I like to stay in when someone else is paying
for it, as I got to do a few times when I traveled on business and the event I
was attending was being held in such a hotel.
Walking through the lobby of the Pfister reminded me of those times.)
We stayed
in an Airbnb in Wauwatosa, just a few blocks away from Scott & Connie. (It is true that Airbnbs are causing enormous
problems for popular tourist cities in that they are causing housing prices to
skyrocket far beyond the ability of locals to afford them, but in this case, I
don't think an Airbnb in a quiet residential neighborhood in Wauwatosa, quite a
ways from downtown, is causing any spike in area housing costs!) We were struck by the architecture of the
homes in the neighborhood, almost all built in the 1920s and 1930s: sometimes 2-3-4 in a row were clearly
designed and built at the same time, but most were individual. Most were probably in the 1000-2000
square-foot range. There was a lot of
brick, interesting rooflines and features, and (what I noticed) many
round-topped doors and windows. I wonder
why they were so prevalent in that area and so rare in Minneapolis. Anyway, it was a fun neighborhood to walk
around in.
Two
impressions of Door County: lavender and
cherries. We took a tram tour of
Washington Island, just off the main Door County peninsula. One of the places we stopped was at what I
might call a lavender plantation. They
must grow thousands of lavender plants (all but a few of which were harvested
by this point in the summer). They also
have a large store where one can buy everything lavender: shaving cream and aftershave, cologne,
perfume, lotions of all kinds, laundry detergent, bubble bath, soap. . . . I learned that lavender flowers (at least
the ones they left unharvested for visitors to see) have no smell at all. The scent must come from processing them. The smell of lavender doesn't offend my nose,
but I wouldn't go out of my way to buy anything scented with it. We managed to escape the store without
purchasing a thing.
Driving
around Door County one sees acres and acres and hundreds and hundreds of cherry
trees. I have no idea if Door County is
one of the prime sources of cherries, but they sure grow a lot of them. After having had salmon encrusted with cherry
sauce at one of the local restaurants, I have finally come to realize that I am
not that fond of the taste of cherries.
(Except the kind that one buys in the produce section with the stems and
the pits in them.) Odd that I had to get
to this age before I learned that I don't care for the flavor. Neither does Kathy, so we decided against
buying cherry wine and cherry salsa.
On the
topic of food, the two nights we ate dinner out at rather nice restaurants I
ended up being appalled at the amount of food that was thrown away. The bread and pre-dinner salads were nearly a
meal in themselves, then came the entrée and accompaniments. Both Kathy and I left portions of the salad
and the entrées. I know that phenomenon
is not limited to Door County restaurants; I wonder why they can't offer
smaller portions for those who can't eat as much. Kathy and I also figured out that 3-4 times
on the trip we should have split an order.
I suppose that's one solution to the waste, but you don't always know
when there's going to be far more food than you can eat.
The local
German restaurant in Wauwatosa serves lousy Wienerschnitzel. Surprising in a city that was originally so
heavily German. But the German beer was
good.
As we
walked through the woods (and as we Segwayed through them), I decided that the
forests of Door County are uninteresting.
I suppose that many naturalists would take issue with me, but the
forests are pretty similar to those in Minnesota, so nothing much new was
apparent. There was also nothing
flowering, so it was all greenery. There
is no doubt that a walk in a tranquil woods is a refreshing and renewing experience. It's also fun, however, to see exotic flora
and fauna ("exotic" defined here as plants, flowers, bugs, and
animals that don't live where you do).
After our
walk in the woods on Thursday morning, we learned that rain was forecast for
the afternoon. Since we were scheduled
to depart on Friday morning early, we decided to heck with it and left Thursday
noon. So had a welcome unplanned day on
Friday!
* * *
A number of
years ago, at a recurring dinner with friends, I issued a dictum (which, of
course, no one was obligated to observe) that valetudinary conversations could
last no more than 30 minutes. After that
we had to talk about something else—weather, history, sports, gossip, travel,
food, politics, anything.
I am
finding that valetudinary conversations seem to crop up in my age cohort more
than one would wish—because afflictions begin to crop up more than one would
wish. One long-time friend, mother of
one of Krystin's best friends, just came through (successfully) surgery for
pancreatic cancer. Another friend went
through major surgery involving the bladder and nearby parts of her body and
now deals with chemo. Yet another
friend's husband has been hospitalized since mid-July with serious and possibly
terminal cardiac problems. I do not find
this amusing.
* * *
From
Elliott, my son who's skeptical about some of the extremes of modern life.
I suspect
Elliott would agree with a couple of additions to the "before ours:" read them books, make them play outside in
the dirt with their friends.
* * *
In an email exchange with a friend,
about the similarities between the two sleazebag leaders of the US and the UK,
he wrote to me:
Provided it actually subsides
within one or both of our lifetimes, I'm willing to bet you quite a bit of
money that we see a study showing that this recent international
populist/nationalist and xenophobic political trend is a direct result of
Facebook and/or Twitter, either by the right using them as a platform, or as a
reactionary response to the far left using them.
I think the point is well taken.
Welcome to
autumn.
-- Gary
