Thursday, December 3, 2015

Birthday Pilgrimage to Lambeau


Sorry for my silence yesterday. Tuesday was Travalon’s birthday, of course, but I had to work, so we just went out for a wonderful dinner at Samba, a Brazilian grill. They have the most amazing salad bar, and then waiters come around with things from the grill on skewers, generally different types of meat but I was most in love with the grilled pineapple. It had a touch of cinnamon, and oh, was it delicious! This has to be one of the best restaurants in town. They even gave Travalon a free dessert for his birthday, so he chose coconut custard. SO good! For his birthday present (besides dinner), I gave him a coffee table book about Green Bay and the Packers that I had gotten back on our pilgrimage to Lambeau Field when Anna Banana II was in the state.

Yesterday Travalon and I took a trip in honor of his birthday. He had been discussing going to either a water park in the Dells or sort of a museum day in Milwaukee, but he was inspired by the book I had given him and wanted to voyage to Green Bay to see Vince Lombardi’s old house and church. We drove up to Lambeau Field and toured the Packer Hall of Fame, which really drove home how historic the team is. Even if the Pack are lousy at the moment (or hopefully not – we’ll see if they can beat the Lions tonight), they have had many periods of greatness over the years. It seems like such a shame that all the other small-town teams were disbanded. An interesting note: because the Packers are a non-profit organization, they are the only team in the NFL that has to report revenue. Because of this, people base what they think other teams make on what they know the Packers make, but I wonder if their results are skewed, since the Pack have an unusually loyal fan base and so sell out every game and move a LOT of merchandise. In that spirit, Travalon and I went to the Packer Pro Shop and bought some stuff, like a Lambeau Field hoodie I am wearing today and a DVD about Vince Lombardi. We ate a late lunch at the restaurant there, which was very tasty, then we drove by Lombardi’s old house, which is a very nice house but nothing too ostentatious. Coaches then didn’t make the ridiculous salaries that they do now. We also went to St. Willibrord Church, where Lombardi went to daily Mass, and were somewhat surprised that there were two other Catholic churches within two blocks. I guess they were all started by different ethnicities; St. Willibrord is the historically Dutch church. Travalon and I had hoped to go to a state park with historical buildings, but by the time we figured out how to get to it, it had just closed. Instead, we went to Our Lady of Good Help shrine, where they were having exposition. On the way home we stopped in Fond du Lac to admire their Christmas decorations and grab a bite to eat, then we got home and watched the Lombardi DVD. This meant I got to bed too late, and this morning I got up with plenty of time to get to work, but no time to run. Maybe I’ll run tonight, while watching the Packers.

Famous Hat

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