Driving Down the Great River Road

I hope my readers had a good Memorial Day weekend. I had a fabulous one, starting with Thursday evening, when Travalon and I brought Rodney to a doggie event at Mickey’s Tavern. There was a costume show, and the lion won, followed by Princess Leia and Cher and maybe the shark. One dog (not in costume) did a bunch of clever tricks, including putting giant plastic coins into a piggy bank. I struck up a conversation with a girl sitting beside me, who was fascinated by my many musical ventures. “I want to follow you around and have your life!” she said. It is a good life, I’ll agree. Music would be a terrible career in my opinion, but it is a wonderful hobby.

Friday evening the Northside Ukuleles had their usual fourth Friday jam, and then since it was the hostess’s birthday, we had a party afterwards. I brought my balalaika, having practiced “Happy Birthday” in the key of A (what was I thinking??) but of course the ukuleles played it in C, so I had to scramble to figure it out. I must have fooled everyone – they said I sounded really good! After that Travalon and I went to Brix 340 for their Wine Day special, and he had an amazing Riesling by Schloss (?) – so tasty!

Saturday morning Travalon, Rodney, and I met OK Cap and Cali for coffee at Crema Café, then the boys and I hit the road and drove to Mill Bluff State Park for a hike. We got to Eau Claire just in time to go to the vigil Mass at Sacred Heart, and then we drove on to Chippewa Falls to visit the Leinie Lodge, since it is a stop in our book of 70 historic taverns. The last tour of the Leinenkugel’s brewery was full, so we took a walk on a beautiful path along the river, and then we came back to the lodge and tried five samples of their various beers. We had dinner at a very brightly colored Mexican restaurant in town, then we headed back to Eau Claire and visited a tavern from the book called the Joynt, that had big name jazz acts playing there from 1974-90. The owner would snag them on weekdays when they were cheaper, as they traveled between Minneapolis and Chicago. Unfortunately the stage is now a back room, but they have photos on the walls of the acts that played there, like Dizzy Gillespie, and also some R. Crumb cartoons. They also had really cheap beer there, I think it was only $1 for a half-pint domestic tap.

Sunday we went to the free breakfast at our hotel, but it was pretty picked over, so we drove to Menomonie to see Travalon’s old school (including a sculpture in front of the Union they call “Stout-henge”), and we found a café there. We drove on to River Falls and a third tavern from the book called Emma’s, which was unusual in that it was owned by a woman back in the 50’s. They had a canoe paddle on the wall that said: “YCJCYADITJB” so I asked what it was and was told, “Your curiosity just cost you a dollar in the jukebox,” but they did let me choose the song, so I chose “Jump Around” by House of Pain. The bartender was really friendly, and when he found out we were planning to head to Kinnikinnic State Park, he said that one was really boring and we would be better off going to Willow River State Park. We heeded his advice and ended up on a long trail but were rewarded at the end with a very large, beautiful waterfall. I will post photos of this and all our adventures soon. Then Travalon and I headed down the River Road, stopping at a beautiful park on Douglas Point and at a restaurant in a historic building in Red Wing for dinner. We drove alongside Lake Pepin and got to Winona just as darkness was falling. Travalon stopped at one of the three Sinclair stations in town (two are right across from each other!) to see if they sold T-shirts with their dinosaur logo on them. The girl working there had one, but she said they were just for employees. However, I did take Travalon’s photo with a big cardboard smiling green dinosaur. The girl working there said we were her favorite customers all day, even though we just bought a couple of drinks, and also she told us she is a Packer Backer. Since darkness had fallen by then, we just headed back on the interstate instead of trying to take a scenic route home, and we got home around midnight.

Yesterday Travalon and I had coffee on State Street before my adoration hour, then we went to the Monona Terrace Café for lunch, but it was closed, although the website had not indicated that it would be. We ended up getting tacos at Q-doba before meeting Kathbert for a long walk out onto Picnic Point and beyond, to Frauschi Point. In the evening Travalon and I went to the East Side Club because the Tiki Bar had opened for the season, but it began to rain as we headed there, and so they must have closed it just before we got there. At least we saw a rainbow. We had burgers and sundaes at Michael’s and then stopped at the Nau-Ti-Gal before calling it a night, and the bartender there was very friendly. We had a conversation with him about the popularity of boys’ names in different generations. He says all the guys his age are named Jacob, and they were all jealous of the one guy whose name was Jakob, because at least he was a little different. Interestingly, he had never heard of Toni as a girl’s name, and he said he knew two guys his age named Casey and a bazillion girls with that name, though they generally spell it some weird way, like Kaysea. He didn’t know a single girl his age named Stacy or Jenny, the two huge girls’ names when I was in school. It’s funny how much it has changed in just a generation.

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Bouzouki at Band Practice

Yesterday evening I went to band practice as usual with my trusty mandolin, and since my bandmates are always asking me to bring one of the more exotic instruments, I brought the bouzouki too. They thought it was so cute, and one said it looked like the “little brother” of the mandolin, but since I think of my instruments as feminine, I prefer to consider it Mandy’s little sister. After we had gotten warmed up, I suggested we play something in D so I could easily use the bouzouki. We decided the klezmer music, which is in D minor, might work well – and it worked beautifully! The bouzouki has a little more exotic of a sound than the mandolin, and I could easily figure out the three chords I needed for the song (D minor, A, and G minor). I was playing along happily when suddenly we heard a snap, and the high D in the lower course went slack. I thought it must have broken, especially since I couldn’t easily get it to tighten up again. The strings came with the instrument when Travalon bought it at an antiques store, and who knows how old they are? However, once I got home and had more time to mess with the string, I found that it had just slipped, not broken. I retuned the bouzouki and practiced on it for my 100 Day Challenge, and then I practiced the mountain dulcimer and the balalaika. I can already see some improvement, and that was only Day 3 of the challenge. Imagine how good I might sound at Day 100 if I can actually keep this up!

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Pictures of Spring

As promised, here are some more photos. Many of these are of my favorite month - May! The first one is the balalaika Travalon got me for our wedding anniversary earlier this month.

Most of these flowers were blooming in May, although some were from April:

Hyacinths

Fritillary

Tulip that looks like a trillium

Crabapple tree

Anniversary picture!

Poppies

Tulip

Dogwood tree

Here are the creations Mamastep and I produced at Fired Up in April. She painted this VW Bug and made two pendants.

I painted this little hedgehog and made three pendants.

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The 100 Day Challenge

I suppose many of the people (like there are that many) who read this blog have already seen my posts on social media, but why not put them here too? First is a photo of Richard Bonomo's "maximum fat" hot chocolate - with sprinkles!

And here is a beautiful orchid cactus we saw at the Olbrich Gardens conservatory:

Tomorrow I will try to post more photos. This post is about the 100 Day Challenge, something I remember hearing about where you post a video of yourself doing something not so well, and then you practice for 100 days and post a second video. Since I have all these instruments lying around, I am doing the 100 Day Challenge for three of them. First is the mountain dulcimer, and my attempt to play "Amazing Grace":

Next is my attempt to play a Russian folk tune called "Troika" on my new balalaika:

And finally, my attempt to play a piece of rebetiko music (sorry, I don't know the title) on the bouzouki. This is the piece I learned for Cecil Markovitch's birthday party.

Check back in 100 days to see if I have made any progress! That should be on or around the 30th of August.

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Beercation and Pa Hat's Birthday

I hope my readers had a good weekend, despite the lousy weather. Of course it was lovely before I had out of town guests, and today it is not bad out, but when everyone was visiting it was cold and wet. We still had a lot of fun anyway. My beer-loving aunt and uncle from Denver wanted to check out the Madtown brewing scene, so they came to town Thursday evening, along with Ma and Pa Hat from Minnesota. Travalon and I decided to bring them to Karben4 for dinner and beer sampling, but unfortunately it was too cold to enjoy their wonderful patio area like Travalon and I did with Rodney during Craft Beer Week. The Denver crew like their beers hoppier than Travalon does (he does not like IPAs at all), and while I don’t gravitate toward IPAs myself, I actually did enjoy all the beers.

Friday I had taken off of work, but Travalon had to work in the morning. I headed over to the hotel with my ukulele to jam with my uncle, who plays the flute. Since I am not that adept at jamming on the uke, we decided I should bring the mandolin the next day. Once Travalon got off of work, we went to Ale Asylum for lunch and a flight of their delicious beers. They even have Gail Ambrosius chocolates there, so we had some of those too. Our next stop was the Chocolaterian, so we could show off the Madtown craft chocolate scene some more. Everyone enjoyed the Parisian hot chocolate. We went to Olbrich and explored the conservatory, then we went into the gardens despite the cold weather, climbed the rose tower, and made our way to the Thai pavilion. In the evening we went to a Wisconsin fish fry with Irish overtones at Erin’s Snug Irish Pub. They have their own beer there, made by Leinenkugel’s.

Saturday my uncle and I jammed on the flute and mandolin in the morning as we all waited for my aunt and uncle from Chicago to arrive. Once they did, all eight of us went to Next Door Brewing for a flight of their tasty beers and lunch, including beer pie for dessert. My uncle from Denver loves New Glarus Brewing, so we drove down in two cars and got there not long before they closed. We had enough time to buy some beer and a fancy stein for my dad’s birthday the next day, then we went to an old tavern in town with murals depicting Switzerland on the walls. They actually had some New Glarus beers that the brewery shop had been out of, so we got some there too. We walked down the main street of the cute town, then we headed back to Madison and had dinner at Liliana’s, one of my favorite restaurants. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it, and my Denver relatives were very happy about their extensive vegetarian menu.

Yesterday we all met for brunch at Crema Café, and Rich joined us to celebrate Pa Hat’s birthday. He ordered “hot chocolate, maximum fat” and they even put sprinkles on the whipped cream! It looked so decadent, you would have thought he was the birthday boy! After we ate, we sang “Happy Birthday” to Pa Hat, and a bunch of innocent bystanders gamely joined in. Pa Hat liked his stein. My aunt from Chicago headed off to C’s Bakery to get some of their famous rhubarb treats, and everyone else also headed out, so Travalon and I went for a hike in the south part of Cherokee Marsh. Afterwards I found my fourth tick of the season – yuck! We ended the evening by watching Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which was even better than the first one. So it was a wonderful weekend from beginning to end.

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Playing My Many Instruments

Lately in the evenings Travalon and I have been sitting on our screened-in porch, and he reads while I mess around on my various instruments. Yesterday I got really ambitious and played almost all of them, even Bubba Sue the mountain dulcimer. The evening before Travalon played along on his bass as I played the chords for “I Walk the Line” on the ukulele, since it was in the key of A so he just had to play the open strings A, D, and E at the appropriate times. My goal is to learn one song on each instrument so it won’t feel like a complete waste to own so many, although right now I can’t really do much with the rebec because it takes special gut strings, and the E string broke, so I have to find out where to get a replacement. Of course the instruments I can play the most songs on are still the violin and the mandolin. A coworker told me the other day that he knew someone who sold one of those old bowl-backed mandolins like mine for $1200. I have no idea if I could get $1200 for mine, and anyway, if I add up all the gig money I have made playing her, over the years it probably came out to more than $1200 (that would only be $75 per year, which is like three average gigs), so I have come out ahead by playing Mandy in public rather than selling her. Not that I would sell her anyway – she is a family heirloom, and one of my very dearest possessions. I love all my instruments, but if I had a favorite, she would probably be it. She is such a joy to play.

I probably won’t be blogging for the next few days, since my aunt and uncle from Colorado are coming to visit, as well as Ma and Pa Hat, so Travalon and I will be very busy entertaining them. We are going to explore the Madtown craft beer scene. 

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Drumline Ridge Winery

I completely forgot to mention yesterday that after our hike in Cherokee Marsh, Travalon and I went to the new winery just down the road from us, Drumline Ridge. We got there ten minutes before they supposedly closed, but they were as friendly as could be. We each got a glass of white wine, and we split the local cheese platter. However, it was a tough choice between that and the European cheese platter. We sat outside, gazing out at the vines, and plenty of other people were out on the patio with us. They had $3 mimosas for Mother’s Day, but I really wanted to try their wine. The staff made absolutely no moves to kick us out, despite the late hour, and when we left the other people were still there. It was a laid-back atmosphere, and the wine was really good. I highly recommend this place!

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