Dan's Big Day Out

A combination of exhaustion from being in the office, Blues games being scheduled for terrible times, and general apathy for being outside has kept my exploration in Madison to a minimum.

I went to the movies by myself once, I've got for a post work beer with a couple guys a few times, and I've hit all my favorite places from previous trips.

Well, Saturday my buddy Rob had house chores to do and a soccer game in the afternoon and Lacy scheduled a solid 4 hour nap, so I decided to have a Big Day Out.

Rob dropped me off at Johnson and Broom street and my more than 10 mile foot journey began.

It was basically the most perfect weather. Just enough cloud cover to never feel sun burnt, but just enough sun to never feel cold, and a great breeze carrying the lake mist across the land.

My original plan was to take an Uber from around here out to Karben4 brewing, but there was a race in town this weekend and my 15 minute Uber ride was estimated to cost around $30. Karben4 would have to wait.

First, I walked next to the lake to the east side of town to have a few pints at One Barrel Brewing. I arrived shortly after 11 am, right when they opened, and took a seat at the gorgeous wrap around bar. There were only two other people in the bar at the time.



I chatted the guy up who quickly noticed that I was wearing both a St. Louis Blues shirt and a Schlafly hat and called me out on my St. Louis uniform. I swear, I didn't plan it that way.

One Barrel is the type of neighborhood bar where you stop every Friday after work for a pint and catch up with the regulars. I really liked the atmosphere and can't wait to go back.

I ordered a pint and some swag, and soon my relative peace was over.

There's a documentary on Netflix called The Barkley Marathon: The Race That Eats Its Young. I haven't seen it yet, but the 25 bikers that swarmed the bar had, and created the Beerkley Marathon: The Race That Drinks Its Young.





Jess, who appeared to be the coordinator of the race, invited me to join them. She said the only qualification to join was wearing some sort of plaid... which as luck would have it, I changed into plaid shorts right before I left.

So she gave me a race number, 67, and explained the rules. The group was biking to every brewery in Madison that day, and at each brewery you had a beer you had to drink and a special objective you had to complete. The full list is below:

• One Barrel: Barrel Roll - Roll something that no one else has rolled.
• Ale Asylum: Seek Asylum - Find a tunnel and go through it.
• Karben4: Karben 4-en Accents - Speak in a foreign accent the entire time at the brewery.
• Next Door: Next Door Neighbor - You aren't allowed to pick up your own drink.
• Great Dane: Man's Best Friend - Adopt a stranger and bring them to the next stop.
• UW Terrace: Cool off on the Terrace - Use nature to cool down.
• Vintage: It's Not Old, It's Vintage - Find something vintage
• Rockhound: Rock Out - Karaoke a song that shouldn't be karaoked. 

Unfortunately for me, my marathon would be short lived since I didn't have a bike. 

After two pints at One Barrel, I wandered down the street to NextDoor Brewing.

Now my biking friends told me that NextDoor has the best cheese curds in Madison. That is a hefty claim because I've had some really awesome cheese curds here. 

They were right... the cheese curds were amazing.

On top of that, I ordered a flight with every beer they had. Usually breweries have 8-10 beers and pour like 3 ounce samples. Nope... not here, 11 samples were delivered to me... and I drank 'em.

With a belly full of cheese and roughly 5 pints, I walked to Brew & Grow a home brew shop, but I got distracted by a skate park across the street. I just stood there, taking in the breeze, watching some really amazing college kids pull off all sorts of tricks. 

After the skate park, I wandered through the east side of town, right to Wisconsin's State Capital. I still haven't taken the tour, but it's one of the most beautiful capitals I've seen. The building looks too clean and it sits on top of a hill, flanked on either side by Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. 

After that, I went to Earwax, a vinyl shop that specializes in Punk and Metal. I didn't find much, but I did find a special edition copy of No Doubt's Ska classic Tragic Kingdom. Then, I wandered into A New Hope comic book shop across the hallway and scored two Punisher comics signed by famed Marvel artist Jim Lee. 

Now, I was still feeling great about the day, I had some more podcasts to listen to, and you look at that map below and everything seems pretty close... so I walked back to Rob and Lacy's not realizing I was adding a solid 90 minutes to my walk. 

By the time I got back to their place, my feet hurt, my back hurt, my eyes were filled with dust and sunburned, and I needed a shower. 

I showered, napped, then woke up to watch the Blues beat the Sharks in game 5. 

What a day.

Getting Stung

My friend Lacy is incredibly scared of bees, hornets, wasps. Like, obviously, no one really likes to be stung by any of them, but she has an innate terror the likes of which you don't often see outside of horror movies.

We were having a beer on her deck, enjoying a Friday afternoon and she showed me a hornets nest from the year prior that was built in their outdoor light. She basically said, if the hornet comes back this year, she's hiring someone to kill it with a flamethrower.

The ironic thing is, she just got stung for the first time ever a week prior on the bottom of her foot. She admitted it wasn't too bad, but then back tracked and thought maybe that's because it was on the part of the foot that is really tough. The anxiety is still there at the extreme levels it was before.

I've only ever been stung once too. The soccer fields by my house had thousands of those small yellow flower weeds and there were always tons of bees when games weren't going on.

On the other side of those fields were woods that me and my buddies used to play in. One time I went sprinting across the fields towards the woods where adventure awaited.

I didn't even realize what was happening. I thought it was a mosquito until I looked down and saw the bee still attached to my leg. I had those dumb kid thoughts like, "Hmmm, this sort of sucks. Should I react? Do I cry?"

I don't think I did much other than curse, which was something my friends and I had just started doing when no parents were around.

But anyway, this conversation reminded of a time back in third grade. I had this baseball coach I didn't like. He was always yelling at us, his son, his wife, just everyone. He was an angry bastard.

Well, this one game I remember being particularly tired, it was incredibly hot, and when you're on the baseball field and you feel hot and you're wearing those thick baseball pants that don't breath and that dust is getting kicked up... well, let's just say that's all my least favorite things in one experience.

So I'm angry, and I don't like my coach.

I'm sitting on the bench, my time to bat was still at least six or sever kids away. I'm just praying for some sort of relief.

Then, I see a wasp start working it's way up coach's leg. I raise my hand to get his attention and then I hear him grumbling as he looks at the batting order on the piece of paper in his hands. My hand went down, I watched as the wasp crawled up his shorts, and a few seconds later he got stung near ... well you know where near.

He swatted and started cursing and got really red in the face with how angry he was.

I was sort of a jerk as a kid. I think even if someone I didn't like was in the same situation now, I'd probably tell them... probably.

Two Weeks In

I'm about to finish my second week at the new job.

It's been tough for sure.

I really like the company. Actually, working in the office makes me wish I were closer to the office so I could go in there once or twice a week. It's a great loose atmosphere. People work outside on the new deck. Great free coffee is available to every employee. Premier league games are put on the TV Friday afternoons and everyone crowds around with their laptops to watch.

I even joined the brew club and have Sal bringing up a bunch of St. Louis beers for everyone to sample on the deck in a few weeks.

I sort of still don't believe it's a real place.

And Madison is beautiful. They really built the town around nature. There's paths through the woods, a geese rehabilitation nature preserve right outside my work, and it's just so green. The most important thing, almost no humidity still. I saw St. Louis was thick with 90% humidity, and I'm walking to work in gorgeous 70 degree weather with a light breeze.

But it's really hard being away from my home, my dumb cats, and especially my dumb wife.

Hotel life is hard. Hotels are one of my favorite things when it's for a couple days, but going on my second week, I'm tired of not having my own bed, hearing the noises of the other tenants, and fearing that the cleaning crew will bust in on any random Friday morning before I left.

My second night staying in the hotel, some jackass even pulled the fire alarm. We all had to file outside, in the cold, at 2:30 while the firefighters cleared the building. It's just that dumb college stuff I'm dealing with again, except now I'm older and more tired and know what it's like to have control.

I'm breaking the days up by meals and the weeks up by weekends. It's all I can really do.

It's also hard not being around the city while my Blues are doing so well. As much as I love watching the game with my buddy Rob on his couch, it just doesn't compare to being in a bar filled with people dressed in blue going nuts.

I actually might have some tension at work because the guy behind me is a Blackhawks fan, two of the guys I get along with are Penguins fans, and NBC loves to tell me that Madison is Wild country. I'm surrounded by people the Blues had to / will have to crush on the way to the finals.

Two weeks of nine are finished. That's almost 25% done. When you break it down like that, it really doesn't seem that long, but at the same time it feels like infinity.