10:56 AM
Good weekends birth long posts. You have been warned.

Since our last Post, your Intrepid Host has driven his car across a river, eaten peanuts proffered by a mad genius, visited fake lumberjacks, seen the bridal parties stacked three deep, soaked in small-town America...

All in all, it's been a weekend that's convinced me to buy a digital camera. Let me explain:

After the last post, I was joined by Chris (and may that picture stay on the web a thousand years so I can link to it every time I mention Chris) and we wandered north. Our destination: dinner in fabulous Wisconsin Dells. Sure, sure we could just have taken the interstate and been there in half an hour, but that would have been too easy. So instead we wandered the country highways, through villages whose existance I had previously heard of only through tornado warnings and towns whose high school athletes annoyed the hell out of me when they invaded Madison each spring for their tournaments and spent all their off-hours trying to steal a peek at (or in some cases, just steal from) Pic-a-Book's porn section.

Dane was not much more than a village on a hill surrounded by farmers' fields (my favorite bit of Dane: a house trying to sell its massive above-ground pool. How does that work? I was always under the impression that once magic and static forces allow the jigsaw puzzle of a above-ground pool to be put together, it can never again be safely reduced to its constituant parts. Of course, that's mainly because the above-ground pool we had when I was a kid was disassembled by a fireman and an axe, but that's a different story.) Lodi, on the other hand, was a beautiful town--and I'm not just saying that because it's the hometown of Tom Wopat (whose cousin once rented me office space--but again, that's a different story.)

North of Lodi, traffic suddenly stopped as the road disappeared into the waters of Lake Wisconsin. I had long heard of, yet never seen, the Merrimac Ferry. Though on a smaller scale, it reminded me of the ferries I saw when travelling with John and Lisa up Lake Malaren. Still, it was the first time I had ever driven my car onto a boat and it was a bit disconcerting to suddenly have the view outside my windshield start bobbing. We were right in pole position, and though the view ahead of us was blocked by the raised ramp we had a great view off to the right of the rail bridge and the nice houses along the lake. At point I looked to my left, and realized that fully loaded the ferry rides awfully low--waves were cresting through the grated ramps, and water was washing over the deck to a depth of about two inches.

You know, you never stop to think if you car insurace pays off for "sunken car" until it's too late.

But all went well. We offloaded on the far side and continued our journey through the hometown of August Derleth and up Highway 12 to the Badger Ammunition Plant (which I've been trying to tour for almost a decade and may be getting close...but that's another story.) But our true destination lay across the road: Delaney's Surplus Store. Sure, sure, you've seen surplus stores before. But Delaney's specializes in industrial surplus and some great bizarre pieces of machinery sitting outside rusting; I have no idea who they think will ever buy any of it. Of course, to see the real draw to Delaney's, you have to wander around the back of the building, past the piles, and through a line of trees. You can almost see it from the road, and you get tantalizing glimpses as you move closer:

The Forevertron.

Go read the article I just linked to. It's where I first heard about the place. But now let me tell you: it's no substitute for visiting. The place is incredible, with hundreds of pieces of machinery art scattered through a beautiful, grassy glade. Chris and I wandered among the giant bugs, the knife-butterflies, the guitar creatures, and the metal cats for a half hour or so before finally making our way to the 'Tron itself. That was where we ran into Doctor Evermore himself--and his wife. They fed us peanuts; that's about all I can remember of the conversation. We were still in awe, and I don't think we had a specific enough reaction yet for them to engage and play on (from the press I've read, it sounds like part of the fun they have is playing with people and making up new answers to old questions.) We talked for a few minutes, then made our way off to see a few more pieces before heading back for the car.

Zooming through Baraboo (so tempted to stop at Circus World...must return later in summer...) we finally arrived in the Dells and had an early dinner at Paul Bunyan's Famous Cook Shanty, an all-you-can-eat repast of wholly adequate food. The atmosphere, a combination of tourist kitsch and a lumberjack museum--combined with the sociological joy of spending an hour soaking in Touristland without becoming a Tourist myself (ha ha--I don't have to deal with kids who would rather be on a waterslide) made it a worthy destination, worth the slgiht amount more than a normal meal would have cost in Madison.

Back in Madison, I dropped off Chris then joined Rob and Kevin (who are wise enough not to have pictures online) on the Terrace and watched the crowds go by and the sun go down over Lake Mendota. It's times like that, after a day like that, that I really wonder why people bother living anywhere else.

And the weekend was only half over.

Rob and I rejoined Chris for a late show at ComedySportz now in their Even-More-Awkward (tm) Pizza Hut location. It wasn't a great show, but it was a good show, well attended by several bridal parties--at least one of which looked to be comprised of women no older than seventeen. I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old.

Then, back to my place where we hung out and watched my new DVD of Joe vs. the Volcano. Goofy, sappy fun that rewards repeat viewings (though maybe notsomuch as Vanilla Sky, which I also picked up last week.)

Sunday morning I was up bright and early to journey down to Verona for their Hometown Days parade. It was very nearly the shortest parade route I've ever seen (easily less than half a mile) and nothing like the Rose Parade or the Thanksgiving Parades you see on TV--but that's what made it great. Several times there were cars or floats that went by with absolutely no indication whatsoever what they were for--no banners, no signs, no nothing. It was also a surprisingly quiet parade--the local marching band and the local jazz band (riding on a flatbed with a generator to power their sound system; wimps) and that was it. Apparently the El Paso Marching Band doesn't range down to southern Wisconsin very often.

Almost devoid of any minorities whatsoever, the crowd at the parade was very full of small-town values. Note the lack of cynical quotes around that phrase. A vast majority of them stood up and took off their hats whenever an American flag went by (and in a post 9/11 parade, there are a lot of them) and everyone applauded the color guard. When a VFW flatbed of aging WWI and Korea-era veterans went by with a group of marching Vietnam vets close behind, both groups got a cheer. (It was interesting to observe the differences between the two groups, the VFW vets in shirts, pants and Cross of Malta caps while the Vietnam vets were in full camo fatigues and berets.)

We wandered up to where two local DJs had hired themselves out as parade MCs and were sitting with the judges up on the back of a truck. It was kind of sad, really, that for "Hometown Days" Verona had to bring in people who obviously didn't know anything more about the units passing in front of them than they could read off the sheet of paper they'd been given. I mean, find the local loudmouth gossip and perch them in front of a microphone--that would be worth crowding around the speakers: Here comes the guys from Bill's Heating and Cooling! A case of beer will get you a discount on any HVAC work you need, but don't give it to 'em until after the work's done!

An interesting morning, a bit of a return to my roots, and I now understand both why I miss it and why I'd never go back. Well, except for my high-school reunion in a few weeks. But that's a different story...