Move: to Madison, WI (Day 500)

Like Day 200, this blog post is long enough to warrant a table of contents. With the passage of time, it seemed like I could summarize what was good about Madison and Houston, respectively. The novelty of the relocation has worn off. What remains delightful?

1) What I like about Madison, and miss about Houston

2) First Winter in Wisconsin: A Review

3) Travels to Minnesota

1) What I like about Madison and southern Wisconsin in general:

• Friendliness and relatively high levels of trust.
• The focus on outdoor activities. Wisconsin is the easier and more welcoming place to hike, hunt, and volunteer for outdoor-focused causes. Trails are everywhere.
• The calm pace of life. There is less of a hurry, despite the stereotypical phrase “keep ‘er movin!”
• The popularity of biking. Not only are bike trails everywhere, but also biking is popular enough that more drivers seem to expect them. Likewise, as a driver, you get used to seeing bikes.
• Relatively cheap auto insurance. The causes of this are likely multiple, including but not limited to Wisconsin-specific regulations, car theft rates, and law enforcement in general.

What I miss about Houston and south Texas in general:

• Family and friends.
• The restaurants. Oh heavens, the restaurants. How I dream of the bánh mì, Whataburger, the Indian food, the succulent BBQ, the fried shrimp, the umpteen bazillion ways one can arrange meat and fixings onto a tortilla, and the subtleties, nuances, and complexities of salsa.
• Legal u-turns everywhere.
• Airport hubs. The population of the Houston metro area rivals that of the entirety of Wisconsin. As a result, Houston is large enough to have two major airports.
• The ambition, and sense of economic growth.
• Getting away with using cheap tires.

2) My First Winter in Wisconsin: A Review

Winter teased the Madison area, with flurries in October and November. However, proper snow came later, closer to Christmas than not. The first picture I have of snow is dated December 11. It’s not a great picture.

With snow and ice, come snow plow trucks, and salt. For the sake of the bike, I stopped biking to work, and began walking to work. It’s a pleasant, albeit long walk.

Flew to Houston for Christmas and New Year’s. Visited friends in both San Antonio and Houston. It was great to catch up with old college friends, folks from Creatorspace, and other people that I hadn’t seen since April 2017.

Flew back north to Wisconsin, and celebrated the occasion with beer and fried cheese curds.

A Wisconsin Welcome

Weather conditions on the evening of January 3, 2018. 

Note that it was warmer in both Whitehorse and Montreal, Canada.

Took the bus from the Milwaukee airport to downtown Madison, where a coworker picked me up. He had been car-sitting while I was in Texas. When we got back to his place, we discovered that the Subaru’s battery was dead. We jump-started it. When I got back to the apartment, I let the engine run a while, and then shut the car off.

The Subaru wouldn’t start the next morning. Forunately, GEICO offers roadside assistance. After they jumped the car, I drove straight to Autozone. One-hundred and thirty dollars later, I had a new battery.

That was the only major hiccup that winter. The rest of January was spent working, looking for wolf tracks for the DNR, learning how to ski at Tyrol Basin, and beginning service at District 1 EMS.

Wisconsin in Winter

It snowed off-and-on from January through...April. Conditions warmed up in February, and that’s when I learned an important lesson: notwithstanding hurricanes, tornadoes, etc., the worst weather is to have low temps in the 20s, and high temps in the 40s. Every day, the ice melts. Every night, the ice reforms. Every morning, a new batch of ice. Every. Morning. Walking to work in February ranged from annoying to dangerous.

When lows are about 10, and highs just at 30, there is not much new ice. The air is also crisper. A perfect afternoon, however, can be had when the temperature is 35, and the weather dry and sunny. Truly, a time to roll down the windows while driving.

In March, I walked home from work, in a snowstorm.

A Suburban Office Park

The last picture I have of snow is dated April 18. What was surreal was not the snow in April per se, but rather that the days were getting longer. There just seemed to be so much daylight. Snow and darkness seemed correlated in my mind. April snow was causing minor cognitive dissonance.

By Memorial Day, temperatures were in the 90s. The summer has been humid and warm ever since. Last year, summer was quite pleasant in the temperature category. However, there were a lot more storms and tornado warnings last year than this year. This year, the weather has been humid, still, and warmer than average.

3) On the weekend of June 22 through 24, I drove up to the twin cities. I met two friends from Houston, at the Seward Cafe, on E Franklin Ave, Minneapolis. The food was delicious. Seward Cafe is recommended.

We met because we hadn’t seen each other in a while, and used the Ellsworth (Wisconsin) Cheese Curd Festival as a rationale for the timing of the visit. We paid two visits to the Cheese Curd Festival. If you were willing to wait for four hours to get a decent-sized box of fried cheese curds, then you were well-rewarded. Since recipients got a rather large helping of cheese curds, some guests shared. That’s how my friends and I didn’t have to wait for hours in line. Getting free samples from random strangers was sufficient. It was not as sketchy as that last sentence sounded. Far from it.

Some folks in Wisconsin are enthusiastic about cattle.

Outside of Ellsworth, one of my friends re-visited her old stomping grounds in Minneapolis. We visited one of the local maker-spaces, The Hack Factory. A gentleman showed us around the space, which had an impressive array of tools and workspaces.

On our final evening, one of my friends and I headed to Red Wing, Minnesota, for drinks. We drove around, looking for a place to park. While doing so, we saw some of downtown Red Wing, and came away impressed with the presentation. We finally parked, and visited 223 Barrel House on 223 E Main St. Had a brandy old-fashioned, and a couple of beers. 223 Barrel House in Red Wing, Minnesota, is recommended.

Nonetheless, Wisconsin beckoned.