Hello friend, strangers, and bots!
September 27, 2022 is the 2000th day of living in the Madison area. In April 2017 I moved from Houston to Madison, and have blogged about the transition.
For Day 2000, instead of writing about Madison or Houston, I will present more personal topics. If you want to just read about travel and see some photos, then you can click here to skip to that part.
Let’s focus on good things that have happened, or lessons learned.
1) Gratitude Journaling.
Gratitude journaling has a surprisingly good effect on one’s life. For about a month I wrote daily:
- Positive emotions (if any; described the emotions and their circumstances)
- Negative emotions (if any; described the emotions and their circumstances)
- Successes (if any)
- Efforts (one at least tried something today, right?)
- Changes (in oneself, others, or both)
- Three things to be grateful for that day.
One challenge was finding three different things every day to be grateful for. Writing down “family, friends, and food” every day was not good enough. Finding three different things every day forced one to think about anything that one could be grateful for. And, wow. No matter how depressing the news, there was always something positive to appreciate.
2) Fun exercise is better than...exercise that you won’t do
In the summer and fall of 2020, I jogged five days a week. I made an exception when there was lightning. Despite this habit, it never became enjoyable. Jogging in warm, rainy weather was fun. Once. When temperatures fell enough to make the roads icy, I stopped jogging and never resumed it. What seemed like a temporary decision for became more permanent.
Three forms of exercise have been kept up as a habit:
- Dancing
- Skiing
- Rowing (on a machine, indoors)
If you have not yet tried any of the Hustle, Rumba, Salsa, Line Samba, the Foxtrot, Cha-Cha, or Single Time Swing, then you are missing out. Each dance uses different leg muscles, and you realize which muscles you rarely use. That said, each dance requires good posture, and most require holding your arms such that you maintain a “frame”.
One of the most fascinating outcomes of learning to dance is that of becoming more observant of music. A great deal of Top 40 music can be danced with the Hustle or Cha-Cha. Slower-paced popular music might be danced with the Rumba. Music too fast for Hustle or Cha-Cha can be danced with Single Time Swing.
I’ve only danced Salsa to Salsa music, which requires listening to the piano, not the bass or the drums, to know when the first beat occurs. Likewise for Line Samba, only I just follow what the rest of the crowd is doing. Foxtrot is danced to music that you probably hear in 1940s movies, movies taking place in the 1940s, or heard at odd hours on Saturday afternoons on public/college/small independent radio stations.
As for skiing, unless you go to Dubai, you have to wait for winter. Based on prior winters, there are three recommended ski hills:
Tyrol Basin is the closest and smallest of the three. It is worth the 30 minute-or-so drive from the western part of Madison.
Granite Peak is in Wausau, about two hours north of Madison. It is larger than Tyrol, and has taller hills.
Spirit Mountain is in Duluth, Minnesota. It’s about 6 hours away by car, and worth the drive. The trails and scenery are the best of the three.
There are other ski hills relatively close to Madison of course, such as Cascade Mountain and Devil’s Head. Both are farther away than Tyrol, and neither take Indy Pass.
Indy Pass sells a ski pass that gets you two lift tickets per ski hill that is in the Indy Pass network. At current prices if you visit at least three different hills, and redeem two tickets per hill, then you’ve saved money using the ski pass.
I’ve used Indy Pass at Sundown Mountain in Dubuque, Iowa, and Pine Mountain in Iron Mountain, Michigan. Sundown Mountain is good if you live in Dubuque, and is the rough equivalent of Tyrol Basin.
Pine Mountain is a bigger than Granite Peak, but less complex than Spirit Mountain. Pine Mountain and Spirit Mountain are both about 6 hours away from Madison. Given a choice, I lean towards Spirit Mountain. If you lived closer to upper peninsular of Michigan than to Duluth, then your decision might be different.
As for rowing, a relatively cheap rowing machine can be a good introduction into an exercise that you can do indoors during thunderstorms or blizzards. It’s also easier on your knees, and uses your upper body. Starting with a cheap machine is advisable. If you enjoy rowing, then you will learn what you want in your next, more expensive rowing machine. If you do not enjoy rowing, then you can simply sell the machine (or give it away), and not lose very much money.
In 2020 I made a mid-year resolution: to buy groceries only at Asian grocery stores for the month of July. It became quite the challenge to figure out breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Eventually, the diet became one of eggs or baozi for breakfast, and curry dishes for lunch and dinner. The main takeaways from that experience are that both curry bricks and buckwheat noodles are good.
Also, bread. One time during July I went to Pick-n-Save to buy something that was not food. The first thing I noticed was the smell of bread. Yummy, yummy bread.
Since 2020, I’ve traveled to Duluth, Chicago, Door County, Dubuque, Indianapolis, the lower peninsula of Michigan, and have taken Amtrak to San Antonio.
Blurbs of each city (and Amtrak) follow:
Duluth: recommended for Spirit Mountain, the Glensheen Mansion, and Split Rock Light House. Duluth is a trading city that has seen better days. It is as far northwest as you can go and still be in the “Rust Belt”. The freeway into town looks as if it was built in the 1960s.
Chicago: if the Midwest had a capital, it would be Chicago. It is the transport hub of the region. Its food is excellent.
Family was shocked to discover that the nachos at Broken English Taco Pub on E Lake St were the best nachos we had ever had. The secret: do not use refried beans for the nachos. Use black or non-mushy Pinto beans. Refried beans makes the tortilla chips soggy.
The Field Museum is overwhelming and wonderful. People suggest that you need two whole days to visit it, and they are right. If you like such things as dinosaur skeletons and dioramas of animals in their respective habitats, then you know how can you spend two days in Chicago.
The Bean is simple and surprisingly attractive.
Downtown Chicago is populated and prosperous. There is a significant amount of new construction. Middle-class people appeared to not merely work in or near downtown, but also to live right outside of it.
The architecture boat tour is highly recommended. Going by memory, the oldest buildings date to about 1900 (plus/minus 20 years). The tour ends with a short jaunt out into Lake Michigan to take in the skyline.
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Door County: You’ve probably noticed on drawings or depictions of Wisconsin’s state boundaries that eastern Wisconsin has a peninsula. The peninsula juts out into Lake Michigan, and most of it is in Door County.
It is very touristy. Recommended places to visit are Rock Island, Newport State Park, and the Baileys Harbor Range Lights.
Rock Island is car-free, and hosts a light house and a boat house. The boat house features runic inscriptions, and a small museum. It’s better than you think.
Newport State Park is a Dark Sky park. Perfect for watching meteor showers. Or, for looking in the wrong direction and seeing no meteors while hearing the crowd go “Ooooh!”
The Baileys Harbor Range Lights look like something out of the 1990s CD-ROM game Myst. The Range Lights are part of a larger park, that one walks through on a series of flat, simple wooden bridges. The effect is pleasant.
Dubuque: Situated on the Iowa side of the tri-state area (the other two being Wisconsin and Illinois), is Dubuque. At first glance, it is a town of red-brick buildings, with hills in the background. Most of the modern construction is on the other side the hills. The most surprising thing about Dubuque is its Italian food. It’s among the best I’ve had.
Indianapolis: Went to this city because a Van Gogh exhibit was occurring at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The city is about as far north as you can get and still hear Southern accents. Its downtown Civil War monument commemorates the Union. Lots of motorcycles.
Lower Peninsula of Michigan: The fourth time I went to Michigan, it was to the lower peninsula. I still have not yet been to Detroit. The airport does not count. The lower peninsula consists of lots of freeways, some of which are new (or newly repaved). Most roads are bumpy. The most charming towns are Frankenmuth, Owosso, and Holland. In Frankenmuth, Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland is a large store that also includes a display of nativity scenes that were carved by artisans from around the world.
Many Michigan towns had left-turn lane signs that were boxes hung over the intersection. Along with at least one cop car that used a single rotating flashing light, the place felt like the 1960s.
The “1960s”, as an infrastructure era more so than a cultural moment, comes to mind especially in places that aren’t Madison or Chicago. Although, even in Madison, one drives to downtown much as one did before freeways.
During Christmas and New Year’s 2021/2022, I took Amtrak from Chicago to San Antonio and back again. The train route was the Texas Eagle. It cost more money and time than a flight, but was overall a more relaxing way to travel. Paying for a room includes three meals per day, plus the first alcoholic drink of the evening. You can also help yourself to coffee and bottled water. The food itself was okay.
If you take an overnight train, I recommend paying for a room, and bringing ear plugs. Since trains travel on the same ground as cars and trucks, you pass through hundreds of (a thousand?) railroad crossings. All night long: ...clang clang clang CLANG CLANG CLANG clang clang clang...clang clang clang CLANG CLANG CLANG clang clang clang…
The scheduling of the Chicago-San Antonio train is such than one sleeps through the Arkansas and Missouri Ozarks, and sees rural Texas and Illinois in the daytime. The train makes many stops between Chicago and San Antonio, serving rural communities in ways that airlines don’t. One may see Amish (or other Plain) folk onboard.
Overall, taking the train is worth it if the train itself is a part of the trip, and you have a lot of time to allocate.
That’s the Day 2000 update folks.
