Southern Wisconsin is every bit as populated as Michigan. It's about fifty miles from the state line on to Milwaukee, and in between are Kenosha and Racine, each large cities in their own right. While no one in Milwaukee would ever admit to being in the same metro area as Chicago, it really is basically sold city all the way--and continues to be urban north of there to Sheboygan, Appleton, and Green Bay. Fortunately, I-94 is six lanes in Wisconsin, so the traffic moves fairly smoothly. Before long I was in Milwaukee.
I've now been to Milwaukee twice in my life, the other time being a quick pass-through after seeing Brad play in a ballgame in Appleton, Wisconsin a year ago. It's an interesting city--old and industrial, but still surprisingly clean and green. Sometime (presumably after Brad gets called up to the majors and I have a reason to spend a bit of time here), I'd like to explore Milwaukee more fully. It's big enough that I'm sure there must be some interesting things to see and do, and I think it would be fun to see just what they are.
Today, though, I took the freeway above downtown and then headed westward to the suburbs. My destination here was the final baseball-themed attraction of this trip: Brad's future workplace, Miller Park. I'm not a great fan of those "Your Name Here" stadiums (don't ever try to get me to call Comiskey "U.S. Cellular Field"), but at least Miller Park sounds like it could be named after a person (like my relatives, for instance), rather than a brewery. It's also a brand new park, so I suppose they can name it whatever they want to. I was here to take the ballpark tour and see what the place was like.
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I bought a ticket for the ballpark tour and then killed some time in a dull, overpriced gift shop. Eventually a group of around 20 assembled, and it was time to start our tour. An elderly lady named Louise was our guide, and she did a very nice job of showing us around the park. She was well informed about both the park and the team (unlike the dreadful guide we had when the quiz bowl team toured Busch Stadium in St. Louis), and she was enthusiastic without being annoying about it. I've done a lot of ballpark tours, but this definitely ranks among the best of them. Only the Chicago parks did a nicer job of entertaining their visitors.
The only really bad thing about the tour was that a Hispanic couple had brought along their four bratty kids. Every time the kids acted up, the parents seemed to think they were being adorable. Fortunately Louise knew better. When it became clear that mom and dad weren't able to discipline their own kids, Louise stepped in. In a voice that was friendly, but unquestionably firm, she let the kids know just exactly what was expected of them. When they pretended not to speak English, she pointed out that they had understood everything she said earlier. That took the kids by surprise, and they had few other options but to obey her. After that, they really were adorable little children.
We started the tour on the club level, the exclusive level of luxury suites that virtually every new stadium has. Miller Park is a very vertical stadium (I've read it's equivalent to a thirty story building), and the club level is way up in the stratosphere. In a way, that's kind of nice, though. The rich people who don't really care about seeing the game probably should be in the worst seats in the house. I pondered while we were up here in heaven the try-out Brad had been given at Miller Park right before he was drafted. He had hit some batting practice balls all the way up here to club level outfield. Apparently Bud Selig himself had seen those bombs, and was most impressed. Looking down from where they landed, I could definitely see why. I have no idea how far it is from here to home, but it sure seems like miles.
Also on the club level is the pressbox. Louise took us through there and pointed out that the tour was supposed to include a visit to the computer room where they generate special effects for the scoreboard. Apparently the Department of Homeland Security had requested that they not allow the public into that room, though. I'm not quite sure what they think a terrorist is going to do with a scoreboard, but it was nice to at least have some explanation for why we were forbidden to go there.
Louise handled all the other places we couldn't visit in much the same way. Almost any big building has a lot of places that he public has no business going. Louise was perfectly willing to point out just where all of those were, what their function was, and why we couldn't peek inside. In the meantime we saw enough other things up close that we could genuinely feel we'd gotten an in-depth tour of the stadium.
From the club level we descended to the service level, which is more than fifty feet underground. There's a big circular road under the stadium, that delivery trucks use to get close to every part of the park. Above that road are pipes that run beer to all the concession stands. We saw such lowly but important places as the main laundry room and the pop bottle recycling facility. We also saw where "Bernie the Brewer" enters the slide from which he descends whenever Milwaukee hits a home run. They've apparently toned down this show from the Brewers' former home at County Stadium. Supposedly Bernie used to be a caricature of an old German man in lederhosen who slid down into an enormous stein of beer. Even though the new ballpark is named after a beer, they no longer feel it's appropriate to have alcohol as the focus of their home run salute. Nowadays Bernie just slides down into the bullpen.
We also saw where they store the costumes used for the nightly sausage race--where a hotdog, a bratwurst, and an Italian sausage run around the warning track. The sausage race was in the news last summer when a visiting player purposely tripped one the mascots. The player was given a stiff fine, and many writers pondered whether the same punishment would have been imposed had the commissioner of baseball not been the owner of the Brewers. (Well, technically Bud Selig isn't the Brewers' owner; he officially divested himself when he became the permanent commissioner, so now Brad's boss is Bud's daughter, Wendi Selig-Priebe.) Louise pointed out that anyone can run in the sausage race if they want. The night of the controversy, the lady in the Italian sausage costume was an intern on the Brewers' office staff. Many times, though, visiting dignitaries ask to don the costumes. Apparently President Bush even wore the bratwurst costume when, as owner of the Texas Rangers, he was visiting Milwaukee about a decade ago. Louise let us know how anyone who attends a game can request to be a sausage, and it's something I just might do one day.
We stopped by the visiting clubhouse, which is apparently a normal part of the tour. Louise wasn't sure if we could see it today, though. We had noticed while we were elsewhere in the park that some college-aged men were playing ball on the field. They were apparently potential prospects who were here for a try-out with the team, a similar kind of thing to what Brad had done--though none of them were hitting balls to the upper deck. Louise wasn't sure if the young men were still on the field, or whether they might be dressing in the clubhouse. To find out she chose me to take a peek in the door and see if there was anyone in there. There was, and I quickly apologized on behalf of the group. It might have been interesting to see the clubhouse, but I certainly didn't need to see the future prospects quite so "up close and personal".
Our last visit was to the bullpen area in the outfield. Here Louise explained the retractable roof (a simpler set-up than they have in Toronto) that allows them to have a natural grass field inside a dome. We got a nice view of the whole park from field level and then made our way back to the entrance. The tour lasted a little over an hour, and it was all very interesting.
I left Miller Park and made my way through Milwaukee's western suburbs. I-94 soon narrowed to four lanes, but the traffic seemed to increase, if anything. It was high-speed bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to Madison--one of the most annoying stretches of the trip.
Fortunately it really isn't all that far to Madison, and after not much over an hour I had reached I-39. I went north one exit to US 151 and drove west about half a mile to the Madison Econolodge. This was one of the stranger motels I've stayed at. It has two buildings, but virtually all the guests seemed to be housed in the annex. There were rooms in the main part, but I think they were all empty. Mostly the main part held the lobby, the office, the breakfast room, and one of the largest motel gift shops I've ever seen--filled with the most atrocious souvenirs of Wisconsin you could imagine. They were re-paving the parking lot, which made most of the place inaccessible. They were also doing renovations on the annex (that place everyone was staying), so there was scaffolding everywhere. The vending machines were inoperative, and instead of having an ice machine they had a deep freeze with little zip-lock bags filled with ice cubes. It was definitely not the best accommodations I've ever had, but it would do for a night.
The Econolodge is right on the main strip in Madison, across the highway from a major mall. I walked over there to see if there was anything interesting. The only place I really spent any time was a Shop-Ko store, the same thing I could see in Mason City or Fairmont, but always a good place to browse. Then I had dinner (steak and soup, that were very pricey) at Country Kitchen, followed by a bit of dessert at that Wisconsin institution, Culver's.
Madison is a college town, and as such it has more than its share of freebie papers with a variety of mostly extreme political slants. I picked up one of these where the cover story brought me back to where I had just come from. The headline read "WMDs in Alabama" , and the dateline was Anniston. While it took me nearly half the article to realize that "WMDs" stood for "weapons of mass destruction", it was interesting to read. The liberal White Wisconsonians seemed to feel that Anniston had been chosen as the weapons disposal site almost exclusively because it was a majority black community. They offered nothing to back up that claim, nor any reason why hundreds of other mostly black cities around the country had been overlooked in favor of Anniston. I personally think they chose Alabama not out of racism, but for the gung-ho patriotism of the state. At least from an outsider's perspective, there seems to be almost no one there who would question anything the government does.
I, on the other hand, am often very skeptical of the government. Seeing that Bush buzz phrase "weapons of mass destruction" only served to reinforce my opinion on the war in Iraq. We never did find any such weapons in Iraq, nor do we seem to have accomplished much of anything there. I heard Walter Cronkite on TV the other day lamenting this radical shift in our nation's foreign policy, with the government suddenly justifying an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country. It's rather obvious that, unlike in Afghanistan, the people aren't exactly welcoming us with open arms. But then, why should they? We came into their country uninvited, and our military is occupying it. While I won't pretend for a minute that Hussein is a good man, it's not like we're liberating the Iraqis from a foreign invader; indeed, from their point of view our army is that foreign invader. I would much rather put the billions of dollars this war into preventing terrorism at home (like having meaningful security at our borders), and then in our foreign policy promote our country as a land of peace and friendship. That's pretty much what Europe's doing, but Bush seems to prefer being a bully.
Okay, okay--enough of the soapbox again. (That is the price you as a reader pay for getting my version of a trip rather than the Fodor travel guide.) There was one more piece to the baseball theme of this vacation. Back at the hotel, I flipped through the channels, finding very little of interest on TV. I ended up spending most of the evening watching the Little League World Series.
Mostly I just drove home today. I left the motel early and set off west on I-90. I stopped at Tomah, the place where I-90 and I-94 split, looking for a post office. I drove all over town, and eventually found what appeared to be a post office. Unfortunately, it had been remodeled into a professional building, with not so much as a blue mailbox out front. I kept driving and driving, and after about fifteen minutes I finally found the new post office, located in a pre-fab building on the outskirts of town.
The motel breakfast was extremely minimal, so I stopped again for breakfast. Again I was at a Country Kitchen, and at breakfast their prices were much more affordable. I had their skillet scramble (ham and eggs over hash browns, all smothered in cheese sauce), as well as some very tasty coffee. I was intrigued to see a couple stop in while I ate, asking for coffee to go. They were happy to serve them (at $1.69 a cup), but it would never occur to me to go to a "sit-down" restaurant just to get a styrofoam cup of coffee.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. I made my way west on I-90 across Wisconsin and half of Minnesota, stopping one last time for gas in Albert Lea. It was pleasant to have the emptiest roads I had seen since leaving I-24 in southern Illinois. Then I sped down US 169, back to my home in Algona.
There's a number of these ... and many of them really are things I've been asked with surprising frequency.
On this particular trip my favorite park was Jacobs Field in Cleveland. I also liked Miller Park, and it will be interesting to see an actual game there someday. I didn't care much for Comerica park. The name sounds like a contraction of "Commercial" and "America", and that's pretty much what the ballpark comes across as.
My actual favorite and least favorite parks were not among the ones I saw on this trip. In the major leagues, my favorite park was definitely historic Yankee Stadium, though Kaufmann Stadium in Kansas City is probably the most attractive park I've seen anywhere. The hyper-commercial Pac Bell Park in San Francisco was probably my least favorite in the majors. Some of my friends will kill me for this, but I also don't care much for Wrigley Field. Yes, it's historic and has a great view of the city, but it's also cramped, dirty, and usually filled with fans who've had a bit too much to drink. I really enjoyed taking a tour of Wrigley, and it looks great on TV, but it's just not a fun place to sit and watch a game.
In the minor leagues, there's even more individual personality among the parks. While the players don't much care for it, I rather like Pohlman Field in Beloit. It reminds me of Community Field in Burlington, the closest thing to a "hometown" professional park there was when I was growing up. Both are old, ratty parks, but you get a feeling of a real community team, rather than a cash cow for some corporation; they give the feeling of really being "friendly confines". John O'Donnell Stadium in Davenport is a lovely old park overlooking the Mississippi, and Sec Taylor in Des Moines is nicer than many of the new big league parks it copies. (I've always wondered why we don't play the state high school championships there.) Probably the best minor league park I've been to, though, was Fifth-Third Field in Dayton, which is basically a smaller version of Baltimore's Camden Yards. Lots of critics praise Fifth-Third, and this is one occasion when I definitely agree with the experts. Besides bring a beautiful downtown park, it's a friendly atmosphere and they've got some of the best stadium food you'll find anywhere.
The worst minor league park? No hesitation whatsoever: Elfstrom Stadium in Geneva, Illinois. The home of the Kane County Cougars is an ugly, generic park out in the middle of nowhere. That alone wouldn't turn me against it, though. The real problem was that the place was filled with some of the most annoying, obnoxious fans I've seen anywhere. Even if Brad were demoted back to A-ball, you won't catch me at another Kane County game.
It's not that I completely disliked sports; I was just never any good at them. I sort of vaguely followed the Yankees and White Sox when I was growing up, I really got interested in baseball back in the early '90s. Another of my former students basically latched on to me after his father passed away. He really was a lot like a step-son to me, and of course I followed the things he was involved in. His #1 activity was baseball, and I started following the Garrigan team back when he played for them. It was following him that I got to know all the intricate aspects of the sport, and then learned to really like it.
I don't see [this former student] frequently these days, though we keep in touch through a fantasy baseball league we are both members of. I've thought about the relationship he and I had a few times recently. There was nothing inappropriate about it at all, but it's the sort of thing that probably couldn't happen in today's more suspicious times. A big focus of the inservice in Catholic schools this year is about preventing child sexual abuse. (We're told that "Protecting God's Children" is not a response to the priest scandals, but the timing is uncanny-and it's sponsored by the company that insures the National Council of Bishops.) Much of the inservice focuses on preventing anything that could conceivably be misconstrued, and an awful lot in [our relationship] could have been misunderstood by someone who didn't know better. It's sad that so many tragedies happen, but to me the real tragedy is telling people they have to avoid kindness because it might be misconstrued as perversion.
Back off the soapbox, I'll make one more remark about following baseball. It's a lot different watching the game when someone you know is playing. I've cheered for the likes of Cal Ripken and Frank Thomas and Derek Jeter, but it's not like I feel really personally involved with a game when I se guys like that play. I'm even less involved when the roster features people like "Coco Crisp". When Brad Nelson is playing, though, I do feel personally involved--just as I do when the students I currently teach play high school ball. It's not like every at-bat is life and death, but I definitely follow things more closely when people I know are in the game.
I don't want to take liberties by calling Brad Nelson a "friend", but "former student" gets cumbersome. To answer the question, yes Brad will make it to what players call "the show". I'm not a gambler, but if I were I'd put money on it--though I probably wouldn't find many people to bet against me. 2003 will probably be among his worst professional season statistically, but it says a lot about the Brewers' confidence in him that they promoted him to AA and moved him to a new position in spite of frankly abysmal hitting following his wrist surgery. Most of the "experts" in the baseball world expect Brad to start back in Huntsville next spring, and I agree with that prediction. I'd guarantee you ... [he'll be in Milwaukee before long, though]
I get this question from my students a lot. Frankly, it's a lot easier to follow someone in minor league ball. In Huntsville it was easy for Brad to come up to talk with me after a game. In Milwaukee (and almost all big league parks), they keep the players as separate from the fans as possible. About the only big league park I've seen where many players actually interacted with fans was the Metrodome, and even there it wasn't as easy as in the minors. Beyond that, it's really on the way up that an athlete really needs the support of people he knows. By the time he is a big leaguer, Brad will undoubtedly have literally thousands of fans. Starting out, though, he needs to rely on the people who actually know him.
Actually, I don't know that the ballgames would have been my favorite thing, even if I'd included them here. My favorite baseball-themed attraction was Field of Dreams, which was especially fascinating on a foggy morning. Among the non-baseball attractions, I'd probably pick the Carter Center.
Let's start with least-Detroit, hands down. As far as I can tell the only real attraction in metro Detroit is Greenfield Village in suburban Dearborn. While waiting in the dentist's office last month I read an article in ESPN-The Magazine that asked professional athletes to choose the best and worst "road towns" in which to play. With almost fifty cities to choose from, Detroit got a majority of the votes. That wasn't hard to believe, having been there. I'd think the players are pretty much stuck in their hotels all the time they're not playing; there's just not much of anything to see or do here-not to mention how ugly and decrepit the city is.
The favorite place I visited is a much harder question to answer. Had I actually stopped there, I'd probably say Chicago--which is just about my favorite city anywhere, period. I don't really think I can count driving through on the expressway as seeing Chicago, though. I'd be tempted to say Milwaukee, but I really didn't see much of anything other than Miller Park there either. Hopefully one day I'll explore that city in a more in-depth way. So, that pretty leaves Cleveland and the Southern cities--and most of them were really just passing through, too. I suppose I'd say Chattanooga, which is a stately old city in a gorgeous mountain setting. It's also just about the only place in the South where the city doesn't seem completely overwhelmed by its suburbs. I really didn't see Chattanooga in much depth either, though, so perhaps I'll just have to leave the question unanswered.
... Quite a few other people have implied this in one way or another, too. The answer is "not really". I always love traveling--by almost any mode of transportation (boat being the one notable exception). While I don't care a lot for heavy traffic, I almost always enjoy driving, even alone over long distances. I've also always been pretty good at keeping myself entertained. (I think that's an advantage to growing up before the age of computers and video games.) I often play a complicated version of the "alphabet" game when I drive, finding things from signs I pass along the way, and I also listen to music and sing to myself as I make my way down the road. (Some people sing in the shower; me, I sing on the road.)
I also think it helps that I was driving my tiny Metro, which has no air conditioning. With the windows open and your view low to the ground, you feel more a part of the country you are passing through. I was reminded of the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I read for a college class years ago. Much more than maintenance, the book describes the joy of riding a motorcycle, where the biker feels one with the environment, rather than just traveling through it in a glass and steel shell. I've never ridden a motorcycle (except when messing around with friends in high school--something my parents, hopefully, never knew about), though I've always thought it would be fun to do so. I do think a small car with the windows open affords some of that same feeling, though.
I'm a big advocate of public transportation, but the fact is that except in northern cities our country's train and bus systems are skeletal at best. I did look at possibly flying into Huntsville or Birmingham or Nashville or Atlanta, but the cost would have been more than it was to fly to California--so much for the sense of airfares. About the only competitive air alternative would have been flying to Memphis, and then I still would have had a long day of driving in a rental car to get to Huntsville.
Again, I'll answer that in regards to both this trip and ever. I tend to have simple tastes in hotels. I like a clean room with good lighting and easily controlled heat or air conditioning, a nice bathroom with a powerful shower, a pleasant lobby, and a convenient location. On this trip the nicest place was the Sleep Inn south of Cleveland. Sleep Inn is also just about the most reliably good chain I've ever stayed at. Hampton Inn is probably nicer, but they're also quite a bit more expensive. As for individual hotels, I really liked the Hollywood Roosevelt where Margaret and I stayed in Los Angeles. The Clarion Barceló O'Hare that I referred to earlier in this travelogue is also a first-rate hotel. In big cities almost any Choice property (Clarion, Quality, Comfort, or Sleep) will be a decent and affordably priced selection. In small towns, though, the same hotels can often be over-priced.
The worst single motel I've ever stayed in was a ma 'n' pa place in Grand Rapids, Minnesota where I stayed almost twenty years ago. I paid what was then an outrageous price (over $40, I think) for a room with ineffective air conditioning, roaches crawling in the bed, and mosquitoes flying out of the bathtub drain. Not long after that I stayed at another ma 'n' pa abomination in Winner, South Dakota that was nearly as bad. After that I made two vows: I would never stay at an independent motel again and I would never travel without reservations again. I've kept both of those resolutions for nearly two decades now.
It's hard to select a "worst" chain, because an awful lot of "bad" has to do with value for money. I've stayed at a lot of Motel 6's and Econolodges that weren't especially nice motels, but where I felt I got exactly my money's worth. Generally I feel the worst value for money comes at Super 8 motels. The quality of Super 8's tends toward budget, but they price themselves more in the mid-range category. They tend to be older and not well maintained. They're often very badly lit, and the plumbing usually leaves something to be desired. The single rooms at Super 8's tend to be cramped and badly located, and you usually have no choice but to walk past the desk every time you go in or out. Finally, I don't think I've ever had a decent breakfast at a Super 8. I'm a member of Super 8's "VIP" club, but that doesn't mean I particularly like their motels.
OK ... sort of ... knock on wood. The exhaust doesn't seem to be a problem, so the $30 job they did at Midas seems to have worked. However, shortly after school started I was driving back from a cross-country meet in Mason City when I noticed that most of the lights didn't work. I had daytime running lights, but no real headlights, no taillights (the biggest concern), and no dashboard lights. The estimate to fix that electrical problem was over $700. Fortunately it turned out to be quite a bit less, but it was still about the biggest expense of the year. I'm hoping to keep the car at least another year, though if I do I'll probably have to get the brakes serviced at some point, too. On the other hand, the car does now have 101,000 miles on it, so I suppose it's due for a few problems. Hopefully, though, I can get a bit more faithful service out of the old Metro--maybe one more good road trip and a lot more running around town.
The background music on this page is "The Millionaire Waltz", originally by Queen.