Our trip, part 1

As confidently predicted here, the storms from Minnesota fizzled out before getting anywhere close to us Monday night. A little storm popped up nearby around midnight, produced a tiny bit of thunder and lightning ... and also faded away. But we did get some rain here at about 9 a.m. Tuesday.

OK, back to the story of our holiday weekend trip to the inlaws. We did Part 2 already, so it's obviously time for Part 1:

* * * * *

To go on a trip like this, you have to accept a few things as givens. Mosquitoes. (They have big, mean ones there.) Polka music. (You haven't lived until you've sat in the back seat of your father-in-law's car, listening to a girl jubilantly singing "I love tutti frutti ice cream!" on a poor cassette tape.) Loud TV programs. (He's hard of hearing.) And John Deere tractors. (My FIL loves tractors, especially John Deeres.)

The trip over there (the fast trip west) had a few interesting moments. While making one stop, we saw this sign outside a truck stop:



No kidding!

For much of the distance, U.S. 8 is two lanes wide. About halfway through the trip, I saw a brown bump in the middle of the highway. I thought it might be a turtle trying to slowly make its way from one side of the highway to the other. I take it upon myself to hop out and help out pedestrian turtles whenever I can, so I made a U-turn and doubled back. Here is what I saw:



A brown and white bird. Quite live, too. It turned its head to look at me but didn't try to fly off. Why it didn't is a mystery. Maybe it had flown into a car window and was stunned. Who knows? Anyway, I sure wasn't going to leave it in the middle of the highway. I went behind it and slowly and gently cupped my hands to lift it to the side of the road and placed it down at the edge of the grass. From there, Mother Nature makes the call whether the bird would fly away or stay there or be eaten by a fox or hawk. At least its ultimate fate would not be road pizza.

It was hot at the house when we got there. My FIL has air conditioning, but he rarely uses it. My wife and I felt warm when we went to bed and opened the windows. No fans, either, no breeze from outside, so we lay together naked on the bed to cool off. After a while, though, she got to touching me, and I got to touching her, and ... and we slept pretty well. (Alas, no pictures!)

Much of Saturday morning was spent by the front window, where they have an array of bird feeders. I was there with my camera and got photos of goldfinches, a red-winged blackbird, an oriole and even the exotic bird known as the robin. My wife pointed out a bluejay, and I went to get the camera again--but he flew off. I waited the better part of an hour for him to return. No dice. But here's a nice one of the oriole, which we rarely see in our area.



That afternoon, we went to my wife's oldest brother's place, where a grandson was having a birthday party. No. 6. His grandma made him a birthday cake in the shape and color of a John Deere tractor. As I said, John Deere tractors are very popular with the family.

That's where I saw the Redneck Regatta. You see ... we were supposed to have a cookout at 1 p.m., but the girl who was supposed to bring the brats was seriously late, and David and I got bored. Across the road, we saw some activity and went over to investigate. They were having mud races. Some guys were taking their big trucks and driving across a muddy bog. Or trying to, anyway. We arrived just in time to see an old pickup bog down in the wettest, deepest section. And stay there.



There was a lot of talk and beer drinking, and some guys waded out to try to get it started. No go. They walked back and had another brew and talked some more. About 20 minutes later, somebody came up with a tow chain, hooked it to the inanimate vehicle and pulled it out. OK, finally time for some mud races, right? Not right. Everyone sat around some more, talked some more and drank more beer. Finally, David and I walked back to the house. I didn't come all this distance to see people stand around, talk and drink beer.

Shortly after we got back to the house, we had some real excitement. The brats had finally arrived and were getting cooked, and the picnic was almost ready. I was pitching softballs to one of the little guys when one of the other kids said there's a snake in the lilac bush in the back yard. OK, I'm game for a snake picture.

This was no little garter snake. This was a big one, mottled yellow and brown. A young woman who also came to look was shocked at the size of it. "There aren't any poisonous snakes in Wisconsin, are there?" she asked. She was sure she saw a rattle on its tail. We looked closer. The snake was hissing at us and was indeed shaking its tail--but there was no rattle.



It turned out to be a fox snake. Not poisonous and the farmer's friend (it eats rats), but not something you want near a bunch of little kids. The woman's husband pinned down its head with a stick, and she finally captured it. Four or five feet long. She carried up to the front of the house to show everyone and then, with no kids around, quietly took it to the edge of the woods out back and released it into the wild.



Just after that, a rainstorm hit, driving everyone into the garage. Wonder how that affected the Redneck Regatta? We had a big meal. Brats. Burgers. Chips. Kool-Aid. Strawberry custard cake (real strawberries) on a graham cracker crust. Yum!! Lots of good stuff.

From there, we went to church. Since I was quite filled with a big lunch that was served very late, I was ready for a nap, and the priest accommodated me perfectly. One of the most boring speakers I have ever heard. He was an older guy, and he spoke very slowly. In the time a normal person would read three sentences, he would still be working on the first. It made the liturgy and sermon quite conducive to sleep, and my head was lolling off to the side, try as I might to stay somewhat alert.

OK, I didn't try very hard. Some public speakers are more effective than any sleep aid on the market, and this guy sure sent me to the land of Nod.

From there we went home. Just a very light supper. Another rain shower hit, and then it cleared off.

We had been away from my FIL's place nearly all day Saturday. On Sunday morning I remembered one of the big reasons I wanted to make the trip: The asparagus growing in his garden, available for the picking. I got out a knife and a bucket and went to work, and after a while here's what I had.



So we took home a souvenir of our weekend trip to the inlaws. It's been all sliced up now, and part of it has been frozen. Asparagus is back on the menu!

Our trip, part 2

Hi. Just wanted to stop in with a brief (?) visit. We got back from our trip Sunday night after a 7+ hour trip home. Yes, 7+ hours.

This is about the second half of the trip and our first day back home. The first part, the one with the photos, will appear in a day or two. I had some odd adventures, documented photographically.

About half that 7 1/2 hour drive was spent driving. The rest was sitting-around time. First, we stopped at my wife's sister's greenhouse and talked with her for about 1 1/2 hours. One topic was her recent trip to Las Vegas with a brother of hers.

They showed all the photos they took and souvenirs of some of the shows. They saw the Blue Man Group and the Cirque de Soleil. The prices printed on the tickets were $80 and $75, respectively. Just think, I said to myself. One of those tickets costs more than the entire budget for our Memorial Day trip. Together, they exeed the money I can allocate for our mini-vacation later this month.

We finally got out of there, but then my son had to get some stuff at a superstore we passed (three guesses which one). There went another hour. Then, supper. About a 45-minute layover. We left my father-in-law's place at about 2:45 p.m. Got home at 10 p.m. So that's 7+ hours to cover 175 miles. Good gas mileage, true, but not much speed.

One big surprise when we arrived home: a population explosion of dandelions in the back yard. They had only been mown on Tuesday. It was way too dark to mow lawns by then, and I had to tend to a few things for my baseball league. By the time that was sorted out, it was after 12:30. Time to get to bed because ...

At 8 a.m., I was out and about to a local township park for Memorial Day ceremonies. A local soldier who had served in Afghanistan was the main speaker. He talked about some of his experiences. I had covered this kid when he was in high school, on the football and track teams. Just glad he got home safely to tell his story.

Then, home and the lawn. It got to the upper 80s in NW Wisconsin on Sunday, and it was close to 90 on the car thermometer on the way back. The forecast was for 90 Monday, so I got to the lawnmower right away, while the sun was still relatively low in the sky. Hot work, but it would have been hotter later.

My wife spent the morning cutting up some of the asparagus we had picked at her dad's place during our visit. Lots of asparagus. Want some?

Then it was noon, and my son was over, doing his best to drink all the soda we had in the house. We had lunch and then shifted to the living room, under the ceiling fan, to hide out from the heat and relax after the long, long drive on Sunday.

The first movie we saw was "Porco Rosso," one of the Hiyao Miyazaki movies. Folks, if you haven't given his films a chance, do yourself a favor. Animated (by hand) beautifully, and a story enjoyable on many levels. But my wife dozed off and missed most of it. That usually happens when she sits next to me in the afternoon.

Then, David wanted to see a Gamera movie. Gamera, if you haven't been properly introduced, is a gigantic flying turtle from Japanese monster movies. My wife and I often sat together and had a giggle while watching Gamera movies just after we got married. (This was way before cable TV was available, and Milwaukee only had five channels to choose from.) About a year ago, I found a batch of Gamera movies in a ridiculously priced giant monster DVD set ($10 for 12 movies). This one was "Gamera vs. Monster X," who is also known as Jiger (rhymes with tiger--but he looked more like a rhinocerus).

Temperatures got to the low 90s today (quite hot for us, even in summer), but the heat won't stay around for long. There are several lines of storms moving east, crossing from Minnesota into Wisconsin, and there's no telling if we will see thunder and lightning after midnight. I've got my finger crossed for a post-midnight show.

Usually, when the storms move in from Minnesota, they fall apart and lose nearly all their punch by the time they get to the U.P. The county where we live seems to be like a rock in the middle of the brook, with the water passing on one side or the other--that's generally what happens when storms near us. Tonight? We'll see.

OK, got to wrap this up. My wife says the pizza is nearly done, and we're going to eat it in the living room--under the ceiling fan, of course.

Blue Thursday

I'm battling a little case of the blues tonight. Doesn't happen that often.

But once in a great while I pause and think for a while and wonder why nobody at the office seems to case for quality as much as I do. Yeah, me with a notoriously messy desk nearly all the time. But when I put stuff in the paper, I'm very close to a perfectionist. Not to an obnoxious degree. But I want my spelling and grammar and logic to be 100%. Maybe you've seen that here--I take a lot of care in these entries, that the words are spelled right and that the grammar is correct. That's just a carry-over from the job. I know the rules at blogs are way different. But sometimes I make a disparaging remark about the "post-literate era," and I'm thinking about how some people write.

I'm also thinking about my paper. It is a small weekly with a very small staff, and some of them aren't very sharp on quality or proof-reading. Our paper has many errors and typos. It gets embarrassing at times--and frustrating when you see the attitude of some of the people. If you look at the paper, I bet you'll be able to tell which pages I was in charge of. Because they look good and clean. The uneven lines are ledded out. The headlines are well balanced and the pictures are fairly well composed. At least with sports, you don't get "firing squad" pictures very often--where people stand in a row as if they're about to meet their maker.

It sort of crystalized today. We have a staff of three, and the editor decided she is going to take two days off, on Thursday and Friday. Five-day weekend. How sweet is that!

But we have an early deadline this week (Monday, the normal production day, is Memorial Day in the States, so the deadline was moved up to Friday.) So all her work is dumped on the other two. And I had a heavy week of news/sports this week. The result is that I've been up to my armpits in alligators--things have gone at a frantic pace. From what I hear, the editor went camping with some friends. Good for her! It must be nice.

I'd say 98% percent of the time I keep my mouth shut and just mutter to myself. Today, I told the office manager that it was unfair of her to do that. (And it's hardly the first time this has happened, too.) What's going to come of it, who can say?

But I can't count all the personal sacrifices I've had to make on behalf of the paper--personal trips delayed or canceled, extra hours away from home after the work day. When the winter sports seasons are in full swing, sometimes I'm working four nights a week. Then, you have to be around town on holidays to get pictures of the parades and other ceremonies. In summer, you rarely have a weekend to yourself. Weekend? What's a weekend? For me, the concept of getting two days off to relax and recover from five days at work is completely alien.

Other things today had ticked me off, too. I went to pay the water bill--but left the checkbook in my desk, forcing me to make an extra trip. Then I changed jackets at lunchtime (weather got too warm for the heavy one) and had to write a check that afternoon. The checkbook was back in the heavy jacket. I went out to get a haircut before my weekend trip. Closed--Thursday is the barber's day off. Had to run around and do more errands for my wife after work. Then she dozed off with the cat, and dinner was late.

Anyway, this Thursday to forget is over. I went back to the office tonight to do some writing and editing that had to get finished--Monday comes on Friday this week, after all, even if we're short-handed. Once all that is done, we are supposed to pile in the car and head off to the inlaws for two days. We have to return Sunday night--because at 9 a.m. Monday I'm out, doing Memorial Day coverage. (Or is that 8 a.m.? Better check!)

I know you had a better Thursday than I did. I just hope by the time I get home, all the stress I'm feeling right now will be just a memory. Anyway, I can feel myself getting tired. Time to take some extra strength Tylenols, lie down and try to sleep.

One journey down, one to go

Saturday went fine. We ran into a little rain on our journeys, but just a shower. My wife found a used book store she really liked, so we spent some time there. We also shopped around for a while. I didn't find the shoes I wanted, so that's still to be done. Had our pizza. Got home in time to watch a movie, then went to bed early for some serious snuggling.

The big thing this week is our visit to her family in northwestern Wisconsin--her dad and most of her brothers and sisters. Because of the Memorial Day holiday, we're putting the paper together early, so I'm hoping we'll be able to hit the road by 4 p.m. Friday for the four-hour drive west.

The visit will mainly consist of visiting her sisters and her dad. Maybe there will be a cookout on Sunday. We also hope to harvest some of her dad's asparagus, which we'll take back home and freeze for some meals I like. If the asparagus is still growing, that is. Otherwise, we'll have to do like most people and buy it at the store.

I've written about visits to the inlaws before (probably on MB). For me, it's something I do for her, and I do my best to enjoy myself. But when too much religion or politics is in the air, I quietly retreat to the bedroom for a nap. Not much sense arguing with people who are always right.

(Note to self: Remember to take the camera, because of all the birds in the area.)

We'll probably be leaving late Sunday afternoon for home because I'll have to run around on Memorial Day morning to the area cemeteries to cover the observances.

It's getting late. We're supposed to get some frost tonight: A freeze warning has been issued. Anyway, tomorrow is Monday, when we put the paper together. And then the early deadline for next week's.

Like the saying goes: "Today is the first day of the rest of the week."

Weighing the balances

Life's about making decisions, weighing all those pluses and minuses and trying to discriminate shades of gray.

Don't like to make them. Had to make one this week. About whether I'd take a long trip today. Or not.

It's Saturday morning, and I'm here in my office typing ... so there's your answer.

The decision-making process weighed many factors. Weather. Distance. The price of gas. The price of a motel. My energy and endurance. New friendships with people of a similar philosophy on life. My wife.

On one side ...

The event was in southern Wisconsin, at a private place where they hold neopagan gatherings. I was there twice last summer and was there for a workbee in April. The people are nice, around my age for the most part and have a similar philosophy about love, affection, poyamory, the human body and moral issues. They are very moral ... just not the way most people are.

Today, they were to hold a Beltane celebration. It would have involved meeting and greeting, enjoying time together, a Maypole ritual (which I have never experienced and badly want to), a pot luck, a fire, maybe some dancing to drums and music later on at night. Very laid-back people just enjoying themselves and life.

Bright, festive clothing was highly encouraged, and it's clothes-optional anyway, so if the weather was nice, the brightly colored clothes seemed destined to be thrown off to the side. Everyone has a birthday suit, so we'll wear them. We're all at least middle-aged and not as "pretty" as we once were. And all of them feel like, "So what?"

And, if you're wondering, no, I've never seen or smelled any illegal substances at these events. These people believe in natural highs.

All of those things were on one side of the balance. On the other side ...

The gas price here is town is a fraction under $3 a gallon. My car gets 37 mph (has even topped 40 mpg) on a long drive, so that's not a major issue. But the place is about 280 miles away. Six hours each way, some of it on an interstate but much of it on country roads, too. After my April experience, I vowed not to make such a long journey on one day again, so I'd stop at a motel on the way home.

My wife had been there before, at another one-day event last year, at the tail-end of a vacation. She was OK with the nudity, but she's extremely shy about her body--something I'm trying to get her to unlearn. I'm also trying to help her unlearn the things we've all been told about marriage and love and monogamy. I've told her everything about the friends I have met. Change is not somthing that happens overnight (strict Catholic family), but it's coming along. She sees that I'm the same person I've always been, treat her the same as before, and she seems good with it. I'd like to get more into that other world--and have her come along with me. She's my best friend, you know.

I had offered to take her along with me on this Saturday trip. She hadn't made a final decision but seemed to be leaning towards going--even when I told her we'd have to leave no later than 7 a.m., which is way early for her. ("I can sleep in the car.") So we were going. Except ...

The weather has gotten cooler here for the last few weeks. Last week, we had lots of rain. The rain tapered off this week to occasional showers, and it was still noticably cooler than normal. So, for the last week, I had been watching the weekend forecasts closely. They were on the fence. And stayed there. Friday, they were predicting that conditions would cloud up in early afternoon, the wind would kick up from the west, wtih showers. Temperatures would be around 70.

From here on, we go to educated guesses. My guesses were that turnout would be lower (about/under a dozen). It would be sunny but then cloud up later. A little breezy. My guess is that the colorful clothes would stay on and disappear under jackets or blankets. The rain would come, but it wouldn't dampen festivities that much. But things would wrap up earlier.

Weighing everying in, I decided to stay up here and go for a much less ambitious trip--a little shopping journey, about 60 miles away, to a place we haven't visited that often. I want to look for some shoes and some other things, she has a place or two in mind, and there's a good pizza place just south of town that we both like. We'll get home in the evening, maybe watch a movie and then head off for a good night's sleep.

For Plan B's, that's not too bad. I'll be real sorry I didn't take the other trip, and maybe the weather will be as nice for them. I hope it is. But my decision has been made, and that's the way it is. No regrets. We move on. It's life, and tough decisions are part of it.

* * * *

For what it's worth, I think May 18 last year was my first entry at Modblog. Much to my surprise, I'm still writing. OK, I abandoned Modblog for a better place here, but I'm still writing. Maybe not as often as I'd like, but I'm here. That's because of all six or seven of my regular readers. You know I just write to release feelings and emotions and try to relate my life's adventure as well as I can. The humdrum and the hectic. The everyday and the exotic. All parts of the journey of life.

Not sure what I wanted to say now. It's just nice having you around, listening. I'm a good listener when someone has a problem, and I try to give them good advice--some of you know that. But sometimes the listener needs someone to listen, too.

Flower power

I know I haven't been writing that much here lately. Busy. The usual trips out of town. Stanley Cup games. (Didn't get to watch any last year, you know.) Interviewing people for an office job for a board I serve on. (Don't want to get more specific than that. A co-op.) Extra work at the office. The usual stuff.

But today I got ambitious and did up a few recent pictures for one of my infamous "What I've been up to lately" posts. A lot of them this time have to do with flowers.

It's spring here. It got nice and warm for quite a while. Warm enough for my wife's tulips to bloom. Umm ... that should be "tulip," not "tulips." Only one of them bloomed this year. It was pretty while it was open. If you've ever seen Grnidlady's amazing flower pictures--constantly dazzling--you'll see that I'm nowhere close to her photo quality. Still, here's our one and only tulip with its companion long grasses next to the house.



More and more wildlife is out and about. One night, I saw some deer on a hillside along the road, right at sunset. They were about a quarter mile away, and when they were against the hillside, they were hard to pick out from the hillside. But then one climbed up to the top and was silhouetted by the sky. Very nice. Maybe I'll get that one ready for next time. Anyway, I said aloud that I wished the deer were closer ... and word must have gotten around. In the next half hour, three deer ran right in front of my car.

On the way home from another track meet, I saw these two jaywalkers crossing the two-lane road that leads toward the setting sun ... and home. Gobble, gobble.



The weather had been warm and dry for a long time. But things have certainly changed. For the last week, we've gotten plenty of rain. A huge storm has sat over the Midwest U.S. for the last few days--on the radar, it looked like a slow-motion hurricane. We wound up near the rain-snow line, and we wound up with sleet. You could hear it clicking off windows, but it looked like rain falling down. The snow was to the west.

It sure created a mess. If you've driven in slush, you know how difficult a slushy road is. And so, on the night of May 11, they had the plows out, pushing away the slush.



We went to visit my mom on Friday. My wife had a doctor's appointment nearby, and she delivered a lightweight quilt she had just finished--soon, my mom's winter quilt will be too warm.

My mom has added a new cat to her collection, and this one is a robotic cat. Sort of. When you pet its head, it goes "Meow, meow, meow!" And when you stroke its back, you hear "Purr, purr, purr" and the cat's body expands and contracts, as if it's breathing. That's the black cat in this picture. The brown and white cat is the one we gave her for Christmas. Both the cats are on the new quilt, and the new quilt is on top of the old (heavy) quilt she has used all winter.



If you want to know more about robotic cats, here are two links from Honeyvizer's site. Petster is the first robotic kitty, from the 1980s, and the story is a hoot to read. The other one is about a 21st century Japanese robotic cat. But you have to know Japanese to read it.

I was fretting for most of today (Saturday) what to do about Mother's Day. We had eaten out several times recently, twice on our trip Friday. The cards didn't look too inspiring. But then, when entering the drug store, I saw what I was looking for. Her favorite flower.



Happy Mother's Day to all you moms and future moms and someday moms.

U.S. Department of Paranoia rides again

Recent news reports have revealed that the super secret National Security Agency has been collecting phone records of tens of millions of Americans. USA Today has reported that a huge database has been built with the help of three major U.S. phone companies.

This is being done to protect the U.S. against terrorist attacks. They are analyzing calling patters to detect and track suspected terrorist activity.

And so on and so forth. America in 2006. ::shakes head::

Folks, this is the era of the Department of Paranoia. And I know this: When the police state comes to town, I likely will be one of the first people rounded up. Because I'm such a dangerous person whom they fear. That's because (like many of you) I think for myself and don't follow the company line. And I love the U.S. Constitution and the freedoms that my country supposedly gives me. (The Constitution is still in effect, isn't it?)

So the NSA is busy analyzing my phone calls--trying to unravel my highly effective and extremely sophisticated method of coding messages. Here is an example of a recent phone call:

"Ellohay?"
"Ihay. It'sway emay."
"Ihay, emay."
"Owhay ouyay oingday?"
"Ohway, I'mway oingday ohway-aykay."
"Areway ouyay onnagay eednay anythingway atway ethay orestay?"
"On'tday owknay. Aven'thay ecidedday at'swhay orfay uppersay.
Ouyay otgay anyway ideasway?"
"Ummway, ellway, eway aven'thay adhay acostay orfay away ilewhay."
"Eahyay, utbay ettucelay isway ootay expensiveway ightray ownay."
"Ouyay otgay enoughway eadbray?"
"Eahyay, e'reway oodgay onway othbay eadbray andway ilkmay."
"Owhay aboutway oundgray eefbay?"
"E'reway inefay. Owhay aboutway aghettispay andway eatballsmay?"
"Eahyay, eway aven'thay adhay atthay orfay away ilewhay. Ohway-aykay, I'llway ebay ackbay omehay inway aboutway entytway inutesmay."
"Ohway-aykay, eesay ouyay oonsay."
"Yebay."
"Yebay."

The NSA's spooks will be puzzling over messages like that one for months. If, like me, you want to make the NSA's life a living hell, go over to this site and have a little fun.

After all, if they're bugging your phone lines, they're certainly reading all your e-mails and blog entries. Hi, guys!

Baseball trips and racing sausages

I am hearing the call of the wild. It is getting stronger. I won't be able to deny it much longer.

It's getting to be time for another baseball trip.

I love baseball, and there is very little of it where I live. The local high school had a team for the last several years, but it has gone belly-up. The nearest minor league team is about 125 miles away (Appleton, Wis.). The nearest major league team is the Milwaukee Brewers, about 230 miles away. So it's no small deal (mileage-wise or money-wise) to see a big league game.

My last big baseball trip was in 2004, back when gas was about $1.75 a gallon. I had a wild plan to see three games in two days: the Timber Rattlers (the team in Appleton) one night, the Brewers the next afternoon and the Beloit Snappers, just north of the Illinois border, that night.

But the schedule wouldn't allow it, so I settled for two: the Brewers and Beloit. Early on a June morning, I hit the road. Destination: Milwaukee and Miller Park. Here's the main entrance.



I had never seen Miller Park (except about five years earlier, when it was under construction). My last trip to a Brewers game was a few years earlier in 1997, when they had just started work on the foundation of the new park. They were still playing at old County Stadium. Waited through a three-hour rain delay--but got to see the Crew win one.

Having lived in Milwaukee for years and seen many games at County Stadium, I remembered it well. Miller Park, in comparison, is much prettier and HUGE. My little camera's wide-angle lens simply isn't wide enough to take in all the interior. Here's the best I could do.



The Brewers were hosting the Seattle Mariners in an intraleague game, and I was in the middle deck, way down the right field foul line. A $20 ticket. If you like that price, how about the concessions?



During the game, I finally got the see the Sausage Race. I had mentioned the Sausage Race in a reply to one of Zarafa's recent posts, and she wanted me grind out some more information about it.

The Sausage Race is sponsored by Klement's, one of the top Wisconsin sausage companies. They make a number of varieties, and the American hot dog, the German bratwurst, the Italian sausage and the Polish kielbasa all take part in each race. The "runners" don foam rubber costumes and "run" from the left field corner down in front of the visiting dugout, behind home plate to the finish line, in front of the Brewers' dugout. On this day, the all-American hot dog hit the finish line first.



The Sausage Race is documented in Wikipedia. And here's the Racing Sausages' website.

Alas, the Brewers lost this day, and I had to get to Beloit for that night's game. But, of course, I got caught up in rush hour traffic after the afternoon game and was inching along. At least it gave me a chance to get an exterior shot of Miller Park in all its hugeness. (They had opened the roof. It was closed during the game.)



Then, off to Beloit, Pohlman Park and Single A minor league baseball. But I'll save that part of the story for another day.

TO BE CONTINUED ... SOMEDAY

Rush to judgment

A story from yesterday's news:

Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh has reached an agreement with prosecutors, under which he will not have to spend time in jail on charges that he fraudulently sought prescription drugs.

Under the agreement, the prescription fraud charge will be dismissed after 18 months if he complies with terms of an agreement. Limbaugh must submit to random drug tests and must continue treatment for his addiction to the painkiller OxyContin. He also may not own a gun.

Limbaugh does not have to admit guilt to the charge, to which he pleaded not guilty last Friday.

"This is a common sense resolution and the appropriate way the state should treat people who have admitted an addiction to prescription pain medication and voluntarily sought treatment," said his attorney.

Prosecutors launched their investigation in 2003 after Limbaugh's housekeeper alleged he abused OxyContin and other painkillers. He entered a five-week rehabilitation program that year and blamed his addiction on severe back pain.

And so on and so forth.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you want to abuse drugs, it really helps to be a well-known conservative radio commentator. I wonder if Mr. Limbaugh is going to walk away from this life experience with some new insights on the plight of all those who, for whatever reason, get hooked on drugs.

(Pause)

Nah, I don't think so, either.

Exit, stage left

Curses!

Once again, the Detroit Red Wings have exited the Stanley Cup playoffs long before they were supposed to. Earlier tonight they were eliminated in their first round series (by Edmonton) after posting the NHL's best record during the regular season.

This is even more grating because it's the third straight Stanley Cup playoff season they were "one and done." Posting the best record in the regular season doesn't mean much. Not when you face a hot goalie. Not when some of your best shooters can't buy a goal. Not when your top player gets injured/plays hurt.

That's why they play the games, I guess. Life would be so boring if everything were predictable. And it's not as if the Wings haven't won three Stanley Cups in the last decade or so.

The team dominated during the regular season and just coasted through the last two months of the season. Were they ready for a scrappy team that had to battle simply to get into the playoffs, a team that had just played a whole string of "must" games and was working on adrenaline?

Whatever the reason, the Red Wings are Dead Things in the playoffs again. I didn't expect it from the Oilers ... but at the same time, I'm not shocked, either. Somehow I'm getting used to seeing them play one playoff series ... and then head for the golf course.

So which team should I back now? That needs a little thought, and I'm too disappointed to think about that right now. It's just one of those things when you follow sports teams.