A beautiful Smithwick's at Seamus McDaniel's in Missouri. Unfortunately it was served in a Budweiser glass. WTFO?

AUGUSTA BREWING COMPANY

After a nice drive in the country, we came along a cool brewery along the Missouri river. The beer was really good and the setting was great. I would highly recommend it to anyone. I had their I.P.A. which was nice, no crappy aftertaste, and I also had their American Wheat. Not something I would normally go for, but it wasn't a traditional wheat beer. More on the bitter side and not too fruity. Very, very nice!

http://www.augustabrewing.com/

DAHMER

A great thing about Wisconsin is all the serial killers.

The one I have the most connection to, would be Jeffrey Dahmer. I took a couple photos of some historical places dealing with his case. The grass area is where his apartment complex used to be. They had to tear it down because so many people kept coming by to look at it, plus there was a lot of gross stuff in it. The other pic is the old 219 Club; closed now, it used to be a gay bar that Dahmer would visit and actually took home a few victims from. Creepy.

Two facts: 1) My evidence teacher in law school was one of the prosecutors on the Dahmer case. 2) My great uncle is friends with Gerry Boyle (famous attorney) as they went to private Catholic school together, and he defended Dahmer. Interesting, no?

FRIDAY NIGHT IN MILWAUKEE

A Brewers game was on the agenda yesterday. It was the first game in the series vs. the Houston Astros. Interestingly enough, I have now seen the Astros more this season than any other team. It started out with some minor tailgating and four friends that haven't seen each other all at once for quite some time.

We had some great seats, the Astros went three up and three down in the first which the Brewers followed by 8 runs! It was awesome.

The historical sausage race in the sixth inning had a new (to me) sausage in the running, we have Italian, Brat, Hot Dog, Polish and, now, Cinco (the chorizo). Italian pulled it out for a great victory. After some argument over the need for a fifth sausage, I agreed that the Chorizo should be represented in our changing times. I took a picture of the race, you can't see much but the long cylinder shapes that were trotting along the third base line...great times!

The seventh inning brought the traditional "Roll Out The Barrel" song, I didn't realize how much I missed that!

Roll Out the Barrel, We'll have a barrel of fun.

Roll Out the Barrel, We'll have the blues on the run.

Zing, Boom, Tararell, Sing out a song of good cheer

Now's the time to Roll Out the Barrel for the gang's all here! (Repeat)

The night ended with the most wonderful drink in America, quite possibly the world. Yeah, I said it. A SB (Suffering Bastard) from At Random in Milwaukee, WI. The recipe, which seems simple, can NEVER be duplicated. To all of our dismay. It is some combination of lemon juice, lime juice, gin, brandy and ginger ale. A rumor was started that it has vodka in it as well, but I refuse to believe that could be true. As a great friend of mine said, "This is liquid gold!"

Even in Wisconsin

You can't skip a trip to The Home Depot. I just can't stay away.

INDIANA!

So, I went down to Indianapolis on Sunday evening and came back to Milwaukee today. I had to meet a little girl that was produced by two of my best friends. She is beautiful. See for yourself.

Then, after my long journey, AMS produced for me my new favorite alcoholic beverage (apart from beer)...the glorious Tom Collins. Please look at the following link for an entirely accurate history of the Tom Collins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Collins

I prefer mine without sugar...here's how you do it.

2-3 oz gin

juice of half lemon

Place in shaker full of ice---shake shake shake until your hand hurts from the cold

Pour in tall glass over ice.

Add 3 oz (or just top off glass) with soda water.

Drop in a three (three is an important number) maraschino cherries

Stir and enjoy.

ROOT SOUP! It's so good you could bathe in it. Sweet potatoes, carrots and leeks in this mashed up hot, yummy, liquid goodness. Tastes just like I remembered. I followed it up with some corned beef.

I forgot how good that is. I forgot how many wonderful imports they have on tap (you can get Murphy's!!!).

If you are ever in Milwaukee, WI, I highly suggest you check this place out for food, drink or even a place to rest your weary head.

http://www.countyclare-inn.com/

MY ALMA MATER

Ring out Ahoya with an MU rah rah

MU rah rah

MU rah rah rah rah rah

Ring out Ahoya with an MU rah rah

MU rah rah for old Marquette!

I took this picture with my cell phone, hanging out the car window, while driving 30 mph down Washington Avenue! Excellent.

BOISE, REVISITED

Our friendly servers from the wedding reception. After a hard nights work they ended up drunk on the streets, just like the rest of us.

THE LAW in Boise...keeping us all safe and making sure we chugged our beers before walking out into traffic.

Basque Bar in Boise (say that five times fast)

They serve the "traditional" Basque drink, half red wine and half Coca-cola. Absolutely disgusting. But I had to try it.

Here....you can see for yourself how great this is.

http://alterracoffeepro.com/

As I sit in Alterra (my favorite coffee place in the whole world) pondering my safe trip to Milwaukee, I think, what they hell did Iowa do to their freeways to make them whistle like that? I also wonder what kind of centipede/millipede was it that I found in the shower this morning? I am thankful to be here, finally. It feels comfortable, even if I only have a few people to hang out with at first. Tomorrow I have my first meeting, followed with another on Thursday. So its safe to say the adventure has begun and is continuing. I love this coffee.

Additionally, besides the bugs and humming freeway outside my hotel last night, I had to park next to a dark cornfield while there was nearly a full moon. Creepy. And it smelled funny.