The Eagle Summit Tribute

Goodbye my friend!


A multimedia tribute to a beloved ride, to come in parts.

(NOTE: Even seven years later, the Eagle Summit is still a little ambiguous. Puzzle-ingly androgynous. To this day, I have never really determined if the Eagle Summit is a man-car or a lady-car. Therefore, I’m uncomfortable using the gender-based pronouns “he” and “she,” and the inanimate pronoun "it" would detract far too much from the Eagle Summit’s obvious humanity, so instead I use no pronouns to describe THE Eagle Summit.)

How does a pirate say goodbye?

ALPs invited B. Johnson and I back - as legends - to run the winter retreat extravaganza. Desperate for a mid-winter reprieve, we opted for pirates.


A highlight? A new initiative centered on dowels: the Human Ladder. Give a large group ten 1.25 inch dowels and see what happens. Jump an electric Fence. Pass through a spider web. Or try see how high a vertical ladder the group can create.

And number of ALPs facilitators converted to typewriterism over the course of the evening? Four. Four good ones... It's been fun watching these kids grow up over the past four years. It's nice to hear the pleasure - and benefit - was mutual.

Will Me?

I recently created my first will that was not presumably invalid. Kind of exciting! I can only show off my favorite paragraph, though, otherwise there'd likely be hordes of folks trying to knock me off to get their hands on my sweet, sweet stuff.


Modest much, Jeremy?

How the States Got Their Shapes

Not much i like more than maps. But maps with answers? Oh-la-la.

How the States Got Their Shapes
Mark Stein

My latest public library check-out answers two of the most pressing questions of my existence:

1. Why is the upper peninsula part of Michigan, not Wisconsin?

(This one i actually learned years ago, thanks to a little snippit in the Journal-Sentinel. According to the paperwork that founded the Northwest territories, the boundary between Michigan and Ohio was supposed to be a straight line east and west from the bottom of Lake Michigan. But Ohio wanted Toledo, a good port, just north of that line. So two territorial armies stared each other down until Washington stepped in with a compromise: Ohio, you take Toledo; Michigan, we'll give you the copper mines of the Upper Peninsula, seeing as no one yet lives in Wisconsin to complain.)

2. Why does Minnesota have that little bloop above it's border north of the Boundary Waters?

A treaty between the US and Canada defined the boundary as the midpoint of a long string of lakes extending as far as Lake of the Woods. From the far northwest corner of that system of lakes, the border ran to the headwaters of the Mississippi. But this was back in the day before GoogleEarth, so no one really knew where the headwaters was in relationship to the Lake of the Woods. So they settled on a north/south line straight to the 49th parallel, the normal border all the way out to Washington State. Just happened the original point of origin was north of that line. So it goes.

Plus you get good maps, like "connecticut according to connecticut."

Updating an Old Map

My favorite random prerequisite class from undergraduate days? Geology of the National Parks.

One project, in between geology lessons based on pretty pictures, was customizing a geologic map of the amazing United States of America. I added, in red lines, the path of my travels.

But that was almost ten years ago - yikes - so when I found it in the way-back of my closet while cleaning/packing, i decided to update it before ceremoniously burning it in the wood stove. In sharpie, the places i've explored since Fall 2001.

The noticeable yet-to-explore areas of our country? California and Oregon, Texas, and the Northeast. All will come in time.

Why Fond du Lac lacks a brewery

Whitney, Rachel, Martin (invisible) and I celebrated MLK Jr Day with a trip to little Potosi, almost all the way to Iowa. A cute little brewery in a quaint valley abutting the Mississippi River, definitely a fun place for a road trip.

But if little Pososi has a brewery (not to mention the National Brewery Museum), why can't my hometown of 50 times more people have a brewery?

Fond du Lac, it turns out, has a long brewing tradition. It's just that it's disappeared.

A model train brewery kit is even modeled after what one FDL brewery used to look like.



Only one brewer, Bechaud Brewing, made it through the Prohibition. But only barely. Beer was last made in Fond du Lac in 1937. Their most famous brew, says the internet, was Empire Beer.



Cheers to that.

Potosi: New Favorite Madison Day-Trip

The Potosi Brewing Company, in short, is what you hope New Glarus is, until you realize that the New Glarus Brewery isn't quiet as quaint as you'd imagine it to be...

While the town of New Glarus (45 minutes southwest of Madison on 151/69) is cute to visit in its own right, the brewery of the same name lacks the charm you'd imagine from Wisconsin's favorite microbrewery. The beers, it turns out, are more special than where they're made.

Potosi, though, solves the dilemma. The village of Potosi (1 hour, 45 minutes southwest of Madison via 151/35/133) is scenic in its own right, and the brewery is something worth boasting, too. Great restaurant, neat museum exhibits - the perfect place for an out-of-Madison daytrip.

And worth a stop on the drive there? The Dickeyville Grotto. Wow.