Milwaukee, Wisconsin

My favorite piece in the Milwaukee Art Museum

I arrived in Milwaukee in the early evening after leaving Madison. I met one of my 2 hosts, Laura, who was a friendly young girl studying at a local university. We walked to the local liqueur store where we bought some local Milwaukee beers.

Side note: Has anyone seen the web show Half in the Bag? Well if you like detailed movie reviews you should check it out on Red Letter Media. It's done by the same guys who were responsible for the fucking amazing 90 minute Plinkett Star Wars reviews.

Anyway, my point being is that they drink a very specific beer on the show with a cow on it. Turns out the beer is from Milwaukee called "Glarus Spotted Cow Beer", which I had in Milwaukee and it was awesome!

Inside the Milwaukee Art Museum

Anyway after chatting to Laura, I find out she is super into tea. She eventually aspires to having a job relating to tea, whether that be growing or otherwise. Her ultimate dream is to own a small piece of land in Hawaii and grow tea on it. There is a little section of their lounge room that has floor coverings and cushions which I thought was a "cat area", turns out it is a place to drink tea! Laura really loves tea.

That night I was pretty whacked so after Laura cooked us some egg noodles I excused myself for bed at like 10:30 PM.

The next day I headed to downtown Milwaukee to go see the art museum. Unexpectedly it has a fairly kickass selection of art; as judged by a person who knows shit all about the subject.

Afterwards I rode down to the Pabst Mansion for a tour. Frederick Pabst was a German immigrant who worked his way up on the ships sailing the great lakes to eventually become a captain. He then bought part ownership of the Best brewing company and expanded to such a level that he became extremely wealthy. He is celebrated today by his beer being drunk by hipsters around the country - the (in)famous PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon).

Outside the Milwaukee Art Museum

Pabst Mansion.

The mansion itself was pretty spectacular, however I was not allowed to take photos of the interior. It had a room for entertaining women (which was all pink décor  and one for the men. Most rooms all had independent colour schemes where the furniture matched the walls. The restoration of the mansion is still under-way  the historians use old photos to try and get the rooms looking how they were originally 100 years ago. At some stage the mansion was home to various Archbishops for over 60 years after Pabst has died, and in some rooms had painted a cream colour over the once very bright and busy wallpaper used inside the mansion. Because the photos are obviously devoid of colour  they chip of small sections of paint to try and restore the room to it's original state.

One of the first Harley's.

What I thought was interesting was that there was an entire other half the house just for the servants.

Once the tour had ended, I headed back to my host's place were I finally got to meet my other host, Veronica. We all then walked down to the Harley Davidson Museum. The museum was pretty massive, as Milwaukee is where the company started. As someone who is not really "into" Harleys - but enjoys motorcycles nonetheless - it was still an interesting place. They have a lot of old bikes there from over 100 years ago, plus some oddities like Harley Davidson bicycles, uphill racers and track bikes. What I found fascinating was a video about the buy back from AMC who owned the company for a while. During this period the quality control went downhill - which they admit to in the video - something that they are trying to resolve now.

From the Captain America Movie

Actual WWII motorcycle.

At the end of the museum you get to sit on the current generation Harley's from the trike to the Sportster. The only one I still like is the V-Rod, mainly due to its more modern style. This doesn't seem like a "true Harley" though.

Afterwards we all had dinner at a burger place called "AJ Bombers", sort of famous because it was featured in one of those foodie shows (not Man vs Food though). I'm guessing it got the name because they fill these little blimp things up with peanuts, where they run along the tracks built into the ceiling and "bomb" the booths from above with the contents. The burger was pretty good, although not what you would call giant. Oh and I finally got to try deep fried cheese curds, another Wisconsin must-eat.

Deep-fried cheese curds.

Laura and I outside of AJ bombers.

Downtown Milwaukee.

Afterwards Laura and I went down to a local bar to play with darts with one of her friends. The dude was really hilarious, we were about the same age and bonded over the crappy 80s and early 90s music some guy had put on the jukebox. Oh and I finally learnt how to play darts! Really bad at it though.

Beach in Milwaukee

The next day I think I might have blogged? It's actually a bit of a blank. However I know that night Laura, her friend and I went on a tour of the Lakefront Brewery. Laura had already done the same tour with her work a couple of hours earlier, but was kind enough to do it a second time. The tour was way less formal than the Coors one I did in Colorado. We all drank free beers at the start of the tour, including the guide. He then took us through the process, but the brewery was very small so I guess you could call it more "intimate".

The next day Laura and I got breakfast down at the restaurant Veronica worked at. Since Milwaukee and particularly this restaurant is know for Bloody Marys, I ordered one with my weird savoury pancake things. I guess they try and jam as much as they can into the "garnish", because it had salami sticks, asparagus, pickles and prawn on a stick in it! Laura and I then walked around downtown Milwaukee and back to her house, where I got to see their beautiful beach and house architecture.

Laramie, Wyoming

Laramie was a town in Wyoming that was recommended to me by a staff member of the Glenwood Springs hotel. He said that it was a pretty fun town since there is a big collage there. So, rolling the dice off the opinion of some random guy I just met, I managed to find a Couch Surfing host and rode there after Denver. I hit a small town called Fort Collins on the way through, which despite the name looked like a really cool town. I found out later in my time in Wyoming that everyone loves Fort Collins - if I ever come back I'll definitely be hitting that town for a bit.

Katie (bottom right) and her neighbors.

My next couch surfing host - Katie - did not have a couch for me to sleep on, so I needed to buy an air mattress before I got to Laramie. This was eventually going to happen anyway, so it wasn't a big deal. I bought a pretty decent one in a camping store in Fort Collins, it packs up pretty small and is a fair size when inflated. It was a really awesome store they had there (Jax's I think?) they had a huge range of camping mats, which was a little overwhelming at first.

When I arrived at Katie's place in Laramie, she was already out drinking in one of the many bars in Laramie. I did happen to meet her roommate Matt, who was currently just moving in to the place. Matt had spent the last couple of years in Japan, and had come back to Laramie to complete a Computer Science degree. He was a pretty cool dude, I gave him a hand moving in some of his furniture then I walked down to the bar that Katie was currently in.

Unfortunately I got caught up with something so I didn't make it to the bar, but Katie kindly offered to come pick me up and take me to a party with a bunch of her friends. Her and her neighbor Fay came then drove me to this party, where I chatted to an ER nurse for most of the time. The house was owned by a firefighter with a bunch of firefighter friends, and it was interesting to hear the conversation between them and the ER nurse. Apparently the firefighters can request a certain level of response at the hospital depending on how critical the patients situation is. There was a bit of a disagreement between the nurse and the firefighter, the nurse thought that the firefighters were calling the highest level of response (which I think required a surgeon on call) way too often. Anyway, all were nice guys!

"Bugfoot" at the Laramie car show.

Afterwards Matt and I headed out to few bars in Laramie. The first one we went to was the local "hipster" bar, full of thick rimmed glasses and terrible facial hair. But the bar was so full that Matt and I couldn't manage to get a service at the bar. By the way, this is the only real benefit of the Australian bar system, where you cannot usually sit at the bar - it definitely unclogs the lines.

So anyway, we move on to the local sports bar which was also fucking packed. This place (ironically really close to the hipster bar), was bro-town USA. There were bros everywhere - hats backwards, douchbag shirts, the whole deal. We eventually got a beer after waiting for a long time at the bar, and decided to head to quieter place.

We eventually ended up at a favorite bar of Matt's, where it was pretty chill but was without all the young collage students. Here I met - for the first time ever - a fan of the website "The Chive" which is notorious for ripping off Reddit (2nd best site ever). He had a t-shirt which said "Keep calm and chive on", which didn't even make sense. So apparently there is actual fans of The Chive? Who would've thought? The Chive hate was really big on Reddit until they eventually moved their hate laser to Funny Junk and now 9gag.

I also met an Australian - he was part of the band. He was pretty cool, actually all the members were pretty awesome kinds of guys. They were doing a pretty massive tour through the states, and had just recently completed a tour in Australia. He told me that Americans love it when we say "Dr Pepper", which I now say all the time.

The next day Katie went down to the local pool, but I had no interest in showing my pasty white skin to anyone, so I headed into town. Luckily there was some sort of car show on, which had some pretty sweet American cars. And some bikes too, mind you I don't think a 2011 Ducati Multistrada with some carbon fibre really counts as "special". That night I went to Matt's birthday party briefly (right after buying a 6 pack the Hipsterific utterly terrible PBR... For 5 bucks!), then Katie and I headed back to the house as there was a "block party" going on.

It was pretty cool really, the landlords (about my age - Candice and John) lived in the same complex and threw a party for all the tenants. They are all shown in the first photo - John is at the back and Candice is the blond girl crouching down. Fay lived below Katie and Matt and is kneeling next to Katie to the left of the dog. Anyway we drank a lot of beer and played with the fire, generally shooting the shit about various stuff. I love the more relaxed get-togethers.

The next morning most of us from the party headed down to a local restaurant for breakfast. Candice and John were nice enough to buy me my lunch! They were a really super nice bunch of people, some of the most friendly I've met in America yet. Oh I had a massive breakfast burrito - these are pretty common on the breakfast menus in the USA. It was pretty awesome!

That day, off to Cheyenne!