DO see this.

Just finished this last night. It's a documentary-style film about the Flaming Lips. Learned about Wayne's family's troubles with the drugs, Steven's heroin habit, Michael's histrory of strange hair and clothing, and the fact that these guys are MUCH MUCH better now than they were 20 years ago. In seeing more of their humanity and ethic (Wayne's still at work on a film he started in 2001 about Santa in space, and something about a baby born on Mars), I became a BIG fan of these boys. I'm re-applying myself to At War With the Mystics as a result. Bless em!

And then Monday happened.

I didn't know until their set was over that I had been listening to Sonic Youth. As I sat through songs that should've been called "Disintegration", "Come On, Audience", and "7-minute Feedback", I thought of how this must be a new band and I felt sorry for them just figuring out what to do on stage. They didn't play together, the girl singer was absolutely terrible, and the highlight of the show was when the two main guitarists (there were, at times, four people playing guitar) made their guitars "high five" in a noteless celebration of nonsense noise. I was glad when they said unto me, "Sonic Youth is now done."


Then the circus started.

It was interesting to see that, because we all watched them set up every element of the show, including cannons, and the laborious focusing of the projector, by the time the show started, everyone in the crowd was rooting for these guys. Everybody WANTED it to work. The fact that the stage hands were all dressed as superheros didn't hurt, and when the curtains revealed a group of aliens on the left, santas on the right, 50+ oversized balloons for crowd fun, and confetti cannons, everybody felt the euphoria of being at a SHOW. We weren't just going to watch some guys play instruments, we were going to be part of a group EXPERIENCE. We'd seen Wayne on stage from the beginning, setting up his own mic, testing the cameras, etc., but he first spoke to us at length by saying:

I REALIZE THAT YOU CAN SEE A BIG PIECE OF PLASTIC AND A LEAFBLOWER OVER ON MY RIGHT. BUT WHEN THE SHOW STARTS, I DON'T WANT YOU TO THINK OF THAT. I WANT YOU TO IMAGINE THAT, WHEN THE SMOKE MACHINES OBSCURED THE STAGE, I FLOATED IN FROM ABOVE, AND DECSENDED ON YOU ALL. THEN, INSIDE THIS PLASTIC BUBBLE, I WILL WALK AMONG YOU. I ALSO WANT YOU TO TELL YOUR FRIENDS THAT THIS IS HOW THE SHOW ACTUALLY BEGAN.

The video screen lit up as Wayne entered the crowd as promised, and it said, through a series of slides, that THOUGH OUR LIVES ARE MERELY BLIPS IN THE UNIVERSE, SIMPLY A BREATH IN THE COSMIC DRAMA, THEY'RE THE ONLY LIVES WE'VE GOT. SO DECIDE TO BE PART OF SOMETHING EPIC TONIGHT, SOMETHING GLORIOUSLY WONDERFUL AND LIFE-GIVING AND POSITIVE. I looked around and literally everyone I could see had a massive smile on their face, many laughing hysterically. That's a pretty terrific thing, there.

They opened with Race for the Prize, and insisted (yes) that everyone sing during Free Radicals (which featured video of a Chinese game show in which girls scream in terror as a gila monster chases them) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. The W.A.N.D. was as awesome as I hoped. Call me crazy, but The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song seemed positively worshipful. I was so inspired I thought I might cry. They played all my faves (except for Buggin' from Soft Bulletin) and closed with Do You Realize? which was an excellent choice.

This is the nun puppet that led the a capella ending to Yoshimi. Her face is magnified many times over by the Microphone Stand Cam.


NO, they were not as impressive as U2, but I don't think that was their goal. They are a different sort of band. The show was a lot like if you gave 14-year olds a wad of cash and let them do whatever they wanted, and it all felt very homegrown. The bassist wore a skeleton costume and played sitting down. He is bald. Wayne's favorite move is to shoot a confetti gun at apropos moments during big songs.

Ultimately, the message of The Flaming Lips is BE POSITIVE. It's not that great of a rallying cry in that it turns out to get you nowhere, but it's certainly better than the message of, say, Aerosmith, who simply seem to say "get all you can as fast as possible." The hippie vibe of these boys is vapid but contageous. Better than church.

Day 4.

Day 4
In which Bobby becomes spurious.

Awoke in my hot tub suite, fairly early, and started down the road. I thought I’d have time for some old-fashioned touristing in Milwaukee as well as possibly stopping for some ROADFOOD, but I thought the best thing to do was get straight to the Harley-Davidson headquarters (the “House of Harley”, where I plan on renting a bike) to get my bearings, go back out into the city to look around.

I will interrupt myself here to relay an actual conversation I had in Fish Creek t’other day with an employee at a leather store (it looked weird. I went in). Now, they sold motorcycle helmets in this store, but there was nothing else motorcycle-y about the place. It was certainly not a motorcycle store. I asked about a helmet.

Employee: What kind of bike do you ride?

Me, hating this question whenever I get asked it because 1) I’m not going to impress you with my answer, and 2) I don’t understand the point of it AT ALL. If you were a scuba diver, I would be much more interested in talking to you about your experiences than what kind of wetsuit you use. Who cares? Bobby is silently with me in the store, by the way. Never says a word. I say: It’s just an old Honda Magna.

Employee (here it comes): Ever wanted a Harley?

Me, thinking of all the appropriate responses to this question, one of them being, “Have YOU ever wanted a HONDA?” I should’ve just said no and gone on, but I decided to actually share my thoughts with this nice-looking guy: You know, when I’m driving my two thousand dollar motorcycle down the road and really enjoying it, I always think to myself, “Why would I pay 40 grand for the same experience?” Just doesn’t make sense to me.

Employee (acting like I have just stumbled out of the Fish Creek Sanitarium): Oh, no! You don’t have to spend that kind of money! Why, I have a little Blah Blah Blah model, and I paid under ten thousand for it.

Me, knowing that 1) now we’re where we were inevitably headed, and that 2) this guy missed my point completely and, in such a short amount of time, am completely done with this conversation: okay.

Employee: And my brother in law does custom paint jobs so I take it to shows and win money for charity.

Me: Do you guys carry Lemonheads?

Anyhow, there’s a typical experience for me with Harley dorks. Back to our story. I’ve been getting lost in Milwaukee for a while, and finally find the place after noon. So then I decide it’s better to just get the bike now so I can get OUT of the city (gross—very done with this city and all cities for this trip—get me back out into the small towns, please) and go back to looking around, which is what I’m good at. I get the bike and head southwest, taking country roads toward Madison. I rented a bike in January in San Diego, and that’s all I have to compare this experience to, so to me, this ride is:

*HOT (like, 90 outside. Not a winner.)
*LOUD (I had earplugs last time. Shoot.)
*SHAKY (I think I had a bigger bike last time. This little guy seems less stable, like the jittery barbers of yore.)

I enjoy the scenery, but it’s nothing new for me on this trip. I should share at this point that I woke up today really wanting to go home. I felt I’d been gone long enough, I really wanted to see my wife, and I was also thinking that my rental car had to be back by 2:30 the next day, and home’s a long way from Milwaukee. So I turned the bike around before even reaching Madison (and that was definitely regrettable. I’d really wanted to see the UW campus, which I’ve heard great things about), and headed back to the shop. It was, by the way, just a four-hour rental. I had it back in just over three.

Back in the air-conditioned cocoon of my car, where I can leisurely enjoy music, snacks, and read and write (yes), I headed south as quickly as possible, knowing that traffic time in Chicago is NEVER EVER pleasant. I took the tollway around the city, hoping it’d be less congested, and finally made it into Indiana headed south. By this time it was probably 8pm, and I stopped off at a ROADFOOD pick called Thiebet’s Restaurant. Let me get the food part out of the way: in northern Indiana, two specialties are fried perch fillets, drenched in butter, and fried frogs’ legs. I ordered the combo plate and got both. They were good. Now then, to the restaurant itself:

This place was a friggin Blast From The Past, memorializing “fine dining” from 1975 to an uncanny degree. I walked in the place a there was a coat check. A coat check! The foyer was all low-slung sofas, coffee tables with elegantly-placed ashtrays (!), and mirror paneling except for the gargantuan portraits of the four generations of the owning family. A 55-year old woman in a beehive took me to my table. This was a county seat-kind of restaurant, where people would come for special occasions or the upper crust of the FFA set might come on Friday night. Boy was it strange. Very low lighting. Prior to my meal, I was brought a ‘relish tray’ that included a random assortment of raw vegetables, with cottage cheese, sliced beets, and cole slaw. Bizarre.

I got out of there, thoroughly amused, and decided that if I could make it home that night, I would, even if I rolled in in the wee hours. When, about 30 minutes later, I got pulled over for speeding, that sealed the deal. Now I didn’t want to fork over another $50 for a room, when this ticket ate that up and more. So I arrived back home in Cincinnati at about 2:15 am, to Didi’s screams of fear that there’s a man in her bedroom, then embraces of relief, then of gladness. It was a plenty full day.

Exercise- holding a bike steady amid crazy winds for 3 hours
Writing- pop song called Another Summer Gone
Lectures- podcasts from the God Journey, Pearl on Hebrews
Monies expended:

Gaz- 48
Motobicicleta- 80
Gaz por motobicicleta- 10.50
Teibel’s restaurant- 30
Stay awake snacks- 6

Total- $174.50

I’ve decided that Michael Pearl is an odd bird in that he’s the first legalist I’ve ever run across that is really zealous about relationship. That’s a new category. He really has some great information, but sorting through that law becomes tiring. Overall, I like the guy.

[flickr tells me I've caught my limit on photos for the month. So be it. NO PHOTOS FOR YOU!]

Day 3.

Thus far, I've failed to say it, and I fault myself for that. I'll say it now: this is a big lake I'm dealing with here.

Well I awoke VERY late in fabulous Oconto--I think I slept so good because the a/c didn't work in there. I learned back in my Barnabas days (Barnabas is a camp in rural Missouri where I slept for an entire summer in the out-of-doors temps with only a fan to keep the steam circulating) that a/c does quite a bit to give us colds in the night, as your grandparents would be quick to point out. I slept very soundly and longly.

Once up and out (say, noon), I got myself around the bend of Green Bay as soon as possible, and started heading back north on the tiny Door Peninsula. It's called that because it's all Door County up there. Get it? Door Peninsula is a tiny little finger that juts up northeast into Lake Michigan. Before I drove too terribly far, though, I had to deal with my hunger. Now, having done my homework by studying up in ROADFOOD (go buy your copy NOW),

I knew that I must needs be getting a product called a Butter Burger into my gut. This is an east Wisconsin delicacy in which you top a hamburger with a pat of butter. You know, for health purposes. I'd also yet to sample the Wisconsin frozen custard, over which I was in great anticipation. Lo and hark and all that, but I came upon a place with this on the door:


That pretty much set me up. Culver's it was. I ate those things along with Dairyland Cheese Curds, which was a bizarre name for what turned out to be tater-tot sized fried cheese. Okay. Now, this was an outstanding hamburger, I can certainly say that--and I'm not a big hamburger guy. This was impressive.

Up into the peninsula I went, finding cute coastal town followed by cute resort town followed by quaint fishing villiage. The west side is cuter than the east side, with Ephraim and Fish Creek kind of taking the prize. [There is no prize.]


On my way up, I stopped at Bailey's Harbor looking for a barber. "Ernesto," I said to myself, "there HAS to be an old-timey barber in one of these well-kept towns." I went into a coffee shop for directions, and asked the girl behind the counter. She didn't understand what I said, and told me so in a severe accent. I asked where she was from. She was from Bulgaria, and the other girl behind the counter was from Poland. I paused for a moment, then decided that I didn't need to hear the back story. I continued to look until, on my way out of the Door Peninsula, I stopped by a place on the main drag of Sturgeon Bay called the Yankee Clipper. I'd not have known to stop there except that they had that helpful barber pole with the stripe of blood running down it outside. All professions should have these visual aides. I know the doctors have those intertwined snakes (an inscrutable symbol if ever there was one--is that supposed to be a Biblical reference?), but nobody else does. It's outrageous!

I can't TELL how pleased I am with the way that haircut turned out. I met Joe Lindsley, a 40-year barbering vet, who cut Packers coach Mike Sherman's hair during his tenure (he'd just been sent Houston Texans paraphernalia from Mr. Sherman, who's now an assistant coach there. I saw the goods!), and had lots of sports memorabilia up on his walls. This guy was at the Ice Bowl! It was great talking to this guy, and he buttressed the idea I've had with the Rod about creating an upscale chain of barber shops and men's grooming. It's a dying breed, and I hate to see them go. Joe told me that there isn't one barber school in Wisconsin anymore. Sucks.

The day was getting on, and I knew that I faced an uncomfortable decision: dinner vs. exercise. Part of me was hoping for some Lake Michigan fish at some roadside joint (as talked about in famous books like ROADFOOD), but I saw a GIGANTIC YMCA and had to stop in. This was the YMCA for the whole of Door County, and it's a wing-dinger. It was only built in '97, with a massive wing added in '02. Two huge pools, great workout rooms, and 2 sweet basketball courts. I got my hoops on and did some weights. Good times. I got kicked out at 8pm.


My my, that hair's been lopped off in SUCH a handsome pattern! And, is that Ode De Y Locker Room you're wearing?

Then I was driving once again, headed south. I made it all the way to Port Washington, just 30 minutes north of Wisconsin, which is great because tomorrow I hope to rent a motorcycle from the Harley-Davidson headquarters there and take off west. I went through Dairyland, I suppose, because dairy farm after dairy farm separated the road from the Lake. After pulling off the highway, I stopped at a grocery store to get some cereal when I spied Sprecher Root Beer in the snack aisle. This was introduced to me by Wunderkind, and I do love this stuff. So I bought like six cases and moved on, into the night.


I found this country inn that said $50 SINGLES on the sign, so I stopped in (not a great price, but passable). Talking with Chris behind the desk, she told me that their only non-smoking room was a hot-tub suite. I talked fast and here I am, God bless her every one.

Miles driven: 425
Exercise: YMCA!
Lecture: the final installment from Mike Pearl’s Body, Soul, Spirit series
Writing: I failed on this one, today. This post is accomplishment enough.
Cash outlay:

Culver's Butter Burgers and other blood-clotting ingestives: 11
Yankee Clipper: 15
YMCA: 8.75
Cereal and Sprecher: 19
Hot Tub Suite: 54
Total: $107.75

PS- Today my ipod loved John Gorka and Norah Jones, both Didi picks, as well as Jack Frost (real name), the Gutteral Sermonizer. There was some “next song”ing done in the Camry.

PPS- I also considered today how much more I could get done if Bobby was awake in the car with me. Reading, navigating, writing, documenting with the photos—all would’ve been much better. I think, too, that if I had a MONTH to do this trip, I wouldn’t feel so frustrated with all I have to miss. It’s too bad, really.

One last thing: I like the semi-sour smell of dairy farms. I guess I owe this to my experience with them in my childhood due to my Uncle Kenneth, who owned one. If by poor sentence construction I made that sound like Uncle Kenneth smells semi-sour, I have misled you. He smells like Old Spice and alfalfa.

Day 2.

One addendum from yesterday’s noticings: I also noticed on Sunday that *America is finished with Sunday night church*. That surprised me, frankly. I never got that memo. I was really hoping to stop in somewhere for some worship, even if I felt like a complete outsider, or that everyone was staring at me. Ideally, I was hoping for a group where I might could get some free prophecy, too. But I must’ve passed 40 church-houses between 5 and 7:30 pm Sunday night, and that Sunday night service thing just wasn’t going down. Whaddaya know.

Alright then: Day 2 of Me and Bobby’s Big Trip.

Woke up in Saugatuck, where my pal Ben just spent a week of vacation. He heartily encouraged me to go see this artsy coastal town, and I gotta say, it’s so quaint and charming I could about puke.


I ate breakfast outside (carrot and chive frittata! Yes! Apple pancake casserole! Yes!), then made my way to a coffee shop with free internet—I posed as if I’d actually bought something. I wandered around town some, then headed over to Oval Beach, Saugatuck’s main lakeside spot. I read that morning in some free literature that Oval was voted one of the top 5 beaches in the nation by MTV, which worried me some, but I really don’t understand what that would be based on. Anyhow, being there at the beach was extremely surreal. Imagine a white sugar beach, and the surf coming in, and seagulls, and you go out there and it’s NOT salt water you taste. Weird. But I enjoyed that beach a lot—completely family-occupied, very quiet—I listened to the Rod’s MP3 player and caught some Rob Bell sermonizing while getting sunburned.

I didn’t get out of there until around 3pm, and I started to get a little concerned about my distance. I’d gone nowhere since waking up, and had a long, long way to go. So I stopped at a country grocery store and got a strange soda called Rock and Rye (liquid + sugar = good enough for me) and some strange-flavored chips. I also stopped at one of a hundred roadside fruit stands and bought a pint of cherries. Lunch.


Driving through Holland, I stopped off to see the Wooden Shoe Factory. This is an uncomfortable invention, the wooden shoe. Look at the photo below, and consider that you can no longer act like you don't know that hundreds of wooden shoes are aborted EVERY DAY.

From there, I was rolling, I headed up to Traverse City (holy SMOKES, this place is GREAT. I hope to return here for a weeklong vacation at some point. The beach is huge—it’s like Chicago’s lakeside—and the entire place seems to be built around the summer traveler. Great place for a getaway.), where I must pause.

While I was researching for this trip, I went to the library and the bookstore finding what I could find. One book I came across that I simply couldn’t let pass by was Roadfood. I bought it because I want it as a reference for the rest of my days. It catalogues 600+ one-off restaurants and greasy spoons across the country that typify local food or sell curiosities. I am very excited to own this book, and have marked on my map where Roadfood establishments exist. I ate at one of these places in Traverse City (and stopped at another in Beulah just because it sounded so interesting)—the Grand Traverse Pie Co.

Northern Michigan is a fruit-and-fisheries hotspot, and this place is supposed to crank out some of the best pie anywhere. So I got a sandwich and soup there, and finished with two slices of pie (I mean, I wanted a fair sampling. What if one wasn’t that great?). They were fabulous. If you have a chocolate cream pie with a great crust, brother, you done something right. I also looked on their free wi-fi at the possibility of my making it to the top of the Lower Peninsula before bedtime. I really wanted to see Mackinac island, where there’s no motorized transportation allowed, but again, was concerned about my timeline. So I looked at the motel situation up there (strong) my possibility of getting there before sleep hit me (good on time), and I set off. I decided that, if I wanted a motel at the internet-cheap rate, I could call my parents, who are ‘wired’ at home (Didi and I are not), and they could book it for me while I waited outside the office. Clever? Yes. Yes it is.

When I got to Mackinac Bride, the 5-mile suspension bridge that spans the meeting point between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, connecting the two parts of Michigan, I felt pretty good, sleep-wise. I thought I could push on. By the way, it’s a little surreal going over a bridge, looking left and seeing a horizon on the water, and looking right and seeing the same thing. Okay, it’s a lot surreal. One genius thing that happened there, though, was that I tuned my AM dial to 530, where the signs told me to, and I got a free history lesson on the bridge! How terrific is that!? Why doesn’t the gub’ment tell states that they can each have their shot at AM 530 so that, wherever you go, you get a history lesson of that region via your radio? THERE’s some public education for ya!

Suffice it to say, I pushed on and kept pushing. I went through cute town after cute town, becoming more and more resolved to get into Wisconsin before bedtime, which I did. There was no town called Michconsin at the border, though there should've been. I came around the entire north shore and finally stopped in Oconto, just a little north of Green Bay, sunburned and sleepy. And the motel was cheap. Yes! The only disappointing thing about all this is that I know that I drove through a lot of beautiful country in total darkness, namely the Hiawatha National Forest. But there it is.

Miles driven: 518
Lectures endured: 2 from Rob Bell (shoulder shrug), the next one from Michael Pearl (I listened to it twice—it was heady stuff refuting Calvinism. I agreed with all of it).
Exercise- swimming in Lake Michigan!
Wrote- a pop song called My Lake Michigan.
Dough outlay:

Breakfast: 7.50
Pie Company: 13
Gas: 50.75
Room: 44.25
Total: $115.50

I am noticing how much, much cheaper it is to travel with two. Except for the meals, these costs would be exactly the same. Where’s my wife?!


PS- I will NOT believe that the ipod is truly random. It isn’t. It favors certain songs, there is no doubt in my mind. It also favors, for some reason, Sarah McClocklin (I have NO idea how to spell her name so I’m not even trying) and Ross King.

PPS- I actually turned around to get this photo. It's for everyone's enjoyment.