I just got back to State College on Sunday from a fairly short but fun-filled trip to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I did a lot of solo driving too: around 2900 miles in 10 days! I didn't spend more than two nights in any one place, either. I'd best get started with a recap.
On Thu 27 May I packed up my car with Alex's keyboard and some of my stuff and hit the road. I didn't get pulled over in Ohio on the Turnpike this time, but I did hit a board and a semi tire. The board seemed to be a jagged end of a 2x2 or something like that. It flew off a truck, hit the road in front of me, bounced off my right fender, and then I caught sight of it again in my rear-view mirror bouncing around on the road. And then the semi tire was the outer tread, rolled out and laying completely across my lane. To my left was the shoulder, and to my right was a semi, so I said to myself, "Well, here goes nothin'." [KAH-THUNK, KAH-THUNK] For a few miles I kept an eye out for a trail of liquid behind me, but my car wasn't the worse for wear, fortunately.
I got to Chicago (Carol Stream, technically) in time to go to dinner with Ryan & Sarah. They took me out to a place called Portillo's, which features Chicago-style hot dogs and Italian beef (last time I visited them they took me to a place that had Chicago-style pizza). So I dutifully got a Polish sausage and a Chicago hot dog. The hot dog had all sorts of fixins on it, including a full pickle spear and a hot pepper of some sort. I'm kicking myself that I didn't take a picture of it.
After dinner we went to a nearby mall so that I could buy a Brett Favre jersey. I had called the four sports apparel stores in that mall the evening before, and found one that had a Favre jersey in stock. The one jersey they had was a white Vikings jersey (I had envisioned a purple jersey), but it was embroidered (instead of screen-printed), and a great fit on me. $80 is kind of pricey, but it was a well-made jersey. The guys at the store said the purple Favre jerseys just didn't sell very well down there, but the white ones sold quite well. Interesting. I wonder if it's because a white jersey goes better with lots of things, whereas a purple jersey is, well, an awful lot of purple. :-) In any case, it was a Vikings Favre jersey, which meant it'd do the trick at the wedding rehearsal at Lambeau! I was also much more willing to buy a Favre jersey after he had the ankle surgery, which indicated he's a virtual lock to come back for another season. I didn't want to get a jersey of him if he was just going to retire.
That night we had planned on playing a game of "Settlers" (of some variety), but instead they introduced me to the first four episodes of "Arrested Development" (they own season 1 on DVD). I'd never seen the show before, but heard a lot of friends rave about it. I loved it, it was so funny! Even though it's a comedy, it's definitely a show that you need to watch in order, otherwise you won't know what in the world is going on. I haven't seen anything beyond those first four episodes, and I'm already sad that there are only three seasons of the show.
On Fri 28 May I drove up from Chicago to Green Bay. Before I left Chicago though, I went to a Jewel to buy an I-Pass. I've been meaning to buy an I-Pass or EZ-Pass for years now, but I never would remember until the week of my trip, which wasn't enough time to mail in an application for one. So when Ryan & Sarah told me I could buy one at a grocery store near them, I decided to take care of it and finally buy one. They're essentially free ($10 deposit), aside from the money you put into your I-Pass/EZ-Pass account (which I activated immediately), but then tolls are usually half price, the discounts are good across all the Eastern states that have electronic tolling, and you can save a lot of time at toll booths by not having to stop to pay cash. It's a no-brainer. I'm disappointed in myself for not having done it earlier. It's totally worth it even though I only go on toll roads a few times a year, either when I go to Ann Arbor or when I go home to Wisconsin.
Ryan & Sarah also suggested a place for me to stop for lunch on my way to Green Bay: Kopp's Frozen Custard off of I-43 in Glendale, a northern suburb of Milwaukee. I did, and I wasn't disappointed. I ordered a double cheeseburger and a banana cream pie custard sundae, which was enormous. It was a "large" (3 scoops), but since it was less than a dollar more expensive than a "small" (1 scoop), I decided I may as well go for the full experience. And I was not disappointed! I had no idea the large was that large, but I still dug in and ate it all, after driving to a nearby park overlooking Lake Michigan (Atwater Beach in Shorewood). It was a beautiful spot for lunch, and a very cliché, fattening Wisconsin meal, with the cheeseburger and sundae. It was good to be in my home state again. :-)
I got to Lambeau Field in Green Bay about 45 minutes before the rehearsal was set to start, so that I could work with the event staff to get the keyboard up to the right place and all set up before the rehearsal began. When I was unloading the keyboard from my car, I was wearing just a plain yellow shirt, and had my new Favre jersey tucked away in a bag with my music that I was going to haul up to the stadium. Anyway, Ashley (the bride, who I'd never met before), was standing nearby, and recognized me (probably because of the keyboard), and came running over and jumped into my arms, excited to see me. (I later found out through the grapevine that Mike had told Ashley how conservative/straight-laced I was, so she may have been trying to have some fun with that. I was fine with it though, hehe.) She was happy that I was just wearing a yellow shirt, because she'd seen my facebook poll of what I should wear, and was pleading with me to compromise with a plain green or gold shirt. But then after I got the keyboard set up in the stadium, I put on my Favre jersey. Pretty soon everyone else came up, at which point Mike & Ashley saw me. Mike said, "You didn't." Ashley said, "I bought you something as part of our gift to you, but because you're wearing that I'm going to have to take it back!!" And they really did withhold part of the gift, lol. During the rehearsal dinner (which was just in front of a concession stand in one of the concourses around Lambeau), Mike gave me my gift bag, and then asked if there was a third thing in it. I said no, and then he laughed and said Ashley really did take it out. A few minutes later Mike made Ashley give it to me: a Vikings cousy. For the members of the wedding party who weren't Packer fans, they gave a cousy of their favorite football team. There was another Vikings fan and a Bears fan, but they both "played nice" -- the Vikings fan was forced by his girlfriend to leave his Vikings jerseys in the hotel, so he was kind of upset at her when he saw me with my Favre jersey, and the Bears fan just wore his Bears stuff underneath, I think. But yep, I was "that guy." Mike, who's a very good friend of mine from high school, said he knew I was going to pull something, but he just didn't know what. They were all fine with it, though. :-)
Anyway, it was interesting to see the event staff and the officiant butting heads in a power struggle during the rehearsal. I mean, there were disagreements over exactly where people should stand, where people were coming in, that sort of thing. Apparently that happens for almost every wedding at Lambeau (that officiant, Gloria, does most Lambeau weddings because her uncle is in the Packers Hall of Fame), and has been going on for years. You'd think they'd have it worked out to a science by now, but apparently not. Anyway, the Lambeau event staff aren't always the greatest communicators either. Initially they told me a few weeks ago that I'd be hooked into the house sound system, before retracting that and saying I needed to bring my own amp/speaker. Then they said they'd have a couple speakers if mine weren't big or loud enough, but when I got to the stadium they said they didn't have any other speakers available (fortunately Alex's little amp was sufficient). They also told Mike & Ashley a few months ago that there wouldn't need to be a recessional, because beer hawkers would come in right at the conclusion of the ceremony and hand out Miller Lite, pop or water to the whole wedding party and then everyone in the crowd. So I didn't practice a recessional, because that's what Mike told me would happen. But apparently they told Gloria that the beer hawkers would come in after the wedding party exited during the recessional. So when Gloria said, "Okay, now play the recessional, Jared," I stood and blinked, basically. When neither Mike nor Ashley corrected her that there wasn't a recessional, I assumed that meant there really was one. So I quick started digging through my other music binder, and eventually found the recessional I played at Dan & Kerrie's wedding. Mike later told me that he was just as surprised as I was when Gloria asked me to play the recessional, and knew exactly what was going on when he looked over and saw me madly flipping through a binder. So while it looked like I wasn't prepared, it wasn't my fault! It was all cool though, and fortunately I had something ready enough to use for a recessional, that I had played only four weeks earlier!
Playing a recessional wasn't the only unexpected thing I did for the wedding, either. On Sat 29 May, the morning of the wedding, Mike told me that one of Gloria's friends had passed away the night before, and so Gloria wouldn't be able to stay for the reception, as she needed to head straight to Appleton for the wake after the wedding ceremony was done. Mike asked if I'd be willing to do the unity candle ceremony and the dinner prayer at the beginning of dinner, since Gloria could no longer do it, and I said I'd be willing to do that. Gotta be willing to be flexible and step up and help out if needed! The unity candle ceremony was indoors at the beginning of dinner (after everyone was seated but before being dismissed to the buffet), because it just wouldn't work to do it outdoors in the stadium bowl during the ceremony because of the wind. Gloria had given me a sheet with a blurb to read for the unity candle ceremony and the prayer; I went with what she wrote for the unity candle ceremony, but I went with my own prayer on the fly.
The wedding ceremony itself was short and went well. It was also really hot, with sunny skies and temps in the 80s, plus the added effect of all the cement and metal seats in the stadium bowl re-radiating heat. We were all sweating bullets! Did the Miller Lite right after the wedding ever taste good! I also played nice and wore a green shirt for the wedding. I'm not that big a jerk to wear something Vikings or purple during their actual wedding ceremony. :-) The wedding wasn't distraction-free, however. First there was a tour group that visited the opposite end zone, and when they all got down to the bottom of the stands they shouted "Go, Pack, Go!" And then there was another wedding party that entered the bowl below us and got to go down onto the field itself (apparently because one of them was an employee). They were being rather loud though, and saying things like, "Oh, look! Another wedding!" And then while they were all on the field, that whole wedding party did a Lambeau Leap, going [THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD] against the padded wall. Very distracting and disrespectful of the wedding actually taking place. But maybe all that is par for the course for a wedding booked in a stadium?? I don't know, because this was the first time I've been to a stadium wedding before.
The reception was also in Lambeau Field, up in the Legends Room. The wedding party all had identifiable glasses that entitled them to free drinks at the bar all night, which was nice. I didn't get carried away though, because I needed to drive my car back to the hotel (I had to load my keyboard back into my car after the wedding, so I didn't take a hotel shuttle to the stadium). :-) In order to get Mike & Ashley to kiss during the reception, clinking glasses wouldn't work. Instead, they had a Wii set up with a home run derby. If you hit 6/10 pitches for home runs, then they kissed. If you failed, then you had to kiss at least two people on the way back to your seat. Many tried, but the only person who I recall successfully hitting 6 home runs was a little kid. :-) That was kind of a neat way of handling the glass clinking. It was a fun evening, but there actually weren't that many people there that I knew, really only a couple people I knew from high school were there at the reception.
I called it a night at about midnight and went back to the hotel. Some people invited me out to the bars, but I declined because I was tired and I knew I needed sleep before a seven-hour drive the next day. I knew I made the right decision in the morning too, when some people showed up to Mike & Ashley's gift opening kind of bleary-eyed, having been up partying until 6am. I definitely would not have done well being up that late, I'm way too old for that!
Anyway, I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd ever spend ten hours in Lambeau Field in any single day as a Vikings fan. It was pretty cool, even though I was in enemy territory! I'm grateful to Mike & Ashley for inviting me to have the opportunity to play at their wedding and experience that. And then of course before I left Green Bay I had to get a photo in my Vikings Favre jersey in front of Brett Favre Steakhouse. :-)
So this Part 1 post of my trip was mostly in Wisconsin, but Part 2 coming up next will be about my time in Minnesota. Stay tuned!]]>
