New York Times travel writer Seth Kugal visited Madison last weekend and writes about it in his blog this week.

Kugal was sent to Madison by his own readers who voted among six cities he offered up. We beat out Montreal with 40% of the vote to the Canadian city’s measly 23%. When you consider that Montreal has 1.9 million people and we have 230,000 that’s pretty impressive. Never mind that half the people in Montreal read only French and didn’t know about the contest or that people in Montreal have more things to do then vote to get a travel writer to come to their city, we won. Eat our dust, Montreal! If I could say that in French I would.

Seth, I think I can call him Seth since he knows us so well, loved Madison. He biked all over the place, loved our bike trails and really loved our beer and local cuisine. He mostly ate hamburgers (to stay within budget; that’s part of the Frugal Traveler schtick) and he drank some pretty heavy duty beer yet went back to Gotham only one pound heavier thanks to all that good biking.

He hit most of the spots I would have sent him to had I been asked. The Weary Traveler, the Old Fashioned, the Great Dane, Doty’s, State Street Brats, Ale Asylum, the Laurel only minutes from my house and Babcock Hall for ice cream. In only two full days. It’s amazing this guy is still alive.

He also loved the Saturday Farmers Market and Olbrich Park and the new Chazen Museum.

Read  Seth’s article. It’ll make you weep and yearn for home. But then you’ll realize that you’re still here. You’ll smile. And bike out for a burger and a beer maybe.

I don’t want to brag, but the numbers won’t let me lie.

Dianne and I got a new television the other day. This is big for us as we generally wait for our friend Jeff to get the latest technology and then give us his hand me downs. This puts us somewhere between five years and a decade behind in technology but that deficiency is made up for by the freeness of the television set.

Not this time, though. The Brewers are marching all the way to the Series, I’m sure of it. The Packers are dismantling every opponent. I want to see the Badgers play for the national championship on the big screen. And I’m looking forward to not being able to watch the Milwaukee Bucks lose basketball games on this television if there season is cancelled (and if there is a God it will be).

So we took the plunge and actually purchased a new television set. We consulted experts first, which included the aforementioned Jeff who never got around to giving us an old flat screen of his (thanks a lot, Jeff) and Terry who works with Dianne and knows all things electronic as well as all the lines to all the Godfather movies. We were advised by these guys in the know that 60 hz just wouldn’t be enough and that we needed 120 hz to watch sports.

Well, that was obvious enough. Sixty just won’t do it for the fast moving action of golf, for example. A guy needs 120.

But I blew way passed them when I sprung for not 60, not 120 but a full, rockin’ 240 hz. Yeah, baby.

How fast is 240? I’m told you see things on your TV before they actually happen in real life. I swear to God, it’s true.

Not only is our new TV faster than Mitt Romney changing his mind on health care, but it also offers us a full sized picture! That’s right, we now have one of those slick flat-screen jobs that shows you stuff that’s happening on the bottom and at the ends of the screen.

This is good because we’ve been tired of watching just the tops of scores and other useful information as it scrolls just out of sight below our old screen.

“Dear, did that just say, “Tornado in Dane County, take cover now!?” or did Toronto beat the Diamond Backs?”

Also, we’ve been noticing that some of our favorite shows feature actors who are speaking but not actually on our screen thanks to their location to far stage right or stage left. Sometimes we got half their faces. Sometimes in documentaries for example you’d learn that that half face belonged to “…berg”, who was apparently with “…niversity” in “..sylvania”.

Now we’ll see it all and see it really fast.

Is this a great country or what?

I finished the Run for Literacy on Sunday with a time just under an hour for the 10K. Pat Gallagher was the race starter. I was commenting to a friend afterwards that I thought that my time was pretty okay for an old guy like me.

She replied, “Old? What are you, 55?”

She was trying to be kind. Problem is, I’m 52.

So, what she really thought was that I was 60. This is because of the “Rule of 5″ that everybody knows. When you make a comment about someone’s age you always figure how old you think they really are and then subtract five years just to be safe. If you’re talking to a woman you might actually discount another two or three years just to be doubly safe.

So, when my friend said she thought I was 55, she was actually thinking I was 60.

I’m trying to put the best spin on this that I can. Under an hour is a decent time for a 52 year old guy. It’s a good time for a 55 year old guy. But it’s really a good time for a 60 year old guy. There. Now I feel better.

So, here’s how I messed up my first assignment as a park ranger.

As a volunteer ranger on Stockton Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore this August one of my daily duties was to report the morning weather readings back to the main park headquarters in Bayfield.

At eight every morning I’d raise the American flag on the shore and then walk out to the dock and use a device called a Kestrel to get the temperature and the wind speed. I’d also have to figure out the direction of the wind and estimate the wave size.

At 8:15 headquarters would call for the “morning weather roundup”. Rangers on eight different islands would report their weather conditions on the radio so that everyone on that frequency, maybe a hundred people, could hear what was going on.

And my island always went first. So, on Friday, August 19^th I dutifully took my readings and waited, a little nervously, for the roundup to begin.

“This is Bayfield. Morning weather roundup. Stockton?” the dispatcher called out.

I cleared my throat, then proudly reported that the winds were out of the west at five knots, the skies were partly cloudy, the temperature was 70 degrees Fahrenheit (I threw in “Fahrenheit” just to sound more scientific and official, never mind that if it had been 70 degrees Celsius we’d be on the surface of the sun) and the waves were one to three feet.

I felt pretty good about my first performance, though I did somewhat regret the specification of “Fahrenheit”, thinking maybe that was a bit over the top and pretentious. While making a mental note about that, I heard the dispatcher call my station again.

“Bayfield here. Stockton?”

Somehow they didn’t hear me. So I had a chance at redemption on the Fahrenheit issue.  I delivered my report again, this time dropping the Fahrenheit, but slipping up again slightly when I signed off. See, you always finish by repeating your personal call number, which in my case was 504. But you’re supposed to only use numbers. So, you say “five-zero-four,” not “five-oh-four.” Well, I screwed up and used the “oh” instead of the “zero.”

While I was making another mental note of this I heard the dispatcher say, “Stockton. Negative contact.” And she went on to the next island.

I was mortified. How could this be?! My first solo performance on the morning roundup lost somewhere in the stratosphere between Stockton Island and Bayfield. Worse, all my new colleagues on those other islands and in Bayfield could hear that I, 504, had dropped the morning weather roundup ball.

I was sure the other volunteers on the radio were thinking, “What’s the deal with 504? We heard he had an awfully nice bottle of Scotch out there. Did he get into it pretty deep last night? Or did he just decide to sleep in? Too good for the morning roundup, 504? We heard about you. Big shot former something of somewhere. Well guess what Watson, out here in the real world of twenty-two picturesque islands you get up early – by 8 AM – and you go down to the dock and you raise the flag and you take your damn Kestrel readings and when Bayfield calls your name you report in proudly, clearly and on time. Learn your lesson, big shot former something or other.”

When the dispatcher completed her run through all the other stations, she returned to me for one last generous offer of redemption.

“Stockton???” I could tell the irritation in her voice was now tinged with the dawning of concern.

Relieved at the opportunity, I recited my report perfectly this time. No superfluous use of “Fahrenheit”, no mistaking “oh” for “zero”. I nailed it. Ten point zero. Even from the Russian judges.

Then I heard the crackling reply from Bayfield. “Stockton negative contact. That completes the morning roundup. Have a good day.”

“WAIT!” I thought. “I reported in. I did! Third gosh darn time, in fact. Sure, the first two had minor flaws and yeah, the mention of Fahrenheit was unnecessary and maybe a little officious, but still to reject my entire report on the basis of that was just unfair. C’mon Bayfield, I’m a volunteer. Give me a break!”

I grabbed my radio again.

“Bayfield. This is 504. Can you read me?”

No response.

“Bayfield. 504 here, Can you read me?”

Nothing. It was like talking to a Tea Partier about the need to raise taxes. No response.

And my colleagues in the field, my fellow volunteers on the other islands, who had all reported in so successfully (although I did feel that 503 was a little verbose and I detected a hint of hesitation in 508’s voice because I don’t think she was sure of her four knots out of the Southwest), what must they be thinking?

I suspected that their contempt for me had now melted into concern. What had become of good old 504? Perhaps, after dutifully raising our nation’s flag and conscientiously taking his Kestrel readings at precisely the assigned hour our brave 504 heard a rustling in the trees nearby. Heedless of the danger, 504 went to investigate, combing through the thicket and coming face to snout with a very large black bear, a young frightened camper-child in its claws. Calmly, 504 distracted the massive animal with a handful of blue berries he had picked for his breakfast. As the bear moved in for the berries, he dropped the youngster. 504 leapt past the bear, swept up the child and tossed her to her frightened, but now relieved, parents who had just arrived on the scene to witness his heroism.

But the bear, now feeling duped and embarrassed, took after our courageous 504. He was last seen retreating into the thicket, the bear in hot pursuit and 504 using his very own life as bait to pull the ravenous animal away from the campers 504 was sworn to protect and back into the deep, deep wilderness. What selflessness! What heroism! Do the Nobel people give awards for such things? Posthumously, of course.

I was having these thoughts when something occurred to me. I looked at the channel on my radio. Was I supposed to be on channel 3 or channel 2? I switched the radio to 2 and tried again.

“504. Bayfield?”

“This is Bayfield. Go ahead, 504.”

For a moment I thought about making something up along the lines of the bear story. But I just fessed up.

“My apologies, Bayfield. I was on the wrong channel earlier.” My humiliation echoed over the islands.

I am now convinced that generations of park rangers will mark time with this event. A decade from now, reminiscing about some event, a ranger will ask, “did that happen before or after the 504 wrong channel incident?”

Okay, so it wasn’t the setting sun warming the Capital dome.  It was more like the fluorescent lights casting a cold glow on the cinder block walls.

But, hey, the “Concert on the Square” went on despite two nights of rain in a row. The Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra performed inside the Alliant Energy Center Thursday night, usually home to the dog show and that kind of thing. It actually worked out pretty well, though I wouldn’t recommend it as a regular venue. There’s something about the actual Square that makes the concerts there something special.

But soprano Susanna Phillips, who usually performs at the slightly more plush Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center and WCO Maestro Andrew Sewell were good natured about the whole thing and they delivered a great performance in the surprisingly accoustically not as horrible as everybody thought it would be Alliant Center.

The real heroes of all this were WCO Executive Director Doug Gerhart and the folks at Dane County who made this happen in less then a day. As of 8:30 this morning there was going to be no concert. Susanna Phillips would have gone back to New York after performing only in her hotel room shower and we would have missed Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer 1915″ and Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” from Rodeo. I also would have missed the tuna fillet for dinner, which was very nice even in artificial light.

It actually turned out to be a nice demonstration of the Madison spirit. A little rain in the forecast? Just move a major production involving dozens of musicians, sound equipment, vendors, and tables and chairs to seat thousands of people to a venue you didn’t know was available ten hours before the performance. No problem.

It was good work by a lot of dedicated people and thousands of us in the audience appreciated it. But let’s hope for sunshine for the orchestra’s last Capitol performance next week.

Over the years, I’ve acquired a taste for Scotch whiskey.  Not just any Scotch, but single malt Scotch.

One of the advantages to losing my job was that my friends knew this about me. So, to console me on my loss, many bottles of single malts arrived on my desk or appeared on my door step. When the City Attorney brought me one on my next to final day in office I said, “Great! Something to do on my first day of unemployment!”

I exaggerate a little here. Scotch is best enjoyed slowly and in small quantities. “Two fingers” worth is just about right. (The two fingers should be measured along the glass horizontally, not vertically.)

And, like the local food movement, good Scotch comes with a good story. For example, one bottle I received in compensation for losing the best job in the world was The Glenlivet Nadurra 16. This stuff is aged 16 years in “first-fill American oak casks.” And if that’s not impressive enough they “omit modern chill filtering.” Why, yes they do. Obviously the advantage here is that it “preserves intact the full flavour of the malt.” Note the “u” in flavour. You pay more for this.

It’s colour (anouther “u”, another five bucks) is described as “bright gold”, though “a gentle haze may appear when water is added.”

It’s “nose” (the way it smells) will remind you of “a fresh summer-like medley of floral and sweet spice aromas.”

And finally when you get around to drinking the stuff it will have the “sweetness of soft fruits and honeyed flowers”. Wow. Now that’ll take the sting out of not being Mayor of the best place on earth.

I thought of this today because there was a story in the Sunday Times Magazine about the discovery of a case of Scotch carried to the South Pole by the famous explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. It was actually just one case out of 25 cases of whiskey which accompanied twelve cases of brandy and only six cases of port. They made room for these necessities by leaving all fresh fruits and vegetables at home. This was a man with his priorities in order. Anyway, a case or two got left behind at a hut Shackleton’s crew built on the way toward the pole. It has been there frozen in time and out of memory until now.  Click here to read the story.

But Scotch, it’s true, is an acquired taste. As a novice Scotch drinker, still acquiring that taste, I would often describe it this way.  “It has the aroma of a wet Shetland Sheepdog on a muggy day after the dog has played in the mud for a half hour. The taste starts with a reminder that you’ve been wearing the same sox at the gym for the last week but then you come across just a hint that you didn’t wash the milk bottle out when you put it in the recycling yesterday and finishes with the revelation that rotting leaves in the gutter should be removed to the compost bin. Overall, this Scotch takes one back to the Lake Mendota shoreline at the Union in the middle of August.”

It’s a long journey to the appreciation of a good Scotch, but trust me, it’s a trip worth taking. Sir Ernest knew that, like all great explorers do.

Ok, so it’s hot. If we lived in Miami or Houston it’d be like this every day for four months.

But here in the land of the frozen tundra this is the longest, hottest heat wave we’ve had in a decade and a half. But what’s changed in 15 years is the 24 hour news cycle and the general twitchiness of the media. The News of the World may be out of business but the whole industry moved in that direction.

So, when you tune in to your local news tonight you’re likely to find this kind of banter.

Anchor Buffy: Wow, Tom, it sure is hot out!

Anchor Tom: You said it, Buffy. Let’s turn it over to Al for the latest.

Weather Guy Al: This could be the longest, hottest heat wave in the history of the planet. The heat index is approaching 500 degrees in the parking lot right outside our station.

Anchor Tom: And David is there right now. David?

Forlorn Reporter David (junior member of the news team): Hey, Buffy, Tom, Al. Ya know, they say you can fry an egg out here. So, we thought we’d test that theory. (Camera pans down to the pavement as he crouches.) We don’t have just fried eggs here, but we also have bacon, sausage and hash browns!

Anchor Buffy: Yummm. You’re quite the parking lot chef there, David. What’s for dinner?

David: Well, actually, later I’ll be making a seven course steak dinner right out here in the parking lot!

Buffy: Wow, can’t wait for that.

Tom: Now turning to the more serious side of this crisis, which is inflicting havoc all over the Midwest, Al what can we do to keep this Armagedon at bay?

Al: Well, first of all, large black dogs are at great risk. If you own a large, black dog do not, I repeat do NOT, put that dog in a car in a hot parking lot with the windows closed.

Tom: That’s good advice there, Al. What about small children?

Al: Glad you asked that Tom. It’s also a good idea not to leave children in cars in parking lots with the windows closed.

Buffy (nodding): What else do the experts tell us, Al?

Al: Stay hydrated. If you’re over 65 doctors recommend that you float in a pool of ice until the heat wave subsides sometime in October.

Tom: And for younger folks who like to exercise outdoors, what precautions should they take?

Al: Well, if you absolutely need to go out for your daily run experts are suggesting that you follow your same route as always, just do it inside an air conditioned car.

Buffy: Sound, sound advice. Finally, Al, what are the chances that we’re all just going to wither and die in the heat?

Al: Those chances are really very good, Buffy. We’re pretty much all goners. If I were you watching at home, i would say the thing to do right now is panic.

Tom: Next up, how monks in those long robes are faring inside of monasteries without air conditioning. Stay tuned!

Dianne and I just got back our vacation Up North.  These photos show our different approaches to vacation. Actually, we’re of a similar mind when it comes to our annual trip to the north woods. The idea is to get a stack of books, go down to the dock and wait for cocktail hour. The difference is for me this is religion while for Dianne some form of activity is part of her routine. Can I help it if I’m a purist?

It’s summertime and many of you will be traveling around our state and looking for a good meal. Of course, there’s no finer place to eat then a real Wisconsin Supper Club. But, alas, the Supper Club is a dying institution in our state. They’re closing as owners age, they’re burning down and, worst of all, they’re being converted to places with names like Le Fresco Italiano Restaurante.

But there are still some of the real things our there. Here’s my list of what you should be looking for to qualify as a Genuine Wisconsin Supper Club:

·        First, you are asked to leave the establishment if you are offered a cocktail before dinner and you either: 1) Order your Manhattan with whiskey instead of brandy or 2) Fail to order a cocktail.

·        Second, you get both soup and salad. Any soup choice that does not consist of a heavy cream base is immediately disqualifying unless they are French Onion or chicken noodle.

·        Third, the salad must be ice berg lettuce. Anything on the salad bar such as “spring mix” is immediately disqualifying. And arugula is an island in the Bahamas that you go to in January.

·        Fourth, you must get a “relish tray”. The tray must include radishes and green onions. You don’t need to eat the radishes. They can be reused for the next guests.

·        Fifth, you must get a basket of cellophane wrapped bread sticks. One must be garlic, the other onion.

·        Sixth, to accompany the bread sticks you must get a cheese ball. A cheese ball made of any cheese that would be sold at Fromagination is immediately disqualifying.

·        Seventh, the menu must consist of steaks and seafood. By seafood we mean fried fish and shrimp cocktail. Any menu that contains mahi mahi  is immediately disqualifying.

·        Eighth, for the health conscious among us, cottage cheese or tomato juice can be offered in place of the soup or salad, but in no event can they be substituted for steak or fried fish.

·        Ninth, extra points are awarded if your waitress’ name is Ethel, Doris or Rhonda. If your waiterperson insists on being called Michael or David points are deducted.

·        Tenth, place mats also garner extra credit as long as they depict game fish of northern Wisconsin or heroes of the Green Bay Packers.

So, there you have it. Dave’s rules of supper clubs. Enjoy.