House On The WHAT!?

A blog about Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin

 

The 20 hour bus ride to Chicago from New York was a killer, although Megan got to see Amish people, so at 3am when we had to change buses, her excitement levels were through the roof because she got to see an Amish family.

 

We arrived at the Chicago bus station at around 9am and had to wait a few hours before our host, the magnificent OBLIVION (Mark), could pick us up.

After we were in the car we met his beautiful wife Amy and awesome daughter Emily.

Mark and Amy treated us to lunch at a Greek restaurant that was unbelievably good, while Em made pyramids out of the little butter packets for the bread rolls.

 

We drove through Chicago, with Mark and Amy pointing out landmarks and we drove past Wrigley Field, where there was a baseball game on, so people littered the streets, buying peanuts from vendors.

 

We drove out into the suburbs which were beautiful until we got to Mark and Amys house, we settled down, had some Chinese food and went to sleep pretty early, we were exhausted.

 

The next morning we awoke and neither of us were feeling the best, I had a headache, and we just decided to stay in for the day.

That night we had a Chicago deep-dish pizza, it was crazy, it was a two story pizza with pepperoni in the first layer, then a multitude of toppings on the top. It was delicious.

 

The next say, we again stayed in and played with Em for a little bit and just chilled out again.

 

It came time to leave Mark, Amy & Em and we said our goodbyes to Em, as we would be seeing Mark & Amy in a week or so.

Mark drove us to meet up with our next stop, our friends Krissy & Joe.

We met at a restaurant, and had a few beers and laughs and some good food.

Mark traded us off and we were back on the road on the way to Krissy and Joes.

 

Once there were greeted by a very excited miniature sausage dog by the name of Dusty, he jumped all over the couches and was licking anyone he could.

We all sat out having a chat for a while before we all went to bed as Krissy and Joe both had to be up early for work.

The next day we decided to continue our relaxing spree and chill out, catch up on some of the internet stuff and play with Dusty and play some video games.

When Krissy and Joe returned home, we went outside and played Cornhole, a game where you try to throw bean bags into the hole on a board. It was excellent fun, until we all started to get eaten by mosquitos.

 

Another relaxing day came before Krissy and Joe got home, we were taken out to dinner and had an amazing meal, the food was excellent as was the company.

Dinner concluded and we drove to the bowling alley, where we hired a lane for an hour….which Megan and I thought was an excellent idea rather than paying per game.

 

We said our goodbyes to Krissy and Joe, although we would be seeing them in a week.

And we jumped on the bus, headed for Madison, Wisconsin.

Although we didn’t get to see any of the city of Chicago, we still had a great time there and got to make awesome friends and we vowed we would do it properly the next time we returned to Chicago.

 

Our bus rolled into Madison at around 9pm, Rin greeted us with open arms and we loaded her car up with our baggage and we drove to her friend James’ house, as he was going to be out of town for the weekend and had offered to let us stay there.

We got to James’ and met him and Rin had some cherry beer and some Spotted Cow, ready for us all to drink.

She also bought us Chips Ahoy and Coke and a whole array of food for us.

James had ordered a pizza for us all to share.

 

James has a ridiculous collection of stuffed animals, and board games and vinyl which we enjoyed looking at.

The next morning, Rin picked us up and took us to Lazy Janes café for breakfast, where the food was amazing, and the coffee was just as good as the food. We sat upstairs and chatted, telling stupid stories and figuring out what we were going to do for the next few days.

After we had breakfast we went to the local Op Shop and got our costumes for the party we would be attending later in the week.

Later that night we went for dinner at a local Madison restaurant, Rin picked a good one, because the food was great and the beer was better.

 

The next morning Rin came by and picked us up as we were going to pick up Vealchart (Chris) from Milwaukee airport. He was coming in to stay with Rin before the party.

Once we had Vealchart in the car, we were off to dinner at a restaurant called County Clare, which is an Irish restaurant, we ordered some delicious Root Soup, then for the main course, the three others had Shepherds Pie and I had a Irish Stew.

We laughed a lot as Vealchart told us stories of him going to see Public Enemy and showing us gang signs.

We left Milwaukee, headed back to Madison.

Once back at Rins place, we looked through Mother Earth magazines from the 70s and 80s, I laughed that night more than I think I have ever laughed, reading ridiculous personal ads from men looking for a woman who was happy being barefoot, to knitting nose warmers that looked like bird beaks for yourself, if you wanted to play ‘Hardcore Harmonica’ you could learn through these magazines.

 

The next day we all piled into the car and we were headed to House On The Rock.

In the middle of nowhere on top of a rock, was a giant house, which is set up as a museum. We walked inside, purchased our tickets and began walking down the ramp into the house, on our right there was a beautiful, amazing Chinese garden with waterfalls and bridges and stone paths.

We got inside, to the original part of the house, which has extremely low ceilings and is made mainly of stone and brick, we saw crazy kitchens and reading rooms, blue light shone through Chinese style doors and window panes.

Then, we reached the Infinity Room, a room that gets narrower and narrower and of course seems to never end. This strange room sits 156 feet above the forest floor and is 218 feet long, but isn’t supported by any beams underneath.

 

The tour continued and the amount of ridiculous collections of everything was unbelievable.

The next part was a sea theme and had a whale sculpture in it, so massive that it was three stories high, it was fighting an octopus. This thing was so ridiculous that it couldn’t even be captured with a camera, no matter where you stood, you could not get a proper photo of this massive beast.

 

As the tour was coming to an end, the most disturbing and frightening part happened.

We went into the room with the world largest carousel in it. There is not one horse head on the entire thing. Naked mannequins stood around demented dolls and weird creatures that would be used for riding on.

 

After we left House On The Rock, we were on the way to Dr. Evermore’s and the time in the car was good to clear our heads from what we had just seen for the last 3 hours.

 

We pulled up, a massive metal scrapyard lay infront of us, Megan and I didn’t know what to expect and judging by the open times on the sign they were closed. However the gate was still open so we decided to go on in.

Vealchart was making me nervous by acting frightened and telling me how crazy the guy was that owned the place. Sparks flew out of a small tent in the middle of this massive metal contraption that looked like it could be a city in a sci-fi movie.

We made our way to the section of the birds which were made with old trumpets and trombones. Sharp, rusted metal made up the birds neck, rollerblade wheels for eyes.

The whole yard was full of these crazy sculptures made from scrap metal.

 

That night we went to a bar and sat out the back around a huge table. We ordered some rum with bark in it. The rum came out…..well one shot of it for us to share came out. The waitress had talked this rum up soooo much that we thought we would all get some, but they only had one shot left, so we shared and it was gifted to us by the waitress.

After much deliberation between Vealchart and Rin we went to a traditional Wisconsin restaurant and ordered up some delicious cheese curds and fish fry.

We played a few games of pool and headed home for the evening.

 

The next morning was Monday, Rin was working and the beautiful Manda was in town, scoping out apartments. She met up with us and Vealchart for lunch, then we headed to Pop Duluxe to have a look at some goodies.

We decided that we would all have dinner that evening and we promptly went to pick up Manda’s husband The Wang from work.

 

That night it was determined that all the males at the table would have to order a ‘Wisconsin Beer Bomb’ which is a MASSIVE glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon with a pickled egg in the bottom…..no, no, you don’t need to go back and read over that again…there was a fucking pickled egg in the bottom of my beer, and The Wang throws down first, taking the beer and egg in one single go. Vealchart follows up by drinking the beer down and munching on the egg to be one of the most hilarious things I have seen in my life.

Then its my turn, not liking eggs to begin with, I am worried, I drink the beer down, take the tiniest bite of the egg and almost vomit.

 

The next day both Rin and Vealchart had to work, so Manda came and we spent the day together.

That was our final night in Madison, we went to dinner with the same group from the night before, with an addition of Mark who is everyone’s friend.

The place we ate was called Ellas Deli, which is like a mini House On The Rock, the food was awesome and the tables all have games built into them.

 

After dinner we said our goodbyes to Manda, The Wang & Mark for now, as we would be seeing them in a few days.

Rin and Vealchart packed us into the car and we were on the road headed for a bar in West Bend, Wisconsin.

 

 

I cant thank Rin enough for all the help she gave us, and the time we spent with her was amazing, we saw so many awesome things.

Rin and I had gotten along so well through emails and chatting that when we met up, it was just like meeting up with an old friend.

I love Rin and I love Vealchart and I cannot wait to see them again.

 

 

 

 

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

 

BJ