Abbey's Road

I've covered a lot of ground since I last wrote. After I left South Dakota, I drove through Minnesota on my way to Milwaukee. I met up with John Horky and Bob Beres, two friends from college, and Bob's wife for dinner. John was gracious enough to let me stay at his lake house for three nights. One day I took Abbey into Madison, where U. of Wisconsin is. The city is squashed between two lakes so it's pretty picturesque. You hardly know you're in the Midwest. Actually, Madison is a real nice town. Abbey and I took a long walk along one of the lakes, and then I took a walk through the campus. A bunch of friends I know went there so it was interesting to see what the campus was like. Looks like a pretty nice place to go to school. The next day I went in to Milwaukee and saw the Milwaukee art museum, which John's firm helped design. The building is pretty impressive, despite the enormous price tag it came with. It kind of looks like a huge bird and my timing was just right in being able to see the "wings" shut and open back up at noon. Quite exhilarating! That afternoon I drove down to my brother, Michael's, in Des Plaines north of Chicago. I spent about a week there catching up on some errands and going to my niece Rachel's soccer and volleyball games. Last time I was there I only got to see Krista play volleyball so Rachel made sure I saw her games this time.

On another day we went for a bike ride at the local forest preserve and we also did some geocaching. If you don't know what this is, check out www.geocaching.com. It's a new 'sport' that is quickly gaining in popularity across the country. You go to the website and look up the location of caches in your area. The trick is that they give you a description, but the exact location is given in longitude and latitude coordinates, so a GPS is very helpful. A cache can be any kind of container and it usually contains a log book so you can log when you found it. People leave small trinkets inside and you can take stuff out and leave your stuff. It's kind of the same theory as a flea market. You get rid of your junk and there's always someone else who thinks your junk is cool so they take it. At least that's the way I look at it. Chris had brought a GPS unit to Yellowstone with him and he left it with me to play around with. The kids, especially Alex, have been getting interested in geocaching but had never had a GPS unit so it was kind of tough for them. So needless to say Alex was pretty excited that it would be easier to find the caches now. On Saturday we decided to take a trip into Chicago to see the aquarium. A French friend of Michael's was in town to run in the Chicago Marathon and wanted to meet up with us. We never ended up catching up with him, but the aquarium was pretty cool. There was also a geocache there, but unfortunately we never found it. To make ourselves feel better, we decided someone must have stolen it.

Bob Beres got a hold of extra tickets to the ND-USC game in South Bend on the 15th so a bunch of us headed there for the weekend. Michael's wife Sandra also went to ND and Bob had enough tickets for them to go as well. The last time the 3 of us went to a game was when ND played USC 20 years ago and the two of them got engaged that weekend.
I took advantage of being near some great stores - Trader Joe's and a local store named Caputo's which has the cheapest produce I've even seen '? and did some food shopping before I left for South Bend. I decided to park the RV at the field and have a tailgater before the game. Excitement over the game was pretty high so I got there a little after 7AM to make sure I got a good spot and there were quite a few people there already. A bunch of my college friends, Dan, Mark, Bob and John came with their wives, and even a high school friend, Mike Schiavi, who was at the game with his father and brothers, made it there. I had Krista make me a great sign to put on the RV so everyone could find me in the sea of RVs. We weren't the wildest or most well-stocked tailgater around, but we had a great time and not bad for my first one in the RV.

Abbey wasn't quite so thrilled about all the commotion. She even got 'lost' at one point when she slipped away without being noticed. I got a call on my cellphone from the people who 'found' her, which turned out to be the people at the RV right next door. They said that she was real playful at first but then all of a sudden got a panicked look on her face when she didn't recognize anyone. She was pretty excited when she saw me even though she was only 10 ft. away and gone for less than 5 minutes.

Most of you probably know the outcome of the game by now, but even though ND lost on the last play of the game it was a great game to go to. It was a gorgeous fall day, perfect for college football. I don't know if ND stadium has ever been that pumped up for a game.

There were thousands of people who were in the area who didn't even have tickets. Some people were getting over $1500 for tickets. It was insane, but we had a blast at the game. I think ND is back on the national football scene. After the game, we ate and drank more while we waited for the parking lot to finally clear out a few hours later. A few people asked me for the recipe to a green bean salad I made so I thought I'd just add it in here:

Green Bean Salad

2 pounds thin green beans cut into 2-inch pieces (about 4 cups)
' cup olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar (I used rice wine vinegar mixed with balsamic)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
' teaspoon salt
' pound cherry or grape tomatoes, halved (about 2 cups)
2 ounces fresh goat cheese, crumbled
' cup of toasted pine nuts
Freshly ground black pepper

In a large saucepan of lightly salted boiling water, cook the green beans uncovered for 7 to 9 minutes or until tender. Drain and rinse in cold water. In a small bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, mustard, and salt. Pour the dressing over the green beans and toss well. Fold in the tomatoes, pine nuts and goat cheese, then add pepper to taste. Serve chilled.

On Sunday I went with Michael, Sandra and the kids to Fernwood Botanical Gardens where they had a fall festival and, as luck would have it, there was a picnic for the Michigan Geocaching Society. We found 6 more caches, usually with someone right on our tail looking for the same one. We also found out that people do this stuff in groups and have group and codenames. One group even gave us their card. So, we had to make up a name on the spot '? the Agents of Dow. You'll have to ask Alex and the girls the meaning of 'Dow' as I still don't get it after they've tried to explain it to me for years now. After all the geocaching excitement I hit the sack early (couldn't have been from the all-day tailgating the day before), and then got up and drove to Columbus, OH on Monday.