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I have got some plans to spend the rest of the Month of May in Massachusetts, on the southern side of the state below Boston. In being there for about two weeks, I’ll have a lot of time to check the place out and so far am planning on going to (Plain Ridge Park Casino, Wrentham VIllage Premium Outlets, Normandy Farms, “An Unlikely Story”, Boston University, possibly even Harriman New York for the holiday at the end of the month if I have time).

I’ll be staying at Residence Inn Providence Lincoln, 632 George Washington Hwy, Lincoln, RI 02865. This is a two week trip and I’m planning on getting out of there just after memorial day. While I’m there, I’ve got a lot to check out. I used to live in Lowell, MA and Nashua, NH too and I have not gone back to either of them since 2014. They are a little bit of a stretch for me to go that far north from where I’m going to be at so I don’t know if I’ll be going to those locations, but if I do go there it would be to check out Lowell’s Suppa’s pizza joint if it still exists. So as a reference – check out the luggage! That’s about 200lbs of luggage.

So I got in on Wednesday, mid-afternoonish. Just in perfect time for Boston’s rush hour. For some reason I ended up flying into Boston at this time to make my way over two hours south to Rhode Island where I was staying. It’s been a while since I was in Boston, and really the only thing that I recalled a little bit was passing through the street the stadium is on. GPS really does not help here, I’m sure I spent too much time looking at that to recall much else from ten years ago. So I stayed at the Residence Inn in Lincoln or something. As I’m checking in, I asked for some extra hangars that never did arrive. So while waiting for these things I drove around a little bit. Just to the store and back really. I was pretty tired because I’d started the day at 3:30 am and got to the room at 6 pm but I didn’t want to end it that fast. So I just went to the shops across the road, I stopped at Stop and Shop. Been a while since I was in one of those either, my home town back in Monroe had one of them when I was growing up. On the way back I drove by the Planet Fitness to see where it was located one exit up on the highway. Then I came back to the hotel and went to the gym there. The equipment at the hotel is pretty nice Precor stuff, all quite new. Actually the whole hotel seems pretty new.

On the way in, I decided to pull up the GPS to see how close Boston University was. I was actually passing by it with it on my right as I was going down the highway. I am still considering going there, and have quite convinced myself at this point that I’d like to go there. Seems like the right thing to do. The place I was staying at was alright too, check it out.

So on Thursday here, I checked out a place called 110 Grill and the Planet Fitness nearby Lincoln that I drove by the night before. 110 Grill was a nice spot, they were pretty thoughtful there. I got salmon for dinner here, about anywhere I went this close to the coast I got seafood – even if it didn’t have much of a chance of coming locally. I also got some clam chowder here it was very good and I would get it again. After that I went to the gym nearby the hotel, it seemed very new along with the rest of the buildings in that parking lot. I spent an hour there just doing aerobics and then went back to the hotel.

Friday I checked out the pizza place in Plainville and the Met in Pawtucket. The pizza place was in Plainville, MA. It was called South Street Pizza. I think this place is a great lunch spot (So much I went back). The choices are many, most of all, there are those, here. I got an italian sandwich and it was pretty good, I also got a baklava dessert and it had about a hundred layers and I had to ask the lady there if they were making it there, but she had told me no but they were coming from a local place I didn’t catch the name of. After that, I went to the Met to check out a rock concert with Gary Hoey. Gary plays the guitar and there’s a band that plays some music with Gary. Every once in a while Gary continuously introduces, and then seemingly reintroduces the same keyboard, drummer and whoever else was playing alongside Gary that night. Gary plays a lot like a Joe Satriani, only without the Satriani, so Gary plays like a Joe. Anyways, the place could clearly hold about 400 or more people, and there were about 40 people there on this evening. The music was loud and I had worn earplugs, the venue has clearly had louder. So I walk in and the bartender asks me where I was from, after hearing the accent in my voice. I mention a few of the places I’ve lived in, in an attempt to resolve the fellas confusion as to my inexcusable accent. He then asked what I did, and I told him a little bit of what I did. I got my local beer, something or whatever from the draft, for 8 dollars. I handed him a ten and told him to keep it and then walked off and stood around for a few moments until the show went on. After a while I decided I was hungry so I left the show after a set.

Saturday I checked out Boston, Quincy Hall, Boston Harbor, the park there, the beach there, it was raining so the boston trip got cut short, chipotle and river falls in the evening. It was a pretty busy day. So I got into Boston in the morning, and this time the GPS was a lot more correct than it had been the other day. On getting into Boston I had some vague flashbacks from 2014 and I could barely remember much of going in and around the city at all, so fortunately the place didn’t leave any lasting damage, I guess. Anyways, I spotted a park as I was driving in and I needed to figure on where to go anyways so I parallel parked and walked through the park, toward a beach. There were some fellas playing basketball on the completely uneven courts as I strolled through, and then before the beach there was a small running track and field and stadium dedicated to a one Paul J. Saunders.

I continued on through the park, and crossed the road to find myself at Carson Beach. Of note on this reasonably windy, chilly and somewhat cold day was that there were two women just chilling and doing tiktoks on the beach, one was wearing a red bikini, this was the one on camera, apparently. They seemed to be having a fine enough time, being about the only two people in sight on the beach. The beach itself was nice, surrounding Old Harbor. It was otherwise quiet, which I assume was due to the poor weather. The rain turned into a mist at this point and I headed back to the car to make my way downtown.

Arguably, the 38 dollar view from Boston Harbor Parking garage was both the best view available on this day, as well as for the best price, at least to me. So I got downtown and decided not to park on the street due to the rain, so I made my way up to the jellyfish level of the Parking Garage. For reference I believe this to be the fifth floor. There were two more floors, one being lobster or something else. Parking was quite easy and getting down there was an elevator so I can quite certainly say that aside from the view, the parking garage itself was nice enough. Check out the views from it!

So I took the elevator down, and started heading towards Faneuil Hall, this being the destination I had in mind to check out. So I get down there and pass by what some engraving claimed to be a fountain and then decided to backtrack a little bit to go to the bathroom. It’s not so hard at all to find these, here. So I go inside of the hotel there and inside there is a coffee bar thing and then there’s a sign indicated that the bathrooms were outside. The buildings got two main entrances into this hall spot, so I figured it was indicating that the bathroom was on the other side, because I didn’t see one coming in.

After getting out of the entrance to the hotel I began heading towards the marketpalce again. I wanted to check it out, just to see what it was like. For the most part it’s still a marketplace, some of the stuff probably still comes in on boat, even. There’s three main halls now and then one they dedicated as a food court. So I got there and walked around for a few moments but I was hungry so I wanted to stop at Quincy Market building. It was gigantic.

So I went inside and there seemed to be a lot more people inside, than there were outside, it being a rainy morning and all. So I got almost halfway through and found myself sold on some lobster sandwich place. There were people dragging their meals all throughout the place, looking for a spot to sit though. Another meal in particular that seemed to be popular was a loaf of bread which had the center hollowed out and in place of the bread center it was filled with clam chowder. This seemed like a pretty heavy meal to me, for a lunch, and so I found myself ordering a lobster grilled cheese sandwich and a drink for about 34 dollars from this place.

The sandwich was delicious. It had about as much lobster on it as you’d expect from a lobster roll, only instead of a roll it came on two slices of white bread and filled with a bunch of ‘Merican cheese. Overall very easy to eat, and yes it was a little heavy for a brunch but I’d not had anything for breakfast so this was worth it to me. Anyways after the sandwich, I walked out about halfway through, near a dinosaur exhibit. After getting a photo of it, I was approached by a 350 lb white male about my age that was wearing a red hoodie and wearing some car keys around his neck. He asked me if he could have some food. I informed him that he sure could, the food court was right next to us and there was a lot of food inside. His facial expression dropped at this point, as he realized that he might have gotten a bit more than he had asked for. So he mentioned that that was not what he meant. I knew damn well what he wanted, but he didn’t ask for that – he had asked for food. I asked him if I looked like a fucking banana tree and then went on a full two minute rant about how he could just easily walk in the food hall and ask people for any of the food that they were not going to eat that they left on the table and even then if he continued to be denied that he could just grab it when they left, or just snatch the fresh food from the trash as any reasonably hungry person would do (This, I do know, yes?). Anyways, the guy certainly could have missed a few hundred meals and certainly was not in any shape to actually need a meal, and so had he asked me for the ten dollars he actuallly had wanted, I might’ve actually given it to him. So anyways, after my rant, he actually says, “Thank you”, and I say, “You’re welcome”, and walk off to the Samsonite store asking other folks if I looked like a fucking banana tree along the way. Tell ya one thing – nobody asked me for more food on this day. Check out the dinosaur.

On my way into the Samsonite store, a lady walks in in front of me and decides to toss her umbrella on the ground outside the store before walking inside. She immediately realized this was a mistake as she was quickly instructed by the store staff that she was welcome to bring her wet umbrella inside the store with her. So, not wanting to back out, I grabbed the soaking wet thing off the ground and handed to to her by the stem and then proceeded to ask the folks there if they had the bag I was looking for. They didn’t have it. So I left there, sat near the entrance to the place for a few moments while being grilled by a fella sitting off in the distance (I assume he heard my rant – one of those inner city denizens, for sure), then decided to walk out of there because the rain was picking up. I had wanted to do a few other things in Boston during the day, but I didn’t want to get soaked. So I went back to Lincoln, RI, walking past the same fountain as on the way in.

I stopped at some of the harbor docks near the same hotel as on the way in, on the way out. There was a sea pidgeon there, eyeing me a bit. Seemed alright though. Not much was going on and the rain was building up a bit, so I stood under an umbrella and watched it for a few minutes.

Anyways, I drove back to the hotel after Boston and then went to the gym there for about an hour. I found out that my watch had been connnecting to the workout equipment as I was using it and apparently it was doing some kind of conversion into steps and sending this to the watch every time I was working out. So on this day it told me around 19k steps or so. Anyways, after all that I went back out to go get some dinner at a place called River Falls. It was an alright spot in the middle of a square that reeked like cannabis and there were at least 6 other restaurants surrounding the circle. Inside the place, the waitress was quite tolerant of bullshit and relentless passes, ultimately having to inform me that she was dating outside of the restaurant, which she was told that we never had to leave the restaurant, and so on and such. Anyways, it was kind of empty there, but the food was alright, I got some fish and chips, but instead of chips it was just french fries. Nice quiet little spot.

Sunday I went to Cape Cod, canal, Sandwich Beach, Fishermans View, canal, gym, spicy stores. Cape cod I went fishing in the canal, walked along the beach, went to a gym. I also tried to find some ceylon cinnamon, at about 3 different stores. The only place that had it was Whole Foods. I go with ceylon because when i put 2 tablespoons of any other cinnamon in my oats I bleed like a motherfucker when cut, and I’m not one to settle for less cinnamon in my oats. The trick is to balance it with actual maple syrup. That corn syrup poison just won’t do – they tried to pull that shit on me at the hotel buffet breakfast.

I went to the canal twice – once to figure out where to go on the way in and another time on the way out to do some fishing. I had some extra bait from lunch I’d saved up and for reference, covering raw salmon in lobster guts didn’t work for me. It might’ve, if my pole was about two feet longer. I couldn’t get far enough into the canal with the smaller 8 foot rod I’d brought – the things more meant for lakes and rivers, not sea canals. It was nice, either way, the fishing.

Monday I went to do some laundry here in the hotel, Lime Rock Rreserve trail, then went to the gym here, also the poke place (Poke Bros or something?). For dinner I had some Chipotle that I’d managed to bake the hate out of with my slow cooker. If you don’t take a slow cooker or frozen meals with you when going on vacation – have fun waiting for food – I spend less time having better meals, personally. The trail itself was pretty nice. It was really two trails – one offereing a view of a manmade pond and the other being a bit mroe rocky and hilly. I took the one with the pond view. This was good for this day as my legs had quite a few pulled muscles from scissor kicks I’d done the day before last. Anyways, the views were great. On my way to somewhere in the morning I happened upon a painted turtle that had decided to cross the road at an inopportune time, and fortunately the road was queit enough for me to hop out and move it out the road. I tried to snap a better photo but while I was doing this my laptop bag slid around from my back and hit my elbow, launching the turtle about 3 feet away only to bounce off a log, land upright and finish the scurrying off it was already doing!

I also learned on this day that there is a different syle of poke all over the place, apparently the style I had on this day was a Hawaiian style. I don’t recall seeing other styles, ever, but anyways, it was good, with some spicy salmon, avocado, soy beans, brown rice, wasabi mayo and fish eggs topped with cashew ground up. This was for lunch. For dinner – I’d been slow cooking a meal I’d gotten from chipotle a few days before. I didn’t feel like tossing it is all. I had happened to show up right before the dinner rush apparently, and by the time I’d gotten a meal there were about 15 other people in line waiting for food. Just 3 people there to prepare food, though. I’d originally wanted to leave because they just didn’t have the staff present to serve the food, but I was talked out of this. By the time I ordered I suppose the girl had heard me rambling for a moment and so anyways she seemed pretty mad, visibly so at this point, so I mentioned at this point that that’s usually why I don’t queue to get fast food – because when we all stand in line like this, the folks get pretty frustrated, and anwyays I could practically feel the hate pouring into the food as the girl kept apologizing for no apparent reason, I was quite content, waiting, that is. It tasted about as I’d expected it to taste, but I only got through about a quarter of it before I’d decided I was full. I slow cooked it for about two days and it was very good after that. Aside from the brown rice, which seemed to have been partially pilferred .. the hull was thinner than I recall thinking brown rice should’ve been.

Tuesday I went to Seekonk river north of Providence, Swan Point Graveyard, Blackstone Park, Good Burger scene shoot, the restaurant and planet fitness. So I drove up and down Blackstone Boulevard – very pretty views on this but I was driving and only got one good photo. There happened to be a movie scene being filmed on the road as I was passing through. I didn’t realize at first, i only saw a funky looking car and managed to snap a photo of it as I blew by at ten miles an hour or so. Check it out!

So anyways, I’d first navigated just to “Seekonk River” and Google thought that I was looking to park in the back of a retirement community. The staff eyed me as I parked there and looked for a better spot, only to find myself parking right alongside Seekonk (not SeeCock!) River, I walked along it for a bit before I found an entrance into Blackstone Park near what was identified as “Hockey Pond” and so I walked around the pond and then back to the car.

So I got back to the car and then drove down Blackstone Boulevard, looking for a better view of the river, only to find myself driving through Swan Point Cemetery. Here I found H.P. Lovecraft’s grave (According to Google!), and a lucky turkey with her dedicated flock of males in pursuit.

Wednesday I went to Patriot Park & Gillette Stadium & the nature trail & cranberry bog back there, and the Planet Fitness in North Attleborough MA, then went back to the hotel to do some laundry.

After the gym, I went back to the hotel and went to sleep for the night. Thursday I went to Scialo Bros. Bakery, Telford Park, Whiting Pond, I took it easy because my knee was aching and i needed to pack for an early flight the next day. I had put the treadmill at a 6.5% grade and about 3.2 miles per hour, and usually I keep it under 3 miles an hour because my right knee will ache the next day due to injuries I’ve had since most of my life that I can remember. The bakery is located in Federal Hill, which felt to me like a Newburgh, NY downtown, but a lot nicer and also right next to the ocean. It’s got some of the best baked goods your money can still buy. Telford Park seemed more like a place to bring kids so I just stopped there briefly enough to plug in Whiting Pond. Whiting Pond boat launch is more of a quiet little fishing spot, but was perfect to end the trip on and eat the cookies I’d gotten from the bakery.

Friday I traveled back, 12 hours of travel time. I left at 530 in the morning EST and got back in my place at 430 CST. The flights were nice. The second one was a little bumpy but for the most part I slept through them. I went to a place to eat on the layover in Georgia for a turkey wrap and they had decided that it was a good idea to put Pesto and some soft cheese in there. It was a very strange wrap, from a texture standpoint. Even the french fries were oddly cut – not straight, more like really thick half-potato chip shaped. Worth the meal for that experience, but overall the taste was not there. Possibly they could do with some better mayo or ketchup, or just better quality ingredients overall. I took an uber back from the airport and it was about 4 times more costly than usual, I guess this is the price of rush hour traffic. It took maybe an extra minute to get back though, so whatever. So from the start to the finish of this trip, there’s about another 23,000 words plus some 200+ more photos and even more words that I didn’t put on this site – this was just what I felt like putting on here to send the reminder that anything here’s very much a movie based on a book, in that this is only about 16 percent of my summary of the trip that I bothered to put here.

I’m pre-writing some of this to see how it reads after I’m done here. I’m spending a week in Green Bay in May and I have got a few things planned coming up. I’m flying in Monday night and am staying at the Radisson near the casino next to the airport. The gym and pool and things are apparently all 24 hours during the times I’ll be there. So when I get there, it should be around 10PM. That night I’d like to at least locate the pool and the gym and see what all they have got going on there. The next morning I’d like to actually go to the gym and the pool there for a bit, then check out the casino.

So I got in on a Monday night, around 9pm. The layover was quite a quick flight out of Detroit for me, ended up having about 20 mintues to walk 15 minutes after the first flight was delayed twice. Once before the flight and another during the flight. Apparently it was a re-routed flight and crew, who knew? Anyways, I took the shuttle over to the hotel and they got me checked in quite prompty. The room itself was pretty nice, having one single king bed and having laminate throughout. Very roomy. I spent the night locating the pool and the gym. I had to let the fella at the desk let me in, and damn if that wasn’t the first time i connected that brisk Wisconsin accent to more than a few folks I’ve known through the years. Anyways, he let me into the gym because my card didn’t work to let me in there and I checked it out for suitability in the morning. The bike and treadmill were up to my standards, and so I went back to the room and fell asleep.

The next day I checked out Lambeau Field. The whole place itself seems to have just been originally an outdoor stadium that they put a massive operational facade on. It’s quite beautiful inside. In there was a massive metal football trophy, the entrances to the stadium and a restaurant or two. I saw a bunch of folks walking around with lanyards so I assumed they worked there. Anyways, while there I checked out the 1919 restaurant which was recommended to me highly by many folks at this point. The food there was wonderful, the cheese curds were some kind of orange cheddar. I had to ask the lady what kind of cheese they used for the cheese curds because they were great and she just came back saying it was an orange cheddar. I assume it had to be some local variety of cheddar because not too many cook like that in the deep fryer. Anyways I got the mango-something salad and it came with watermelon radishes, macadamia nuts, a very fatty vinegarette, crumbled feta, lettuce and of course bits of mangoes that appeared to have been pulverised into some uniform shape somehow. The salad tasted pretty good, but after a few bites I caught on to how fatty the dressing was and had to stop half way through the salad. Not that there was anything wrong with the salad – just that mine are usually consisting of just some lettuce, pepper and apple cider vinegar.

Anyways, downtown Green Bay was quite an event in itself. This direction being the one goes if they would like to get to the bay itself, in my opinion. While downtown, I was quite abruptly met with a full-pursuit police chase. A run down white van rolls past me, moving from left to right and I don’t catch on at first, but then there’s two full police SUV’s. These pass, but traffic does not move. So, I decide traffic is right and sit with it. Good thing I did because two more crusiers come barreling by, then I see the same white van only this time on the other side of the road traveling from right to left. It was at this time I realize that the driver was fleeing the police and was witnessing my first active police chase in over a decade. So in total there were 7 cop cars and they nailed that poor bastard about two blocks up. Anyways after this I headed over to a marina on the south side of Green Bay off Lake Michigan, because you can’t go to Green Bay without seeing the bay! The marina was neat, wildlife was abundant as some geese took refuge on a small island off the shore just out of earshot of most things but close enough to come back for food. There were gophers hanging out in some lumber by the breakwall. The breakwall was just covered in shells and drift-sticks (for reference – this is driftwood that doen’t qualify as driftwood, so it’s a drift-stick here). Got some nice photos of the day on this beautiful day and then came back to the hotel.

The jacuzzi was great – they actually let you run the thing in hour long increments! I also got to check out the gym and the bike there was really comfortable to run. After that Tuesday was about spent so I went back to the room becasue I had just found out earlier that day that I’d gotten accepted to Boston University for some reason only God knows and wanted to check out what that was all about. Anyways, on the next day I had some breakfast at the hotel. I didn’t realize at the time of me walking in there that it was apparently a fulls service restaurant and back which was not something I was expecting at this place at all. So I walk in there stinking like a gym and meanwhile the folks there are ready to start their day after breakfast. Anyways, getting back to the service side. I had some bacon and two over-hard eggs. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had taken the time to order anything other than sunny side up or fried eggs or not, but it’s not often that you’re going to come to a place that can cook an egg over medium or over hard. These are things I feel like people should do, because nobody really wants to eat that fried egg by itself, but sunny side up seems like such a waste when you don’t get toast with your egg. For this, the over-hard egg is the proper selection more than not. Anyways, it was quite well cooked and the bacon had an increible taste and texture to it and was delicious too. I had to get out of there so I had to prod the lady a little bit by standing up and letting her know to please bring me the check and I did this and then left.

After that later in the day I checked out a place called Parker John’s BBQ and Pizza. It was wonderful barbecue. One difference between carolina BBQ pulled pork and here is that in NC, it’s a bit more moist and I think this is due to the juice being re-added to the meat after cooking it. I don’t believe the cooking method at this place had this step in there, but re-adding the broth really adds a level to the dish I don’t think this place was looking to offer. They did seem to cook it at a higher temperature too, similar to the one you would use for carnitas. I very much liked their mustard sauce. This meal also came with a side of beans and some cole slaw. They also stashed a cornbread with a pad of butter on the tray and then let you go at it. It was overall incredibly high quality barbecue and I would definitely go back to this place. The scenery was well matched to the style of the place too, wonderful things to look at. The waitresses had shirts on them that said “Smoke meat not meth” which I couldn’t help but blurt out laughing at due to the audacity of a restaurant giving it’s folks a shirt at all that said anything in particular about anything was a welcome sight and I enjoyed this most of all. If, for nothing else, say you go there and don’t even eat barbecue – do go there for the folks wearing this shirt. Great lunch place.

After that, later in the day on wednesday I checked out the Oneida Casino here. The door on the entrance informed me that it was the select casino partner of the Green Bay Packers. Seemed legit. So inside of this casino connected to the hotel is a neat array of cheap slot machines. A lot of them would let you spin for fifty or sixty cents, I was not able to locate anything that lets you spin for lower. So I took out forty dollars from the ATM and paid $1.50 for the fee for the convenience of having the machine there. I fed a farmville machine 20 dollars, and within moments I found myself leaving the remaining 50 cents with the machine. I then continued on to a green machine, another slot machine but this one I could pull the handle. So I fed this machine 20 dollars, and played a little bit on my phone because its spins were a dollar a piece so i wanted to space out the spins a little bit. I walked away from this machine with more than I fed it.

The next machine was something with some pumpkins on it. I had cashed out from before and fed the machine 20 dollars. I then found out the machine was halloween themed and otherwise had the same face card draws other machines would have and its persona was prominently displayed as a halloween witch that I don’t recall seeing before having sat at the machine. I had been drawn to the machine because I had seen some meme circulating about a dog and some baby pumpkins earlier that day and it had made me laugh. So i sat at that machine on recalling that, and walked away from the machine with $59 and 8 cents. I decided that I was done gambling, cashed out and left the casino. You know they still do vending machines with cigarettes in them there? Then I went and spent the next few hours going to the hotels gym, jacuzzi and pool .. in that order.

So the next day I woke up, had some breakfast here at the casino and had to explain the the lady that a fried egg is just a broken egg yolk that you fry up like an over hard egg. She told me that she would just tell them to break the yolk. I can tell you right now that if I walked into the right restaurant and asked for a fried egg, they’d know exactly what I’m asking for, and understand that I’m not asking for an over hard egg and that if i wanted an over hard egg that they would give me an over hard egg. Also apparently ordering two orders of the delicious-sounding bacon from yesterday translates to giving 8 of the scrappy thin cut poor tasting bacon I got today and so I’ll have to admit that I got bamboozled there. God, they even put the egg in a round thing too – it was super pretty! Anyways, around the middle of the day I made my way over to a place called El Sarape West Tequila Bar and Restaurant.

This place is your typical, fantastic mexican food joint that people belong at when eating lunch. So I walk in and I was instantly greeted with a bench signed by a bunch of Green Bay Packers players. Bench like this would be a part of history at some point in the future, much like most things now. Anyways, they got me in a seat pretty fast as it was emptier than I feel like it should have been for the time it was. The place had gotten pretty crowded by the time I was done eating. So I ordered the beef enchiladas with mole sauce and I don’t think I’ve tasted such a nice silky mole in many years, it was quite wonderful and I did like to dig through the shredded lettuce on a scavenger hunt to find just one more bite of the enchilada with that sauce. I highly recommend the mole. But really, if enchiladas aren’t your thing – don’t even bother picking up the menu just order what you like at this point because they are going to have it! They are also really generous with the chips and I’d be quite impressed if any of the salsa had come out of a can at all. This had to be the single place in Green bay that I didn’t try the cheese curds at. I’m sure they had them though, everywhere here does. So I got out of there after a bit, the oncoming onslaught of folks pouring into the door was taking more and more of the lady’s time from me and so timing to leave was about as right as it could have been.

So a little bit after this I went back to the gym at the hotel and the woman at the desk helped me get the door open to the gym. There was a fella on the ellipcial machine that had been there before when I first tried to open the door, who got about half off his elliptical by the time she’d gotten the door open, when she had spotted him and said “You’d think he could have just opened this for you”, and walked off. The fella was still a little startled so just as the door shuts I tell him, “No worries, I just like making them walk back here at this point to let me in the room,” the door’s been “broken” since Monday night when I was told “Oh we just don’t want peoples kids in there,” and, “The guy that fixes those things was on vacation since last week and just came back”, and half a dozen other stories I enjoyed hearing but not believing either. Anyways, a bit later I ended up at a place called Legend Larry’s.

I’d decided to go to Legend Larry’s because the cheese shop I’d wanted to go to at the time was closed before I’d made my way to it. Their loss I guess. So, Legend Larry’s feels like a local, townie bar far enough away from downtown that the locals can go there to enjoy it, but close enough to downtown that at least a few non-locals would straggle in there. Legendary for that, at least, sure. The door is absolutely un-decorated, double metal doors with no windows, signage and you would not otherwise think this to be the entrace to anywhere other than the kitchen, very unwelcoming feel. Then you go inside and feel like you should have been there yesterday, or that you already were, or have been all along. Something like that, legendary for sure, yeah. I don’t think I’ve gotten that kind of feeling from anywhere else that’s a wing bar. So then, there’s nobody to tell you to take a seat – you just gotta remember that you should take yours! So you do, only to sit down and find there to be those order menus and pens at each table for folks to select what they would like and drop it off at the bar which you’re supposed to figure out for yourself, also. This whole process was actually the neatest part of the whole visit. So I filled it out, same as you would with one of those all you can eat sushi places – only with chicken wings and appetizers! They also had shrimp in place of chicken wings, I was there for the wings though. I grabbed the 12 medium wings and the cheese curds. This is a good place.

Anyways, I’m out of here at noon tomorrow and don’t have much planned that I feel like putting on here. Next week I’ll be headed over to Massachussetts. Check out various pictures below:

You ever been asked this question before? I get it all the time. I’ve said a lot of different answers too. Not because I have that many different answers, more that I can’t really answer that kind of question very fast and unless you’ve got yourself some context you’d think I’m just telling you different stories. That’s one neat thing so far I’ve figured out in Texas – you never really meet the same Texan twice. It does feel like I’ve lived here almost a decade even though I’ve only been coming and staying here for just a year. Anyways, that’s a different story full of stories.

One thing that brought me to Texas was the heat. I don’t much care for the humid weather I was dealing with in the southeast United States, and I don’t much care for the winter weather on the north part of the USA. That really narrowed it down to me. I had spent about two years in Oklahoma finishing college, and the climate there was about the favorite to date. So that’s one thing that brought me to Texas. The dry, hot heat, unrelenting. Back in Oklahoma when I was living there I was driving a 1970 Lincoln Continental (hereafter: hoopty). Anyways me and my hoopty could easily be found on the side of the highway cooling down, both myself and the car. The car had a brand new radiator and even that beast couldn’t keep itself cool enough when it came to bumper to bumper traffic on the highway in the midwest. It also didn’t have A/C. And the drivers window wouldn’t work so great. It was a good time. It was a hot time, too, but it was also a good time. I have a 2017 GMC Sierra 6.2L Denali now and the roads are much .. cooler .. to drive on, anyways.

Another thing that brought me to Texas was that I was looking to live in a large city. San Antonio is a city made up of smaller cities, and certainly checks this box off. The city is massive, and still incredibly affordable and has a lot to offer for being a city of this size. I lived about 40 minutes north of Manhattan as well but I’m not really looking to go back to New York. Taxes there are a bit too much for my tastes and I just don’t really want to live near another New Yorker at this time. I also really like that San Antonio is as close to Mexico as it is, as at one point I was seriously considering a long stay in South America and this spot is at least closer. I’ve been told by some folks here that San Antonio’s a lot like Mexico without all the problems – so it’s like Mexico would be then under different circumstances. This was told to me by a Mexican that moved here and lives nearby the same gym I go to. He even told me it looked a lot like it. Sure, outside of all the signs written in spanish and beautiful arched facades, I really only can take his word on this. It certainly looks different from other places I’ve lived at and I’ve certainly lived in quite a few cities. It’s a good look, this.

Something else that brought me to Texas was that I noticed a lot of folks were moving out this way. At one point I was watching a lot of different people play video games on a site called Twitch, and it seemed like just north of here in Austin there is some kind of serious development with regards to a lot of folks moving from California to there, and also New York to there too. So, I get a lot of the benefits of living in Austin without having to deal with the people from Austin, here in San Antonio. For one, an apartment is still quite affordable, comparably. I did look there in Austin, but the prices were a good 25% higher on average going from my memory. Also I don’t like tolls so much.

Texas also seems to have its own version of everything, too. Theres Whataburger to replace McDonalds, and HEB to replace Walmart and Wegmans. Texas editions of vehicles .. you get my point. If you don’t, then that’s fine go ahead and skip the paragraph, or not. But, are you starting to see the picture yet?

I’m living in a city of cities, so I can take a vacation while I’m on vacation, in a state where I’ll never meet the same person twice, where there’s a state brand of everything! I came here for the variety! My whole life I’ve only known the East Coast, except for the two years in Tulsa I spent largely studying my ass off trying to get that 3.96 I graduated with, only for it all to have gone away quicker than I could have graduated. I actually left to go back to the East Coast less than an hour after they handed me my diploma, and I guess I just wasn’t done here is all.

I wanted to go back, actually I never really wanted to leave. Family had fallen on some tough financial times about half way through my education in Tulsa, so I spent the next decade helping out where I could – close by. They are very far away from that situation now, but that’s just what you do for folks who now live in their own home with a retirement that’s well planned for them and not having any outrageous struggles that they’d’ve been in before that.

So another thing that brought me to San Antonio instead of another city in Texas besides the lower rent was that I did have a friend here. Note the past tense, not all things work out for everyone. Really, the idea of moving to a Texas city was a lot in itself to me and the thought of being able to make new friends easier by knowing at least one person in the area before going there was initially something that I was thinking was a good thing. This is a poor mindset for moving to a place though! I didn’t really know that moving here – I’ve met more folks just by looking for a job.

Speaking of jobs, one thing that also brought me here was that there seems to be a large culture centered around wrestling. I’ve always had an inclination to the sport, only it just never really was the only thing I was doing. Mostly this was because I was in the 300 – 340 lb range for over the last ten years. I didn’t even watch the stuff. Even more interesting about being so close to the border here is that you get a lot of crossover between American wrestlers and Mexican luchas and the whole thing is pretty cool. I even managed to join a gym here for a few months, feeling the risk was reasonable after having lost over 80 lbs in 2022. Training was going pretty good. I learned a lot from a few good people there. Then I got kicked out of there, no specific reason given to me, just kicked out, no contact. Guess I’ll never know, and that’s fine. There are other places out there but at this time the place I was training at moved to the other place I was considering training at. For the time being, I just go to the regular gym and work for money. Some day I might go back and train but for now I’m just fine not having to deal with that. One thing I did learn – a fella could pick this stuff up in his fifties if he wanted to.

Another thing that brought me to Texas is the expanding manufacturing industry here, specifically automobile and semiconductor manufacturing. Usually I just tell folks that computer chips brought me here, for lots of reasons. Mostly it’s the facial expressions, the look on the woman’s face at Scarlet’s by the airport here was priceless when I told her “computer chips brought me here”, I guess people have a lot to think about this. I mean sure, about these days computer chips bring people about everywhere so it doesn’t seem at first glance a great reason to move to San Antonio. Apparently, there’s about ten or so manufacturing plants for Samsung about to spring up in ten years just north of Austin. Or maybe it was a ten billion dollar plant. I don’t know, ten something. Point is that the kind of work I’m used to – manufacturing – is expanding and growing in the area. Electric cars are also being manufactured here. Tesla is making the Cybertruck here in their Gigafactory in Texas. It’s a very beautiful and stunning plant, by the way, I highly recommend the plant tour they give during mass interviews if they’re still doing those.

One other thing that brought me to Texas what that I always heard they drive fast here. I can certainly confirm that not only do they drive fast – there are generally more lanes in the highways and thruways than there are stupid drivers nearby. That was one thing that caused me lots of issues in North Carolina. Folks drive around like the outside of their car is made of bubble wrap and they can’t pop a single bubble. It’s nuts and it drove me nuts. Every single turn was made at less than 5 miles per hour. Every single time you tried to turn into oncoming traffic the cars had spaced themselves so critically apart from each other that it was too close to jump in line without potentially cutting the person off, but just at the point where they were not too far apart to then potentially cut the next driver off – it was maddening. It was just some of the slowest, poor driving I’ve ever seen. Like they all drive around living in a dreamlike trance state. I’ve never been one to be subject to road rage, instead choosing to quietly dwell on the poor driving skills of the folks around me in that state. Not saying I’m much better but if you haven’t experienced North Carolina driving I’d recommend it as much as i’d recommend a rusty saw removing your head from your neck. Highway driving was awful too, the entire state merged a mile or two back rather than zipper merging, and when they weren’t doing that they were consistently 15 mph below the speed limit on the highway in predominantly the left lane and there certainly were not enough lanes in the roads there. They also had a strange inclination to go the exact speed limit at all times for no apparent reason. Then they would get mad when they got passed on state highways and speed up and tailgate the fuck out of you after the passing zone. I just don’t get it! I’ve driven in a looooot of states and North Carolina is worse than Massachussetts. I think Mass. is a little more dangerous driving sure, what with folks dead-stopping to let someone into the road in a 45 mph zone, but damn if North Carolina didn’t have them beat everywhere else. So anyways, it’s just not like that here in San Antonio. Sure there’s normal congestion traffic occasionally, and the paint really doesn’t stay on the roads, but the flow of trafic is pretty good and comfortable here.

Sure I guess I could also say things like “the people are nice”, but I never liked hearing this myself. Let me rephrase that – it’s a good thing to hear! But, in general I think it’s a poor way to reinforce ones decision when used in conversation. We live in a high trust society, about every single person you’re going to meet is going to come off as nice, in general. Also as a general rule, if you’re looking for nice people, you’re probably going to find nice people. There’s a pretty good tendency to find what you’re looking for – wherever you happen to be! Anyways, that’s a bit of a separate story too. So, another good reason to pick the middle of Texas to live in is that it’s really only 2-4 hours to get anywhere you want to go in this state. The gulf is 2 hours away, Houston is 4 hours away, Mexico is 2 hours away, Austin is 45 minutes away. While 4 hours is kind of stretching it for a day trip – the point is that it’s a good location to make unplanned day trips and while most things are a 2 hour away flight, it’s substantially easier to make a 2-4 hour unplanned drive than it is to make any flight any time here in the US.

Another reason toward the timing to get over to Texas was that after over two years of insanity and restrictions I was just done. Done dealing with pharmaceuticals, done working, done doing just about anything. The main reason I left the first place I was working at was because they mandated their workers to be injected with what had been re-classified that year as a vaccine, despite it very much being a therapeutic level weak genetic modification. Had I stayed, and a lot of people did, I would have either gotten fired or alternatively I would have been roped into fucking absolute insanity. Not that I have a problem with the drug delivery system itself, but I’d rather see it get put to use in humans for useful things other than what it was introduced for. Like weight loss. Or Alzheimers prevention. Even just calling it what it actually is would be reasonable to me. Tons of other shit besides what it was. So, I let them know that as soon as they remove that requirement from their job postings then I might consider working there again. In the intervening two years, the requirement’s been removed, despite being told at the time it never would be. Anyways, I then went to a place that only required people be tested. But that didn’t necessarily fix anything. Restrictions were still in place and I was just hopping into someone else’s insanity. So it was great to me when I first started visiting here and everywhere was like downtown Raleigh, and nobody seemed to be talking openly about the bullshit that drove me the hell out of there.

This isn’t even a complete list, so far. It’s just the details of what I remembered in an off day here in Texas. A couple of other reasons I can’t even remember right now are something for business, and something for land, and something for the politics, but I don’t even remember those details right now. There were a shit ton of things that weren’t getting sorted through by sitting at a desk in North Carolina, I sure figured that out. I’ve got a good three years of logs going back to about September 2020 where I was writing something about moving to Texas though, so I was definitely planning this for a while. Probably even longer, I started logging things around early 2019 or late 2018 but I don’t feel like digging those archives out and checking out what I was planning there. Such is how things go though!

I wanted to keep a reminder to me somewhere about the best tasting beans I have had to date. Not saying it’s the tastiest recipe for beans ever made, just for me specifically, top five easily beans I’ve ever had. This includes beans served at the Tex-Mex places I’ve gone to here in Texas so that’s saying something at least. I have not really kept good track of the amount of places I’ve had beans at, overall either. If I had to guess it’s about a dozen or two places over the years. So anyways, being in the top 5, the recipe lets me have these things easily at home. The recipe is:

1.5 Lb Bacon

1.0 Lb Kidney Beans

0.5 Lb Black Beans

1-2 Tbsp Harissa or Berbere

3 Chicken Breast

I’m pretty sure the recipe can do without the chicken breast, but I was mostly looking for a way to make both beans and chicken breast taste good for me. I did! So, all I did was take the dried bags of beans, add it in a slow cooker, then lay the slab of bacon on top and stuff the chicken in on the sides. Then I poured in about a cup of water or so. Then I covered the meat with the Harissa seasoning (I used it from a brand called Spicewalla). After that I just let it cook for a few hours on high, then more on low, then I got tired of the strong smell of the stuff cooking while i was trying to sleep so I took it out and popped it in the fridge overnight.

Next morning I took it back out and set the cooker back on high, then moved it back and forth between medium and warm through the day. I stored the stuff in the fridge for the 2nd night too, because the great smell disturbed me when I was trying to sleep. So the third day, I noticed it didnt really smell any more. I also saw that the water was gone and there was basically just liquid bacon fat left.

So I let it cook all day on low, and then overnight on warm, and then the fourth day I put it back up to medium. It was starting to show that it was going to burn from basically frying in bacon grease at this point, the water was gone a while ago and the remaining fat was going into the beans.

By the end of the 4th day there was no liquid left, and the beans were amazing. The bacon and chicken had completely broken down at this point too, the entire meal was incredible to me. I paired it with some broccoli and chicken legs. I can say I’ll be cooking this again as soon as I can, the meal continued to get better day by day, I had been taking a cup or two away per day to eat at.

A modification here could be that if you wanted to cook the beans without adding much water, you could just take away the chicken breast and then cook down the bacon for a bit until the liquid part separates and then add the beans to that! I also think I might have used harissa seasoning instead of berbere, but either one makes a good pot of beans. One thing that is important is to make sure the bacon is not spiced itself! This will change the flavor quite a bit. Cured or uncured bacon is just fine, I had a little more luck getting the fat to break down completely with cured bacon.

In the end it kind of looks like this:

In a few weeks I’m going to start traveling pretty often. First on my list is Green Bay, Wisconsin. The location was picked for me quite randomly and I’ve made an educated guess or two. I have spent a lot of time traveling over the last year since leaving my last place of work in North Carolina. Initially I did quite a bit of flying in and out of San Antonio & Austin, TX areas due to there being a large airport in both those cities. This would have started in about June or July and ended when I finally decided to move here in August 2022.

Since then I have made a road trip out to Denver, Colorado for about a week. While there I had stayed at an airbnb location. On the way there I stopped in Missouri to see some family that I’d been planning on seeing for about a decade. After returning from Colorado I stayed here in Texas for a few weeks. There was a number of places I stopped at along the way, all logged elsewhere around that time, offline. While staying in Texas, I had spent a good three weeks in early October checking out San Antonio a bit more in depth. It’s essentially a city that’s made up of quite a few other cities, and I often describe it as much when talking to folks here.

At this time San Antonio is celebrating in what is called Fiesta San Antonio. I don’t much know where the tradition came from, this is quite a new experience to me. Essentially folks just throw parades, events, carnivals, fair’s all across the different cities in San Antonio and they have this thing where the people that go to it look for and wear Fiesta Badges reminiscent of something they took part in, or for performing some task, or sometimes just from having traded or paid for one – whatever the reason folks just cover themselves in these things as a way to hype up the festival. One of the more lively events here at this time was a parade on the riverwalk. I didn’t get a chance to see the parade directly this year but did spend some time on the riverwalk last week and found there to be quite a number of folded up plastic chairs for onlookers to see the parade floats that were being stored along the riverwalk under a building i had passed by at one point.

Anyways, my other part of traveling last year was going and traveling to New York through driving there in my truck. The sights were alright and I didn’t hit any snow. I do enjoy the driving so it was nice. I had also logged the bulk of this traveling offline and am only gonna summarize it here this time. So in New York I re-visited the southern Hudson Valley area, where I grew up, and visited a few estranged friends and stayed with family. It was a wonderful time.

After visitng New York on this long car trip I drove south to North Carolina, to re-visit the place I had spent the previous 6 years at. I stayed with family during this time and celebrated christmas here as I stayed for quite a few weeks this time. Since about January I have mostly just vacationing locally – a thing you can do when you live in a city of cities so you can travel while you’re traveling! I’ve also been logging most of this offline since then, too! I meant for this blog to be a place for me to write out the places I get to check out when I’m traveling away from San Antonio, at least at this time and so I would expect that come another week and a half that I’ve got some things to say about the Green Bay area!

So I’ve decided that the best way for me to learn the city is by going to random gyms inside of it. Learn the city means a lot of different things to different people. For me, I’m quite literally just talking about the roads. Simple. So yesterday I went to two different gyms: A Planet Fitness at 4400 Fredericksburg Rd and a Gold’s Gym at 255 E. Basse Rd Ste 310.

I first got to the Planet Fitness, walked in, got to the lockers and went to change and realized that I had forgotten my shorts and shirt. I’d taken the weekend to rest and for some reason had assumed that I had put these back in the bag earlier in the weekend. Anyways I drove back home, got two sets and put one as a backup in the truck. Then I drove back and worked out for 2 hours. 1 hour on the bike, and 1 hour on the treadmill. Both machines were in good condition and not bad. I then went and got a tan. I didn’t realize the tanner was on a timer, so I came out and accused the machine of being broken to the woman at the front desk. She told me they were on a 4 minute timer (not 3 or 5!) and so I said, “Okay thanks, I’ll head back now” and did.

After the tan I came back out and the 3 folks at the front desk were engaged with an angry old white dude complaining about not getting his moneys worth for something surely too much to ask for to begin with. I got the attention of one of the three visibly frustrated employees and asked for a hydromassage, during this short conversation the dude seemed to have calmed down and left. After the massage I went back, changed and then left. Overall not a bad gym, none of the folks there seemed overly creepy. The new years crowd is still rolling through. The parking lot was a small shopping center, not the greatest neighborhood but the facade of the building itself looked okay. I recall seeing an empty beer bottle standing up on what would appear to be the drivers side of an empty parking lot on my way out. No complaints here. The next stop was Gold’s Gym.

The whole place is located in a wonderful part of town, I think it’s called The Quarry. If not, it should be as a lot of places there indicated “so and so” at The Quarry. The upscale stores in the area along with the nicer restaurants indicated that the area was designed for a more luxurious living pace. The gym itself was next to a cinema inside a parking lot that rivaled the size of a mall parking lot. There were even a few parking lot security guards roaming around on bikes and what not. I couldn’t say it was the highest of the high end, like I didn’t see a Gucci store there, but definitely for the more bougie folks. Anyways I walk in theres a woman at the front desk, who tells me to have a good workout, so I say “thanks” while I scan the card and walk over to the locker room.

The one thing I can say about the entire gym is that there appeared to be very little concern overall for cleanliness, but it seemed to go with this specific gym. Like one could imagine the kinds of people that frequent it are the kinds of folks that don’t generally concern themselves with the messes they make, often as if they don’t make a mess at all. While I’m okay with that, it’s more of an observation than a stance and anyways the thing I noticed immediately was that there was only a sauna in the mens room. I was a little aggrivated by this because the place was advertised as having a steam room and steam rooms are my much preferred choice when dealing with these things. Anyways, I went and changed, noticed the floor was quite filthy, wet in a few spots. There was a guy that was frustrated a few lockers down from me, I overheard him muttering “god-damn i cant believe it” or something as he was fumbling with his drink bottle. So, I put my bag on the bench and he apologizes for taking up so much space, because he was also taking up the little alcove off to the side as well I guess. I said it was no problem I’d just take up the other half the bench, there being only two of us present at the time there and I needed a place to put my bag to ruffle through the contents and get my stuff out. So I changed, checked out the showers which were huge and nicely tiled, then went to the 2nd floor where all the working out is to be done apparently.

Up there there were free weights on one side and machines on the other. I went to the side with the machines, and sat on the recumbent bike and exercised for an hour. During this hour there was a dude on the bike in front of me who was one of the new years crew .. these folks stand out readily because they try a little harder than most folks and take more pictures. Anyways it was entertaining to watch him go while I sat there mostly just listening to music. He was pushing 140 rpm at times on that bike, for reference I burn more calories at about 40-45 rpm on a recumbent bike with a little more resistance in an hour, to the tune of 20% more per hour. Anyways, he wasn’t overweight, but had a pair of man tits that he covered up with a loose fitting jacket and it was really funny to watch his entire upper body flop around as he exercised as hard as he could on the bike, man-tits sloshing to and fro at the 100 rpm right along with him. Unfortunately it was one of those sights that was hard to avoid as the bike I was on was directly behind him and to the side.

Outside of the fella, there was some stretching mats off to my right a few folks would come to, and the bike also had a great view of the parking lot with a partially visible San Antonio skyline in the distance and it was nice to see this. I finished with the bike, and got some water, and then went to a treadmill, on the way there I got checked out by a pretty good looking pale brunette shortish irish chick on a treadmill further down. For reference, I’m a 6 foot flat, 255 pound blonde Western & Eastern European mix with a muscular build and heavily built legs and a decent tan, also adorable, and I can’t say I can blame her as folks doing aerobics seem to have an inclination for checking out people a bit more often. Anyways I got on the treadmill for about half an hour and was done exercising for the day .. totaling about 2000 calories according to the machines this day. So I got some more water and then when back to the locker rooms. I took a shower and then went into the sauna, which was my first mistake of the day apparently.

So I get in there and immediately I notice it’s just an electric heater dressed up with rock adornments that probably weren’t actually rocks at all. The rooms wood, so at least they got that right. There was not nearly enough space to sit down, only seating on half the rectangular room. Theres a wall with no seats, a dudes there just exercising and panting heavily and seemingly inappropriately in the corner with no seats. In the other corner a dudes just chilling in full clothes including shoes, they both were wearing shoes. The room wasn’t nearly hot enough to be considered a sauna and the floor was filthy. So I walk in in a bathing suit and covered in water and just sit down. In the fifteen minutes I spent in there, 4 or 5 other dudes walked in, all in fucking full clothing, nobody even took a shower. There was only one other dude that broke a sweat besides me in there during this time and it was the dude that was doing pushups who was the only one to leave during that time.

Anyways we all cram ourselves in there like sardines, strangely so because the room was certainly large enough to hold more than double the 7 of us in there or so, everyone wearing full ass clothing and not sweating besides me. The sauna is largely not just about going into the sauna, for reference. Sure the hot air is comforting, but the whole experience of the sauna is that you are to open up your sweat glands with hot water before going into it, this allows you to sweat for the duration in which you are inside of it, you do this with hot water from a shower or the like. Then you sit there for no less than ten minutes, sweating your ass off, then you exit and take a cold ass shower to immediately close your sweat glands. I did this. Everyone else during this short moment just wandered in wearing full ass clothing like off the street and I guess it’s, for me, about the most bizarre sauna experience I’ve ever had. Like they wanted to experience what a sauna would be, rather than go into the sauna.

Anyways, I got a shower on my way out of there and went to my car in the parking lot and left. I probably won’t be returning to this gym, mostly because it’s needing a steam room. The lower end recumbent bike I was on was in good condition, at least, and the medium end treadmill was in decent condition. If I do go back, it will be to check out the very nice area as it seems to be a place where one could come across some quality people rather easily.