Sunday after breakfast I elected to do a little sightseeing just the two of us.  It’d been a whole lot of family and I needed a break.  We went down to the river on the Illinois side and I can report that there are houses in East Dubuque that are actually single wides that have been raised on sticks so they don’t flood.  Classy!  Here’s the view:

We headed over to the Little Maquoketa burial mounds and sadly, I can report that it’s way too overgrown to see anything.  It was a nice walk and I’m not complaining but here’s Mr. Poe at the river overlook.  WTF??:

We headed back to the hotel and hung out with Athena.  Then we headed over to the old Star Brewery for dinner at a restaurant uncreatively named ‘Star‘ which was surprisingly very good.  They had a couple of vegan or near vegan things on the menu and I was pretty pleased.  This is Sam and I after:

The whole dinner party.  That’s Bart and Ellen on the left with Sam.  Ellen is Mom’s coolest friend.

Hanna in front of the brewery:

Eugene was trying to figure out how to infiltrate this wee little riverboat.  Luckily we left before he came up with workable ideas:

We headed back to the hotel and hung out a little before going to bed.  Long ass day…

Sunday I got up early and went for a walk before work.  We’re gonna get some weather today and it was nice to get some exercise before that started.  I drove over to my old neighborhood and walked around there.  It’s lovely:

This is a former archbishop’s residence:

Pretty Wartburg Seminary:

This is the Dubuque Country Club.  It’s got a beautiful golf course:

I got back in the car and went to get Mr. Poe a Starbuck.  It’s at a grocery store and I thought that I’d pick up a couple more bottles of wine while I was there.  In the back of my mind, I was prepared for not being able to buy alcohol on Sunday until noon but the checkout lady apologetically told me that she couldn’t sell it til 8AM.  Which seems very early and why on earth would you bother to even have a blue law if it’s so early.  Thankfully, I wasn’t planning on drinking it just then.

Friday night we headed over to East Dubuque to have dinner at Timmerman’s Supper Club.  It’s up in the bluffs with a fantastic view of the Mississippi river.  It was my grandmother’s favorite restaurant and it really doesn’t seem to have changed in many, many years.  It’s pretty fancy by Dubuque standards and it seemed very expensive.  Mr. Poe really liked the prime rib he got which came in this Flintsones sized portion.  Vegan dinner was pasta with marinara sauce and it was passable.  Check out the view around sunset:

Mr. Poe with Youngran and the kids:

The biggest outrage of the evening was the kids the meals.  This is straight up kraft macaroni and cheese and they charged $8.50 for it.  I know that that kind of mac and cheese that kids are gonna eat, but the pricing on that seemed gratuitous:

After dinner we went back to the hotel and hung out a little and then went to bed.  Long ass day.

We got cleaned up and then met the family for breakfast.  Here’s Sam, our cousin John and.  You can definitely see the family resemblance:

I’ve decided to document Mr. Poe’s breakfast.  Here’s the eggs benedict he consumed this morning.  He’s loving the midwest portion size:

After breakfast we went walking downtown.  So many fabulous buildings:

We headed back to the hotel and headed off to Galena, Illinois.  First stop was the Ulysses S. Grant house.  They sure love him in Galena!  They have a bit of a different view of him in the southern states.  Here’s Mr. Poe in front of his slightly unfortunate looking wife Julia:

I took a bunch of pics of Galena which is super pretty and a bit older than Dubuque.  It’s warmer there than Dubuque because of the lack of the Mississippi River but there’s still a lot to like:

Mr. Poe, Aunt Sheila and Athena:

Mr. Grant:

This is the foot bridge over the Galena River:

Hello gorgeous:

My grandmother had her wedding reception here.  Nothing changes in Galena:

This building is missing the pointy roof over the tower.  Which is a shame:

The Galena River:

We lasted until about 2:30 and then we headed back to the hotel to try to escape the heat.  We’ve got a fun night planned.

I managed to get my ass out of bed early and went for a nice walk on Saturday morning.   The weather was cool and sunny and perfect.  I started off downtown.  This is the Five Flags Theater which is in a gloriously baroque second empire style with a fantastic Mansard roof:

I love this building despite the dismal Z-Brick on the first level:

Love the sign:

This is the famous Dubuque Shot Tower.  They dropped molten lead through a grate that would form droplets on it’s way down and be spherical and uniform by the time it his a pan of water at the bottom.  They were then used in the Civil War by, for example, Daddy’s family to fight, for example, Mom’s family.  You can read more about it here:

I even like the railroad bridge:

This brewery building is super fantastic:

Dubuque now has a riverwalk and a River Center.  The center is very nice:

I don’t get all of the art on the riverwalk.  I think this is supposed to be a scale:

This sculpture on the other hand is pretty awesome.  It’s by an Iowa artist named Dean Kugler and it’s entitled ‘Powerless’.  I think it’s very voluptuous and incredibly well done.  It’s also currently for sale and can be yours for $6,000.  Interested shoppers can click here:

The beautiful Mississippi:

Me:

I headed back downtown and got some more pics.  This is the amazing clock tower:

This building is very understated and super fantastic:

So gorgeous:

This is the Grand Opera House.  More of that gorgeous Romanesque Revival architecture found all over Dubuque.  Loves it:

This smacks of William Morris to me:

The fantastically frothy Dubuque County Courthouse.  Loves it:

I like the building and the builder’s name is a bit of a mouthful:

I headed back to the hotel and went and got Mr. Poe some coffee and then we got cleaned up and ready for breakfast.

Friday after I managed to rouse Mr. Poe following his enormous breakfast we headed over to see my Mom’s friend Mrs. Moldt.  Here they are hanging out:

Youngran and Hanna:

After, we headed over to Dubuque’s Botanical Garden which we didn’t have high hopes for but turned out to be fantastic.  They had this huge Japanese themed section and it was gorgeous:

There’s a yellow rose named ‘Julia Child’!  Bon Appetit!

Mom, Sam and Youngran and the kids headed back to the hotel and I drove Mr. Poe around a bit.  First stop was the Mount Carmel Convent, headquarters of the BVM nuns.  We walked around the cemetery and I didn’t realize it, but all the nuns there were Sister Mary something or other.  Because they’re BVM nuns and that’s their naming convention.  I was all “We’re all Sister Mary here girl!!!”  and Mr Poe was all “We’re in a cemetery shut the hell up.  The convent buildings are glorious.  Like so many structures in Dubuque, it’s late 19th century in a handsome, sturdy Romanesque revival architecture that works very well here.  Like:

The view of the river from the convent grounds:

Then we headed over to the Julien Dubuque monument.  It’s nice, but there’s more fantastic river views from there:

Me:

From there we headed over to St. Columbkille’s.  That’s the celtic spelling for St. Columba the saint who’s credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland.  I was an altar boy here back in the day.  Try and picture that!  The church is very handsome and pretty inside.  Smaller than I remember but then everything is:

We drove around.  This fabulous house is on the bluff overlooking the river:

The view:

This is the house I grew up in.  It’s been extended a couple of times and I have mixed feelings about the additions but it’s still good looking.  The garden my Mom planted is pretty much still there:

We headed back to the hotel and got cleaned up and then headed to a picnic at lovely Eagle Point Park.  It was a WPA project and many of the structures have a Frank Lloyd Wright feel and were designed by Alfred Caldwell.  You can read more about it here:

The Collins family.  Hum the theme from ‘Soap’ while looking this:

These are the beautiful pavilions in Eagle Point Park.  Love them:

Mr. Poe and I:

We got back to the hotel pretty late and then we hung out with the family and then we went to bed.  It was a very long ass day.

I woke up very early on Friday morning and elected to go for a walk rather than bother Mr. Poe.  The morning was cool and gorgeous.  Dubuque is a beautiful city.  They’ve done a lot of work restoring the downtown since we moved away almost 30 years ago, but what stuck me most was how little seemed to have changed.  The restaurants we went to when I was little were still open and all with their original names.  The neighborhoods looked almost identical to the way I remember them.  Almost liked the city was trapped in amber.  A little unsettling.  There’s lots to love downtown in Dubuque and I took a bunch of pics:

There’s a funicular!

This was my best friend Chris’s house.  It has since been painted blue.  Neither of us are loving that color:

This is part of Loras College:

The Ryan houses:

Me:

How cool is this place??  I love love love Victorian architecture:

The clock tower:

Like the building, love the name of the business that’s in it:

I ran into Sam as I headed back to the hotel and we headed of to Starbuck to go get Mr. Poe some coffee and then I dropped him off so he could jog back to the hotel.  I headed back to the room and we got cleaned up and then we met Sam, Youngran, the kids and my Mom for breakfast where Mr. Poe consumed something called the “Main Street Platter” which consisted of “Four buttermilk biscuits smothered in sausage gravy, crispy hash browns, topped with two eggs cooked any style and then drizzled with Caroline’s cheddar cheese sauce”.  The waitress mentioned that she’d never seen anybody finish one.  Here he is in a stupor after finishing it.

I didn’t let him rest for long.  We had plans to go visit friend with my Mom and his presence was required.

Thursday we got up at 3:30 for our flight to Milwaukee.  We were going to a family reunion in Dubuque, Iowa, and thanks to the complexities of airline travel, flying into Milwaukee was hundreds of dollars cheaper than flying into Chicago and half what flying into Dubuque cost.  It was even a lot cheaper than flying into Minneapolis and we even had to change planes in Minneapolis to get to Milwaukee.  It was all fine with me because Wisconsin is super pretty and I didn’t mind driving so we flew into Milwaukee so we got up at 3:30 to catch out flight.  Our cab, of course, went to the wrong address and I was reduced to running down the street like an idiot to catch him before he drove off.  We made it to the airport in plenty of time and got our luggage dropped of very quickly.  People really seem to be getting used to online check in at SFO and the luggage drop off line moved incredibly fast.  Here’s a view of SFO terminal #1 which is pretty tired looking and needing a freshnin’ but really who doesn’t these days??:

They’ve redone security at Terminal 1 and now Delta and Frontier have a separate security line from everybody else.  That’s good news for Delta and Frontier passengers because they no longer have to share a security line with Hawaiian because Hawaiian tends to get big groups of passengers that arrive all at once and I’ve been stuck behind a huge group of Hawaii bound people more than once.  We made it through security pretty quickly.  They have one of the new security machines there that picked up the metal in my knee which I thought was pretty neat because that’s never caused notice before.  This is the view of the airside terminal which isn’t bad but it isn’t as nice as Terminal 3 or especially swanky Terminal 2:

We were flying MD90′s all day which I was excited about because I hardly ever get to fly them and I think the last time I was on one was in 2006 when I flew Delta from Savannah to Atlanta.  Our ride:

Here’s a pic of the cabin:

The flight was about what you would expect.  I love 2X3 seating if you’re in the 2 section and we were.  The flight attendants were pretty much what you’d expect except one of them was young, hot, and asianlicious.  I decided against being a chester and didn’t get pics of him.  Here are some pics from the takeoff:

A whole bunch of Virgin America parked at remote stands:

Finally we got above the gloomy fog which had the bay pretty much socked in.  I could see Mount Tam peeking out from under it:

We leveled off and headed east:

Pyramid Lake:

About an hour into the flight there was announcement that the toilets weren’t flushing and could we avoid using them.  Not convenient, but diverting and rebooking would have been a whole lot worse so I wasn’t gonna complain.  Before too long the land got greener and greener and we made our way into Minneapolis:

We flew by Minneapolis airport and then turned around for the approach:

We didn’t have a long layover but the good news was that the gate for the flight to Milwaukee was next to the one we had come in on.  I had some lunch and then we waited to board:

Our ride:

The doors shut and we headed for Milwaukee:

Beautiful Minneapolis:

The flight to Milwaukee was too short for a drink service and before long we were in the airport.  I’ve seen better terminals but I’ve seen worse:

This is how you know you’re in Wisconsin:

The main terminal was a little better:

The rental cars were very close to the baggage claim and we were in the car and out of the airport very quickly.   The airport is really easy to get around, but once we got out of the airport there was a lot of construction and it was very confusing.  Mr. Poe was not amused so I drove the rest of the trip and so I didn’t get any pics.  Southern Wisconsin is very beautiful and traffic was light and we made it to Dubuque in a little over three hours.  We headed straight to my cousins house to meet up with everybody.  Mr. Poe discovered that he enjoys midwestern cooking as much as he enjoys most other cooking and discovered a sandwich called “Turkey and Dressing” and a corn chowder laced with summer sausage both of which he was very fond of.   My brother Sam and I didn’t get much to eat because I’m vegan and Sam’s almost vegan so we tried to find some more food after we dropped our mom off at the hotel but Dubuque pretty much shuts down at 9 so we were out of luck.  Ah well, I’m sure I could manage to miss a meal.  We’re staying at the Hotel Julien which is very, very nice (Aveda products!) and our room is very comfortable.  It’s gonna be a fun weekend!

Wednesday I came into work Market to Laguna to Eddy to Larkin to Post to Kearny to Clay to Sansome.  Over lunch I look the bus to Kaiser to pick up some prescriptions and then walked home.  I started off in Japantown Center where I saw this super fantastic castle I hadn’t seen before.  Nifty:

I came out of the main entrance and got a few pics of Peace Plaza:

I’m not sure when they repainted the Hotel Kabuki but I’m not loving the orange long time:

I headed over to the Cathedral.  Which I love.  It’s just so modern and wonderful:

And it’s super gorgeous inside:

I love the feeling of volume and thrust that the structure conveys:

Me:

The view from the north porch of the Cathedral:

I headed over to St. Mark’s which is kind of hidden because it’s in a dead end alley that was created when the northbound direction of Geary was rerouted to go up O’Farrell.  It’s very easy to miss which is a shame because it’s so pretty and it predates the earthquake:

I headed down O’Farrell to Van Ness and got a pic of the pretty former Cadillac Dealership which is now a movie theater and condos.  It’s richly detailed and easy on the eyes:

This is the side of the O’Farrell theater which is one of San Francisco’s more notorious strip clubs.  Why they have whales painted on the side of the building I don’t know but it’s a pretty mural and I’m not gonna complain:

I walked down to Union Square on O’Farrell.  This is the view from O’Farrell and Grant:

I headed over to Kearny and picked up falafel at Ayola on my way back to the office.  It’s crazy how good their food is.  A little messy to eat but then isn’t everything delicious??

After work I headed off 2nd to Howard to 6th to Brannon and stopped at REI.  I was hoping to defer all of it to the fall but my commuter bike is behaving strangely in a way that makes me think something important on the drivetrain is coming looses and I didn’t want to have to deal with that drama so I took it in.  They’ve revamped their tune up menu and it seems a little more expensive but for $200 they’ll do everything you practically imaging to your bike including an ultrasonic cleaning of the drive train.  They didn’t have the machine that did that back in 2009 when they rebuilt that bike and I’m pretty sure that some of the grime on it is older than people who are old enough to drink.  From there I walked home through the Mission for dinner.  We finished packing and went to bed early.  We’ve got an early flight in the morning.  We’re going to a family reunion in Iowa.  Stay tuned!

Tuesday I came into work Market to Laguna to McAllister to Polk to O’Farrell to Grant.  I stopped at Sacramento for a pretty pic of Chinatown:

I continued to Clay.  This is the Transamerica Pyramid from Clay and Kearny:

And this is the view from Montgomery:

I continued on Clay to Sansome and into work.  I headed home for lunch and witnessed this fuckery on my way back to the office.  I know the pic kind of sucks, but if you look at it you can see that dude is dragging a television and a microwave on the ground by a rope.  It was accompanied by a lot of scraping because he didn’t have them on wheels.  Drugs are bad!:

After work I headed off 2nd to Townsend to Kansas to 17th to Potrero.  I stopped for some pics of the gigantic new San Francisco General building that dwarfs everything else on the sit.  It’s enormous:

One of the original buildings:

I continued on Potrero to 25th to Bryant to Precita to Mission to 29th to San Jose to Monterey to Ridgewood to Flood to Hazelwood to Greenwood to Plymouth to Wildwood to Faxon to De Montefort to Ashton to Head to Holloway to Borica to Entrada where I stopped for a pic of the sun dial which is the only remaining piece of the old Ingleside Racetrack:

I headed to Borica to Urbano to Moncada to Cerritos to Winston to Ocean to Clearfield into 34th to Yorba to Crestlake to Wawona to 30th to Vicente to 17th to Taravel to Merced to Hernandez to Laguna Honda to Portola to Corbett to Ord and home for dinner.  Mr. Poe made me stir fried udon noodles which were awfully good.  After dinner I watched the Absolutely Fabulous Olympic special and they really need to stop making those.  Each one seems to be less funny and this one wasn’t really funny at all except for a few incontinence jokes.  No likey!

Bike Mileage:

Today 27.2 Week to date 43.0 Month to date 357.2 Year to date 5,252.6 To Goal 2,747.4 Over (Under) plan 715.6 YTD Mileage vs Last Year 1,062.1 Rolling Year 6,490.5 Since Inception 10/1/07 39,179.5