Nine days in the Northwoods

BobbyG just got back from Marquette, Michigan. The Palms had originally set Feb 4th as a dark night for Santa Fe, so I decided to take some time to go see my sister while the band was off (duh, then they changed the schedule). So, that's why you haven't heard from me.

Some of you may recall that Carole tragically lost her husband of 36 years four months ago. The family is doing well, better than might be expected, but I needed to go hang in support and check up on things while I have the time. I'll post an update about my trip shortly. Took some pretty cool pics. Had a great visit. I love my sister and her kids.

I will see y'all tomorrow night. Good to be home.

- Bobby
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MONDAY MORNING UPDATE

Brrrr-r-r-rrr...

Actually, most of the time I was there it was not very cold, and didn't snow all that much during the week.

An interesting and fun week. I flew outa Vegas early Friday morning Feb 2nd, into bad weather. My routing was Vegas to Salt Lake to Detroit to Green Bay, then driving up to Marquette. Winter storm warnings were up for both Salt Lake City and Detroit. Wonderful. We landed in snow at SLC. No problem. Then, we rolled out about an hour late headed for Detroit. Captain comes on: 'Ladies and gentlemen, we are next in line for departure. Flight attendants, prepare the cabin and cross-check...' and then moments later pulls off to the side on the taxiway, just shy of take-off. We sit for about 15 minutes, captain comes back on: 'Folks, sorry for the delay. We just lost our main navigation system. We have a backup system, and we're re-programming it. Gonna be a few minutes...' OK, swell, at least it failed while on the ground, duh.

My connecting flight to Green Bay is starting to look dubious.

More time elapses. Captain, again, then: 'Ladies and gentlemen, we're still working on programming the backup system, but we're now gonna have to take a different route, and the tower is running the numbers as to whether we have sufficient required fuel on board...'

All this time I'd been sweatin' the weather! Jeesh. Whatever. OK, Gladd, just keep readin' your new Grisham novel.

More time elapses, then he comes back on: 'Folks, we're good to go, but if you look out of the left side of the aircraft, you can see than we're now about 13th for departure...' [Bleep.] BobbyG in Green Bay tonight? LOL! We finally took off, two hours behind schedule.

Actually, they did get me to Green Bay, about 4 hours late. Budget Car Rental is off-site (I didn't know that when I booked with them) and their courtesy van driver was not there by the time I got in, and we couldn't raise him on the phone. Luckily, I was able to do a walk-up at the Hertz counter.

So, I drove up to Marquette listening to some very cool traditional jazz stuff all the way on Wisconsin Public Radio (eventually switching to the same show in progress on 90.1 WNMU), getting to Carole's at 3 a.m.

Coulda been worse. That old school jazz stuff is such a glorious flash. Me and cuz Jojo were playin' Chuck Berry etc in our high school garage band in the early 60's, but we were always listenin' to the likes of Maynard, Jack MacDuff, Oscar Peterson, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Stitt, etc.

All of the Poggi boys -- David, Mark, and Nathan -- had returned home when they heard I was coming (only Sarah, and now, of course, April, are still living at home). That was particularly gratifying.

WINTER IN THE U.P.

I took the shot at the top of this blog post while walking Chewie (below) along the shore of Lake Superior during a snow storm early in the week. She romped like a little puppy.

Chewie is a 14 year old black lab mix, and is a great old dog. We really hit it off. She got all agitated when she sensed it was time for me to leave. She frequently would come hang at the bottom of the stairs waiting for me to come down (she doesn't do stairs at her arthritic age).

FAT TUESDAY

You couldn't make this stuff up. In the center of arctic-ice-bound downtown Marquette is a legit Cajun Creole eatery known as "Lagniappe." We went there Tuesday night for their Fat Tuesday bash. The place was jammed shoulder-to-shoulder. Food and atmosphere were great, and I likes me Mardi Gras stuff, recall. Maybe they could book me a gig there, LOL, cover my trip. I'd go back, heck, yeah.

Music was by "Zydecology," local cats who do a fer-real Zydeco book.

LOL! Their website is www.zydecology.net. The lead guitarist is Sven Gonstead, a local luthier who builds custom acoustic axes. Very nice cat. I'd wanted to see his stuff, but he was in the process of moving his shop, so, maybe next time.

Click his name to check out his site. Maybe I can get him to craft me a 12-string, hmmmm...

After Lagniappe, we cruised over to the Ramada to check out Michael Waite, another local player, a cat that was my nephew David's grade school pal (David is the oldest of the five Poggi kids, an engineer who now lives in the Minneapolis area).

David had a copy of Michael's new CD "Let It Go" at the house. Cool, eclectic stuff (cat plays trombone, too). Michael went to UNM and majored in voice. He came to Tony's funeral back in October and sang a beautiful "Amazing Grace" for us.

'Nuther very nice dude. I wish him the best with his music.

THURSDAY: MARQUETTE "MOUNTAIN"

I just had to nurse my downhill Jones, so on Thursday I went over the the Marquette Mountain Ski Resort.

Think "HO Gauge Scale Model Brian Head" about 8,000 feet lower in elevation. It was a nice little hill, actually. I even managed to not fall one time (came close once when I caught an edge while booking hard down a blue run). Nice to not have to gasp for oxygen as well. Stuck to mostly the blue trails (did just one black. Don't like to get goin' that fast on these tore-up knees).

"BRIDGE CABLES"

I took one of my 12-string axes with me (the smaller one), and re-strung it with a heavier gauge string set while I was there. I've been using the Darco 5400 set, but moved up the the heavier 5500's.

The 5500's will kick your butt. Gonna have to practice a lot every day to be able to pull off a long set on these puppies. But, they sound great, and, like I suspected would be the case, they tune up nicely and hold the tuning much more durably.

Those Darco strings are a C.F. Martin brand, BTW. So, I go to the Martin website, and there's that dad-gumbed unauthorized BobbyG impersonator again! This cat is everywhere, and I'm gettin no resids!

LOL! Elisa recently got all over my case to do an Eric Clapton tribute schtick, as did Jamie. I probably could cut it passably. We sure do look a lot alike any more, LOL.

FRIDAY: "WE WENT TO A FIGHT, AND A HOCKEY MATCH BROKE OUT"

LOL. Actually, there were no fights, though things got a bit testy at the end of unranked Nothern Michigan's 3-1 spanking of 6th ranked Michigan State. Below, Carole, April, and Sarah at the game.

Hockey (surprise, surprise) is The Big Deal in these parts. That was great fun. They played again Saturday night (we went to the symphony instead, to hear, among other selections, Hanson's Symphony No. 2, Opus 30, "Romantic"), and NMU chased MSU outa town with a follow-up 3-0 thumping. Wow.

ERRATA

Below is a shot I took from the parking lot just off the old ore dock that juts out into the bay adjacent downtown Marquette.

That thing is about 600 feet long and 50 feet high. Used to have a train trestle running out to it upon which the mine trains would would pull in and offload their stuff into the Great Lakes ore ships. BTW, note the light pole on the right aside the piled up snow. That snowpile was about 15 feet high. And they say they're having a light snow year thus far (remember, you can click on any of these images to view 'em full size).

SATURDAY NIGHT

OK, so I'm watching the weather updates on weather.com. My original plan was to leave Sunday morning for my 2:45 pm return flight outa Green Bay. And then I see this:

MARQUETTE-DICKINSON- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...MARQUETTE... IRON MOUNTAIN 456 PM EST SAT FEB 9 2008 /356 PM CST SAT FEB 9 2008/... WIND CHILL WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM EST /1 AM CST/ TO 11 AM EST /10 AM CST/ SUNDAY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN MARQUETTE HAS CONTINUED A WIND CHILL WARNING... WHICH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 2 AM EST /1 AM CST/ TO 11 AM EST /10 AM CST/ SUNDAY.

EXPECT THE COMBINATION OF GUSTY NORTHWEST WINDS TO 35 TO 40 MPH AND TEMPERATURES FALLING TO AROUND 10 BELOW ZERO TO DROP WIND CHILLS AS LOW AS 30 BELOW TO 40 BELOW ZERO LATE TONIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. WIND CHILLS WILL MODERATE GRADUALLY TO AROUND 25 BELOW SUNDAY AFTERNOON BEFORE DROPPING AGAIN SUNDAY EVENING.

BRISK NORTHWEST WINDS OF 20 TO 30 MPH TONIGHT INTO SUNDAY MORNING...COMBINED WITH TEMPERATURES DROPPING INTO THE SINGLE DIGITS BELOW ZERO...WILL RESULT IN WIND CHILLS FALLING TO 28 TO 38 BELOW ZERO BY SUNRISE SUNDAY MORNING. WIND CHILLS WILL MODERATE SOME THROUGH THE DAY SUNDAY...THOUGH LIKELY ONLY REACHING 15 BELOW BEFORE DROPPING AGAIN SUNDAY EVENING.
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WAUSAU...WISCONSIN RAPIDS... STEVENS POINT... APPLETON... GREEN BAY... WAUTOMA... OSHKOSH... CHILTON... CRIVITZ 317 PM CST SAT FEB 9 2008
... WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL MIDNIGHT CST TONIGHT... ...WIND CHILL WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 12 PM CST SUNDAY...

WIND CHILL READINGS WILL FALL TO 35 BELOW TO 45 BELOW ZERO OVER MUCH OF NORTHEAST WISCONSIN TONIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. WIND CHILLS THIS LOW CAN CAUSE FROSTBITE ON EXPOSED SKIN IN LESS THAN 10 MINUTES.

IN ADDITION TO THE BITTER COLD... SNOW SHOWERS WILL ACCOMPANY THE FRONT. THE STRONG WINDS MAY CAUSE CONSIDERABLE BLOWING AND DRIFTING OF THE SNOW... WHICH COULD MAKE TRAVEL HAZARDOUS IN SOME AREAS...

[Bleep.]

Cheryl emails me "You may need to rethink your travel."

Uh, duh, yeah...

We got out of the symphony performance at about 9:10. The wind was whipping up severely, and the temperature was dropping like a rock, with snow blowing in sheets. The Sunday morning forecast was majorly sucking, so after quickly mowing some birthday cake that the girls had made for me (I turned 62 Saturday), tossed my stuff in the rental car and, at 10:10 pm, I launched off into the night ahead of schedule (temp 10F and falling), hoping to make it to Green Bay before things got way out of hand.

NMU again had that cool jazz show on (which I would later traverse over to the one coming from Wisconsin Public Radio). So here I go into this surreal combination of soothing pure jazz and hyper-vigilant, anxious driving through sometimes white-out blinding blowing snow driven by winds gusting to gale force velocity and sub-zero wind chills. It was like that all the way down to Menominee (about an hour out of Green Bay).

Stressful, man.

So, at one point I'm diggin' the jazz grooves while white-knuckling the steering wheel, and the thought crossed my mind that I could get my Fuji out, throw it into movie mode, and do a video clip of this stomach-churning winter foray.

Nah. Woulda been cool, but perhaps ill-advised under the conditions. End up in a ditch out in these boonies tonight, you're maybe a dead man in short order.

I made it to Green Bay rather quickly all things considered (not much traffic out), and copped a motel room. Probably the right move.

SUNDAY

I had a bit of time to kill before heading to the Green Bay airport (conveniently located across the road from the Native American Oneida Casino - "reclaiming our nation one quarter at a time"). Below, a shot from a rail siding near the Fox river just next to the Georgia Pacific plant. Temp was about minus 5F ambient with wind chill at about minus 25F. Ya get outa the car, and in about 20 seconds any exposed skin is throbbing and burning. You could freeze to death in this stuff in no time. Wow.

Above: Vince "Winning-Is-The-Only-Thing" Lombardi in bronze repose at the Green Bay Packer stadium.

Below: our Zen Niece April sends her props to all in the Santa Fe tribe.

CODA: UPDATE FROM DAVE SIEFKES

Gino Vannelli is the guest this week on Ric & Jackie Gould's Original Sunday Morning Jazz Radio Program.

BTW, below, our bro' John Wedemeyer gettin' his Zep on last year:



'eh?

I will see y'all tonight at The Palms at 10:30 pm.