Monday, April 23, 2012

Getting Away for the Weekend - Rev3 Dells Preview

Wow, it's been forever since I've blogged!

There's alot going on, and there have been some new pretty big challenges for me of late.  More on that later.  For now, this is about the awesome weekend Lana and I had last weekend.

It had been a while, and we've been pretty beat up, so Lana and I decided to get away for the weekend.  And this was a perfect weekend to go try out the Rev3 Dells course.

We loaded up the car Saturday Morning after breakfast and drove up.  After stopping for lunch, and getting to the hotel, we got on our bikes around 2.  We changed in the hotel public bathroom in the lobby, which meant I got to parade around the lobby as spandex man! Good times...

I covered the bike course here, if you're interested.

 After the bike we cleaned up and went over to a restaurant called the "House of Embers"  which was pretty good.  The food was cooked very well.  Lana had steak, I had salmon, both were pretty much perfect.  They limited things like free refills on drinks and charged extra for alot of the sides though, which I suppose was supposed to be "upscale" but came across to me as cheap.  Also, the plating was a little wierd.  My salmon was a big plate with a piece of salmon and .3 carrots.  It looked a little empty.  Lana's main was a steak, covered in a demi-glace.  No vegetation, potato on a seperate plate.  It was odd.  Anyway, enough iron-chef, the food was good.

That night we went to the hotel bar to get a drink...because you can't buy a bottle of wine in the dells after 9pm.  That place was a treat.  I asked to see their wine list.  Here it is, from memory:

White
Riesling
Sauvignon Blanc
Pinot Grigio
Chardonnay

Red
Cabernet
Merlot
Pinot Noir
Shiraz

Descriptive huh?  I thought so too...but hey, I'm on vacation.  I'll play along.  So, I order a glass of mystery Pinot Noir.  I got Pinot Grigio.  Ok, maybe I didn't say the right thing, and hey, I like Pinot Grigio, so whatever.  Round 2.  This time, I'm determined to get a red!  So, I ordered Cabernet.  The bartender ALMOST poured me a flipping Chardonnay.  This time I stopped him before he could charge me $5.00 a glass for that over oaked crap, and asked again for Cabernet.  Finally, the juice was red.

Folks, I'm starting to think Wisconsin has it out for me.  The last time I was here I woke up with the flu and had to do an ironman.  This time, I show up, ride 56 miles of crappy hills, and then find out all the wine in this place is white!  Uncool Wisconsin, uncool.

Ok, so anyway, the next morning Lana and I ran the run course.  I wrote up an overview of that here.

After that, we hit up Paul Bunyon's which is an all-you-can-eat kind of breakfast place.  I remember going there when I was 7, and so does my mom, so it's been there virtually forever...  You know, the food was good.  And all-I-could-eat was ALOT after this weekend.  I seriously chowed down, and it was great.




Sitting there after putting in two hard days, chowing on pancakes and coffee made it really feel like a normal summer, which is very welcome.

After that I took Lana to Pearson's Indian Trading Post and shopped around for a bit.  I remember it being a huge, vast collection of junk, souvenirs, and knick knacks, so I figured it would be a good opportunity for Lana to do the shopping thing.  After training all weekend, I think I owed her some girl time.  :)  Around 2pm we pulled out, got home, and did shopping/chores.  Back to the grind!

It was an awesome weekend away though, we had a great time and I'm excited to see Lana race this first half.  There's lots of promise for this race season!

 





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