Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Wednesday night we got home from our 5-day trip to Wisconsin. In retrospect I could have made it a 3-day trip, leaving Monday. I chose to stay the extra two days, working remotely from a hotel, to space out the travel days and have two extra evenings visiting my sister and her family. The extra family time was nice, though having more time at home would've been nice, too. Especially as we're leaving on our next trip less than 48 hours after returning from this one!

The game of planes, trains, and automobiles on Wednesday wasn't too bad. We drove down from southern Wisconsin to Chicago Midway because we could get a non-stop flight there. I figured the drive plus nonstop was faster than flying with a connection. Though the drive wound up taking close to 2 hours with traffic even though we left just before 2pm aiming to avoid rush-hour traffic, so maybe it was close to a push, time-wise. But there's also a benefit in flying nonstop as there's no risk of a late flight causing a missed connection and potentially an unexpected overnight stay in an airport terminal. ...Yes, that actually happens. It's happened to me twice in the past few years.

Our flight to California did leave late. Southwest even told us it'd be delayed already on Tuesday. Once at the airport the delay shortened, then lengthened, then shortened, then ultimately lengthened. At least the flight was mostly uneventful once it got moving. And we caught some favorable winds on the second half of the flight (I knew from watching the ground speed on the in-flight stats page) so we actually landed a smidge early despite the late departure.

We got home-home, as in walked through our front door, around 9:30pm. It was nice that it wasn't late-late. Though 9:30 felt like 11:30pm to us because of the time zone change. Even so, we stayed up another two hours. We unpacked our bags and ran a load of laundry while winding down for the night. That laundry would come in handy as we started packing Thursday night for our next trip, Friday evening. We're going to Alaska!

I wrote recently about how we've made a point of trying new restaurants since the start of the year. I'm still catching up on the first several we've tried. Today it's Pizz'A Chicago, a few miles away in Santa Clara.

Pizz'A Chicago is not new. It's been there for over 30 years. And we've eaten there before. As with Gumba's I wrote about last week we're considering it effectively new to us as it's been so long since our last visit— almost 25 years ago, I think— that we don't remember it well. Also, it could be totally different now.

The air of Chicago is thick in the restaurant. Chicago is right there in the name. It's also all over the walls, which are covered in black and white photos/murals of classic Chicago scenes and public figures. Alas it may be just a Chicago veneer covering an increasingly generic restaurant.

Curiously there are two Pizz'A Chicago restaurants in the area. They have the same name, spelled and punctuated the same way, and the same logo. But they have different websites. Neither website acknowledges the other restaurant's existence, and the two sites offer different "About Us" backstories. The other restaurant tells the story of its founder, who grew up in Chicago and opened a restaurant here. This restaurant has none of that. It's just a place that was founded in 1991, no names, no inspiring childhood story.

Clearly the restaurants were started by the same person. My point is that it looks like the founder sold off part of his business, or perhaps had a falling out with a partner, and this store is the orphan. It's got the name but it no longer has the same parent-guardian. And that's obvious down through all the staff working here. Despite all the Chicago memorabilia on the walls, nobody working here looks or sounds like they're from Chicago.

So how was the food? Enh. I thought it was decent, Hawk didn't like it. The tomato sauce was too richly flavored for her. And they were pretty liberal with it. "Poured it all over everything," would be an apt description. "And served a half cup on the side."

I'd be willing to give this restaurant one more try. I'd have to do it without my spouse, though. I'm also curious to try the other Pizz'A Chicago store, in Palo Alto. With the founder still involved, that one might be better.

On the way in to downtown Detroit yesterday we drove local streets the whole way from Dearborn. Compared to driving around Detroit on the freeways (which is about all I've ever done before) it provided an interesting, closer up view of the cityscape.

The first thing that struck me is that Detroit is architecturally similar to Chicago. Commercial buildings and houses have similar design. The second thing that struck me is, compared Chicago, it's 2/3 abandoned. Lots of stores, and not a few houses, are empty, boarded up, even burnt out years ago and not repaired.

Census Bureau statistics bear out the reality seen on the ground. Detroit's population peaked at 1.8 million in 1950. The 2020 census reported just over 600,000. Literally 2/3 of the population are no longer here.

In the world of pizza delivery chains, Pizza Hut gets short shrift. People seem to like it less than Domino's and Papa John's. That's strange to me because I find Pizza Hut much better than the others. I even tried Domino's again recently... they're not better.

Last week when I got the jones for some Pizza Hut pizza I checked their Deals page and saw a limited time special called The Edge. Basically it's a thin crust pizza with toppings right up to the edge. As that sounded like virtually the same as their standard "Thin & Crispy" pizza I was concerned it was a gimmick. But they were offering a deal on it with a 5-topping combo, and I like their thin crust pizza, so I ordered one.



While the ad copy seemed a bit gimmicky, the actual pizza came through above my expectations. The crust is a little different from a standard Thin & Crispy pie as it's rolled flat instead of curled up at the edges. The big different seems to be the cheese. On this pie there's plenty of it. That's a worthwhile upgrade from Thin & Crispy-land, where they're often stingy on the cheese.

Note the pizza's also cut in a Chicago cut. That's right, it's a round pie but some dweezil is like, "Duh, I only know how to cut squares." It gives you a mixture of those weird, mostly edge pieces and those "How do I pick this up?" center pieces covered with toppings literally edge to edge. For Chicago style pizza fans, that's all part of the fun.

"How can this be Chicago pizza? It's not deep dish!" you might object. There are actually three styles of Chicago style pizza. Deep dish pizza, the kind with a thick crust, is the one most people from elsewhere know as "Chicago style pizza". But there's also Chicago thin crust and stuffed pizza, where there's a crust on bottom and on top, kind of like an apple pie.

As a Chicago-style thin crust pizza this one's close. To be truly authentic it would need to have the toppings under the cheese. But that's really a form factor issue, not a taste issue. The taste of this one is good. The toppings are adequately generous, and the cheese is plentiful. I'll keep ordering these as long as Pizza Hut sells them.

Yesterday I wrote about the project I started a few weeks ago to taste-test beers I can buy in stores. The idea is to reevaluate what my go-to brands are for buying for home consumption. Round 1 of my taste test began with an unlikely pairing of beers, Anchor Steam and Smithwicks.

These beers are almost nothing alike, and I didn't intend them to be. My reasons for picking them first were utterly prosaic. I had to start somewhere, and they were on sale. 🤣

Anchor Steam

Okay, Anchor Steam was more than just a random pick. It was one of my frequent picks in bars right after graduating college. It wasn't among my top-tier favorites, more my second-tier choices, but it was one that reached wide enough distribution by that time that a lot of bars would have it in stock. And despite my considering it "second tier" it was way, way better than the likes of Bud, Miller, Coors, etc. I picked it for Round One here because I was wondering, after all these years and newer beers later, how does this old bar standard of mine stand up?

The answer is.... Enh? But in a good way.

Understand that Anchor Steam is kind of a weird beer, a "neither fish nor fowl" of the brewing world. It combines lager yeast with ale-style brewing at warmer temperatures. The result is a beer that has flavor characteristics of both a lagers and an ale. It's kind of the malt flavor of a lager with the strength of an ale. It's hard to categorize what it tastes like. It's not bad... but it's also not "Ooh, that was good, let's have another." Alas, after all these years, its claim to fame for me remains that it is still way, way better thn Bud, Miller, Coors, etc.

Smithwicks

Smithwicks was a totally random choice.Well, okay not totally random. I mean, I like red ales. And this one was on sale. And I didn't recall seeing it very often, even in well stocked liquor stores. So I'd figured I'd give it a second chance.

Second chance?

Yes, I'd had Smithwicks once before. It was at a supposedly Irish bar in Chicago years ago. I say supposedly Irish because there really wasn't anything Irish about them, except maybe their false pride in calling themselves Irish.... And even that isn't Irish as much as... I dunno... Texan? I mean, they even lorded their fake presumed Irishness over the customers by reminding us all, repeatedly, that Smithwicks is pronounced "Smiddicks". So if Texans decided to open a fake Irish pub in Chicago, it would've been the one I walked into.

Oh, and that one time I tried Smithwicks sold by Texan-Irish-Chicagoans all those years ago? It sucked. It was bold-faced awful. But a few weeks ago I figured, "Hey, it's on sale...." 🤣

I'm glad I tried Smithwicks again because it doesn't suck. I mean, those presumption fake-Irish Texas in the Windy City— so named not because of weather but because of the tendency of its politicians (and maybe bar owners) to bloviate about how awesome they are— probably did something to screw it up. But at least in bottle form it's just a standard red ale. And I like red ale.

Alas, I'm not sure I really like Smithwicks. It's... fine. There's just nothing about it that made me say, "Yeah, I want more of these." And given, again, how much I like that category of red ales, that's saying something.

Oh, and fake-Irish pub or no, Smithwick's is genuinely Irish.

When we got home last night from our trip to Hawaii we chose to cancel our trip to Chicago for New Year's. We made our decision at the proverbial 11th hour; we would've left before sunrise this morning. It was a difficult decision. Here are Five Things we considered:

1) Vaccinated friends we trust
One thing that argued in favor of still going was that we know everyone we would've been sharing a house with for 4-5 days. We know them, know they're vaccinated and boosted, and trust them. There are headlines in the news about cancelling New Year's Eve parties.... What the CDC is recommending against is partying with people you don't know well or aren't fully vaccinated.

2) Surging rates & Omicron
As recently as a few weeks ago we felt safe taking this trip, being fully vaxxed & boosted. But in just a few weeks the new-case rate nationwide has tripled. Part of that is the emergence of the Omicron strain, which is more contagious and better able to slip around the vaccine's defenses.

3) Spike in Chicago
Part of the surge is that places that weren't spiking before are spiking now. While the US rate overall is 81 new daily infections per 100k residents (7 day average), Illinois is higher than that at 127, with Cook County (of which Chicago is part) the worst in the state at 159. That compares to just 50 statewide in California and 34 in our home of Santa Clara County. Leaving home to travel somewhere with over 4x the infection rate, when even the lower infection rate is significant, is unwise. (Figures from The New York Times's Coronavirus in the U.S., retrieved 29 Dec 2021)

"But didn't you just travel to Hawaii, where's there's a spike?" you might ask. Yes, and we were alarmed to learn about that spike AFTER we arrived. If that spike were clear days earlier when we planned the trip we likely wouldn't have planned to go.

4) Negative test, but...
We and our friends agreed we'd take rapid tests before gathering in Chicago. Hawk and I took tests after arriving home last night. Fortunately we had a few on hand from accidentally overbuying last month, as stores are regularly sold out now. Our tests were both negative. But I was developing a cough all day yesterday. Was that from dry airplane air, the start of a common cold, or something else? Even with a negative test result I'd hate to be "that guy" in the house who's hacking & coughing.

5) Stupid people suck
Our experience on the flight home last night, frankly, spooked us. Too many people coughing, too many people deliberately taking their masks off or letting them hang loose. Pre- this surge we would have taken it in stride, but with risks 3x, 4x, 5x, or higher now than before it seems unwise. If we were driving to Chicago— driving in our car, not flying on a plane— we'd have gone, because our biggest exposure would be with people we know & trust. But traveling with the general public is too risky right now.