Thunder Storms and The Summer Solstice

Waking up in the night is not usually something unheard of with me, I've never been one to sleep through. But tonight was a whole different ball game, not only was the humidity a huge factor but the rain gently splashing in through the open window had drawn my attention, followed by a five second period of blinding white light which lit up the room drawing Martin and I back to conciousness. The walls and windows shook which eventually worked its way down to the floor which followed suit. We both shot up from the floor which we call a bed and both uttered the same words.
"What the fudge was that?!"
For the younger audiences I changed the explosive swearing to a more family friendly word, who doesn't love fudge?

The light faded away but the sound remained and grew, my first thoughts were that seeing as we are living by an airport that a plane could've crashed. The following sounds confirmed to me that, thank God, it was not that. The thunder that continued to follow was like nothing I've heard before. That air could make such a solid sound was unbelievable, like the sky was made of rock crashing together coming down like a landslide of sound.

The light show and the thunder continued throughout the night, I watched the fork lightening coming down in jagged purple forms. The scary thing came the next morning, on the morning news apparently a house was struck and set alight. Luckily no one was hurt, but imagine being in your bed when suddenly you roof caves in on fire. Pretty scary.

There's a saying in Wisconsin that "If you don't like the weather, wait a day" and I can't express how true this is. It receives state-wide, an unbelievable three hundred thousand strikes a year! Most of those during this trip I think. Anyway, lets not get sidetracked with figures and numbers, the point I was making about the changing weather was that today, it was beautiful. To be honest we were very grateful it had picked up because today we were heading out to the Summer Solstice! What is Summer Solstice I hear you shout, well let me enlighten your minds. Actually hold your minds right there because before I get to the Summer Solstice we ended up having to take a journey of epic citywide proportions. We must have walked about five miles that day, even ended up in a ghetto-ey (yes that's a real word) part of town, where a large man with no legs sat in a wheel chair and gave us the stink eye from a hundred yards and proceeded to hold that fire filled glare for the entire of our approach. His legs are going to have guns in. Don't know why I thought that. Too many video games I guess.

Ok, open them minds up. The Summer Solstice is when the Earth's tilt is towards the sun for us, marking the longest day of sunlight of the year and from here they get shorter until Winter. The city of Milwaukee hold a little day festival on an intersection of road with three stages, packed with places for food, drink and shopping stalls! The beer here wasn't too expensive which is a nice relief from UK festivals, however it wasnt a great selection on the beer stalls, the pubs and bars on the other hand were still open so you could just as easily walk into there to have a different kind.

After meeting John a friend of ours from Milwaukee we went and settled on a curb with a beer next to one of the stages. The band that were on were pretty exceptional! Their name was just as awesome, the one, the only, Extra Crispy Brass Band! A full brass band including a Tuba, Trumpets, Trombones and Drums. And, I've got to add that it was some of the best Trumpet playing I've ever heard! Not to mention a cover of the original Thrift Shop by Macklemore, by original I mean the track that Macklemore used as his backing track which was actually written in 1890!

Extra Crispy Brass Band!

Eventually Amy joined us and as the night wore on, so did the beer. The dark ales around here sure are strong all pushing between six to ten percent! One you should definitely look out for is Luna Stout, dark as the night sky but with the mass of the moon! Delicious. As it got dark more and more lively music came on, including the local Boy Blue who are friends of John and were well worth seeing! Their music was mix of synths, deep thunderous bass, tight drum beats and on some songs guitar played by their front man. Their EP is out right now so get on YouTube and check it out!

Here you can see just one of the streets, Subway and the Super Moon

The night once again came to an end and Martin as usual fell asleep in the back of the car under the light of the Super Moon, which we missed the rising of sadly. We stopped for Jimmy John's which serve sub sandwiches pretty much twenty four hours a day, not to mention they're pretty good! Over the next few days the thunder storms carried on, some days raining all day other days off and on with breaks of incredible heat and sunshine! Lets just say thank God for Netflix and Breaking Bad!

Our Drunken Mugs

Sorry Martin

Martin's Creepy Drunk Face