This Is Drivel

Category: play

  • Blue Hills Felsenmeer 5/23/2026

    Blue Hills Felsenmeer 5/23/2026

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    After checking out the wooden canoe festival, I ate lunch a couple blocks down the street at the Round Man Brewing Company, then drove about a half-hour south of Spooner to hike to the Blue Hills Felsenmeer. While I was helping cut trail at the Ice Age Trail event last week in the Blue Hills,… Read.

  • Wisconsin Canoe Heritage Museum

    Wisconsin Canoe Heritage Museum

    I have a weird love of wooden boats. Well, maybe not so weird. They are undeniably beautiful, especially when you can see the insides. The woodwork and all those pretty blonde ribs lined up next to one another are so pleasing to the eye. I got to see quite a few wooden canoes at the… Read.

  • IAT Hemlock Creek Segment 5/22/2026

    IAT Hemlock Creek Segment 5/22/2026

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    Just one week after volunteering to help build new trail for the Ice Age Trail Alliance in the Blue Hills of Wisconsin, just northeast of Rice Lake, I went back up nort dere this weekend to check out the seasonal opening of the Wisconsin Canoe Heritage Museum in Spooner, Wisconsin. I learned about the museum… Read.

  • wild goose chase

    wild goose chase

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    I set out on a hike this morning and I got one, but not the hike I thought I would get. My plan was to hike a ten-mile stretch of the Milwaukee River Segment of the Ice Age Trail near Kewaskum. To walk that far, I planned to drop my bike off at the southern… Read.

  • Blue Hills trail building 5/13/26 – 5/17/26

    Blue Hills trail building 5/13/26 – 5/17/26

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    I spent five days last week in the Blue Hills of northern Wisconsin, helping a gaggle of about 90 volunteers build new trail for the Ice Age Trail Alliance so they can re-route the IAT through a more scenic part of the county. It’s a beautiful part of the state that I don’t visit often… Read.

  • TBR 05-07-2026

    TBR 05-07-2026

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    “Platform Decay” is the latest installment of a series of books from Martha Wells nicknamed “The Murderbot Diaries.” I read it in two days and enjoyed it, but then I enjoyed all the books in the series, although I enjoyed the earlier books more than the later ones, if I’m honest. The books chronicle Murderbot’s… Read.

  • new ride, who dis?

    new ride, who dis?

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    I finally bought a recumbent bicycle. I’ve wanted one for years but the price always scared me away. Used recumbents cost more than a thousand dollars; new recumbents cost more than two thousand. It was hard enough to make myself spend more than three hundred on a nice Trek bicycle back in 1998. But Monday… Read.

  • TBR 4/9/2026

    TBR 4/9/2026

    Last week, my pile of books to be read (TBR) was down to just two. Today, it’s up to seven. At the top of my pile: Right now I’m powering my way through “Solaris” by Stanislaw Lem. I read this science fiction classic when I was in high school, didn’t understand it at all. The… Read.

  • walking on sunshine

    walking on sunshine

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    There were signs early Monday morning that the weather was going to be extraordinary, but I had no idea until I got out into it how glorious it would turn out to be. Sunny, calm, so pleasantly warm it could have been any day in the middle of summer. I just loafed along the trail… Read.

  • to be determined

    to be determined

    I want to spend the morning sitting on the sofa with a book, nursing a big mug of very black, very strong coffee. It’s the perfect day for it, cold and rainy and windy. Going out to do almost anything today would be no fun at all. I can stay in, I can stretch out… Read.

photo of the author and the author's best friend