BeigeJournal

I just had a truly hilarious walk and dinner this Friday evening in Milwaukee. I’ve been doing quite a bit of walking around downtown recently, and though I’ve complained that there isn’t much in my neighborhood, I do live, technically, in the city of Milwaukee, and relatively near, at least what would look near to a bird circling high overhead, to an “office park.” (They are not fooling anyone. Office, yes, park, no. Forest rangers work in parks. The people who work there, do not.)

A few restaurants have recently been built there. That “recently” part is interesting in itself. The big office buildings have been there at least since I moved here, in 1995, and probably some years longer than that, but building a restaurant near them, that’s a radical new idea.

Anyway, I thought, why not walk to the Atlanta Bread Company for dinner? Why not, indeed. I’ll be going back with the camera someday to document just what a special experience walking to this place is.

Step one was getting to the vicinity of the office area. I walked north-west on Fond du Lac Avenue, which, out here, is two lanes, mostly no sidewalks, partly wide gravel shoulder and partly narrow or no shoulder. 107th Street is two narrow lanes, lacks sidewalks, and has very narrow gravel shoulders. After crossing the Good Hope Road and 107th Street intersection, I then had to figure out how to get to the actual building. There is a sidewalk that runs off into the distance to the north. Figuring that a sidewalk must be a good route, I set off. And walked. And walked. Right on past the buildings. Off in the far distance, the paved road heading, in a curvy way, to the west and south and past the restaurants, was just coming into view. Much of the grass is very tall and probably muddy, but a little way before the road it turns to mowed lawn, which is reasonably walkable and cuts some distance off. After then walking quite a way back toward the way I’d come from in the first place, I finally reached the building. I was laughing much of the way at the absurdity of the layout.

My actual meal, a roast beef sandwich on rye bread, was fine. There were some other customers (including a small child who was a strong argument for effective birth control) who drove there, as was obviously intended. I assume the designers had lunch customers from the offices in mind, and the building faces the office complex, but I did not explore how easy that walk would be. There are roads leading that way, whether there are sidewalks I didn’t notice.

I took a different route back, walking behind the building, first on a service road, then over the lawn to the intersection. That’s shorter, at least. The “back” of the building faces a major road very near ramps on and off highway 45, and is a blank wall with electrical and gas equipment everywhere. There are some signs indicating what some of the businesses are, some of them temporary-looking banners tied to the wall. No windows, no access except over the lawn or by circuitous route that no pedestrian would take.

There is what I assume is a public sidewalk running from, well, a few meters east of 107th street (it just ends amidst the grass, with a dirt trail leading to the actual road) alongside the church there and past a landscaped berm to, I think, West Leon Terrace. That end is at least paved all the way to the paved road. From there it is a fairly pleasant walk through suburbia on sidewalk-less but low-traffic roads to the Little Menomonee River Parkway underpass under highway 145, which takes me right to my apartment building. That would be the preferred route.

A few years ago I attended a meeting at a motel near that office complex regarding the cleanup of the Little Menomonee River, which was contaminated by a wood treatment plant. I rode my bicycle

to the motel, but could see no place to lock it, so I walked into the lobby rolling it along beside me and asked the person at the desk where to park it. To her great credit, she had a solution. She called a maintenance person who is a serious cyclist himself, and he led me to a boiler room with, obviously, restricted access, and let me leave it there. When I was ready to leave I inquired at the front desk, and they contacted him by radio. He let me out through a back door in the boiler room, which was convenient as well as saving the hotel from having someone rolling a long wheelbase recumbent through the halls. I don’t think they get a lot of cyclists, and they may have been talking about me for months after that, but they did make me feel welcome. I imagine it didn’t hurt that they were hosting a meeting about an environmental cleanup and thus might have been expected some enviroweenies, plus I think I present an image more of fitness-nut/environment-nut with ridiculously expensive gear than of looser who can’t afford a car, which in the United States is much lower status than overeducated exercise nut.