I’ve been to Madison in the Winter a few times; it’s brutal!
I’m going there in 2 weeks for a short trip to visit my cousin. I look forward to being there NOT in Winter. I hope it’s not prime time mosquito season yet. WI can be brutal for them.
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The ONLY time I’ve been in Madison (really right outside of the city at some weirdo dive-bar) was when I played a show with an old punk band back in 2017 - it was nighttime in November, and it was one of the single coldest places I have ever stepped foot. Only Minneapolis felt colder, with Philly not far behind them.
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The weather for the race on Sunday was perfect. Mid 40s with breeze first thing (a bit chilly for me) but the high was in the mid 60s after I finished the run.
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Yeah, mid 40s (even in the morning) is too cold for me in May! Today’s temp and rain in Raleigh is too cold for me after Memorial Day. It’s supposed to be Summertime now!
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yeah..i spent a day and a half there. kinda nice place…meander around the capitol bldg, two downtown lakes…almost 300k pop?
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i liked this though Transformer Lootbag | Transformer Lootbag
I haven’t yet made it to Madison, but while on the subject of Wisconsin I did recently get a few hours in Milwaukee and really enjoyed it. They have a nice riverfront and lakefront, great food, and some impressive architecture, including the 15th-best skyline in the world according to Architectural Digest. It’s also just a quick 90-minute Amtrak ride from Chicago, so we were able to make it a day trip.
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I’ll take it. Will be hot and humid AF soon enough.
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cool, but it’s still Derm, so I’ll pass! 
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Yeah I barely survived with my life. So I’m back again risking the unique danger of downtown Durham.
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We all know that you just enjoy the longer drive there than to DT Raleigh. 
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Show off Things from other Tiny Towns edition. Little town of Marshall north of Asheville that had a wall of water flood its downtown is well on the way to recovery. Resilience is what any city could learn from this small town. Coffee shops, restaurants, brewery all reopened and several businesses but everywhere I went there was the sound of renovation at homes, businesses, the courthouse etc. Visit Western NC and support these small towns. I ate lunch at restaurant in the old jail right by the French Broad River. As in the past on Helene affected areas of WNC someone thanked me for visiting and spending money! Video of the Helene flooding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAlIfRiDjRw&t=5s
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Lexington kind of reminded me of Raleigh in some ways, like an alternate universe version if it had never had RTP, Durham, or Chapel Hill near it perhaps.
Fun fact - they have the first urban growth boundary in the country.
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Rode down to Spartanburg this morning, may venture a bit farther down 85 to Greenville if my body can handle adding another 70ish miles to the ride as sportbikes are definitely not built with touring in mind. If anyone finds themselves in Charlotte for a few days, you should definitely take a drive to the upstate and explore here. Downtown isn’t quite as expansive as in Raleigh or Charlotte, but it feels like city leaders are really taking advantage of what they have to work with. Main St is extremely nice with wide brick sidewalks, lots of trees and tasteful landscaping, and relatively little automotive traffic (likely thanks to part of the street being fully closed off to vehicular traffic in favor of a large pedestrian/public square area). Heading out of downtown the city looks to have finished a very impressive road diet which added a set of fully protected bike lanes that wouldn’t look out of place in Europe. There’s also a similarly impressive cycle track on the other side of downtown that connects to a rail trail which extends away from downtown for a couple miles. Pretty solid amount of development for a city of this size, and architectural standards seem to be very aggressive with new buildings around downtown looking to be of higher quality than much of what has been built in Charlotte or Raleigh recently (civic buildings especially are at a level unseen in NC). I’ll post some pictures later but feels somewhat like the Durham to Greenville’s Raleigh except that the city isn’t afraid to actually get shit done.
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A few pics. This is looking down main street from the coffee shop I was sitting at.
Main St closed to vehicular traffic.
Cool alleyway that I believe used to be a one-way street.
Cycle track along Converse St which saw a road diet to make room for the bike lanes.
Recently completed Main St road diet with more fully protected bike lanes. This is heading west out of downtown. Not much on this side of the tracks yet, but there are a ton of underutilized lots that are ripe for redevelopment.
New county courthouse. Apparently not real marble or granite, but the materials look top notch.
Also, Greenville is on another level. Just an absolute staggering amount of pedestrian traffic all afternoon and especially into the evening. Other than special events, I think the only places I have a similar amount of vibrancy during the day has been in South End, Charleston, and Old San Juan (on weekends).
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We visited the Wedgewood Cheese Shop after work yesterday in Carrboro. It’s a fantastic place. They have all kinds of cheese, meats, tinned seafood, small plates, wines, beers, aperitifs, etc. to eat there. But also a really nice and insanely knowledgeable staff who let us try a bunch of things to help us know what we wanted to buy to take home from the deli case. This is a must visit for us next time we’re in that area. I would love to see something like this in downtown Raleigh or even North Hills. It was interesting and classy, but very casual and accessible. Sorry I didn’t take more pictures.
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Been out in Texas and went to downtown Austin and their state history museum. What impressed me besides their huge 1 M sq ft Capitol both above and below ground is their Capitol Mall. Instead of 4-5 story buildings like Raleigh’s Government mall they have 10-15 story buildings. I realize their state government has 3x the number of employees than NC’s does in Wake County but they have built a very urban dense state government complex. They have some bland 1970s buildings too like NC but just very nice class AA buildings.
Plus check out the new buildings they are building.
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Fiscally responsible Republicans with an urban mindset (Texans) vs. Fiscally irresponsible Republicans with a suburban mindset (North Carolinians)… that’s the difference
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Eh, if every fascist in Silicon Valley had decided to 10x the value of Downtown Raleigh real estate rather than that of Downtown Austin, NC Republicans would probably devote more resources to Downtown Raleigh’s redevelopment as well.
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