MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

When your biggest cultural export is Pabst Blue Ribbon, you probably don’t have much to offer. Milwaukee, I’ll admit, smelled like trash when I rode into it, and the skyline was unexpectedly short (can’t they borrow some skyscrapers from Chicago?). So yeah, some parts stunk, but I found little nuggets of wonder: fried cheese curds, delicious beer, artsy kids and ukeleles, a silly soul cover band and a coffee shop run by soldiers. Wasn’t Milwaukee supposed to be more pitiful? Now that I think about it, I should have biked through Gary, Indiana while I had a chance. People poopooed it, but I bet I could have found some fun there, too.