Mad-town part 2 and the future

So it is Tuesday morning and I've got a bus for St. Paul soon. Yesterday was again all sweet, my life rocks. Yesterday Palmer and I went into town and just kind of walked around. UW-Madison sits next to a lake and there were a bunch of people hanging out by their student union as it was memorial day. We chillaxed and I consumed a brat. Palmer had a "Paul Bunyan Burger", they love that guy up here. Personally I don't think you can call such a tiny burger a Paul Bunyan but apparently you can. It was an ideal memorial day, at least during the day and the people of Madison seemed to be out in droves to enjoy it. That I think is one of the biggest differences between cold and warm weather places. On a nice day in Arizona you won't really see that many people out and about, it just isn't a big deal. But on one of the first great summer days in the midwest, people feel silly staying inside. I think parks and other recreational areas in the end get a lot more use actually.

We walked down State St., the main drag of this town of 500,000 toward the capital building. We went inside and had a drink at one of the nicest water fountains I've seen. We then walked to the second biggest lake in Madison (Madison is the only major american city to lie on an ismuth, in this case between two lakes. I called Pjay and we talked for a while. Missing my friends is already starting to kick in. That is going to be really hard for me. But I digress. Eventually we bummed our way back to the Hodag house and played some more washers (Palmer trashed me).

That evening we went out to a bar called the vintage known for it's 1 dollar Wisconsin local draft beers on Mondays. Unfortunatly I had misplaced my id earlier in the trip so I didn't have it. This being a college town they are pretty strict with checking id's so I was kind of screwed. However Drew Mahowald, who doesn't look entirely different than I do (similar hair, face shape, though he does have blue eyes and is 6'2") offered to try to give me his id after he was inside and see if it worked for me. So after they were in Palmer slyly gave me the id over the fence. I had to wait in a pretty good line outside but by the time I was in there was a good size crowd of Hodags,Belladonnas (the women's team), and other folk who were hoping the operation would be succesful. I memorized the id pretty well just in case he got wise and asked questions. In the end though it all hinged on one thing. If he looked at the height. I could pass for the dreamy facial features of Drew Mahowald but even on my tip toes, I'm no six foot two. After a quick look the portly bouncer waved me through. Dollar beers was great and I got reasonably drunk once again, though not as bad as the night before. Eventually it got really windy and cold (we were outside) and I moseyed on back.

Overall my tour of the upper widwest has been great, I'm not sure what city I liked the best, they were all really different. Chicago is certainly the best city to be a tourist in, there is just a lot to see, but I wouldn't want to live there I think. Just a little too big, too crowded, too big city like for me. Milwaukee worked out really well. I couch surfed for the first time and that was an excellent experience, one I expect to repeat. It was a nice town and it I could stand the cold, a place I could imagine settling down one day, just like the twin cities. Madison was exactly what I heard it was, a great college town, an awesome place to party. The fact that I had such a great group of locals to connect with quickly made it a unique experience on my trip.

It made me wonder how my life would be different if I had come to Wisconsin (not that I ever planned too). Would I still have played ultimate? Would I have a Hodag tat? Would Drew, Riley, and Will Lokke be my best friends? Would I hate snow? Who knows, but I bet it would have been good. Still it also made me realize that as sweet as it may or may not have been, I would trade the last 5 years of my life for anything. I was so happy for so long in a way that I didn't even know I could be. Still my goals now can't be about trying to maintain that kind of happiness. That is gone forever, I need to try to find my new life, and figure out what it will take to make me happy now. Maybe I'll mull over that few days and get back to y'all.

The posts will probably come with less frequency soon, once I'm at camp. I'll be very busy but I want to try to write a good deal. I'd like to try to make people understand what my life is like there and what it is all about. It is interested to me that the two biggest things in my adult life, camp and ultimate, I am never able to make people on the outside understand. I've never been able to really convey to my mom why ultimate is so important to me, there on so many people on sunburn who I am convinced could have had their lives changed by camp if I could make them understand it. But I can't, or at least haven't been able to. So maybe that is too lofty a goal. Instead of trying to explain camp, maybe I just need to explain what my experience is like and perhaps that will help people get it, maybe even me.


Joey