I pulled into Madison Wisconsin About 9:00 pm on Tuesday night as the Red Sox were finishing of the Cleveland Indians in a beautiful pitched baseball game 1 – 0. The trip to Madison is a quick hour and a half jaunt from Milwaukee. One of my first images of the capital city was a dude fondle ling the breasts of his women under her shirt on a bench in the heart of the main st. They both seem to be enjoying the experience with little attention from the steady stream of passerby’s.
Madison is the capital of Wisconsin, built on an Isthmus. An Isthmus is a narrow strip of land that is bordered on two sides by water and connects two larger land masses… from Wikipedia.com. The campus of the University of Wisconsin is spread through the downtown and along Lake Mendota. The capital building is built on the highest point in the city and the roads fall off on all sides where the central business district lies. It’s a lively center with much youth, culture and activists. Madison claims to have the largest amount of bicycles per capita in the country which I believe! The city is chock full with miles of bike trails and in the future you will be able to bike from the Canadian border into Illinois right through Madison.
On Wednesday I rode my bike to a small town of Peola. Starting through an arboretum along Lake Mingra it quickly shot me out through a series of back roads lined with farms and rural living! After a swim in Lake Monona I called on my friend Matt, I hadn’t spoke to him in years but received updates from his big bro Dave. Matt and his lovely wife Julie both educate young adults and have a nice home in a great little neighborhood about 2 miles from the capital building with two cats Joplin and Butterscotch.
They showed me all their favorite haunts, including the Willey St. Co-op the finest Co-op I’ve shopped. A Thursday night pub crawl to The Weary Traveler, Crystal St. Bar and Mickey’s where we met some local folk and talked about how fat Michael Moore is, how we are going to create peace, and other life altering concepts! Matt and I biked around Lake Monona most of the 13 miles on bike paths! I got a flat tire and we were giving water and a ride to a bike store by an older man and his wife, huge Green Bay Packer fans!! We went to the Madison farmers market, which is renowned; I gorged myself on free samples and purchased a bag full of fresh produce for the road! I enjoyed our passionate conversation with two men setting up shop to debunk the concept of evolution. I found out even if I live the highest of moral existences’ but I do not confess to believing in their god I will go to hell, shit.
Matt’s first book Sudden Anthem, won the 2007 American Poetry Journal Book Prize, and will be published by Dream Horse Press in Winter/Spring 2008. We had conversations ranging the gamut of politics, stool, religion, children, education and cheese curds. He kicked my buttocks at chess and made the finest goat cheese pasta dish, his wife Julie bought me Ice Cream and they allowed me to shower in there bathroom.
A theme of our time together was my unfortunate lack of experience with the Cheese Curd. Cheese curds are little-known in locations without cheese factories. They promised cheese curds and they finally delivered Cheese Curds the night before my departure. After a viewing of the movie titled Talk to Me at the Sundance Movie Theater we went to a local pub where a waitress resembling Christine Ricci delivered a basket of piping hot deep fried Cheese Curds with a marina sauce. Fried cheese! For more info on Cheese Curds go to: CHEESE CURDS as they are seriously a delicacy.
Thank you to Julie, Matt and Madison for a great experience and your friendship! I’m off to Minnesota…..
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