Chapter 1.5: Madison, Rockford cont'd (with pictures!)

Before I get to the body of this post, just an FYI for those who are reading: my wonderful friend Chelsea is going to be helping me move this blog to a WordPress location sometime in the next few days, so I can do cooler things with it than Blogger has in its capabilities. I'll be transferring the posts from here to the new site when it goes live, and then this site will just have a redirect link. I'll also post the new website on my Facebook, and email it to my mother to send to our friends, so you guys will be informed of the changeover, never fear!

Now for the fun stuff!

*ahem*

So I ate chocolate-covered-bacon-on-a-stick on Sunday.

It was delicious.

As I mentioned, Taste of Madison was going on this past weekend, and I was happy to be driving through the capitol area on Sunday because it meant there was lots of tasty foods available.

Like, tons.

Like, this is a picture of the stage-right area around the Capitol:

And this is a picture of stage-left.

All those stalls you see, continuing into the horizon? Yeah those are full of food (and beer. Lots of beer) from around the Madison area.

And all those people you see? There's more of them. The entire Capitol "square" was completely full up of happy people eating lovely food and drinking rather a lot of what I assume was good beer; unfortunately, I had to drive so I couldn't partake :(

Look at all the people!

Although I didn't spend much time in Madison, it was really nice to be there on Labor Day Weekend. After having lived in Wisconsin for four years, through one gubernatorial election and one presidential election, the politics of the region have become, if not all-important to me, at least very much noticeable as a part of my life. And Madison is, really, an epicenter of today's politics and social issues, so it was a thoughtful kind of day for me.

Very short digression into politics – skip if you want, I won't by any means be offended.

Some of you may be aware that I hate politics. Even more than Rosendale, even more than people who don't use correct grammar in emails, I hate politics.

I recognize their importance in the country and world which I inhabit, and it's not that I wish they didn't exist. I just wish that people could interact in reasonable ways, and have reasonable discussions, without hating each other for stupid things like party affiliation.

And if you try and tell me that politics in America isn't about stupid things like party affiliation, I'm sorry but you're just mistaken.

I have seen friendships strained because of politics, not because of who each person voted for, but because one person was a self-labeled Republican and the other was a self-labeled Democrat. Their differences didn't have to do with policy (in fact, had they sat down and discussed it, they would have realized that they had fairly similar views on some large issues), they were just uncomfortable around each other because of the words which they used to describe themselves. And that discomfort meant that they never wanted to mention politics around each other, never mind actually sit down and discuss their thoughts.

Maybe I look at things differently than most people, but it seems to me that having a government with a party system should be about sitting down and discussing things. It shouldn't be inherently us-versus-them, where people look first to the color of their uniform and only afterwards to the rules of the game. It should be "Hey, our group has a different idea of this issue than your group does. Can you explain your thought process to us, so we can explain yours, so we can debate them?"

I know that such mature and logical discussions do exist, but they seem far too few and far too infrequent when compared to the plain meanness I see arising between people just based on whether they vote red or blue – again, not based on what they voted for in terms of policy, but only based on the label of the vote. Not, "I don't agree with you because you think that X law should be resolved in X way," but "I don't agree with you because you voted for the *** party."

Anyway, I don't want to fill up this post with politics, because like I said I really don't like them, but I wanted to give you a slightly better sense of my beef with the political system in our country, so you understand that I don't hate Democrats or Republicans, I hate people affiliated with any party who use their civil right to express their opinion in a meaningful manner to proliferate an unthinking, un-discussing We're Right Because You're Wrong.

END RANT. (If anyone would like to further discuss this, please let me know!)

Now, back to your regularly-scheduled program!

Madison was lovely. I stopped by my dear friend Aaron's apartment, but he wasn't home so I took a creepy picture of his window.

I know where you live . . . 

And while I was in the Capitol area, I spent a few minutes with the statue for the Women's Movement, which is in front of some random building that apparently has some kind of significance to the state. 

The Capitol photo-bombing my picture of the statue.

Last week, my mom sent me a care package for my trip, which included a couple of handfuls of pebbles from our garden. I picked one out to leave at the statue's feet – sort of a, "Hey, I was here!" kind of thing. I'll be doing that at all the points on this trip that feel "significant" to me in whatever way. 

Then I headed back to my car to get back on the road to Rockford, stopping only to appreciate some architecture:

. . . and to buy a copy of Madison's Street Pulse from a very nice guy outside said architecture. It was really hot out and he'd been standing in direct sun all day, so I bought an extra bottle of cold water at one of the stands and left it with him. 

Then I drove to Rockford! I didn't end up stopping in Janesville, since I wanted to get to Luna and Wolfgang's by dinner. Luna took me to her parents' place, where we had delicious BBQ and a fun game of Settlers of Catan with her sister and sister's friend. 

Then we went back to Luna's place, where Wolfgang was de-stressing from a long day of work by watching Comedy Central. (Their other roommate and another good friend of mine, Sirilay, was unfortunately gone for the weekend, but fortunately she was having a great time with people elsewhere!)

So we watched Gabriel Iglesias say funny things in front of an audience for a while, I knitted some, and then we went to sleep.

Wolfgang had to get to work by 6 AM, so he woke me up on his way out the door for a hug, and I promptly face-planted back into the couch and slept until about 10.

Luna made delicious french toast for breakfast, we had tea and chats, and by about 11:30 AM I was heading to Starbucks to get some noms for the road, and update this'a here blog. 

 . . . Argh, I really want to continue this post and tell you guys about the incredibly fun afternoon I had in Chicago, but my computer's running super low on battery and I really should get on the road to Petoskey.

Suffice to say, yesterday was another 180 miles, at about 37 MPG, I made it to Milwaukee in time for dinner with Phil and hangouts with Chelsea, and this morning I found out there was no more car space on the ferry to Michigan today so I'll be driving back through Chicago anyway! (Dang.)

From Milwaukee, about to leave for Points East and North . . . 

Julia