Well, itis being quite a trip. Yes, this is Bubbles, we are both fine and I haven't really been able to think about what I might like to write about so I have just been going along for the ride and enjoying the view. I can hardly remember what I last blogged about. We were in the Driftless Land of south western Wisconsin. We are still in Wisconsin, but we are in Madison, Wisconsin, also known as the MadCity, Cheeseheads and Badgers. More people live here than in Portland, Bangor, Augusta and lots of little towns, over 282,000 and I don't know how many of the 164,000 students that go to the University of Wisconsin are included in that number. MaryAlice has both an undergraduate and a graduate degree from UW, she is an alumni, and a long time ago Dick Wagner (it is so sad that he died in 2021) and MaryAlice were the first co-chairs of the UW-Madison GLBTQ Alumni Association Group. She has been thinking about Dick a lot on this trip, he meant a lot to her. She has also been thinking about Cheri Maples who died in 2017. We are visiting with many friends who are still alive and living in Madison, but I have been noticing how the people who are gone I still very much a part of this trip that we are on. There are also so many ways that they live on, we went by the Rodney Scheel House which MaryAlice helped to make happen when she was the Executive Director of the Madison AIDS Support Network.
There has been a lot of very good conversations, many many hugs and smiles, and lots of stories. MaryAlice has been eating lots of very very good food. She is enjoying all the different food, and the time with every person that she is seeing, and I get to come along and listen and watch and see it all. I am not going to list everyone that we have visited with, but I will tell you that it has been very very fun to watch. Everyone is older, and they each look old in there own way and there has been almost no talk about body parts, surgeries or illness, but of course there has been some. We have been staying with Tim and Jeff, they have a house that is one house away from Lake Mendota so it is beautiful to watch the sun setting over the lake and to see all the ways that the water ice reflects and changes over the day. There are so many things that are different than she visited, and really a lot from 1976 when she and Peg and Sasha moved from Vernon County to the Madison for MaryAlice to go to college. Some things seem as they were, but of course everything is a little different. We don't have many pictures and none that I am going to post today, the pictures are in our heads, except that I got to have a picture of me at this great restaurant Ama. I was having a little meditation time, it was so quiet and serene and the food so so good.
Tomorrow is a travel day. We are going to Jefferson, WI then Chicago, then home. This is the last week of our long, long trip. Many wonderful people and sights and feelings and the best is that both of us are so very happy to be back home. That's the best. We have some fun things planned for the Chicago trip, and I am sure that I will have lots to say about that. I gotta go, we are going to some open houses with Tim and Jeff, and the rest of the day is unplanned. Who knows what might happen. There is supposed to be snow tomorrow and I think that there is freezing drizzle expected in Patten. It is winter, each day a little more light (just a very little) and we are still on the road, seeing new and old friends and so much more.
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