Roadtrip! Big ol' cheese country (hold the cheese)

When driving up to Wisconsin on I-90 West, remember to bring a journal to log the variety of roadkill (e.g., deer, racoon, possum, cat, rat) and the number of torn tires peppering the road (er, many).

This past weekend, I accompanied a pal (let's call her DJ J-Cap) up to Madison, Wisconsin, where she shall be attending the illustrious university in order to pursue her dream job of improving adhesives and, in so doing, our lives. It was a pretty nice ride and not a terribly long trip for those people who actually live in large states that can't be traversed under 3 hours, unlike some of us. It was an excellent time to sing and spazzily dance along to newly acquired hipster tunes.

Alas, we did not travel far enough to see Wisconsin's famed cows or any breweries (that's Milwaukee...or Millioke, which is Algonquin for "the good land"), but there were certainly enough farms and looong country roads to make one appreciate why Laura Ingalls Wilder was always so excited to go to town and get that half-penny piece of candy. Yeesh. Speaking of good ol' Little House on the Prairie, we even stayed in a neat old farm house! J-Cap's very friendly acquaintances were nice enough to let us stay the night in their house, which is just outside of Madison. Apparently, they never bother locking the doors. Hmmm... The house was built in the 1870s, and I was halfway hoping that it would be haunted by some poor murdered soul seeking vengeance, just like in one of those Unsolved Mysteries segments I used to watch when I was little. No such luck. Apparently, the owners told us that they were also disappointed that they didn't find any hidden treasures when they bought the house. What kind of boring, non-murdering, non-pack rat people lived in this joint?!?

Anyhoo, the rundown on Madison is that it's an unexpectedly cool place. It has pretty lakes and good restaurants, which is more than I can say about my grad school destination. The ice cream is excellent. There is a distinct lack of cheese, but an abundance of coffee shops. And, in the tradition of the grandest college towns, the town is rife with crappy apartments run by sketchy people trying to make a quick buck (we did find a nice one owned by a very nice professor-type just as our wits were running out, though). We also discovered that the State Capitol is an extremely popular venue for weddings (at least 3 were in different stages of progress during our brief walk-through). I will always remember Madison as where I discovered Ting. Moreover, I can't diss the city too much, as it is probably the only reason why Wisconsin was a blue state in 2004. By no means is Madison representative of the rest of the state (the city is nicknamed "78 square miles surrounded by reality"), but it's nice that it is the state capital so that any irrational conservatism can be tempered a wee bit. Still, seeing so many old Kerry-Edwards signs or stickers made me die a little each time. Sigh. Long live the college town!