Perhaps the Sunday evening trip to the casino was a harbinger of impending events. Besides procuring valet parking for Madtown redux 2015. Repeating .40 ¢ bets over 2 hours covers the cost with $160 profit.
Back at the casino, Tuesday 0430 am, for shuttle to OMG early departure GEG to DEN, DEN to MSN. MSN Dane County Regional Airport formerly known as Truax and a personal familiarity as the airfield also is home to the Wisconsin Air National Guard. Here, in a “huey” during the 80s, perhaps “then” a harbinger hint of helicopters in my future.
The #20 with at transfer bus ride from the airfield across the Isthmus, past the capital, past the UW campus, around the University Hospital and Clinics to the West Transfer Point. A slow, perfect passage and a different perspective as a rider. Past, a swirl of layered recollections, old places vividly familiar and new places with discordant disorientation. Now earbuds stream Indie music but a faint “then” flash of Country Joe’s “Give me an F…” blasts from Sellery Dorm speakers. Where once graffiti ed and poster-ed plywood bordered construction, now cranes cast shadows.
Brunch at Mickie’s Dairy Bar where a paltry fare provides enough tasty calories to feed most of Indochina for a week. Small circles begin to form where once this was an almost daily “Trek” enroute to MGH ER.
Onto the campus of UW to the Geology Museum. Because the museum is under renovation, specimens are surrealistically plastic wrapped for preservation and protection. There, a chat with a retired physician and his wife visiting from New York. He reminisces the time, here as a student of Psychology, The school where Harry Harlow made fame. “Normal is a setting on a washing machine”.
PRESERVE WRAP
At NMRFAM Mark Anderson takes his time to give a tour, patiently answering what are probably naive inquiries with great geek enthusiasm. The technology within this fascinating facility is, personally, only understood in fractions and fragments. Fractions and fragments is probably an apt description of NMR spectroscopy.
Sitting with a Daily Scoop of Babcock Hall at Union South, a gastric nirvana of ice cream surrounded by learning and knowledge , the familiarity of Madtown. Once the union was a “Trek” stop to use the free phones, now the smart phone is plugged into a free charging station. Still tumbling spectroscopy, a google of Overhauser effect and suddenly a transformation into a student again, this time armed with a tablet.
With a sufficient charge, a B-Cycle gets charged for a bike ride about campus, up State Street, around the capital, down State Street to the Memorial Union where it is returned at a B-Cycle station. There is an app for these stations, and for Uber (“currently unavailable”), for bus transit.
A third visit to the Chazen for the year and incredibly in a true Madison effect, also strolling about the art, the retired visiting physician and his wife.
The Wisconsin fall colors are in full display the pink flamingos have returned to Bascom Hill, Homecoming weekend has brought out all the Badger red and white.
A disorienting walk up State Street trying to reconcile memories (“Is that the old Ovens of Brittany?”) with new impressions: the homeless sleeping in corners while, nearby, phones are charging plugged into street light outlets, shadows from new housing structures reflecting gentrification, a “Huey” gunship hanging in the Veterans Museum, Forward to the Capital again and like previous visit, inaccessible rotunda, this time under construction.
Before departing Madtown, a short wait sitting between Camp Randall and Mickie’s Dairy Bar. The circles still spin in this city.
