Lunchtime Boat Ride

Today I took a long lunch break and went down to the alumni association with my colleague from Asian Languages. She had just returned a few days ago from a family trip to China, so I figured she needed to ease back into work, and I was allowed to bring a guest. (Or more than one, as it turns out.) I am a member of the alumni association, and on Fridays in the summer there are free boat rides for members and guests. Last Friday they canceled them due to excessive heat, and the week before that I was busy with the Early Music Festival, and I didn’t know about them before that. The boat can hold ten people besides the captain and the coordinator, and most of the other people were retirees, although there was one guy who had just graduated and joined the association. The captain took us out to David Buoy, the buoy that the Limnology Department has put in the deepest part of Lake Mendota to measure all sorts of things, and he told us about it and also talked about how now the students are taught about the Ho Chunk people who lived in this area. He said, “Things have changed a lot since you were in college,” and then he added to my colleague (who did not go to this university but one in China) and me, “Not so much for you two,” since we were decades younger than our fellow boaters. Though I will admit that a lot has changed since I was a student at this university. The ride was about half an hour long, and it was a perfect day, with a refreshing breeze and just enough sunshine but not so much that we would burn. It was just what my colleague needed to welcome her back to this country – she said the weather here is much nicer than in Shanghai, where it was hot and humid, but then she missed the heat wave last week. It was so bad that it caused cancellations, like boat rides…

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