Story about the Circus Train at Moldy Jam

 

Today I worked on campus, but I did not walk with Hardingfele. Remember how she dropped a laptop on her foot at home and broke her toe? She did that at work too, and broke the same toe on her other foot. So I walked by myself and apparently went so slowly that my FitBit didn't register it as a workout. Then the student hourly asked if I had any hand lotion, and I had an ancient tube of it, so she tried it and immediately went to wash it off. "You have to throw that away!" she said. She told me it was the third grossest thing she touched at this job, after the corroded batteries and the box of rotten blueberries that she found in the supply cabinet.

In the evening I went to Moldy Jam, stopping first at the credit union to get some cash for the two tip jars (one for the jam and one for the music club). I was aggrieved to find out both their cash machines were out of order, so I gave up and drove to the club, remembering along the way that I had a $5 and five singles, which was enough for two $5 tips, so I hadn't even needed to stop anyway. And then when I got to the club and went to get the cash, there was a $20 bill in my wallet that I didn't remember being there before. The jam was really fantastic - I knew almost all the tunes! Maybe it's because I've been coming for so long? Even the ones I didn't know seemed easy to pick up, or to play chords on. Another kind of newer person said it was also a good evening for tunes. I did make a faux pas by requesting a tune I don't really know called "Gravel Walk," hoping the others knew it, but they didn't, and one of the leaders said I really shouldn't request a tune I can't lead. It's one I want to learn. Afterwards people were just hanging around, like it was such a great session that nobody wanted to leave, and I started talking to two other ladies about trains. One said that one night when she lived downtown years ago, she heard a steam engine's whistle, so she ran out to see the train because it wasn't an ordinary train. And it was the circus train going up to Baraboo! She said the cars were so colorful and beautiful. I would love to see something like that!

Speaking of trains, there was a video on social media of one here in town with some beautiful graffiti, but it's all stuff I've already posted. Instead, enjoy this tiny engine Travalon got in the mail today.

So cute! Now we have a whole shelf of a bookshelf full of little train engines and cars. I also finally took a photo of the cup we got in Delafield on Saturday. It's kind of a rubbery material.

It is very different than the cup we got last year. I suppose every year they will make them very different so that people will keep buying them. Some of the money goes to the Ice Age Trail Alliance. We can get five "bonus" miles for taking a photo of an Ice Age Trail license plate out in the wild (i.e., not at a trailhead parking lot), so I'm tempted to take a photo of my own license plate. It's not cheating, is it?

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Skyview Park

 

This morning at Mass all the cute little girls were there that we always see, like the African Princess and Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music in Miniature. Then we debated about hiking on a closer segment of the Ice Age Trail, but for some reason I got it in my head that Skyview Park, which isn't far from where I used to live, was both the park I saw from the railroad tracks years ago and also the park Rich, Kayhu, and I went to even longer ago, so we tried to find it. It is very hidden and at first seemed to consist of a playground, but there were trails in the woods, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. I do think this is the park I saw from the railroad tracks, but it's not the one I saw with Rich and Kayhu. Rich thought that was either Elver Park or Garner Park. It was somewhere on the southwest side of town. Here are some photos from today's adventure.

I went to my drumming lesson, and today the guy who founded the drumming group gave some of us a private lesson. Mine mostly consisted of how to hit the drum. Meanwhile, Travalon took advantage of the beautiful day to go fishing, but there were too many boats going by. Then he picked me up and we went to Yahara Park to enjoy the two-for-one energy bars we got in Delafield yesterday. Mine was so crumbly that I lost half of it on the ground. Then I went to the Slow Irish Session, where I could barely stay awake, while Travalon went to the place off of Fair Oaks to see the train cars. I may have posted some of this graffiti before.

Speaking of train graffiti, here are screenshots from the video Travalon made yesterday in Hartland.

Some of that is quality stuff. One of the people in my drumming lesson knows how to do graffiti, and she said she'd show me how to do it on small model train cars. I am not planning to put any on real train cars.

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