Travalon's Train Day

 

I forgot to mention that Monday night after Moldy Jam, Travalon and I took a walk and I saw a meteor. The big shower was last week and I forgot to look, although I heard it was too cloudy to see much. Then yesterday on the way home I saw a faint rainbow.

Today I worked on campus and walked with Seabird over lunch. She was also very enamored of my teal Aer Lingus hat with the lime green shamrocks. It's such a beautiful hat - I'm so happy that those ladies were willing to give them to us. Maybe they saw I was wearing a hat already and figured I'd actually wear it. It did seem like a lot of people were just carrying the hats around, or had them stuffed into bags.

In the evening Travalon picked me up from work, and we drove to Cross Plains to hear the Daughter of Denni and her band play at a farmer's market. We chatted amicably with the Widow of Denni while listening to them and being puzzled that they had set up umbrellas so everyone on stage got shade except the Daughter of Denni, who hates temperatures above 60 F. Seems like they could have moved one over a bit... There was a food cart, so we got dinner, and someone was selling "buckeye" cookies that were chocolate with peanut butter on top. So delicious!

On Saturday while I was at Irish Fest, Travalon had a train adventure. He started at the Portage rail yard and saw one CSX train. Then he stopped in Columbus but did not see a train there. He went to Slinger and saw a Canadian National train, then he went to Duplainville and saw two AmTrak trains and two Canadian National trains. He stopped in Pewaukee but didn't see a train there, and no trains in Oconomowoc, but in Watertown he saw a train after dark. He topped his day off with a Key lime martini at the North Side Lounge back in Madison. Here are some photos of the graffiti he saw. Actually, this first batch is from Thursday night at the Portage rail yard and the one in town.

Sorry, Blogspot has abruptly decided that is enough photos for one post, so I'll have to do more tomorrow. There are also lots of great screenshots I can get from his videos, so stay tuned!

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Tuesday on Campus: Too Many Sweets

 

Today I had to be on campus because we were having orientation for the new grad students, and all the staff had to explain what we can do for them. We did get free lunch, which included a large, salt-encrusted chocolate chip cookie. Did you know you needed salt on your cookies? You do now. Usually I don't work on campus on Tuesdays, which may be why I forgot my computer at home this morning, but Travalon (that prince among men) brought it to me. He was driving my car Noelle, since she needed an oil change, so he had to do a lot of adulting this morning.

It was a sunny day at first, and I walked with Hardingfelde at lunch. Since I was on campus, I was able to go to the ice cream social at three, but just before that it began to rain, so I didn't see anyone outside of Birge Hall. I went inside and still didn't see anyone, so I sent a message to the organizer, and she said it was now inside of South Hall. I got some ice cream (which is just what I needed after eating a big cookie) and sat alone eating it, but then some bigwigs I knew arrived, so we started chatting. Pretty soon the place was full of people, but no FART 5 compadres, because none of them work on campus on Tuesdays. Of course when I left, it was sunny out once again... and I'd left my sunglasses in my office. At least people did like my Aer Lingus bucket hat.

I don't know if my regular readers missed train graffiti photos while I was posting about Irish Fest, but I did see a video on social media that had lots of amazing art.

It looked like there were some more cars coming along with beautiful graffiti, but then the video ended. Speaking of trains and art, while I was waiting for Travalon to pick me up, I heard a train crossing campus, but I was nowhere near a place to view it. Then Travalon said he was stuck behind it, so he was running late for a good reason... and then he texted me a couple of photos!

He has more photos on his good camera from his Train Day on Saturday, so I'll hope to blog about that tomorrow. He brought me to Adoration, and then it rained heavily, but it was done by the time I was done. He ducked into the State Street arcade and played some games while waiting for me. Then on the way home we thought a train was going to cross Commercial Avenue, but then it backed up into the rail yard instead. I've been too busy thinking about Irish stuff to give much thought to trains for the last five days, but it's good to be back in the hunt!

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Mass at Irish Fest

 

Yesterday Celtic Lass and I got to County Clare early in the morning, after I ate the other half of my omelet from Saturday morning and we stopped at McDonald's to get breakfast for her and coffee for me. There was a woman driving the shuttle, and it turned out she was the wife of Lyman, the guy who had been driving the shuttle every other time we'd taken it. We got into Irish Fest free by donating two cans of food, then we went to the big auditorium for Mass. Celtic Lass took some photos.

The Bishop of Down, who had heard my confession on Saturday, celebrated the Mass. There were so many people there! Celtic Lass went to Cederburg to check out a quilting museum, so I wandered the grounds alone. The entire weekend I had not heard a bodhran, the classic Irish drum, but as I headed toward the Failte VIP lounge, I heard the distinct sound of one.

I sat listening and realized the couple ahead of me were from the Shamrock Club, so we sat together in a small patch of shade. The next band at that stage were the Brigideens, highly recommended by Celtic Lass, and they were a women's trad group with a bodhran. Then I grabbed some lunch and went up to the Failte VIP lounge, where I bought the previous years' picks. There were five previous years, and they were sold in packs of three, so they said they'd sell me five for the price of two three-packs and throw in a bottle of water. Here are the picks; the purple one is the one I saved from this year.

The red-headed flute player arrived, and she and I checked out the Irish dog breeds (as Tiffy and I had the day before), then we went back to the session area, and I sat in the circle between her and another woman I kind of knew, loving the vibe. There were bodhran players and a number of fiddles, a hammer dulcimer, guitars, whistles, and bouzoukis, and a couple dancing in the center of the circle. Then a guitarist arrived and needed my seat, so I went back to Failte VIP to wait for Travalon to arrive. Can you believe this? He ended up on the same shuttle as Celtic Lass when she was returning from Cederburg!

While I waited for them, I watched a band with uillean pipes from the VIP section.

The sound is so haunting, it gives me chills. Travalon loved the VIP lounge, and honestly it's worth the money because you can sit in the shade away from the crowds. We hung out there a bit, then he and I got some dinner and were sitting in the shade by the lake when the flute player came by. We begged her to join us, but she said she was too hot and was heading home. We joined Celtic Lass to see the pipes and drums and Scottish dancers, then we went shopping again. Travalon got a couple of T-shirts I should have him model soon, and I got a bag that Travalon said looked really good with my Aer Lingus hat and Irish Fest Summer School T-shirt, so I asked him to take a photo.

I did forget to tell one story from Saturday that Celtic Lass thought was hilarious: while we were watching the Scottish dancers, they had a bunch of people from the audience come and do a Scottish country dance, but it was like herding cats. I thought Tiffy said, "That dancing looks like ass," which I can imagine other people saying, but it seemed out of character for her, so I said, "What?" She repeated what she'd said, and I said, "They look like ass?" so she said, "It looks like chah-ose." This is because I told her how, in fifth grade, it suddenly occurred to me that the word kay-oss that I always heard but never saw written meant the same thing as the word chah-ose that I always saw written but never heard anyone say, so I realized my mistake. Yesterday when we watched the dancers again instructing the audience members, Celtic Lass said, "Does it look like choss?" and I didn't understand for a second, then I was like, "Chah-ose? Yes it does!"

Meanwhile, I was actually keeping up with my DuoLingo:

Last night we left during the big celebration at the end, when all the bands are on stage together, and I got my stuff out of Celtic Lass's car and rode home with Travalon. Today I worked from home and went on my lunch break with Travalon to pick up the car, since it's close to where he had to go for work. That all went very smoothly, and while I missed my lunchtime walk, I'd had enough sunshine and walking this weekend that a break was probably in order. 

In the evening I went to Moldy Jam and played with one of my Irish Fest picks, specifically the green one. I didn't like it quite as much as the pick I usually use, but it's fine. The feisty mandolin player showed me some really interesting chords, and the new person from last week came back. I was going to leave at the break halfway through but then did stick around, so once again I'm blogging too late. Time to wrap this up, because tomorrow I have to work on campus. At least I get a free lunch.

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More Reports from Irish Fest 2026

 

Yesterday I took the day off of work and went to the dentist in the morning, then in the early afternoon I drove to the condo of my Shamrock Club buddy (who wants to be known as Celtic Lass), and she drove us to the hotel where Travalon used to work. I took some photos for him, and he said it was really fixed up these days.

This is the roof of that atrium as viewed from our room.

Their "Caution Wet Floor/Piso Mojado" sign looked like a banana!

Then we drove to County Clare and took the free shuttle again, and I had a free ticket someone had given me, so I should get in free all four days. We went to the VIP area again and then we watched BIIRD again, as well as another all-women band called Cailini Lua.

We had really good lamb stew with marble rye bread and butter that looked like Kerrygold from the packaging, but then when you looked closer, it was a cheap knockoff. We also ran into a coworker of mine who I also saw at Irish Fest last year. We took a relatively late shuttle back to County Clare, and Celtic Lass found someone's hotel key card on the shuttle, so she gave it to our driver, Lyman.

This morning Celtic Lass met with a friend who lives here in the Milwaukee area, so I checked out the restaurant in the hotel for breakfast. They were surprisingly quick and friendly. Then we drove back to Irish Fest, thinking we had free parking as well as free entrance due to the statewide Shamrock Club meeting, but in fact we did have to pay to park. The meeting was kind of interesting, hearing what Milwaukee and La Crosse and New London Shamrock Clubs are doing. A priest came over with an Irish bishop, and somehow I ended up having this poor bishop hear my confession as we sat by the lake.

Once the actual festival started, we spent a lot of time listening to pipes and drums.

Tiffy arrived while Celtic Lass and I were listening to an Irish storyteller named Eamon De Cogain.

And here are some more pipers with dancers.

Here are photos of the Gardiner Brothers.

We kept seeing people with these cute Aer Lingus hats, so we kept asking people where they got them, and everyone had a different answer, but they were always free. While Celtic Lass was watching a different show, Tiffy and I were sitting in the shade by the lake, and we asked a group of older ladies who all had the hats, and to our surprise two of them gave us theirs. They said they were from a Badger rally that I had never heard about in either my capacity as an alumna nor as a current employee. We thought it would be bad form to ask for a third one for Celtic Lass, and we never did find one for her. Here's a selfie Tiffy took of the two of us in our new hats.

She tried to take a second one, and I didn't realize it. This one just makes me laugh. Is it my good side?

Celtic Lass saw the Brigideens and said they were really good, so I'll have to check them out tomorrow.

After Tiffy left, I went to the Irish Language tent and ran into some people I'd met before. They were giving out cake to celebrate a guy I'd never heard of, but Tiffy and I had just had chocolate chip mint shakes. Celtic Lass met me there, and then when we were leaving, we could see the beautiful lights on the bridge above us.

Now we are back at the hotel, and we'll have to get up early tomorrow for 9:30 am Mass. Yawn! I should note that a lot of these photos were taken by Celtic Lass, since her phone takes better photos than mine.

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