Train Graffiti and Salsa on the Rooftop

 

Today I worked from home and Travalon didn't have to work, so we tried to figure out where to go for a lunchtime walk. The road to Governor's Island is all torn up, and Jackson's Landing is closed until further notice. I don't know if this is because of storm damage or because there are Karner blue butterflies there, which are endangered. I am totally speculating about that, but I have seen the butterflies there as well as in Necedah, and like Necedah there are lupines there, which is what their caterpillars eat. Anyway, since it was no longer a close, shady option for a walk, we went to Tuggle Road off of River Road and hiked on the trails there.

In the evening after we took care of our neighbor's cat, I said we should get going right away to get to the salsa concert on the Monona Terrace rooftop, but we weren't fast enough and we just missed a train heading north. Then when we drove by the railyard here in town, we saw so much cool graffiti. Travalon happened to have his good camera... but the battery was dead, so we ran around with our cell phones and took photos.

The traffic was terrible getting to the Monona Terrace because Concert on the Square had been postponed from yesterday due to rain, so everyone was heading downtown at once. (I hear their theme was the songs of Elton John and Billy Joel.) It was a beautiful night, as you can see from these photos.

The band played salsa, bachata, merengue, cumbia, and even a Mexican song, so sort of pan-Latin. The music always sends me to another place, with a very green mountain overlooking water. It looks sort of like Trempeleau, or like the view of the hill in Pheasant Branch with the creek in front of it. Does this place really exist? I'm beginning to wonder if it's somewhere in Puerto Rico, because when we were approaching it while hanging out in the Zen Room, listening to Enya, the misty mountains looked so mystical and sacred. Whatever this place is, I wonder if Heaven will look like that. How amazing if it did.

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Ukulele Strum with Songs about Animals

 

Today I worked on campus, and Seabird and I were able to walk between storms. I showed my younger and much tech-savvier coworker the photo of the train artwork featured on this blog yesterday, specifically the one with the figure between two tags, and she said she loves train graffiti too. We agreed that "modern art" you see in museums is often terrible because it's either produced by nepo babies or artists who are so famous that they don't have to try anymore, whereas train artists don't make money, and they constantly have to prove their cred to other artists, so their work is often amazing. She also laughed when we found the photo of Seabird and me on the Alumni Association boat, because it's specifically an ad for the party we are going to on Friday where we hope to ride the boat again, and my coworker said how meta it is for me to be in an ad for an event I'm going to. I also asked her if she could help me find the photo of Travalon and me canoeing on the Wayback Machine; we had no luck, but we did laugh really hard because at one point the website had a photo of two guys in a canoe from a side angle, and then later they had the same guys in a canoe, but from more of a head-one angle. I asked if she could help me with the bewildering folder of files of an unknown type that saved to my computer when I tried to save the image from the website, but she had no ideas about that either. I guess the photo is lost to posterity. 

Speaking of photos, I took this one of a tree peony seed pod that looks like a star when Seabird and I were walking in Allen Centennial Gardens.

We also saw this tree that looks like hops, and in fact it's called a hop hornbeam.

There is a guy who makes videos of every train that passes by and then posts them on social media, and I saw that he made a video of the train Travalon and I heard pass by around 5:20 yesterday evening, so I watched the video to see if there was any good graffiti. Answer: yes.

As you can see, I still need to learn something about screenshots, since these all have the "pause" button on them. Fortunately, it's higher than the graffiti in every photo.

I already had my steps for the day by the end of our lunchtime walk, so I was thinking of skipping my afternoon walk, but I needed more fresh air. I could hear a train coming, but the way campus is set up, there wasn't a good point to see it from for about a football field's length away, so I started running until I couldn't anymore... and then I heard the horn very close and started running again. And I saw the whole train! It was short and didn't have a lot of graffiti, just the 4AL that I thought was "YAL" until I saw the "Four" spelled out, and later I saw it was "4 A LAUGH." No "Puck" this time.

I left work early to catch the shuttle before my usual one in order to get to the ukulele strum on time. The sky was getting dark as I headed north, and I thought about going home instead of heading all the way into Waunakee, but I did beat the storm. It started shortly before the strum did, so right when I would have arrived had I taken the later shuttle. After the storm, a rainbow!

We played songs about animals today, like "Horse With No Name," "Three Little Birds," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" - you get the idea. Everything was clear once the strum ended, and when Travalon came home, we went to take care of our neighbor's cat. There were some beautiful pink clouds.

As astute readers might have noticed, I have mostly given up on clever blog post names and now call the blog post whatever it's actually about. This is mostly to make it easier for me to find past blog posts, because if I'm looking for the time I went sailing but the blog has some clever pun of a name that has nothing to do with sailing, it gets frustrating for me. Maybe I'll save the clever titles for days where I'm just working from home and nothing happens.

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Trains and Choro

 

Today I worked from home, so not much to say about that. Travalon had the day off, so he went to Portage and took more photos and videos in the railyard. Here are some photos he took. Even the sign has graffiti!

These are screenshots I made from videos he took of train cars that had awesome graffiti.

A better view of the same car.

I just thought this tanker was cool-looking. The graffiti isn't that exciting.

Some more really beautiful graffiti.

My car is repaired now (and the front bumper is black), although there is some quick fix that needs to be done on Thursday. However, it is drivable now, so I drove to the choro session today. It was the leader on guitar and mandolin, the guy from the drumming collective on cavalquinho, a student who is a really good Irish fiddler that I convinced to come, the owner on cello, and some random hippie guy on drums. It was a lot of fun, but by the end I did feel like my brain was going on strike. When I saw an F flat, I played an F sharp, because what's an F flat? An E - so why not just write that?? When you're playing at those kinds of speeds, it's too hard to think that fast.

After I led Night Prayer, I went out for a walk to get my remaining steps for the day, and I heard the train at the second closest crossing from the north. I hurried to where I could see the train but heard it at the closest crossing and thought maybe I was too late. However, when I rounded the corner, I saw the engine going by. It was too dark to see the cars, so I have no idea if they had excellent graffiti. By the time I got back to the front door of our building, I heard it at the first crossing to the south. Travalon heard it too, so he started to come out to see it, but I said, "Too late - it's already passed." That's okay, we recently saw one coming from the north at the nearest crossing. That one was much longer than the one tonight. This one sounded like it only had five cars.

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