Achievements Unlocked: Mammoth Hike Challenge and Apple Eating

 

Once again I am blogging too late at night, so I won't put many pictures on, but I do have a lot to say. Yesterday Travalon and I met his brother and sister-in-law for lunch in Delafield, which was a lot of fun. His SIL has EDS, which is a syndrome, not sure how rare it is, but it takes forever for diagnosis because it's a constellation of symptoms and 90% of the patients are women. Anyone who knows anything about medical research knows that they never understand anything about women. I have a lot of the symptoms, like being able to touch my nose with my tongue and being an easy bleeder, but I haven't had a lot of the terrible problems many people have. It's genetic, but I got the easy bleeding from Ma Hat and the long tongue from Pa Hat's mom, so who knows? Maybe it's just as well I didn't have children, because women with EDS have a 30% maternal death rate. 

After we bid them adieu, Travalon and I went hiking on the Waterville segment of the Ice Age Trail, which has a long boardwalk. Two women passed us, then I thought I heard more people behind us, but it was a bloodhound and a black lab who kept us company for some time on the trail and then vanished. After hiking we indulged in some Trail Magic, getting free stickers and a small scoop of ice cream and having our photos taken in giant yellow chairs. (Before lunch, we had also gotten free trail diaries from the Delafield library that were obviously aimed at children.) We were supposed to write a question in our trail diary, so I wondered if I am strongly in favor of the Oxford comma, and so is Trump, what other things do we agree on? I forget Travalon's question. We had so much fun getting Trail Magic in Delafield that I suddenly realized we had finished the challenge, because you get two bonus miles for each instance of Trail Magic. Wow, done already and with yet another weekend in October to go! Who knows? We may still hike enough to actually get all forty-four miles via hiking.

We planned to go to the pizza restaurant with the organ that my late uncle had helped install, but it was a madhouse in there, and there was a thirty-minute wait, so we went to a Japanese restaurant instead. It wasn't too busy, which I hoped wasn't a bad sign, but in fact we had just fortuitously beaten the rush, because after we had ordered, about a million people arrived. After dinner we went to China Lights at Boerner Botanical Garden. Travalon took about a million photos, but I will share just a few from my phone to whet your appetite.

This morning Travalon's team, Wolverhampton, played one of the top teams but they were keeping up with them. Then right at the end, in stoppage time, the other team (Manchester City) got three penalty kicks in a row, and they got a goal but it was called back because of interference on their part... and then their manager somehow argued for them to get the goal, so the Wolves lost AGAIN. We went to the 10:30 Mass north of us, and I was surprised to see a neighbor who seems to have moved sitting right in front of us. She has twin boys with muscular dystrophy, and I was afraid she had moved because they had died, but they were alive and well this morning. I know she saw me, but she bolted out of Mass before the closing hymn, so I didn't get a chance to ask where she is living now.

Travalon and I decided to hike along the mountain bike trails in Sauk between the VFW Park and the dam, with the goal of finding the apple tree we had seen blooming along the trail in May. I wasn't sure if we would find it without the showy, lovely-smelling blooms, but we did spot it. The fruit was small like the tree in our neighborhood with the really delicious fruit, right between crabapples and apples in size. It wasn't quite as tasty, but they weren't bad little green apples, so we ate a bunch. Then we went to the dam and saw lots of seagulls and this blue heron.

Speaking of wading birds, I posted a photo of the "goolie bird" we saw in Bimini in a social media group about wading birds, and they all said it was a juvenile crowned night heron - they just couldn't agree if it was a yellow-crowned night heron or a black-crowned one, though most people leaned toward yellow-crowned. That is very helpful, because it wasn't matching any bird species I could find. I never thought of it being a juvenile, but it makes sense.

The Packers played at noon, and it was too nice out today (like summer!) to sit inside and watch them, but we listened on the radio as we drove to Sauk and back. They beat the Texans with a walk-off field goal as time ran out, because now they have a new kicker who can get it done. (Narveson was useless.) The refs seemed to have it out for them, like they usually do, except last week when the refs seemed to have it out for the Cardinals, so when the Packers beat them handily, it wasn't that satisfying. It's very mysterious how the refs seem to love some teams and hate others. Kind of sus, if you know what I mean.

After my Irish class, Travalon and I took a boat ride back into the marsh, where the colors were pretty but not spectacular like some years. Then we went to Rich's house for a birthday dinner with Kathbert. He made brownies, and something seemed different about them - we all noticed - but the only thing he did different was use sugar from Pakistan, and it tasted like regular sugar. We may never solve this mystery. On the way home I was bombarding Travalon with random questions, like, "I wonder if anyone has ever taught a chicken to go skateboarding?" and "I wonder what happened to my radio that looked like a church?" Maybe the funny taste in the brownies really was some kind of drug! Ha!

Famous Hat