I have been very lucky the last few years by having incredible birthdays. This year was no different. John and I headed to Madison on Thursday about 4. We stopped in Dubuque for pizza and got to Madison around 8.
John planned out a nice townie route and we headed out on our bikes to check out La Fete de Marquette. We caught the last couple of songs by Cyril Neville and the Royal Southern Brotherhood. What we heard was great. We headed back home and our friend, Burne finally showed up. He was going to try and get there when we did, but he's a farmer and he had stuff to take care of and he said it was just one of those days where everything went wrong.
Friday morning was cool and misting outside. I got up and went running around 7. My brother lives across the street from the arboretum, so I went there to run. John had already gone out and we ran into each other on the road. he took me to this cool trail to run on and it was beautiful.
My brother loves to paddle and has a garage full of boats. So, we took out a kayak and a canoe and walked them across the street to put in the water. John jumped at the chance to use the kayak, as opposed to being stuck in a canoe with Burne and myself. So, we were in the canoe with very little collective experience steering and the canoe was soft on the outside, which didn't feel all that stable.
We got better the longer we canoed and saw many lily pads, complete with beautiful flowers.
We paddled to Lake Monona where the water was very, very, choppy. I told the boys that since I didn't want to tip over in the canoe, that we should just head on back.
So, covered in mud and what looked like sea weed, (river weed?) we paddled back to my brother's house.
We were all starving so we rode our bikes to a place called, Brasserie V. It is owned by a guy who graduated from high school with my brother and the food and drinks are soooooo good.
Coadster and her boyfriend made it into town and we all had a really good lunch.
John is apparently a very patriotic, kitty.
We headed home, took a little nap and then got on our mountain bikes and rode to Quarry Ridge. It's a little mountain bike trail system right outside of Madison. They did an excellent job of using all of the room they have. They had some crazy technical stuff, I couldn't ride, but also, some nice flowy single track.
Here is John pointing to a ramp that I will never, ever ride.
I walked this downhill the whole way the first time I rode it and only walked halfway the second time I rode it. I might have had to try it 57, 000 times in order to figure out how to go down those first big chunks, though.
We rode home, took showers, and then headed downtown to forage for food. We found a place to eat and had a nice meal. Stinky and her boyfriend got into town and joined us. Burne's cousin also showed up. He was a really nice guy and fun to talk to.
We ended the night at a little dive bar, with very few people in it, where they were showing "The Goonies". Stinky was in hog heaven. We still had two days left and I felt like we had done so much already.
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