Day off: Madison, WI

Today was our FIRST day off - wahoo! For the first time all trip we had NO obligations for an entire day : i.e. we could sleep in as long as desired; (this did not end up being that late since we are used to getting up at 4am); eat whenever and wherever ( I had Greek for lunch and Pad Thai for the second night in a row for dinner = yummy); check out the city at our leisure and we did NOT have to BIKE (don't get me wrong, I have developed a love of biking, but after your butt has been sitting on a small leather bike seat for 2000 miles it welcomes one day of true rest).


I had a slow start out of the church in the morning, so slow that I ended up getting into town by myself b/c everyone else had a little more morning energy that I did. but I enjoyed the alone time (which is hard to come by) regardless. I walked and then took a taxi (I am a very slow walker and time was precious) to meet up a with a bunch of people at a feminist book store- it was really cool. After perusing around the inventory, and purchasing many buttons (i.e. pins) we walked along the streets and into other stores other stores enjoying our time to do nothing(and I purchased more buttons - all I need now is a purse to pin them on to).


I spent most of the afternoon with Graham walking around and loooking into every hippie store in downtown Madison is search of the perfect tie-die t-shirt. We ended up spending abotu 2 hours in this once store, and after having tried on pretty much every style in the place we were ready to purchase our new (vibrant) attire. See picture below (we actaully got all decked out and sported headbands and glasses to match! Graham had to purchase his tie-died bandana but I, of course, happened to be wearing one of matching colours to the shirt I purchased. Figures....)


Picutre = Graham and I all decked out. Even thought Madison is big hippie town, we definitely got some interesting stares. This one older man stopped us for abotu 20 minutes to tell us all about the Grateful Dead concerts he used to go to dressed just like us and told us to live up life large while we could. Word.



The store clerks were actaully super nice and fun and one of the guys working there offered to burn us a CD of the music they had playing the background b/c we had enjoyed listening to it so much! Now we own a copy of the playlist and I can't wait to listen to it on repeat.


The day was long and packed ( I also managed to pick up another newsboy cap for my collection..."Now hats a wonderful thing you see..." (Hi any fellow Waldener's out there...), but overall it was a great day off. Tomorrow will be our first century (over 100 mile ride), so I need to get to bed early so that I can finish it inone piece - wish me luck.


Keep it real and keep on smilin'...