Madison Is So Gay.

At 9.00am on Monday, August 16th, I departed from Madison with my bicycle, housing, medical necessitites, rations, tool shop in a bag, medium spirits, and two stuffed, fuzzy Henry Kenyon replacements. At 3.oopm on Monday, August 16th, I arrived at 117 W. Dayton St. APT. 3, Madison WI. This is the tale of how I ended up where I started. It will be told in three pictures, all of which would inspire radiant life in a bike-touring tale of past, yet serve as nothing but an outline to a weak and thin (though ever so treacherous) journey, like a person turned two-demensional. This is partly because pictures of past would have been selected for their compartive superiority and ultimate accuracy in Epic representation. These three pictures are the only three that I have. They are not the chosen ones, they are the only ones, a mere settlement. This picture was taken 6.07 miles outside of Madison. That's a thirty minute bike ride, give or take five minutes, depending on inner-city traffic lights. There are no beads of hill-climbing sweat, no county lines, no grass patches turned diner for the world's most enjoyed peanut butter and honey sandwich, no scouring of a map for alternate (or oringinal) routes, no depleted blood sugar emergency stops for electrolytes behind this photo: Just Madison. Dane County. A slightly glorified commute to botany class.

Shortly thereafter, I made a left turn that should have been a right turn. I felt great; the ensuing downhill was thrilling and lasted about four miles. Then the road just stopped, which was not supposed to happen. Oops. Thirty minutes later I was back up the hill and to my oringinal turning point. The correct direction had no exciting downhill. Not physically anyway. Mentally the downhill was hard to beat. My aged and experienced tubes of 1200+ miles had no evasive powers to the perilous remnants of drunken high school boys or college girls, or forty year old men; anyone can throw a glass bottle out a window.


These are a bunch of horses. They're on a hill in Dane County. They graze about 1.2 miles before the highway, as in four lane divider road 65mph expressway, for which I was doomed. My directions would have had me on this highway for 87 miles. Huge, huge fail. Sunny cloudless days apparantly have no say in Wisconsin bike trail weather. This tunnel flood engulfed my entire bottom bracket and more as I rode through it. That's to say that at the top of my pedal stroke, my foot was still under water. That, ladies and gentlemen, was the death of my 2010 bike tour. 6 hours and 60 miles later, I was back home. A litte tanner, perhaps a little stronger, still in Madison.
Luckily Madison is not a bad place to be. Not at all. I would in fact want to be no where else. No where but my kitchen with Albert,

one cool bunch of bananas who likes to smoke and has a small drinking problem, and

Collin, who cooks at all hours of the day and has an eternal presence in our spice cupboard, a kind of Chinese, Indian, freshly ground wonderspice presence,

and the many daily guests that circle around our beloved kitchen table, entering and leaving at will, partly because we leave our apartment door open, partly because the building door won't shut and the landlady seems not to know she is a landlady.

Nowhere else but home :).

Bike paths are fun as well, especially with Syliva and Ike.

Truckloads of shirtless men are great too! What is a truckload of shirtless men?

This is a truckload of shirtless men. They are the wonderfully exuberant men who represented Woofs Bar in the Wisconsin Pride Parade today. They are largely without hair, they are gay, and they are not censored. Library Mall, as seen from a tower on which I make Thing One calls to my Thing Two counterpart (Jean where are youuu). Colors of Madison.

Today was a day for Wisconsin Pride. There was a parade, there was lots of color, there was live music, and there were speeches, surprisingly authentic and inspiring, from the Madison Mayor and Congresswoman.

Madison Wisconsin: farmer's markets, bicycles, pedestrian zones, bros, hippies, wordly restaurants, vegetarian restaurants, chicken wings for five cents, spotted cow, Germans, lakes, four seasons, LGBT, straight, everything in between, good music, the onion, coffee shops, the Union, the Terrace, quiet rooms and cages, very loud religious radicals, very loud atheists. This is my college home :).

Caitlin Quintenz

My father and I arrived in Madison on Tuesday night. My freshman year roommate, now one of my closest friends in Madison, was so kind as to allow me to store my belongings in his cardiovascular research lab. We put my things in a radioactive room and I watched him spin little tubes of green stuff in a machine that could very well date back as far as 1993. He said he is growing bacteria. I believe him.
After a delicious Himalayan dinner with my dad and Eric, I went to the Terrace to meet Caitlin Quintenz. She was there along with Sylvia and Collin and Sabine and some international friends. I've had my heart in my eyes ever since I saw them all again. It's hard to explain how lovely it is to be back. It's as if one year ago I put myself down on top a table at the terrace, as I would my keys and wallet, left to go grab a beer at the bar (several beers at several bars on the other side of the world this time), and came back on Tuesday night to pick myself up again. There is so much of my world in Madison that I have built here, that I will never get anywhere else, and when I come back I'm revitalized by these sleeping aspects of me. It would be the same going to Freiburg; there are parts of me that will always only be accessible there. It is the same in Boston, although some of those aspects have either decided not to wake up quite yet, or are simply lost because I'm not trying to find them. Anyway Madison has been a non-stop treasure hunt the past 48 hours, and I've found dozens of me eggs all over the place. I'm even painting some new ones as I go.Here's a branch of mine that I can only find in Madison: Lakeshore bike path, on which I commuted daily for two crisp Mendota years.

Wednesday was my one day to find an apartment. I have papers to write; I can't be bumming on sofas and having no house. Nevertheless there is always time for breakfast, indeed for long, relaxing, and colorful breakfast. Like this one:

This breakfast is the newly discovered awesomeness that calls itself Lazy Jane's Cafe. Sylvia and Collin and Sabine took me there. The place is splendid. It has a downstairs and an upstairs, a living room and a hallway full of mirrors, and a man that yells your name for food in his very unique way. I've been told it's the same man every morning. It was nice to have breakfast with Collin and Sabine, as Collin is soon leaving for China, and Sabine for Freiburg. Sylvia, however. I will be seeing a lot of Sylvia this year. Which is fantastic :).

After spending a weak three hours "looking" for a place to live, I found one and moved in, taking the obvious option shining luminously in front of me. Within 24 hours of arriving in Madison I had found a golden (actually several shades of purple) flat on the second story of State Street's one hundred block. Directly on the capitol loop, I have a room with a balcony and a tomato plant that grows (apparently) delicious tomatoes, a living room with finger-painted trees on the walls, and a kitchen with cabinets that I don't understand (really? handles that measure 8 feet 8 inches off the ground?). The rent is the cheapest I've ever paid and I can hear concerts on the square from my window. Of course none of this compares to the fact that this apartment, the one whose front door is 26 feet from Ian's and a block from Noodles, belongs to two of the happiest and most warm-hearted people I know: Caitlin and Sylvia. The three of us are going to have the best vegetarian kitchen of the year and one of the most linguistically diverse apartments in Madison. Especially when Nick is there. I don't have pictures yet, but they will come. Just know that I'm so excited I can't keep my shirt on. Though the 90+ degree weather certainly doesn't help.

Welcome back to beautiful Madison.

Have a peachy Thursday :)

Love,

A Happy Ben.

Goodbye Freiburg, Hello Boston (Goodbye Boston)

For the first time in time a plenty, I've found some space to sit down and write in my blog, thereby sharing with the entire world, except those places running late, my little ant-like activities. I may be one of billions doing nothing but scurrying from here to there and back again, leaving weak little traces in the sand waiting to be washed away, but no matter; they are important little soon-to-be-non-existent imprints. Life is to be doing, and if you weren't doing, you'd be dead. So how did I get to my post on the scratchy sofa sitting in Eric Statz' 2009-2010 apartment, in which he made a years worth of little soon-to-be-non-existent imprints (quite literally. The house he is living in is to be demolished in 4 days. Were you to come here on Tuesday, you would see nothing of Eric Statz. But no matter, life is to be doing.)? Let's back up to the final week of Freiburg, in which I wrote four papers and thereby took care of everything I needed to take care to wrap up my academics in Freiburg, closing that blue booklet in my education and flying stress free back to Boston!

There was no such week. There was a final week to Freiburg. There was a week before that week in which I got two of four papers done. That was nice. It does appear however as if I still have two papers to write. German University mentality of "DIY" as in "teach yourself, our professors are just here to research," I never want anything to do with you again.


(Picture above is my roommate and best dude in Germany, Tobi, and myself, pictured where he grew up.)

My final week was full of farewells. Every meal was a goodbye of some sort. It's only appropriate that way; the people and the food are the two things I miss the most, and I miss them a lot. I've had five or six meals in America that haven't forced away my appetite within a bite or less. Often all I need to do is walk into an eating establishment and the waste, apathetic and indulging eating choices, and general fatness eradicate my hunger entirely. America doesn't have many smokers and has even fewer chain smokers, but it's got sugar eating machines and big balls of people. Smoking is not a healthy addition to a lifestyle. Eating donuts and meat out of a can for every meal (and dozen snacks in between) is in absolutely no way better. Food/healthy or unhealthy lifestyles, however, are a different post (this technique of naming a topic yet postponing its elaboration to an indefinite future post I have stolen from my best friend and role model in intelligent and writing affairs, Henry Kenyon. You can find his anime adventures here: http://www.outofmountains.blogspot.com/.).


This is where I lived in Freiburg.

This is my kitchen with all of my plants, which in this moment are very confused and slightly irritated at the removal from their homely habitat in my Zimmer. If only they knew they would never see it again. Heartbreaking. They sit now adapting to a new lifestyle on the balcony. Fortunately Eleanor is not there to pee on them. At least they don't have to deal with that.

Saturday before my departure. A friend of mine belongs to an artist group of 6 who have a studio. They had their premiere, full of free eats, drinks, and good bands down from Berlin. The opening was a huge success. The studio was packed for the night, the music was fabulous, and the art was wonderful ( Here is a link to some of his and a few others' works, if interested: http://kommode1.tumblr.com/Bildendekunst). I made friends with the uniquely stylish Joanna Tamara Maria Staczowski. She sews her own clothes and finishes a dress a day. They are lovely. She gave me a tape player with a mixed tape, because yes, she still makes mix tapes. Funny how badass out-of-date things are. You pull out your fancy ipod touch. I'll put AA's in my tape deck and rock out classier than you can imagine. Oh wait wrong side of the tape, hold on I got switch it. Oh man just give me a sec, I gotta rewind this thing. It only takes like three minutes. Ok there we go. HA! Hey, do you get that fuzz in the background when you turn your music up to any audible level? No? Hm. Must be a bad recording.
In all seriousness one of the greatest mixes I have, thank you Joanna. Also, thank you Apple for making great products. Although I carry around my mix tape and tape player from time to time (seeing as I have no way to transfer the tape to my iTunes), I bought myself a new iPod within hours of landing in Boston. Those months without my music in Freiburg were pretty killer.

The farewell dinner of all farewell dinners: the apartment farewell. Andy, Tobi, Lucia, I will miss you, in fact I already do. Sigh sigh sigh. We each now hold the possibility for one another for random encounters with people we know in far reaches, or close by reaches, in any corner of our very accessible world.

There were only two occasions all year for me to wear my suit. Two nights before I left a friend and I made it three, going to a wear-your-nice-suit restaurant on top of Freiburg. The sky was like this for over an hour. Lovely.

My last night in Freiburg consisted of rounds bought by waiters saying goodbye at my favorite cafes, board games until 4 am, gift exchanges, and a tired 5:38 tram ride to the train station. I fell asleep on top of my luggage in the train's hallway, and woke up in Boston (in the Apple store). I must have woken up for several different connections between trains and planes, but I don't remember that so much. Freiburg, I miss your tram convenience and your food. I miss all my friends, I miss the intelligent surroundings, I miss the closeness of everything. But the year is over, and it's a good year to be at its end. A good start, a full middle, even when full of nothingness, and an end with a period. One day I'll be back for an epilogue, but the story within Freiburg is over. The story with the people may continue elsewhere some other time. For now I can write about other things. Like the awesomeness of Lazy Jane's, but I'll do that in another post.

Boston. Boston is... Boston is act three of a tragedy, kind of. I mean, not really; my story isn't tragic, and Boston's act isn't comic relief. But it has very little to do with the rest of the play and kind of just has a change of pace, adjust-in-your-seats-for-a-bit kind of role.

Boston hasn't much to do with me. With me now, that is. Boston was my childhood, but my childhood has gone by. I'll always be mama Jone's daycare Ben, but only in memory and foundation. When I go to her house now, it's not for tiny cut up pieces of orange and naps (although on second thought, those are two things I still frequently receive in the kenyon household). Boston was my high school city, but high school is also years gone by. Boston is now the home of my father, but it's not my home. Not my now home. My home is with me, on the move, and in the places I've included in my college life: Madison and Freiburg.

Streets are different, storefronts are different, and faces are different. The one thing that still puts me happily at home in Boston is my bike and my music. Therefore, here are some pictures of my daily bikings in the East Coast's greatest city.

Southwest Corridor is repaved!

Yesss. Biking in Boston is home.

My dad and I went to Fenway for a baseball game. That was very fun.

Here, a little insight into Baseball, für das schöne Volk in Freiburg.

Fenway Park, built in 1912, the oldest Ballpark in the States. And the most beloved, of course.

Boston's departure was abrupt. Nice meals with old friends and family, a baseball game, a 5k race with my father (who got first in his division, go dad!), and that's it. Just like magic, I'm in Madison.

Introductions to college home soon to come. Stay active stay happy. :) love and peace.

Ben.

Henry, Vien, Family and Friends

Boston and my childhood atop the blackforest, Freiburger Münster.

They kind of look alike don't they? My roommate Tobi teaches Henry how to make Spätzle, a noodle and cheese dish found in southern Germany. Spätzle cooking in our kitchen continues below.

Another morning: Mama Jone Pancakes make it to Germany! Henry and I called her in the U.S. for an emergency recipe consultation. Successful shopping and American Breakfast ensued.

Henry and I went to Vienna via what are normally fast and reliable German trains. They were off the mark this weekend due to rail construction, we missed several connections. A skeptical me and a very optimistic Henry approached the Deutsche Bahn to see what they would do for our missed connections that certainly rested in their hands. Not only did they cover all our trains the next day and repay 50% of all the trains we took that day, they put us up in a junior suite room in their employee Hotel. They also bought us drinks at their bar. DB, I'm sorry I doubted you.

View from our suite (the one with the TV screen that welcomed us when we enetered the room). We were directly above the train station. Roll out of bed and into Austria's extremely comfortable high speed trains.

Weekend in Vienna with Nick, Sylvia and Henry. Best weekend in Europe?

Their White House has a statue of Athena. And no fence.

France's opening game of the World Cup in a bar with many french friends of Sylvias who constantly apologized to us for having to watch the 'despicable' performance of their 'utterly incompetent' soccer team (paraphrased).

Stephansdom/St. Stephen's Cathedral.

We went to a ballet At the Vienna State Opera. Everything about it was amazing, including the pouring thunder storm during second intermission, during which we drank white wine and ate chocolate on the balcony and watched little europeans live their lives below us.

I'm afraid the Vienna storm got the worst of my friends.

Luckily the city's magic brought them back to life the next morning for this beautiful view atop the Stephansdom.

WATCH OUT FOR THE SPINNE!

Tobi moderates a beer sampling for Henry and I. Lucia reminisces about her time abroad in Colorado with Henry.

I went to a music festival. There were 70,000 people. On Friday before the shows started everyone gathered to watch Germany's world cup game against Serbia. Great amusement: For the three and a half day festival, there were of course many food stands, fun stands, water stands, be what there may. There were also vendors walking around. However. There were no water vendors, no food vendors, no refreshing ice cream vendors. There were only cigarette vendors. American Spirit. Music Festival in Germany.

Our lovely pavillion after one night, a night in which rain and winds turned a grounds for 70,000 housed in tents into a mock Red-Cross Rescue effort. This picture was taken during one minute of perhaps 35 during which the sun said hello.

Vampire Weekend.

This was a treat. It's the SPECIALS. How cool? It's like I was meeting Mike Kolton in 8th grade Latin class all over again.

Rain= Too Matsch too Matsch too Matsch. Look at all that refreshing, thirst quenching tabacoo.

Also there: The Strokes (if you ever want to feel what it is like to be dissappointed, go to a Strokes concert with absolutely no expectations whatsoever), Beatsteaks, Billy Talent, Skindred, Phoenix, Massive Attack, Marina & the Diamonds, Moneybrother, Stone Temple Pilots, Deftones, Coheed, Bonaparte, Dropkick Murphys (I happily recruited members to watch them solely based on Boston pride), Tegan & Sara, La Roux. Lots of Native Americans selling cigarette's.

Until my next installation of pictures in my blog-turned-photo-album.

ciao!