the end of the beginning

howdy folks! before we get started, please take a moment to ponder these organic strawberries we got at the farmers' market in madison.

thank you. wasn't that nice?

okay, first: i fear that we're getting into a bad habit, or at least a debatably good habit, of posting on the run, and of stuffing too much into each post and posting too rarely as a result. unfortunately, it doesn't seem like free internet access is going to get any easier to find as we head north to michigan's upper peninsula or west across the vast plains. thank you for your patience.

for example, while there's much more to say about scenic madison and the lovely time we had there, we're going to let abbie's video stand as the emotional heart of our experience and let your imaginations fill in the rest, like the lovely hike along the water or the time we went busking and realized just how quiet we really are.

chicago also deserves volumes, especially since abbie still thinks we should move there. or at least it's pretty high on her list.


and i have to mention our gratitude to emily bettin (abbie's childhood friend) and kathy (her mom), who took us out for a very fun evening during which we got to sample their neighborhoods.


but instead of bothering about the open mic we played, which was fine, or our other lovely hike along the water, which was lovely, i'd like to spend some quality time discussing our visit with my cousin andy carter.

as the poet said, o, what a night. we picked andy up from the downtown university where he teaches math (and education - or at least i'm pretty sure he teaches both) and puttered over to the frontera grill.

now, i have some issues singing the praises of a non-new orleans restaurant to the extent that i am about to do. rick bayless, the chef/owner/superstar, does not need any more horn-tooting. but i just have to come out and say how completely blown away i was by the food. of course we went there expecting to have a great and memorable meal, and i'm sure that helps.

the company was equally spectacular. although we missed seeing andy's wife diane, we were very glad to be able to spend a few hours with him doing some top-notch visiting.

what can i say? i felt at home in chicago - like there was a place for me there.

but we had more to do, verily, and so we left town the next morning and made our way to the michigan side of lake michigan to meet up with sarah deacy (abbie's bestest friend) and her family. more to come on that in the next post, including some video, we think. meanwhile, please enjoy this photo of the first time i ever played beirut (the last of about seven competitive activities we enjoyed yesterday).



we love and miss you all. more soon we hope. over and out.

fun with flatware

sometimes you have to wait a while for your pizza.

it sure z

my sister sent me this cute text message this afternoon:

"z it windy?"

she has an idiosyncratic text messaging style that i find very charming. also, she's the reason i've been to this lovely city before, since she went to graduate school here with her lovely (and then-new) husband. i can't remember whether we came up for her graduation or what, but i do remember the berghoff, restinpeace, and the exceptionally poor suspension of our rental car, which was so bad it had a trademarked name ("Dy-no-ride!").

chicago has come a long way since those heady, alanis-morissette days of the mid-nineties. for one thing, there's an organic restaurant called crust that serves fancy flatbread pizzas and stuff. we had a delicious supper there (with half-priced wine!) and discussed the stark contrasts we saw today: waking up in madison, stopping at a place called the elegant farmer out in the fields of wisconsin, and then creeping into town on the under-construction freeway before landing in this hip, leafy neighborhood called bucktown.

the upshot is, abbie loves chicago and wants to move here immediately. even the truly spectacular apple pie at the elegant farmer could not overpower the alienating vibe, which is only partly about politics and religion, but it's hard to say what the other part is. as soon as we got off the freeway, she started to feel at home.

so anyway. we're apparently definitely moving here unless i can find a more effective way to help her imagine the brutality of the winter. i think the final nail in the coffin was the little bar called the charleston down the street here, which was exactly her style (at least on a monday), which is to say cute and chill with nice lighting and lots of beers on tap... and smoke-free. i have to say, i have never had such a nice bar experience myself either. and i sort of can't believe that there isn't even one place in new orleans where you can go and enjoy beer and fresh air at the same time.

so anyway, we're back in our little home for four nights, happily smelling the lack of smoke in our clothes as we putter around. we have internet here, so we'll put up another post soon that wraps up madison and includes some pictures and video.

comments should be fixed now so that y'all can post anonymously.

we love you and miss you. keep in touch.

madison

madison is a nice place. look at this nice sheet!


we have enjoyed wandering around and thinking about my parents wandering around when they first met.


today we were amazed by the farmers' market. there were lots of farmers with beards, lots of vegetables, and some begonias.


my mom and dad told us to go hang out on the terrace, which is by the water. they didn't tell me to make a dorky video of myself, but i did.

day one. hour one. minute one.

how appropriate that we start the road trip blog at 12:01 am on the first day of the trip... and of course at this moment we are really doing the opposite of going on a road trip - which is to say we are sitting in a dark bedroom, one of us asleep, the other staring at a laptop screen. i'd prefer to break a bottle of nice champagne over the hood of the prius maybe, but there will be time for something more ceremonial in the morning if we're feeling up to it.

scenic kansas city has treated us very well as it always does. it will be a sad goodbye tomorrow, as it was last week when we left new orleans.

we head to madison tomorrow - at about eight hours, one of the longest driving days we'll have if we stick to the itinerary. we'll be staying at a hostel abs discovered during her Exhaustive Research Phase (September '07 - February '08 - for those of you who didn't have the pleasure of seeing her in action, she spent just about every free minute reading books to find cool stuff to do and places to stay. for fun. she would talk to me only reluctantly during those months. it was amazing... and now we get to start enjoying the fruits of her labor of love).

the photo really speaks for itself, so i'll just thank max for the excellent drum lesson....

we also want to thank gloria and eddie for putting us up and putting up with us; and katrina and t. j. for the lovely hospitality and the excellent songs; and the new orleans peeps for the magnificent send-off (we just finished the cookies... mmm).

good night everyone - we'll post from wisconsin.



The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.



J. R. R. Tolkien, who also wrote that "not all who wander are lost."