obamarama day

on obamarama day, it being a nice sunny oddly sultry day for november, packed joãozão and ziquinho into the machine and headed out. i had spent one globally warmed november day trapped making slides and i knew if i didn’t take advantage of this one...well actually nothing would have happened as i tend toward days around 10c for wandering. i had to break what was becoming a pattern of not bothering to head out for perceived lack of time.

i was going to head along route 16 to route 19 to find this old amusement park before heading into madison having a coffee out in the back garden of zoma either before or after i headed over to the big o’s place standing out and staring until he showed his face. didn’t want to take an interstate as i needed to get back into the habit of stopping, and i seemed to remember the towns along the way being somewhat interesting.

windows down, blugrass from wort alexander cockburn saying that if one were really brave a madisonian would put out a palin sign.

a bit of a culture shock, i catch myself nodding to people as i pass, but forgetting that this is rural wisconsin, find that people do stop to talk and aren’t filled with the paranoia across the state line in illinois. i also forget that i cannot simply park anywhere as i pull off the road into a carpark that once out of the machine and across i notice parking only with permit sign. stopped in waterloo to wander the town - empty except for a few voters,

-where is everybody?
-out at the outlet mall in johnson creek.

watched the obama signs increase as i neared dane county

stopped outside marshall for the amusement park thinking that i’ll be chased off the grounds but no ask if i can have a look and buddy shrugs as he goes back to fixing his ride.

closed for the season but just closed i wander by rides that i thought has disappeared decades ago as they simply weren’t big or scary enough to-day - a wooden racer dip, bumper boats, go cart track.

not racing but it still being early wonder if i can push the outing. why stop at madison, there are sights to be seen farther afield, i was curious about the dells, baraboo, but while i knew that getting there wouldn’t be a problem leaving would be as there would be just one more thing to photograph.

settled on the free ferry across lake wisconsin a lame attempt to recreate the crossing during the navegatio. more back roads with the windows down but now there were curves and hills more towns but now smaller and less self sufficient

pulled up as the ferry was leaving parked and waited watching to see if the cable tensioned al all, some snaps of the closed concession and seeing the park, decided to be a foot passenger.

i am sure in summer this is quite aggravating as the ferry is part of the state route system and while the crossing is maybe 10 minutes there is only one boat. now though it was simply an extension of the slow roads that i was on. six cars a motorcycling couple and me boarded after one car and six bicyclists disembarked.
spent two ferry crossings photographing merrimac mixing objects and cheesy formalism people in the bar at the crossroads craning their necks to see what i was interested in before taking the slow diagonal route back to the outskirts of madison and a race down I-90 hoping that i would still be light along the rock - walworth county frontier where the land the once again flat the roads straight and you and can hear the air.