Oooooo Wisconsin.

We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and learn what is good for it.
Wendell Berry

On Sunday morning we crossed back over into the States and wheeled south through North Dakota and back into Minnesota territory. After a short run across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and dinner at a little Indian food restaurant close to "The U," we ended up trekking all the way to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. On Monday, we drove to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin and floated the Chippewa River for two sublime hours. It was incredibly peaceful, listening to the chirping of a myriad of birds who filled the trees on both banks. We even saw a bald eagle.

After the float, we homed in on our next big destination: Madison, Wisconsin. Dubbed "76 square miles surrounded by reality," Madison was the epicenter of Vietnam Era protests and is still widely known as a progressive hippie town in an otherwise mostly conservative rural state (the GOP controls both houses of the Legislature and occupies the governor's mansion). Although it hosted some epic public teacher's rallies at the Capitol building just a couple of years ago when Governor Walker legislatively scapegoated public unions, in actuality, the place is quite mild in terms of everyday radical activity (full disclosure: we've vacationed in Berkeley the past two summers). Bummer.

We spent most of our time on State Street, a half dozen blocks of indie restaurants, bars, coffee houses and clothing shops wedged in between the Capitol and the University. This is a truly great scene, better even than Massachusetts Street in our beloved Lawrence (mostly because State Street lies adjacent to the campus). There were a lot of live musicians and the weather was shockingly perfect. Where did the humidity go?

Madison is saturated with socially conscious businesses like Fair Trade. After all, the Bottom Line cannot possibly be sky-rocketing profits at the expense of the rest of God's Creation (these businesses dare to live out the above Wendell Berry quote):

We were floored by the generous hospitality of Jonny and Michelle Hoffner, college friends of our boy Matt Ankeny (the 6'6" "Ank The Tank"). The Hoffners moved to Middleton, a little town just outside the Madison city limits, just a few months ago from Minnesota. They are wedding photographers and took a ground-breaking road trip of their own in 2012, packing up their Honda Fit and traveling all over North America, donating $1,000 from every wedding they shot to an organization that works with women who have been kidnapped by sex traffickers. Their trek was called The Nifty Fifty: they raised $50,000 and they put 50,000 on their Honda.

Our time with the Hoffners was delightful. Conversation peppered and tangented all over the map (literally): stories of falling in love, struggles with finding community of fellowship and solidarity, book and movie recommendations, our jobs, John Piper's peculiar "thrusting" analogy and, of course, the emerging (post)Evangelical convictions about gay marriage (and so much more). More than anything, the Hoffners embodied a rich display of hospitality (philoxenos in the Greek: literally "love of strangers"). We didn't know each other at all before we touched down in Madison on Monday and they bought us dinner, served us up the finest locally fermented and distilled beverages and allowed us to stay at their place the rest of the week while they were out in San Diego shooting a wedding.

Jonny & Michelle's apartment was converted from an old condensed milk factory. It is just blocks from a coffee house, local restaurants and bars and the Capital Brewing Company right behind the apartment complex:

Lindsay found some friends on State Street...

...and Tom got a bit more intimate:

State Street is flooded with talented street performers...

...some of whom take a break to enjoy a cigarette with admirers of their work. This is community!

We visited "The Mendota Terrace" on the Fourth of July...

...and then went for a 45 minute run on the University lakeside trail:

Then we settled in for an East African dinner at Buraka (the name means "joy" or "contentment" in the Oromo language):

The local Baptist church was handing out tracts. As it turns out, they interpret Romans a bit differently than we've been trained to (see this and this if you want to move beyond the fundamentalism of "the Romans road"):

Fortunately, we know University of Wisconsin educated Presbyterians who love beer. Steve and Sara Jo Craw steered us 30 minutes south to New Glarus, a little Swiss hamlet with a famous family-owned hilltop brewery. They refuse to export any of their product outside of Wisconsin:

A beautiful drive: this scene could easily be 5 km outside of Interlocken:

And, lastly, a quick bike ride through the Middleton Nature Preserve before we left Wisconsin:

Today, we continue the college town portion of our pilgrimage as we travel southeast to Evanston, Illinois (Northwestern University) to visit the Reba Place community and then on to Ann Arbor, Michigan on Sunday to experience Life with our good friend Mike Smith and his girlfriend Nurse Betsy.