Sconnie..

Wow, what a messy weekend.. not that messy is bad, just a mess.
Thursday was spent in airports. My plane broke down before it got to Seattle, so I got on a different far later flight. Thankfully I have Netflix and a broadband internet card, so I watched the Boondock Saints in the airport. I made it to my hotel at 1 am local time. I was starving, there was no food. I got a gas station burrito and some milk and called it good. Got up at 5:45 local time (3:45 Seattle time) and went to work. I worked for 12 hours straight setting up the network and phone system and headed to Madison to hang out with my brother. Met him and his lovely wife at the bowling ally, and hung out for a couple of hours. We went back to his HUGE suburban home and watched V for vendetta on his ginormous TV. I got up at 7 on Saturday and headed to Ford's gym in Madison. The map I had of the place only showed about a 5 block radius, I was a solid 8 miles away. I used the force and found it. I drove right past it as I needed coffee before I was about to do any training. I went to Mermaid cafe, and got some fantastic coffee.
Ford's is an amazing place. Everything I would want in a gym. 3 platforms, chalk, Kettlebells, strongman equipment, all manner of boxing gear.. awesome. I did some mobility work, and foam rolling to warm up, and then some brief intervals on the airdyne, before Jesse and Doc showed up. We talked about warming up, and a few other things, I helped out with some deadlift technique. They were both pretty good, minor changes in foot position, and Doc pulled a respectable 125. Then they had to go run their park workout. My brother was feeling a little neglected so I compromised and promised to be back at his place by 11.
I did some deadlifts:
5x3 at 405
Fat bar rows:
worked up to 5 at 150
some grip work and light conditioning.
While I was working the Ford's gym PL team were benching. I saw a guy who was at least as old as my dad put up 600lbs. Very impressive. If you're ever in Madison, go there, train and get stronger.
From there I had breakfast with and hung out with my bro and his wife. The plan was to meet folks out at a sports bar, then go to the Wisco hockey game (I love hockey).
At 3 we (Chico and I) met up with Jesse, Dr. 1% and their friend Eric at some sports bar. It was loud, and I almost immediately got a headache. I started drinking water like crazy hoping that if I re-hydrated it would go away. It didn't, but things were fun, and my spirits were high, so what the heck. We're all sitting around chatting, and some old geezer with a Santa Claus beard walks by makes an inappropriate comment to doc. Now he looks to be a regular, and probably gets away with it with these college kids. My brother looks at me and says "Awkward!" I'm fuming. Every part of me wants to break this old fart into 126 little pieces, but I'm restraining myself.
The old fart says "I thought it was funny."
I look around and say "well that makes.. 1 of us." In unison with my brother strangely enough.
He replies with something about I shouldn't be looking at him the way I am, and how he could yadda yadda yadda.
I have brief fantasies about doing horrible things to this guy, and decide to just laugh in his face. Either he'll punch me and I can beat the snot out of him without being the @sshole who beat up a 60 y/o man for mouthing off, or he'll go away.
He went away. I was still shaking I was so angry.
The old guy came back and said something about how us white folks were going down. He was about as white as my Irish behind, but he left and didn't say another word to us the rest of the night, so I was satisfied.
We hung out for a good while longer and had a good time, I had to pull the plug on the hockey game, my head was killing me, and I wanted to spend more time with everyone. We went out to a very nice meal. The waitress explains the specials, one of which is a 'duck confit.' She leaves us to chat, and then comes back several minutes later to take our order. Since Duck confit is one of my favorite things in the world I order that.
She says "Duck, we don't have duck."
I give her a funny look. She says "we have a rabbit confit." Our whole table gives her a funny look. I shrug "OK, great. I'll have that."
My brother looks at me when the waitress walks away, and says "Dude, she said duck."
We have some fabulous salume as an appetizer, and then the meal arrives. The rabbit comes, and it is no more 'confit' than it is gold plated. It was fried.. It was tasty and delicious, but my country taste buds know fried rabbit when they get ahold of it.
All in all a great weekend, my trip home was uneventful. The movie on the plane was a cool documentary called "It might get loud."
Trailer is below.

Loads of thanks to all of my hosts, I hope they had as good a time as I.

Mahalo.