Seriously.  Graduation weekend is a busy-ass weekend with an unfortunate amount of out-of-town drivers trying to navigate alien one-way streets, college graduates partying their butts off for one last hurrah, and undergrads partying one last time for this school year before they leave for the Summer.  The service industry is running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off trying to keep up with the craziness.

Then everyone leaves and the locals get a breather.  They rest up for a couple days, then they start emerging from their trauma stupors and have some fun.  The college kids that stick around for summer school start loving Madison for it’s great summertime weather and joyous activity (yay it’s not Winter types of activity:  softball, kickball, ultimate frisbee leagues and LOADS of bikers and runners).  The city is way less crazy-busy, and a little more crazy-crazy.

That part is hard to explain without some examples, so I’ll start with a couple of those.

A friend of my husband tweeted about this a couple weeks ago.  She woke up in the middle of the night to a strange noise and looked outside her window.  A man was dragging a toilet by a rope down the middle of the street in the middle of the night.  Why would this happen?  Why would anyone do that?  Because it’s Madison and we’re a little nuts here.

Also, this happened on Sunday night:

I don’t know if this guy was an actual marine, but he was wearing a vest with a marine patch on it.

This was approximately 1:30 am.  I asked him what was up and he said he’d just moved to town and saw someone else moving out of their place.  They didn’t want this furniture so they gave it to him, along with these really cool polished wooden building blocks.  When he got the furniture back to his place his roommate was asleep and not answering the door, so he set himself up a living room outside of his building and to entertain himself he was making a castle.  I don’t think he’s actually crazy, but driving past this without a backstory, one would have doubts.  Also, where else would you see this?  Without the huge amount of school students to harass and yell at us, the city can relax into a comfortable state of weird.

So the following short-short stories from my cab aren’t going to be negative ones, but fun and positive ones from the last couple weeks because that’s what’s been happening.  I had only one ride to blemish my last two weeks and it wasn’t actually all that bad so we won’t talk about it.

#1)     Two young ladies got into my cab on Friday night, they were coming out of a college-y bar going home for the evening.  Some dudes wanted to glom onto them, but I could see by the girls’ faces they just wanted to go home so I nipped that in the bud.  Then one of them couldn’t stop laughing as she got in, saying over and over “Oh my god!  They thought you were Iron Man!!”

Eventually she told me the whole thing.  Her friend had stashed her cell phone in her cleavage where the screen was facing out (I do this in my back pocket sometimes so that my body head doesn’t mess up the touch screen for the first few moments when I want to take it out and use it).  When these dudes approached her and wanted to chat her up, her friend was behind them all texting her friend, lighting up her chest like Iron Man’s through his T-shirts periodically.  I think next time I’m at the bar with a friend I’d like to do this.

#2-3)     I learned two new vocabulary words this weekend from my passengers.  I can’t remember the context for the first, but “Super-Senior” is someone on their second senior year.  This should probably have already been in my vocabulary.  Maybe I just killed it with booze and relearned it, but it’s pretty cute.

Also, “Napkin-Pants”.  I’ll use it in a sentence.  “Don’t worry, I won’t get grease from my yummy Ian’s Pizza in your car, I’m wearing my napkin-pants!”  Then passenger rubs his greasy hands all over his jeans.  The moment was 50 times funnier considering the passenger was about 35 years old and going to a very nice home.  When grown-ups act like kids, sometimes it’s really endearing and funny.  Sometimes.

#4)     Weiner Mobiles.  All of them.  Or is it?

2 Weiners.

Above is a photograph I got off the net of a normal sized Weiner Mobile and an official, specialized Mini Cooper Weiner Mobile.  I’ve seen both in person quite a few times since the Oscar Meyer headquarters is here in Madison.

This is a terrible cell phone picture of when I went crazy and saw 4 normal sized Weiner Mobiles in person about 2-3 months ago:

OMG FOUR WEINERS

As you can see, you have to look carefully to see all four.

This is a photo from last weekend that a local, Mick Braddock, took.

Someone needs to buy a lottery ticket. How lucky!

Not pictured is the Mini Cooper Weiner, it was parked far enough away that it avoided getting into the shot.  I’m pretty envious of my friend who took this photo, I wasn’t lucky enough to see these all lined up in person.  Not many people can say they’ve seen this many all at once.  They’re probably outnumbered by people who’ve won lottery jackpots.

#5)     I got serenaded by 4 gentlemen with kazoos.  First with Daft Punk‘s “Harder Faster” song, then with Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun”.  These were lovely gentlemen (the two ladies they were with didn’t have any musical instruments, but one sang along) were going to a wedding the next day…  one was the groom.

I picked them all up the next day by chance from the reception.  Instead of kazoos, one had an umbrella that was taped to stay open (I don’t know why), and one had a tambourine.  They were very excited and surprised I was their taxi driver again.  I was surprised they had ANOTHER musical instrument.  It must have been a kick-ass wedding!

#6)   Minor league baseball.  Who knew it’d be so popular!  Madison residents LOVE the Madison Mallards.  I go to a game at least once a year with friends and have a blast in The Duck Blind.  The Duck Blind is an all-you-can-eat-and-drink area you can spectate from, tickets to this area are about $45.  Yes, all-you-can-drink includes beer.  Good beer.  From really good breweries.  People in The Duck Blind rarely pay attention to the game except to harass the right fielder.

Here’s a picture of there good looking gentleman I had in my cab on their way home from one of the games this weekend:

Two locals and a visiting friend

They’re a little sunburned, a little drunk, and a little tired, but a LOT happy.  They kept going on about how their jerseys were only $20 and they were going back the next day for more.  I asked them who won, and they didn’t know.  I don’t blame them, when I go I drink, heckle the right fielder, watch some of the hokey between-innings shenanigans, and enjoy the time in the sun with my friends.