Wisconsin

We decided to hang out around Wisconsin for a little while before going traveling again. We ended up living in Janesville with my Grandmother. I loved Granny, she was a character. She had a photographic memory for anything related to baseball especially the Cubs. You could name any player and she could tell you everything on his baseball card off the top of her head and she didn't have a single baseball card, she just knew it all. I tried quizzing her when I bought some baseball cards and she was good at it. She was very outspoken and said her mind on anything without hesitation. We spent many hours talking about things. She believed that men should be men and women should take care of them. She told us that the world started to go downhill when women were allowed to vote and wear pants. I tried to debate her on that but she was adamant in her beliefs. She was also extremely tolerant and accepting of differing opinions others might have or different choices people made. She did not fault me for trying to defend women's rights from a different standpoint than she held. She said it is ok to hold opposing viewpoints. It doesn't make either position right or wrong just different is all. I enjoyed debating her even though we butted heads on almost every topic. She knew her world news better than most people I knew.

Finding work in Janesville proved to be impossible for us. Janesville is a place were nepotism and who knows who rules. Resumes mean nothing there. Skills mean nothing. Only who you know or who you are or who you are related to will get you a job. We spent a few months there. I wanted to have at least a month of Wisconsin summer so that I could do some fishing and stuff.

Sue and I made some friends there. We were still having threesomes and swapping with some local couples we met. Then we decided to get married so that Sue could get a work permit. We went down to city hall and just got a license and got married with a couple of our swinger friends as witnesses.

I briefly thought about opening a Mexican restaurant in Janesville but I could not find anybody willing to help me financially with it. I know I could have started a popular place but I gave up quickly when I added up the startup costs.

We met a girl at a Rock Aquajays water ski show that we ended up having a lot of fun with. She was kind of crazy fun and she was very sexually oriented with a great body and fun spirit. We hung out with her and her various boyfriends a lot and had some wild times together.

We started to make some bikinis in Janesville to supplement our dwindling bank account. Selling the bikinis in Janesville was entirely different than selling them in Australia. American girls had some pretty strange self image problems and hangups that just drove me nuts. One day a girl asked me to design her suit with a little flap to cover up a freckle on the side of her hip. I almost punched her she sounded so stupid with her ridiculous vanity over a freckle. She was not alone with weird requests like that. The Australian girls were all fit and most American girls were flabby by comparison. American girls were always talking about their diets and how much they worked out but they didn't come close to being as fit and trim as the Ausies were who never even thought about a diet. I gave up on trying to sell my bikinis to the American girls because I was starting to think they were all just stupid idiots and I did not want to give up on girls.

We went boating one day in Janesville with some friends of ours. We skied a bit and drank some wine. A couple of the girls went topless at a remote stretch of the river to get some sun. Within five minutes of the event I think everybody in a hundred mile radius knew that Sue had gone topless. I could not believe the crap I heard from people over the fifteen minutes of topless sunning. The people kept talking about it for weeks. I decided to just get the hell out of this narrow minded backwater town. Sue and I packed up and headed to California.

When we left my gramma's house we could not find anybody else willing to live with her. About a week after we left she had a stroke and fell down the stairs and landed on the concrete basement floor. She was not rescued for about a day. She never recovered. She spent the next fifteen years or so living in her own head. She was non responsive and unable to talk. She had to be fed and cared for completely. I tried to visit her but I could not take seeing her like that. She had a condition that made her talk almost nonstop but she did not know what was coming out of her mouth. It was just like talking diarrhea of the mouth. It was very sad to see such a vibrant person fall to this level of life. I feel like if we had stayed there and if we could have helped her quicker she would not have ended up so bad off. Such is life. I do not ever want to be kept alive like she was. I have done my medical directives and stuff and think everybody should do it now while you are still able to.

New Zealand to Madison

We flew out of Sydney with mixed emotions about Australia. I had a really good time there. I arrived penniless and was leaving with a pretty good bankroll. The plan was to go to New Zealand visit Sue's family and see some of the country and then fly on to Hawaii to visit some of our friends that lived there before we would fly on to Wisconsin for a quick stop.

New Zealand is a beautiful country. It has almost every single geographical feature that can be found anyplace else in the world. Like Norway has fjords. New Zealand has Fjords. Switzerland has mountains and glaciers. New Zealand has them too. Africa has the Saharan Desert and New Zealand has one too. Africa has jungles, New Zealand has them too. Canyons, rivers, grasslands whatever you can think of, you can find it somewhere in New Zealand. Oh and there are a lot of sheep too. One good thing is it has no snakes. I found the country to be just one surprise after another. From the volcanoes to the sheep it was one thing after another all of them beautiful or weird or something special. I wish I has spent more time traveling around the country but we only did a quick visit.

When we were there New Zealand was a pretty sleepy place at night. Most of the place shut down and the people went to bed at 7:30 at night. I was a night owl and it drove me nuts that there was nobody around at 10 at night. They did get up early. 4:30AM or there abouts seemed to be the normal time to get up. I liked that because I am up before dawn every day myself. I would get up and watch the sheepdogs working the herds. I loved the way the dogs looked like they absolutely loved their jobs. I wanted to go out fishing but I never got the chance. There is some top world class trout and billfish fishing there but I missed out on both. We visited family and drove around the country for a while but then it was time to leave for the States. We said our goodbyes and headed to the airport to go to Honolulu.

The flight was a seventeen hour endurance trial. At least that was the schedule. Our plane developed a problem right about where Amilia Earhart disappeared. Maybe there is a Bermuda triangle there. We made it to Fiji and had to deplane while they fixed the aircraft. We got to see some of the island before we took off again the next morning for Honolulu. The rest of the flight was uneventful except we joined the mile high club to pass the time.

When we arrived in Hawaii our friends met us at the airport. We were going to stay at their house but there was a problem. One of our friends was deathly sick. His lover was taking care of him but it was not a good time for us to stay at their house so we checked into a hotel downtown instead. It was a bit of a downer to have your friend that sick when we came here to have a good time. He ended up needing to go to the hospital. He did not make it. He died from a massive outbreak of herpes and Kaposi Sarcoma tumors along with pneumonia and numerous other infections. This was 1976 and he was gay. I am pretty sure he died of AIDS but AIDS wasn't identified until almost eight years later. It was tough to have a close friend die suddenly like that. He was always a happy carefree kind of person and it hurt to see him die such an ugly death.

We took our pain out by hitting the town. We went to shows and ate dinner at the best restaurants, took taxis all over town to see and do whatever we wanted or we hung out at the beach. We basically just distracted ourselves by having fun. Then we jumped on our plane and headed to Madison Wisconsin.

We landed at Madison wearing our tropical Hawaian shirts, short pants and sandals. Sue just had on a light tropical dress. We did not get the warm reception we were hoping for. When we landed it was minus fifty one degrees outside and blowing about twenty plus miles an hour. The wind chill factor was way colder than fifty one below zero. We knew it was going to be winter when we arrived and we had arranged to have my brother bring us some warm clothing until we could buy some of our own. There was one big problem. The plane stopped out on the runway and we were told to walk about a hundred yards to the terminal. It was not possible to survive a walk like that in those windy cold conditions. Human flesh would freeze in about five seconds. We asked the airline to let my brother bring us the warm clothes and they said no. We asked to borrow some blankets to get to the terminal. They said no. I got angry then and told them I was going to take the blankets anyway and if they wanted to try to arrest me then so be it. The publicity would kill them and they knew it so they did not stop us when we wrapped up in multiple blankets and walked as quickly as we could to the terminal. I did not think I would make it halfway there. Sue almost died in the first three steps. In the end we survived and put our warm clothes on in the terminal. Welcome to Wisconsin.