So this is Madison: Sometimes you have to be 6

Today wasn’t a bad day, but it was the last day before we went home from vacation and back to normal life.

And unlike Edinburgh, when we both knew it was time, I was starting to get that “blah” feeling that comes at the end of vacations.

Then we went to the pool.

Lots of hotels have pools, but the Holiday Inn we’re staying at in Madison has a mini-water park, including a slide.

And there was no way I wasn’t going to go down that sucker. Sure, I’m a full-grown, 46-year-old man, but it’s a water slide, and water slides are fun!

So I climbed that ladder, got in my best luge position and flew down. It was only one curve and didn’t last more than 10 seconds, but it was amazing!

Whatever was left of my shame kept me from going down the slide over and over as much as one of the kids in the pool. I went twice.

So if you’re looking to fight the end-of-vacation blues, get yourself to a water slide.

In other news …

… I got kicked out of a football stadium today.

Hey, it’s not my fault that Camp Randall Stadium is a public building, and that almost every door and gate was open, and that the football team came out for practice while my wife and I were wandering around the bleachers.

As far as I was concerned, the team starting practice was a bonus, until a man came into the bleachers to inform me that it was a closed practice and I had to leave.

He was very nice about it — and it’s possible that they were OK with the public being there until practice actually started (all any spy for their opponents this weekend, Iowa, would have gathered was info about their calisthenics) — but it’s more exciting to say “I got kicked out of the stadium.”

According to my wife, a lot of the displays in the Wisconsin Historial Museum aren’t that much different than when she lived in Madison more than 20 years ago, but it was nice.

By the way, it took all of one day for my wife’s memory for how to get around Madison to come back, even though she hadn’t been here in 20 years.

The Wisconsin State Capitol is open to the public 365 days a year, and tours are available for 360 of them. And even if you’re not taking a tour, you can just walk in.

When I talked to our tour guide afterward, he said that there are plenty of cameras and police officers around to provide security, but the state constitution calls for the capitol to be as open to the public as possible.