AIDS Walk Madison was today. My feet are raw slabs of death, I'm groggy as all get-out, and I realize that I'm the most un-fit person ever, but, all in all, it was a good time--and, considering the Alliance gathered over 1000 dollars, it made you feel at least a little good about yourself.

We--Elizabeth and I, and quite a number of the Alliance--were in the back of walk, partially because we started out that way. I had worn my boots, thinking it would be too cold for my sandals. It wasn't. It was sweltering out, and my boots--despite being broken in--started to really get murderous. After 8 kilometers, I just took them off and walked the last 2 barefoot. Now my feet are tender, but it was better than blisters. And I got the comment "Walking the 10 K barefoot, kudos!" from a total stranger.

It's really hard for me to describe what it was like being there, and it doesn't help at all that I'm exausted and have a headache. I don't even know the exact number of people who were there, only that between it and the walk in Milwaukee, there were about 5,000 participants. And that between the two, half a million dollars were collected. I don't know what I think of the amount--in some way, it seems so small. Perhaps because I just can feel the sheer magnitude of all those in Africa, where it is still a nightmarish epidemic.

The one thing that did hit me the most was just seeing all the more, I don't know, aged members of the LGBTQ community there. You feel like sort of a tool, being some college student out there walking when you haven't ever even met anyone with the disease when you have the knowledge that these people actually lived through the epidemic as we think of it. Not that the epidemic is over, by any means, but the things we always think of--the early eighties, and whatnot. Not that I was particularily melancholy about it. I don't know--it's just an odd contrast. Coming from a republican hotbed, you don't really see a lot of older gay/lesbian couples. Or any LGBTQ folks at all, if they don't want a lynching...

Man, this is the most incoherant entry, ever. It seems like I should have something important to tell about it. Instead, all I have is stories about bad sunburn and fifty-year old gay couples with one man wearing devil horns, and the other cat ears.