Live From the Other Home of Paul Bunyan

Greetings from a Twin City. It could be St. Paul, but it’s not. You guessed it, it’s Minneapolis! Ben and I pulled in at about 3pm after USAir (not as good as Southwest, in Weather Lad’s book...or mine*) deposited us without incident at the Hubert H. Humphrey Airport. I don’t really think it’s the Hubert H. Humphrey airport, but since everything else around here is named after him, I kinda like my odds.

From HHH, we took a white-knuckle ride in a cab to the downtown Holiday Inn Express, which is really a lot nicer than it sounds. About two streets up from here there is a street shut down for pedestrian traffic, and lots of cool looking restaurants. Unfortunately, there is still motor traffic cutting across that street every block, so it kind of defeats the purpose. At any rate, there are street musicians, homeless people, and lots of young well-dressed professional types. Clinton and Stacy would feel right at home.

Many of the buildings in downtown Minneapolis are linked by walkways over the streets. We entered an urban Target store through a revolving door, went up the escalator, and found a Quizno’s, where we had our dinner. We could have taken an indoor tour of the city but decided not to since we were pretty tired (can you tell from this disjointed post?) We finally found a place where our crappy-and-soon-to-be-history T-Mobile plan could contact home, and we chatted with Nanny and CheerChick for a little while. Upon returning to the hotel, Weather Lad and I threw all caution to the wind, deciding to take a dip in the hot tub and pool in the shorts we brought along. They’ll dry eventually, I guess.

Tomorrow it’s an early wake-up call (5:15 am) to catch the bus to Sioux Falls, where we will pick up the white eleph...er...gracious gift from Rach’s parents. Yep, the 1986 Toyota Crossman RV will be heading home to where it belongs. The snowbanks and woodpile receded just in time to give us a good place to park it!

*Why is Southwest better than USAir? Let me count the ways: first, in Weather Lad’s words, Southwest is “funny”. “Remember when they put the snacks in the aisle while we were taking off, so they slid down the plane to us? That was cool.” USAir’s employees treat their jobs like, well, jobs. Some of the unhappiest flight attendants I’ve ever seen. Second, USAir didn’t make a second run for drinks, and on the first leg, from Portland to Philly (don’t get me started) we didn’t even get a snack! As soon as we boarded the plane in Philly, Weather Lad looked in the crack between his seat and the wall and said “Well, at least we know there are snacks on this flight.” I asked why, and he said “Because they’re between the seat and the wall.” He said “It’s kind of like trail mix”, to which I replied “More like flight mix.” Later on I realized we could call it contrail mix.

I’m off to the lobby to post this, while Weather Lad watches the Chris Farley SNL special. I’ll post again when I get a chance.

P.S.-Wish we’d had a chance to do some campaigning for Barack today, but our presence in Philadelphia wasn’t quite enough. Looks like he had his tookus handed to him.