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Tony Patton/OMGKitties was my host in Minneapolis and he’d recently returned from an attempt at climbing Mount Rainier that was cut short by an avalanche.  He had applied sunscreen to his face but the snow was bright enough that he got burned between the hairs of his beard.

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Red hair or peeling skin?

He cohabitates with his girlfriend Amanda.

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Accidental Far Away Look

They have an apartment in Minneapolis which has a bug/feature in their shower of only having either frigid or scalding water.  I thought really hot was just going to be a touch excessive on the warm side but I felt like was being poached when I touched it.  After standing in the shower for a bit and having my feet get scalded I hit upon using a portion of my towel as a wash rag.  I had to man up and just scream a little to wash my hair, but in the end, I think the dirt was washed/carbonized.

After Amanda left for work Tony and I went to the Minneapolis sculpture garden.  I normally like sculpture as an art form as it has the power to impose itself in a way that painting simply doesn’t.  Working in three dimensions allows the conversation between the artist and the viewer to be much more intimate by saturating the space with meaning.  The Minneapolis sculpture garden largely failed to do this.  For example:

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Boo

So we have the space to the right occupied by the girder combo that suspends the held board plank.  While the installation suggests both the serendipity of created form as well as the seeming difficulty of creating structure the blank board doesn’t close the deal.  The figure on the left is a functioning bridge with a poem inscribed on the cross beams which is functional but trite. Gr….

Another team member in town was Hal King/DoubleDragn, a digital design student who we met at the Mall of America.

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Hal, in a tiny house

I met two interesting people at the mall, the first being the guy who manned the World of Lego named Ki who told us of the times that people have stayed after hours and tried to take the display pieces.

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Ki, Legoland Defender

The second fellow I met was at Noodle & Co.  He had a bad ass scar on his arm that happened BECAUSE HIS FRIEND IGNITED A LINE OF BLACKPOWDER ON HIM WHEN HE WASN’T PAYING ATTENTION.

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That shit's crazy.

I also learned at Noodle & Co that Amanda asks for a glass for water and then proceeds to fill the glass with soda.  If I recall my Dante, she’ll wind up in the 7th bolgia of the 8th circle of Hell but has probably saved a bundle in drink costs.

The evening ended by watching Demetri Martin and learning that he’s 37.

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Hag in Golf Cart: You need to pay for today.
Me Suddenly Awoken: I already paid for today.
Hag in Golf Cart: Nope, you paid for yesterday.
Me Suddenly Awoken: I got here at 6 AM.
Hag in Golf Cart: That was part of yesterday.  Today starts at 11 and you need to pay.
Me Suddenly Awoken: Ok.

These are the moments where I’m simultaneously happy and sad that I don’t have laser vision.  The shrew in a house dress may have inadvertently helped me as her call to reveille provided enough rage that I didn’t feel terribly tired during the next eight hours of driving when coupled with the focusing power of a Carl’s Jr. hamburger.

North Dakota and Minnesota were more of the same after driving through Canada except that the North Dakota license plate is just close enough to the PA one for it to trigger flashbacks when viewed in my peripheral vision.

Close

to this.

Another difference is that as a side effect of the manifold legislation to jump start the American economy, most of the arterial roads in both states were under some sort of construction.  One of these construction areas was large enough that the best detour consisted of driving 20 miles on dirt roads next to exact rows of spring peas.  These roads had the curious distinction of having a speed limit of 65 but being speckled with stop signs.  Some drivers tackled this by blowing stop signs, others tackled it by humming along at 40 and slowly rolling to a stop.  I tackled it by driving the speed limit and then stopping at the stop sign while watching the former and passing the latter.  Driving is fun.  During the drive I think I crossed over the Mississippi four times each from what seemed like a different direction until I arrived in Minneapolis, made niceties and then rocked some sleep.

All in all I drove 1600 miles in the past 34 hours or about 12% of my entire trip.

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