Travel Log – Day One 5/11

Awake since 6:30, flight out and have landed in Minneapolis, St. Paul. The only thing I know about this city is that allegedly, Mary Tyler Moore threw a hat in the air here once. I’m told there is even a statue of it. I can now, however, expand our knowledge a bit more with my first hour of study in the way of some exciting tid-bits about Minnesota from where I stand.

1) It is ten degrees hotter here than at home.
2) They still have as many Starbucks per airport block, only here the Pike Place Blend is considered exotic.
3) Our terminal has it’s own mall with three food courts, six restaurants and a cocktail bar.
4) They like the moose. A-lot. Like, the Canadians plaster that maple leaf on everything from salt packets to f-all, the Minnesotans plaster their moose. We passed five major eight-foot-tall-or-more statues of them just switching gates. You can take pictures of a moose, with a moose, or even of moose’s with a moose..

…So far am disappointed in only one aspect: have heard no one sporting Fargo-esc lingo. Mostly just Asian tourists and boring non-accented west-coasters like us. Hold the faith though! I’ve got hours, and we are gonna go to a sit-downy place for dinner, so I can always pin hopes on our server. Oh look, a moving sidewalk…

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…Am sitting by a moving sidewalk as people glide by. This surly woman sitting next to us gave us a decided “look” when we dared to plug in at the same outlet post as her for laptop power. Clearly, she is not a Minnesotan. I mean, every movie set here tells us that any self-respecting Minnesotan would just smile and say something like: “Oh gosh, so nice to have these little sharin’ stations for internets, isn’t it? My name is Barb, where you folks from?!”

…This lady didn’t. In fact, judging by “movie types” I’d say she’s from somewhere cold and distant…like Yugoslavia/Croatia or something…you know, a place where there’s been so much civil war that she’s pre-conditioned to hate and distrust everyone immediately assuming you want not to share but to seize power of her outlook plug, put the entire internet café under Marshal Law, and change her nationality name again…for the third time today.

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For your consideration: the Minnesota Opera did “Faust” in January…followed by “The Barber of Seville.” I’m just gonna leave that one wide open and let you fill in the punch-lines. Next: It has been three hours now, and I have officially heard a flight attendant chatting up a Captain enroute their next flight. At last, the sound I was waiting for. Other than that, a sore disappointment has been the supposed “happy-go-luckiness” of these Midwestern peoples. Maybe it’s just that they suck at Mondays, or maybe they aren’t paid enough, or maybe the movies lie. I dunno. Thank goodness for Ingrid though, she is now the sole living representative of the “swell” and smiley kinda person I’d expect to come from here. Maybe she sucked up all the good parts and pirated them all away. Bring it Heathrow! Am ready to jump these States.