Monday, August 6, 2007

Nick at Nick's...The Twin Cities


12 Noon

Back from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area from the weekend. Took in part of the Indians/Twins series, Minnesota appears to be making another late season run, as Cleveland and Detroit slump. We arrived Friday late rush hour, and really not much traffic despite the I35W Bridge disaster. We got out yesterday(Sunday) around 8:30 Central AM time.

Observations.....we walked around Sunday AM before the game started, heading towards the bridge area, the local cops had things under control, and nobody was getting close to the area. The only notable thing was a few idiot war protesters with their phony signs "Build Bridges Not Bombs" typical ass clown left wing solution for everything...buy hey! It's all Bush's fault, isn't it? Anyway, I ignored these burnt out hippies of my generation, Nick was not as kind...he pretty much insulted them all....and being the manly liberals they were, they pretty much looked away....you know, if you look away from your antagonists, they can't see you??? LOL!

Anyway, enough of the lefties, it wasn't about those clowns. The weekend was our usual...drink beer, smoke cigars, watch baseball, drink beer, smoke cigars, drink a glass of Drambuie on the rocks...you know the routine. Olson still inhales those nasty machine made stogies...how, I'll never know...if it isn't a fine hand rolled smoke, well, it just isn't a smoke.

The sunny drive up, by-passing Chicago, was pretty non-eventful, the drive back, highlighted by clouds and some rain(cool temps too) through Wisconsin was OK...then came Chicago, I decided to take 94 through the city, usually quicker than the toll road(294)..big mistake, Sunday traffic, along with the large construction project was a mess....2 hours to go the 29 miles. We picked up Sam's car in Nappanee on the way back, Nick drove that, and make it back to Celina last night just after 9...about 12 1/2 hours total. Anyway, we agreed no more taking the Minnesota trip, unless we go through Michigan and the Upper P.....a little longer, but taking a trip anywhere near Chicago, is out of the question.....it is the worst traffic around, beats LA, Orlando, and Atlanta, and they are bad enough.

10 years ago
______________Took our first family vacation to Florida in 1997. Even though I grew up there, the family as a whole had not been there. Mom has been wintering there since 1989, Mike lived off and on for years at Homosassa, and youngest sister Kelly and her Dane husband Michael moved to Naples from St Croix, USVI, in 2002 or so.

We really had no plans on exactly what we were going to do...15 year old Sam was given some freedom to map out the 9 days. We started off heading to Manmouth Caves in Kentucky, after a day and night there we headed south to Florida. We arrived in my old hometown of Venice, and grabbed a large room at the Inn at the Beach. We really had no plans from there, but the place was so darn nice, and right next to the beach, we ended up staying for 3 days just relaxing. We then headed south once again to Key West...the freak show as I call it. Couple of days there watching the goings of another beach city changed forever, not in a good way, by the freaks of nature, we headed up Florida's east coast to Daytona Beach, mom's winter home at the time(actually she lived in Ormond Beach, just to the north). Then on to Virginia, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, and on to Cooperstown, NY. The first ever long vacation to multiple locations was deemed a success, and we made variations of that theme until the boys one at a time finished high school.

prh

No comments:

Before February Ends...

The plan is, is to get at least a post a month here for 2024...so here we are in later February so let's do it... It has been, for the m...