Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport may provide (weather permitting) the quickest entrance and exit to the Twin Cities. It also is the most drab: Chain fast food restaurants, gloomy parking ramps and TVs on which The Airport Channel drone constantly give it a utilitarian feel at best. The super-tight security needed in this post-9/11 day and age does nothing to help that. The drabness hangs over both terminals thicker than the smell of jet fuel.
Minneapolis/St. Paul once had a sprawling streetcar system akin to what you could find in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Melbourne ("tram" in Aussie parlance) and other big cities. Unfortunately in the 1950s, the system was dismantled with public transit switching 100 percent to bus. Why? In a word, greed.
I love to ride the light rail transit Hiawatha Line into and out of Minneapolis/St. Paul International as a lark. Why? Because the line dives deep underneath the sprawling complex of runways and serves one of the two terminals (Lindbergh Terminal) in a station fit for a New York City subway. Every time I ride between Lindbergh and the adjacent Humphrey Terminal, I am always in the company of people going to and from those friendly skies above.
Jason M.'s article Six amazing waterfalls to see around the world brought another to my mind.
The St. Croix River Valley bisecting the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin is one of the best-kept secrets in the nation, tourism-wise. North of Stillwater, MN and Hudson, WI, the towns on or near its water have a delightful small-town charm to them. It's a miracle, given how close the ever-sprawling Twin Cities are to the east. Way back before the rise of urban sprawl, day trips to the valley were common by citizens out for (literally) a change of scenery. They mostly came by rail to towns such as Taylor's Falls, Minnesota and Osceola, Wisconsin.
As you descend into the Missouri River valley going west on U.S. Highway 14, a city creeps over the bluffs. You have entered Pierre, South Dakota’s state capitol city.
If you head west across the northeast corner of South Dakota on U.S. Highway 12, a large city rises from the prairie 96 miles out of Milbank, SD. That city is known as Aberdeen. Aberdeen? Why that? It came about thanks to the president of a railroad -Alexander Mitchell, head of the Milwaukee Road- having been born there. When the town was platted next to the Milwaukee's tracks, it was named after his home town.
America is, without question, a two-party political system. We have the Democrats and the Republicans and every election cycle, you spend your time finding out what each side says that is a little different and pick your poison. Most people are vaguely aware of "third" parties, but often consider that voting for a third party candidate is the equivalent of throwing away a vote.
In the winter, spring, and summer of 1998, I always walked to a brown and tan rambler that stood a couple blocks over on Larchwood Drive in my old neighborhood in Minnetonka.
Oh how I always trod up its tan gravel driveway that lay cocooned beneath snow and ice in winter, or was dry as a bone in spring, summer, and fall.
Well you look just like General Custer
On the day of his last stand …
-The Waterboys, “Custer’s Blues”
On Saturday, October 29th, 2005, I unlatched my bike from the front of the Metro Transit Route 3A bus near the Como Park swimming pool and rode off proud as General Custer at the head of his battalion at the Little Big Horn.
