Minneapolis was a nice relaxing stop for us. Our good friend Tom allowed us to stay at his house so we had full amenities which we haven’t had for a long time now. Needless to say we watched a lot of TV in our free time instead of reading books or what have you. The first night we went out a bit downtown with Tom. One of the places we went to was called Brit’s, it was probably the coolest bar I’ve been to, but more on that later. The next day Tom left to go to a friend’s wedding so we had to cruise around the city by ourselves for a while. We went to the sculpture garden and museum. The sculpture garden was awesome, my brother and I climbed around it like monkeys, it was like a play ground for adults….as we were leaving we saw a small sign posted near the grass that read “Please do not climb on the sculptures.” I felt a little bad about it, but it was so much fun and I’m pretty sure we did not damage anything. The sculptures were made out of like 2 inch thick steel, basically invincible stuff. Anyway, after that we played a nice round of bocce ball in the park and waited for some of our other friends in town to call us back. Then all of sudden the stars aligned, our cousin Shannon called me back at the same time Paul, a family friend, called Graham back. So we decided to make a nice little group get together at some pizza joint near downtown. The pizza place was on Hennepin and 3rd, so we used our map and made it to the intersection and parked. Upon further investigation we determined it was Hennepin EAST and 3rd so we had to cross the river. We decided to drive because it was like 8 blocks or so, but as we were driving Paul called and asked if we made the same mistake as he did. Graham said “yes, now were driving across the river to the other 3rd street.” He said, “Did you just stop at a red light on Washington?” Graham said “yes.” It turns out Paul was right next to us walking so we just opened our door and he hopped in as the light turn green. It was pretty crazy how that all worked out. Then we finally met Shannon at the pizza place. The pizza was pretty good but nothing like Chicago style, although it was a good time and we got the chance to catch up with two old friends. After dinner we took Paul back to his car and then we went out with Shannon back to Brit’s downtown. This time around at Brit’s we did things right, we got to play lawn bowling outside on the roof, we also played a little pool, and watched a bit of the Australian Football League championship. For those of you who are not familiar with lawn bowling, it’s basically curling on grass, and if you’re not familiar with curling you should be, because it’s awesome. Shannon and I won, but mainly because Shannon dominated. We all think she must go there all the time and practice, but she says that’s not the case. The next couple days we spent watching football at Tom’s house, like I said we haven’t had TV for a while. Saturday there was a pretty good match between UW and USC, but it did not end very favorably. Then Sunday right before we left Minneapolis we watched the infamous Vikings-Packers game. We couldn’t afford tickets to the stadium which would have been fun, but the TV worked for us. That one didn’t end to favorably either, the Packers won, but I’m happy for Favre who got the all time TD record for QBs. Minneapolis was pretty cool, but the most fun was catching up with our old friends and our cousin. Maybe next time I visit the town I’ll be a little more active and not watch as much TV, but it was a nice break for us.

- Carson

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