Minneapolis has a truly inspiring light rail system. It’s very plainly new, as all aspects of the light rail cars are still somewhat shiny and fresh. There is also only one route, spanning all the way from downtown Minneapolis to the Mall of America. It was on this light rail that Jodi and I put ourselves this morning. She was headed to the airport to get her rental car for the long drive North, to the Soudan Mine. I was headed to California, to start a short work week made long by the Washington D.C. planning meeting this weekend.
We had a lovely weekend. On Saturday we went to see “A Prairie Home Companion” live at the Tom Mann theatre on the campus of the University of Minnesota. Oh, those goofy gophers! Well, it beats a team mascot which is a color, or those ridiculous banana slugs. Who thinks banana slugs, or a color, make good mascots?
Sunday was spent taking a long, long, LONG walk along every floor of the Mall of America. With temperatures warm for this time of year, but still hovering above freezing, it was nice to take a stretch indoors, in what is ostensibly the Mecca of commercialism in this world. We hit all the stores that looked fun, including “PB Loco” (a custom peanut butter shop), an awesome game store with about 25 versions of Monopoly, and the Lake Wobegon store, where Jodi picked up a shirt with a delightfully feminist message printed on the front.
The flight back to California was great. Not only could I actually fit my luggage in the overhead bin (this time, nobody put their bags in my spot and then returned to their seat – ten rows forward!), but because I had an exit row seat I both (a) leg room and (b) the delight of knowing the person in front of me was mechanically barred from leaning their seat backward. This allowed me to not only setup my laptop comfortably on the tray, but keep it open all the way. On the flight out to Minnesota, the seat in front of me was leaning backward, forcing me to semi-close my laptop and work at a cramp-inducing angle.
This short week will be punctuated by the planning meeting for our annual user community effort to lobby Congress on behalf of the physical sciences. As a co-organizer of the trip, I am still mulling over the question I got today from a previous planner of this trip: “Are you overwhelmed yet?”
