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| Ready for a beastly good time |
Note: Clicking on any of the pictures will bring up a larger version, in a click-thru album for that day. Enjoy!
Richard scowled at the alarm showing the all-too-early digits, and he pulled himself back together and down the hallway for what looked to be an extremely long day of nearly-nonstop meetings.
So let's switch to something more enjoyable. It's been said that Duncan belongs in the zoo. His mom decided to test that hypothesis on this day.
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| Ready for a beastly good time |
They encountered ferocious (OK, maybe a bit lazy) grizzly bears behind stout glass.
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| Growling grizzlies | Big bears enjoying their habitat | Cool pool helps make summer "bear"-able |
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| Our lil' bear snack on this side of the barrier |
There were also perky popping prairie dogs in a grassy habitat and mischievous monkeys,
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| Fuzzy chubbies cavort for the visitors | Who wants kisses? | Simian silliness |
an aqueous display stocked with species such as sea dragons and octopuses (octopi?),
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| You're gonna need a bigger aquarium | Sea dragon shimmers in the light | We're a sucker for octopuses |
and really big photogenic insects infesting several areas.
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| Is something bugging you? | Crawling on the caterpillar | Don't look behind you, son... |
But that's not all - the tractor tram to the petting zoo allowed for encounters with piggies, cows, and other friendly fuzzies, and some play in amusing places.
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| Taking the tractor tram | Pigallel, not perpigdicular |
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| Traversing the tree house | Indulging the nesting instinct |
Let's not forget the penguins.
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| Pooped-out penguins plop on the rocks | Can we take one home? |
But the highlight of the day had to be Duncan's ride on a genuine camel, whose unique mode of humpy-backed transportation made for a memorable experience.
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| Lumpy bumpy camels relaxing in the pond | Happy Hump Day! | Riding the not-so-wild camel |
We return to Richard back at the hotel. He had a couple early evening hours between meetings, but a whole pile of drawings to develop in that brief time. His agenda-addled brain somehow thought pizza and pasta delivered to the hotel room door seemed like an excellent dinner option, and within a few minutes the red-shirted deliveryman had deposited exactly what was ordered, with the soon-returning wife and child heartily seconding Dad's wisdom in food choices (yay). Then back into the evening round of meetings he returned, with a long session on colored pavements giving way to a good overview of bicycle law and its enforcement from a local expert on the topics. But when that session wrapped up, Richard staggered back to the room almost 16 hours after first departing it, and plunked down into bed to be lulled to gentle rest by the thrumble of the inbound and outbound aircraft swooping just above the hotel's modernist roof.
Richard's day: more meetings, starting at 6 AM AZ time. Suzanne and Duncan, though, had no such constraints, as they made their leisurely way to the hotel shuttle for a grand mall see-there at the Mall of America.
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| The Midwest Mecca of mercantilism | Four levels of stuff. Lots of stuff. |
And it began with a visit to the Sea Life Aquarium, where sinister sharks, goofy turtles, and all sorts of other scaly and finned creatures were seen and admired.
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| We see turtles |
Next stop was at the enormous Lego store sprawling its boisterous brickitude on the first level. At this spot, Duncan discovered a new Lego Minecraft kit (cubical construction to the next power, you might say), along with a few other interlocking items.
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| Needs a bigger Lego logo | Interlocking with new friends | It's The End, and he couldn't be happier |
The next item of entertainment for mom & child were movies on the top level, and then a refreshing snack. Soon after, while wandering the intra-mall area, they encountered some real characters, in the most literal sense - Raphael the red-bandannaed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, and the polka-dotted Uniqua from the Backyardigans kids show.
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| Pre-tweenage mutant ninja Duncan | A shell of a new buddy | Uniqua with a unique one |
And keeping in the spirit of strange blocky creatures, it turned out the toy store near the Nickelodeon Universe amusement park had two hard-to-find Minecraft "mobs" - a prismatic squid and a blockheaded sheep, which now joined Duncan's already-acquired piggie, "moo-shroom", and ocelot in his Mine-agerie.
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| New semi-cuddly stuffed Minecraft NPCs |
Through some minor miracle, Richard's meetings only detained him for ten hours this day, and after 6:30 PM he was free to stroll the several blocks from the hotel to the mega-mall to rejoin the family. He intercepted them within the Build-A-Bear Workshop, a place where love, stuffins, and lots and lots of money transforms a hunk of cloth into a child's cuddly treasure. Up until now we'd avoided places like this, given that our household was already overstocked on cute fuzzy things, plus the strong connotation of Build-A-Bear with squealing packs of feral pre-teen girls. But tonight our son reallyreallyreally wanted a super-special new friend, and wouldntya know right there in the bin was a suitably camouflage-pelted waiting-to-be-stuffed bear husk that seemed the perfect companion for a boy's adventures. The deflated ursine was brought over to the Chamber of Stuffing for the insertion of appropriate polyester bear guts, while a ceremony instilled the proper amount of love and care into the little red heart placed in the bear's puffy chest. Duncan also wanted to volunteer more of the parents' finances to obtain a voice box for his new buddy, and he programmed it to reply in his own voice when the paw is squeezed just right. Then some suturing and post-operative care, and "Mr. Camo" (as his birth certificate now read) had his bright little plastic eyes ready to join our family.
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| Bear-able wisdom | Picking through the flattened carcasses |
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| We will. Oh yes, we will. | Tumbling fluffy bear guts |
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| Capturing another heart | Putting a big happy wish on the new bear's heart |
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| Suturing up the fuzzy little patient | Cleaning up his new camo-clad comrade |
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| "I will call him 'Mr. Camo.'" | Boy and bear are happy |
Hey, Mr. Camo, are you ready to devour dead animals in a malaria-reminiscent setting? We are. And so we adjourned to the Rainforest Cafe, where the safari-suited staff seated us next to a rushing waterfall complete with a golden neon-accessorized Atlas wading in the waves as the oversized mechanical butterflies flapped menacingly on the walls. The food was good and the atmosphere was relaxing albeit glasses-fogging, and we unwound under the occasional simulated thunderstorms.
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| Foraging for food in the family-friendly jungle | Large lepidoptera lurk in the shadows | Neon-heaving Atlas takes a swim in the rain forest pool |
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| Happy kid amid the overgrown decor | The family is reunited in the rainforest |
Then a plod to the shuttle bus in the basement under the rumbling light rail, and a well-deserved rest from a mall-icious day.
Richard rolled out of bed (clonk!) facing an exceptionally-extended day of meetings, and dutifully trudged down the interminable halls of the hotel, the squeaky wheels of his fully-laden rolling briefcase providing accompaniment to his plodding steps under the rustic decor. This hotel originally opened in the early 1960s with a strong Native American motif, and even though it's changed names and owners, the hotel's Hall of the Tribes and the plaques in the passageways still recognize this legacy.
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| The Hall of Tribes' homage to Native America |
Meanwhile, Suzanne had made contact with an old friend from her Minne-days, and Erik J. swung by in the morning to take Suzanne & Duncan on a tour of some local parks, including the runoff-swollen cascades of Minnehaha Falls. They had a grand time at the parks, appreciating how the greenery is a bit different from our dry Arizona home.
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| Seems like Dem politicians can't resist making it a publicity stop (one happened just the day before) | Falls in view through the trees |
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| The waters prepare to plummet | Falls in full flood mode | Visiting the falls with one of Suzanne's long-time friends (Erik Johnson) |
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| Green-skinned Minnehaha views her namesake cascade | Pleasant plaza |
More watery fun ensued after Erik dropped Suz & Dunc back at the hotel, as our son made a straight line for the round building housing the indoor pool. The decor of this structure of swim looks like it belongs in an early-60s modernist architectural display or a supervillain's underground lair, and Duncan and other aqua-nuts splashed in the blue water amid the sinuous curves.
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| Indoor pool, or secret lair? | Swimming in Midcentury Modern. Literally. | Finding friends in the swoopy indoor pool |
And while Duncan was coolin' in the pool, his dad was released from the day's meetings, and met the family poolside - where he was tasked with the mission of foraging for food. On the multi-block walk over to the Mall of America's food courts, Richard pondered the choice of suitable comestibles, and found them in noodleicious form at the Panda Express. These were packaged and returned on foot piping hot to the awaiting hungry bellies, and Dad was briefly seen as a hero once again.
But even as wife and son settled into dreamland, Richard's work day was nowhere near its end, as he revised and prepared no less than eleven detailed proposals for presentation at Saturday's general session of the National Committee. This painstaking work continued far into the evening, until about 1 AM the balance shifted from fidelity to fatigue and he also keeled over and conked out for a few short hours' rest.
One more day of meetings for Richard, with some uncertainty as to just how long the work might go. He sat down with his AASHTO "tribe" and attentively listened as his fellow NCUTCD committee chairs presented their months of hard work to the Council hoping for swift approval (but often gratefully settling for a few revisions here or there instead of outright rejection).
While this exercise in full-contact engineering went on, Suzanne and Duncan escaped the hotel and got The Works - as in The Works, a local science center stuffed full on interesting hands-on exhibits.
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| Looking forward to The Works | Indeed it is. | "Can we build one of these at home?" |
Duncan wired up enlightening circuits,
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| Electrifying action | A cliche was never so fun. |
worked with his mom to built speedy wheeled racers,
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| The twosome assemble Knex racing machines | This looks somewhat familiar... |
evaded the sensors in the puzzling maze, programmed a "bee-bot" to follow his commands,
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| Our small secret agent evades the sensors | Dodging and crawling around the pesky detectors |
and spent many hours in a building are where large gray blocks were formed into castles and battlements, which then of course meant sieges and bombardments were sure to follow (along with rebuilding the wreckage, sounding the attack anew, and so on...)
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| Marble-transporting starships are assembled |
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| Laying a stout foundation | A boy's home is his castle (or is it the other way around?) | And now things get a bit wacky |
As late afternoon rolled around and a thunderstorm pelted the buildings with such force as to be heard deep indoors, it was finally Richard's turn to present the Bicycle Technical Committee's work since late 2013, with the minor distraction of a formal wedding being conducted in the room right next door. It was hoped that the late-day slot might result in a more-accommodating mindset from the Council, but as soon as the first presentation filled the screen it was clear that the members of the National Committee would be slinging many pointed questions, which required sharp and concise responses in order to keep the discussion productive. One by one the proposals went up, and one by one they were all approved successfully, although the draft wording on bike boxes did see some unexpected changes in its path to acceptance. And eventually, nearly ten hours after convening for the day, the last of Richard's proposals received enough semi-enthusiastic "ayes" and the National Committee adjourned until January for the members to make their weary way through the throngs of wedding guests just getting started on a wild night of celebration.
Dinner would be good. Let's see - Duncan wants something fried, while Mom wants a big restaurant-style burger. So Dad, could you find enough strength to pleeeease walk to the Mall and get us something? And it came to pass that he did plod to and from the bountiful Mall, using the soggy-stepping time to clear his mind of engineering-related troubles and adopt a rain-cleansed approach toward the remaining weeks of travel. And the unexpected sweet fresh-baked surprises he returned with made everyone's moods better for our final evening at the hotel.
We've enjoyed our Blooming-time, but now we must move on. But first, several slaps of the snooze alarm yielded enough rest for the load-out, and the generous noon check-out time (which we might have stretched for a while after that) made for a less-stressful departure. And after the room was thoroughly inspected to make sure we didn't leave anything (although Monte's mileage log with every entry since January 1st seems to have disappeared without a trace), we shut the thunderbird-encrusted door and dropped the keycards off to commence the next leg of travel.
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| We liked the old T-Bird, but happy to be traveling again soon |
Which admittedly wasn't a long one. Suzanne's brother lives in the nearby suburb of Rosemount, less than a 20-mile drive from the Mall and the hotel. And after a few minutes of Sunday driving punctuated by a crossing of a very full Minnesota River and a pleasant lunch at Applebee's, we pulled into their driveway to greet the folks within.
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| A very full Minnesota River swamping the rail trusses |
Suzanne caught up with all the local family news as many loads of laundry were washed and processed, and our nephew and Suz tag-teamed to seduce the sister-in-law into joining the wonders of Facebook to make it easier to share news, gossip, and cat pictures in the future. Then a wonderful home-cooked dinner to everyone's delight, obligatory photos with the relations, and an early exit to bed to prepare for early starts to a busy Monday.
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| The Home of the Bro | Cousin vs. Cousin | "We're tired of all these photos!" |
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Latest Historical Revisionism 30 December 2014
Scripting: Richard C. Moeur
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