After Sarah's race on Saturday, we went over to meet Maggie, Chris, Joel, and Gideon to make our way to New Ulm.  New Ulm is so German, that in World War One, the Governor and some of his cronies removed the Mayor of the town, and investigated many others in the town for not being patriotic enough and for possibly having German sympathies.  Oh no!  We figured that Oktoberfest here would be great.

Sadly, though we had fun, it wasn't the Germanofest we were hoping for.  The major part of the festival were a few different places with polka bands and food and beer in close proximity.  Watching/dancing/eating near by were masses of old people.  Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against old people, but they don't usually make for the most fun party crowd.  At the Holiday Inn (one of the venues) one of the highlights of sitting and watching, and ocassionally dancing to, the mildly entertaining bands was a suddens stream of vaguely pagan-masked characters dancing about.  I think this means the harvest will be good, and not very many of us will die from exposure this winter.

The best part of Oktoberfest, after going to visit Hermann the German of course, was the Schell's brewery tour.  While it would have been nice to see more of the nuts and bolts of brewing there, I really enjoyed the history of that brewery.  Of course, there was the beer at the end of the tour, but what made it so great was Chris's being assertive with our beer wench server, who agreed to give us about twice as much beer as we would have normally gotten... and in short order.  In no time, we were in fine shape and ready to party.

But as I said, there wasn't much partying to be had in New Ulm.  So we went to the Pizza Ranch buffet and ate too much mediocre pizza. 

It was a fun weekend, but perhaps next time, we'll go somewhere else.

Simple pleasure - walking in the rain
Peace

I dropped Sarah off at work and since I got back home, I've been scurrying around the house getting the last of our gear together/packed.  I still need to go to the grocery store, and we will have to re-pack food and clothes tonight.  Tomorrow, we get up early so we can be in Ely by 7 am to pick up our permit and watch the cheesy leave-no-trace video, then it is up the Echo Trail to the Moose River.

Quick trip itinerary:

Saturday
Put in moose river
paddle downstream through Nina Moose, and Agness to Tiger Bay on Lac La Croix.
Hopefully find a campsite on Tiger Bay.

Sunday
Day trip to Rebecca Falls on Iron then to the Pictographs on Lac La Croix with a stop at Warrior Hill
Stay second night in Tiger Bay

Monday
Easy paddle back to Agness to find a camp site near the south end of the lake (or maybe do the second half of the day-trip this day)

Tuesday
Get up before dawn, pack quickly and get on the river by sun-up
Hopefully see moose on the way to Nina Moose
Have breakfast on Nina
Climb Top of the World Rock
Get back to the car

Drive to Ely and get homemade ice cream at Cherry's
Eat a big greasy meal at the Steakhouse
Drive back to Wrenshall to drop off canoe and then maybe home that night.

I am really excited to be taking Sarah up into the B-Waters for more than a day trip.  It's not a long trip, but there are lots of great things to see on this little route.  I just hope it isn't too crazy with the 4th coming up.  I hope Tiger Bay won't be all filled up.  Bleh.

Ok, back to the last of my packing.  Pictures later.

Simple pleasure - rockin' out to The Talking Heads
Peace

EDIT:  Working on the paper is going well.  Internet went down as I was composing this entry earlier.  Little break now and I can post it.  C'mon creative juices, keep flowing.

I'm sitting in Bearaboo coffeein the crap-tacular town of Cloquet, Minnesota with my brother Matt.  He's finishing a social studies paper for my step-father's class where he examines a topic of his choosing (the Iraq debacle... errr... genocide... err... war... errr... international cluster-fuck) and investigating its connections to events in the past, The Versailles Treaty, etc.  I am sitting across the table from him and as soon as I am done with this little entry I will be turning off my internet and working on my debacle... err... self-inflicted torture... errr... history paper.

It's been a pretty good weekend, with a few small exceptions.  Sarah and I arrived on Friday night, the night of the Wrenshall High School dance.  After the dance was over, my siblings came home with about 20 of their friends in tow after midnight.  Sarah and I didn't get to sleep until after 2am.  Oh well.  My sibs have good friends and aside from being loud they never cause any trouble.  Yesterday Sarah and I went on a little backpacking trip on the Superior Hiking Trail.  We did a short loop and stayed at a great site on the Split Rock River.  Unfortunately, it got colder than either of us anticipated.  So we both had a hard time sleeping and when we did sleep, we had weird dreams - Sarah about a crazy Twins game, and me about Joe, hookers, and dog racing.  Go figure.  After it had been getting light for a while we decided to give up on trying to sleep and broke camp.  Since my stove is broken (we discovered), we didn't even have any warm breakfast or coffee to get us going.  But the sun came up and things warmed up before too long.  We finished our very nice hike and had a big breakfast on the way back to Wrenshall. 

Sarah is making up for lost sleep now, and I'm here at this hokey little coffee shop soon to be working and waiting for Joe to call so we can give him a ride back to the cities.

Simple pleasure - talking with my brother... he's a good guy.  Funny thing about little siblings getting older, maturing, and being able to have good conversations with them.
Peace

Today is my second day home from work.  Though I am not unhappy since I don't have to deal with those little jerks, I know having fewer people there makes it a little harder for everyone else.  Still, it has been good to spend a bunch of time in bed recovering.  Except for a few minutes when Sarah got up to go to work, and a few minutes doing something else, I've really only just gotten up about fifteen minutes ago.  I've been stuffed up, achy, and had a soar throat.  Not much fun.  I am getting a little tired of being in the house constantly though.  Bleh.

I suppose it's better I get sick now than while we're in Ireland.

Speaking of which, everything is arranged now.  The rough itinerary is as follows:

March 24 - fly from Minneapolis to Chicago.  Sarah will sit at the gate during our layover.  I will wander around aimlessly.  Board the flight to London.
March 25 - fly into Heathrow, take bus to Oxford to meet Sarah's old roommate, Sarah.  try to stay awake until a normal English bed time.
March 26 - explore Oxford, pretend we're society folk while walking around the different colleges.
March 27 - take a bus to Bath to explore the old Roman ruins.
March 28 - fly from Heathrow to Dublin.  Check into B&B, find a pub,  relax
March 29 - explore Dublin - Trinity College, Book of Kells, Temple Bar, St. Stephen's Green, walk along the Liffey...
March 30 - explore Dublin, Guiness Brewery tour, determine if Guiness is actually better across the pond than the bland stuff we have here, Dublin post office (one of the sites of the Easter Uprising),
March 31 - pick up rental car (it'll be a tiny little thing.  For eight days though, it'll cost about half of what the car I had in Scotland for three days did), drive south through the Wicklow mountains, Glendalough, to Kilkenny to stay.
April 1 - see Kilkenny Castle, Rock of Cashel, drive to Cahir to stay in a castle for the night, sing "It's a long way to Tipperary"
April 2 - tour one of the last three (!!!!!) distilleries in Ireland, buy a few bottles to bring back, stay in Kinsale on the south coast.
April 3 - drive part of the ring of Kerry to the Dingle Peninsula, stay in Dingle, try not to look too much like tourists while listening to Irish music at a pub
April 4 - explore Dingle and the peninsula, without getting too wet try to meet the resident dolphin that lives in the bay, relax in Dingle
April 5 - drive through co. Clare.  See cliffs of Moher, the Burren, possibly Bunratty Castle for a medieval banquet, spend the night in Galway
April 6 - see Galway in the morning, drive through Connamarra, Kylemore Abbey, drive east cross country to co. Meath to stay in Trim
April 7 - visit Bru na Boyne (burial sites older than the pyramids), and other Boyne valley sites, check into inn in Dublin, return car
April 8 - be dragged onto the plane kicking and screaming to go home.

There's still cleaning around the house to do, and plenty of packing, but the logistics are pretty much set.  It's getting close and I am really excited.

Simple pleasure - sudafed
Peace

There is a ton of stuff I want to write about concerning our trip out west (magazines on planes, Seattle, life on Orcas, family...), but that will be multiple posts and will have to wait until later.

Sarah and I landed last night about 10:45 last night, but due to staffing issues at the airport weren't able to get off the plane until an hour later. A few people were a little grumbly and some little kids (second cutest little girls ever) were a little squirmy/crabby/tired, but everyone was patient. We wound up down at the baggage claim when midnight came. I whistled Auld Lang Sign and kissed Sarah before we caught a cab home, where I promptly passed out in bed.

Sarah is visiting with friends and I am baking cookies and banana bread (the cheese bread will have to wait until tomorrow I think) for a visit by Brent and Connie (former canoe guides who had the coolest wedding ever... after ours of course) this afternoon.

Bad news, our coffee grinder seems to have died. Not happy about this. Fortunately, I found the pre-ground coffee we brought to Northfield for Christmas, so I'm not withdrawing too much.

More to come later. Much more.

Simple pleasure - cooking for company
Peace

Merry Christmas.

Much to say, but little time to say it as we are off to the airport soon. The family came down, and we had a good time playing host and hostess. Movies, darts, cards, knitting, food, fun. I also got my brother to start his new LJ. I hope he'll keep it up, especially once he leaves home for the Air Force next summer.

So welcome, lasertag101! WOO-WOO! Welcome to my addiction.

Then off to Sarah's parents for Christmas service, a German Christmas dinner, a fire in the fireplace, grasshoppers (YUM!), and exchanging presents.

Now we're back home and finishing packing for our trip to Seattle. See you after the new year!

Simple pleasure - watching the planes fly over us on highway 5
Peace