Price of gas: $3.49
REI stores visited: 4 (Bloomington & Roseville)
Stillwater, MN & Minneapolis area
Uncle John takes off this morning for a quick trip to Canada, really early. I don’t really hear him go, though I did hear the cat meowing at 4 in the morning. Katie is 17 and has that old cat yowl, the meow of a cat who can’t hear themselves. But I’m back to sleep soon enough.
Every year the Unitarians have a water ceremony on the first Sunday after Labor Day. For the water ceremony, you’re supposed to bring back water from wherever you were this summer, and you add it to a communal vessel and tell where it came from. I love this ceremony, so I make the effort to go to the nearest UU church, which is about 8 miles away and is called White Bear Unitarian Universalist congregation. They have 600+ members, about 3 times my church. Very large! They do two services each Sunday. They even have a different water ceremony: they pass a pitcher among the pews, and people add their water and are supposed to tell their nearest neighbors what they did. We also make cranes for the Knoxville congregation, and it all comes back to me from making 1000 of these with my class in 8th grade. I help out my neighbors and we have a good time during the service.
Afterwards I talk to the youth group folks, both adults & youth. It’s awkward, and I wish I could stay long enough to get past the awkwardness. From what I hear, this district seems strangely more decentralized than our own. Hmm.
I type in “REI” to my GPS and head for the nearest one in Roseville. Wow, terrible location, terrible outer appearance.
But a nice store, and one of the employees tells me they’ve been nearly 10% above plan the last two years. As a destination store, I guess it works! I check out the maps section. Talking to Tom last night, he said between South Dakota and North Dakota, he’d take South Dakota. I agree. The only reason for going to North Dakota is to cross it off the list, and it’s just too boring a drive for that. So I get maps on the Badlands of South Dakota, and Yellowstone, as I’ll be there too…
On to Bloomington, the last of our three flagships for me to see. Wow! Great exterior! Still a little bit of an odd store: single floor, with admin offices upstairs. First REI I don’t buy anything in or talk to anyone. It’s very busy, which is good.
Local park? No, local REI.
I think about Maple Grove, but it seems too far to drive. I think perhaps I’ll visit on my way out of the Twin Cities – it’s out of my way, but not too badly, and when will I be back here? I don’t know.
How many more REI stores to go? Not sure. Probably 1 in Madison, and Missoula… I think those are the only ones in range. Milwaukee, but I’m not traveling to Milwaukee just for that. I tried to visit a Dick’s Sporting Goods today, but while I could see it from the freeway, the roads did not line up for me. There is road construction all over the Twin Cities, but in particular in the area around I-35, which is where the freeway bridge collapsed a year or so ago. I just decide it’s not worth it, and head home to Kathy’s.
I yell hello when I arrive, but no answer. Kathy is deeply asleep upstairs. I sit down at my computer to hash out a few things I have been leaving undone. Kathy is up just about the time I’m done, and we head out for a power walk around town. I get to see their rental house a few blocks away: I want my uncle to come visit and help me redo my house, too.
We have homemade dinner redux from Friday night, which is better the second night than it was the first. We listen to the Mamma Mia! soundtrack. So far I haven’t found anyone who didn’t like that movie.
Now it’s sunset time over Stillwater. Kathy is getting ready for teaching her senior aerobics classes tomorrow. I need to pack up a bit to get ready to go to Steven’s Point, where my uncle & his wife live. I hear the Pack plays the Vikings tomorrow on Monday night football – wow, I feel honored to be here!
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