Driving All Over

[On location from Cumberland, Wisconsin]
I’m finally home again, resting up for a few hours before starting the drive back to Pennsylvania tomorrow. I’ve sure been in my car a lot this vacation…
On Friday evening I drove down to Eau Claire for Matt & Sarah’s goodbye party. I played piano at their wedding back in 2003, and basically hadn’t seen them since, so it was great to hang out with them again. It’ll probably be awhile before I see them again too, because they’re moving to Las Vegas to be middle school teachers. I also got to see a few other Cumberland folks down there too that I hadn’t seen in awhile, including Pete, Jesse, Arnes, Brianne & Dave. We went to some different bars on Water Street right by campus, and by the end of the evening I decided it’d be best to play taxi driver to make sure everyone else got home and stay overnight at Pete’s, rather than drive back up to Cumberland. It was a fun evening.
After getting home to Cumberland on Saturday, a few hours later I drove down to Minneapolis to hang out with Ben, Vicki & Kate for the evening again at Ben’s apartment, mostly chatting and playing spades. ‘Twas fun times.
On Sunday I went to church with Aaron & Eve and their kids Gabriella & Mathias. It wasn’t a typical church service, but rather a baptism service outdoors at a park on the shores of some country lake between Winsted and St Bonifacious, with a yummy potluck afterward. With being at the lake and having a potluck, it really felt like a Sunday in Minnesota! 🙂 After lunch Aaron & Eve took me and Naomi (a girl from their church) for a spin out on Lake Minnetonka on their boat, Fortunate Lee (apparently Niggard Lee was their second choice, haha). It was cloudy and only in the mid-70s, but that kept a lot of people off the lake, making it nicer for us. Aaron was the only one who didn’t go tubing (though he did have an excuse with a badly sprained or possibly broken big toe). Though he gave Eve and the kids a “nice” ride on the tube, his goal when either Naomi or I was riding was to get us to fall off the tube. The first time I rode, Aaron failed to knock me off, and was wondering what more he could’ve done (safely) to try to dump me. Naomi also held on for a long time before finally falling off. After Eve took Ella and Mathias for another ride, I decided to go out for one more spin. This ride was even wilder and bumpier, with Aaron swinging me into and out of the wake several times. After nearly falling off a few times but still clinging, my arms just got too tired after about ten minutes of hanging on, so I fell off, much to Aaron’s relief. Well, and I also realized that Aaron wasn’t gonna stop until he knocked me off, so part of me just decided to get it over with, haha. At least the water was really warm! After we finished tubing we boated over to Lord Fletcher’s on the Lake for dinner (a couple Twin Cities news anchors were just a couple tables over from us) before going back to Aaron & Eve’s place in Minnetrista. It was so nice to be out on the lake! I’ve missed water while living in Pennsylvania.
On Monday I basically just hung out and relaxed at their place, and then in the evening Aaron & I went over to Waconia to see “The Bourne Ultimatum.” I was a big fan of the first two movies in the trilogy, “The Bourne Identity” and “The Bourne Supremacy,” so I was really looking forward to this one. I absolutely loved the film! I’d honestly give it 5 out of 5 stars! There were action scenes that kept you tense and on the edge of your seat for 20-30 minutes before there was finally a short break where you could relax. And I really liked the handheld feel of the unsteady camera angles throughout the movie, it gave it a bit of an edge and helped make you feel like you were right there. Since the movie started just by dropping you right into an action/chase scene, we were a bit curious how that fit in with the previous movie, so when we got home we popped in the DVD of “The Bourne Supremacy” and watched the last 20 minutes — and suddenly everything made sense. It’s really cool how they entwined the movies together. The whole Bourne series was quite well-done, and when the third movie comes out on DVD I’m definitely planning on having a Bourne marathon!
I drove back up to Cumberland on Tuesday morning, spending the rest of the day at home (for a change, haha), though I did go with my parents over to Nathan & Laura’s for Bible study in the evening. I finally got around to taking a picture of our lake though, and how low it is. Compare it to the picture of the lake that’s (currently) up at the top of the main page of my blog, and it’ll be easy to see how much lower than normal it is. We have the dock pushed out a lot further than normal, and it’s still dozens of feet away from any water at all. We just haven’t gotten much precipitation here in the last year at all.
Yesterday afternoon I drove back down to the Cities *again*, this time to visit with my friend Scott and his wife Katie. We went down to Saint Paul to go to the Science Museum of Minnesota’s exhibit on Pompeii, which had all sorts of cool artifacts (and casts of bodies) unearthed from the ash of the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius in Pompeii. At the Science Museum we also saw the Omnitheater film “Secrets of Ancient Greece,” which looked primarily at the eruption of the volcano Thira which extinguished the thriving civilization on the island of Santorini over 3,000 years ago, and also a bit at the Golden Age on Athens around 500 B.C. It was all really cool and educational and everything. After all that we finally ate around 10pm at an Irish pub on 7th Street downtown before heading back to their place in Shoreview. It was good to spend time with both of them again.
I drove back up to Cumberland again, and was thinking of starting the drive back to PA today, but eschewed that for a bit more rest today. I’ll start out *early* tomorrow, or at least that’s the goal. If I feel like a marathon (driving) man and don’t feel tired as I’m rolling through Ohio, I might just try to finish off the whole drive in one fell swoop. But more than likely I’ll break it up into two days and get to State College on Saturday. In either case I have to make sure I’m at the church by 6pm for worship band rehearsal, since I’m playing piano in church this Sunday morning. Maybe I’ll need a vacation from my vacation when I get back to Penn State…