Thirsty-day

Wednesday was one of the biggest waste-days I've had in a while. I painted my garage and re-read About A Boy.

But Thursday was cooler!

I started off my after-hump-day with a cup of coffee from the Riverview cafe. As you notice the flick is on the outside. A: I forgot my camera. B: There was a lady staring at me all crazy-eyes like. She sorta freaked me out.......If I had brought my camera in, I would have gotten a flick of a staple of one of the finest coffee shops in Minneapolis, Rach.

My cool coffee cup that almost spilled all over me when I had to slam on my breaks because of the Train police chasing some vandals.

These are the two cops that stopped traffic on 38th for almost 20 minutes while they looked all over the place for about 3 kids. Who paints trains in the middle of the day?? They had dogs and foot police all over the place.

After my wondrous caffeine fix, I hopped the bike and headed downtown. I completely forgot to flick the new library downtown....But I did get the MacPhail center for music. I stopped in and listened to some people learning how to play the french horn. It was actually pretty good.

After the tingling in my ears wore off, I went across the street to the Gutherie theater. Now I wasn't all that pleased that they moved from the old location (and the fact that the big blue building took a LONG time to get used to), but I've been pleased with every play/production I've seen here. I went up to the Target Lounge and got an Cherry Italian Soda and a club sandwich and watched tourists flock back and forth like a slow pong game.

After the Gutherie snack I headed across the stone arch bridge to find this......

I also found a security guard I aptly named Jersey Mike. He explained everything about these large, black, mirrored boxes in a very classic Italian-Jersey accent. He looked like a smaller Paul Teutul from Orange County Choppers. No lie. I asked if I could take a picture of him and his reply was this "If yous (yes, he said yous) take a picture of me, It'll be the last thing your eyes ever see". Other then the death threat, he was a nice-funny guy. We joked about some of the pictures and the fact that Redbull was sponsoring it. So we had some redbulls and I went on my way.

Redbulls reasoning for doing this. Jersey Mike told me that the part about "braving the lens to take a picture" was b.s. He said that that the people behind the pictures took flicks of people being brave (because most of the pictures are of REALLY extreme sports). He then mumbled about how he once jumped off the 4th floor of a building for drunken kicks....

The park boards message about it.

Since Jersey Mike wouldn't let me take his picture, this is the next best thing. Just picture Paulie with a yellow security shirt and black sunglasses.

This is what the 5x5 blocks look like when they're lit up at night.

This is what the blocks look like when they're not going during the day. Apparently, they show an image of Jon B-nonstop!

The Gutherie and Gold Medal Flour from the Stone Arch Bridge. You can sorta see the Metradome behind them.

This is what the 35W bridge looks like thusfar. Hopefull it will be done in October......It really doesn't look like the old one. Apparently there is supposed to be a walking/bikeway underneath it to go across the river.

This was the video of the parked cops. I couldn't get them actually chasing the kids...

This is the stone arch bridge part 1. At the end, some yuckle started yelling for me to get off that side. It was one of the security guards.
This is the stone arch bridge part 2. I got the Guthrie, Gold Medal Flour and some other stuff.

Then for dinner I whipped up some garlic shrimp, lemon pasta and some white wine (that turned out not to be so good). Oh well.

Update: Kristen and me tried out this spot called First Course in Minneapolis. I'll babble about it more, but it was quite good. Good wine, tasty pizza and the head chef spent about 10 minutes talking about his drivers license photo. I would give it a solid 8/10 for a good 2nd date.