This weekend my daughter is participating in the 2010 Northern Lights volleyball qualifier in Minneapolis. We decided that instead of doing the normal flying thing, we would make a road trip out of it. Flying is of course more expensive but not only that, it is too quick. To quick you say? Yes too quick. When your kids get in high school and sometimes even in grade school, they have so many things going on that it is easy to loose track of them and what they are doing and becoming. Taking a nice long ride, 6 hours in this case, gives you a chance to find out what is going on in their lives and maybe do just a few silly things. Of course if you have a communication issue with your teen, then a 45 minute plane ride might be more attractive to you. If that is the case I still suggest you bite the bullet and make an effort to reconnect.
Driving through the outer reaches of Wisconsin there is not much choice in the way of radio stations. You either have country or strangely enough 70’s and 80’s music, with the later getting the thumbs up from me. Normally Jen will bring her own device full of music, but in my vehicle I only have an iPod connector that I installed about 2 years ago when I bought the car. We are both moving away from the Apple ecosystem (being a techy I don’t like being told what I can and cannot do to or put on my device, but I will leave that for another post) so Jen had her Zune HD and I had my soon to be replaced by the HTC Incredible, iPhone with mostly podcasts on it. We were soon into a game of guess that artist/tune on the ‘Classic’ rock station (if that is classic music then I guess I am considered a classic too but I will have to confirm that with my wife). I have made some effort over the years to introduce my kids to the ‘good’ music of the 60’s thru the 80’s, minus most of the hair bands. Jen is already a fan of AC/DC, The Who, Springsteen, The Beatles etc so she did very well in guessing most of the artists and only fell short when dipping back into the early 70’s for Badfinger, T-Rex and late 70’s for Rupert Holmes (who doesn’t like Pina Colada’s).
My Facebook friends are familiar with a game I like to play called ‘Where In The World Am I?’, that involves me posting a picture and having people guess the location. I play this game to remind people that there is so much to see in our everyday lives and travels. We are in such a hurry that we miss many interesting things along the way and I was very guilty of this before I started the game.
On this road trip we stopped just outside Black River Falls, WI for a bio break so I thought I would look for an item to post as a clue for the game. As luck would have it there were a few items to choose from and I finally decided to use the the Passenger Pigeon marker as kind of a tribute to earth day. The marker explains that all the passenger pigeons have become extinct and infers that we should take a step back and look at what we are doing to the earth and the creatures that live on it.
One of my other choices for a clue was a sign that commemorated the Black River Falls Forest Fire that happened in 1977. This one was a bit ironic as we came upon a huge fire later that evening near Menomonie, WI. I only had my point and shoot with me so I was unable to get a good close up shot but the some and orange glow was visible for miles.
I wanted to get out of the car and take some better shots with the DSLR but I-94 was pretty busy with truck traffic and there was not much of a shoulder to stop the car on. Oh well, still exciting.
The rest of the ride was uneventful and we pulled into the hotel at about 10:30. We stayed at this DoubleTree 3 years ago when we were here for the same tournament. Nice enough property for the price, right on Nicollet and 11th so only a few blocks from the volleyball venue and the light rail to the airport and Mall of America (we are with teenage girls who want to shop).
Tomorrow we start play. Good luck IPV.