Day 5 - Minneapolis

I'm beginning to realize as I travel across the U.S. how different our various cultures are. I don't mean black v. white v. Asian, I'm talking about Minnesota v. Pennsylvania v. D.C. It seems that we have a tendency to know of a few slight differences, maybe pronunciation or occupations, but I'm seeing that it goes a lot deeper than that. It's really interesting to see how a place affects people and how they learn to cope and even embrace the challenges of their surroundings. Minneapolis is cold (insert duh here), and it snows...a lot, but the people here are so used to it and ready for it that they don't even seem to notice. I've had a great time here over the last two days, and I've certainly learned a lot.

This morning after getting cleaned up, I decided to head back to the downtown area. I wanted to see some of the architecture, the Mary Tyler Moore statue and eventually get on the 1 line over-ground metro system to the Mall of America. The minneapolis downtown is fairly good sized, maybe 15 blocks square. When you reach the outskirts, you start to notice these enclosed footbridges everywhere. It's called the 'skywalk' system and it's one way that Minneapolis has learned to live with its climate. There are literally footbridges for miles, connecting almost every building to each of its neighbors. I was there around 11am, or the beginning of the lunch rush, and these were as busy as any streets in D.C. The actual streets though were almost entirely empty. The skywalk had everything you'd ever need, grocery stores, malls, apartments, movie theatres, all connected. Theorhetically, if you were to live and work in downtown you'd never even have to go outside for months on end. I'm here in March so even though it's cold, its not TOO bad. I can certainly understand that in January, when it can get to 40 below zero just hiding from the elements.

Eventually I made my way to another Minneapolis landmark, Mary Tyler Moore. If you don't know what this statue is for then shame on you for not knowing pop culture well enough. It's funny though, thinking back to Indianapolis which had monuments everywhere to fallen Civil War and World War soldiers. Minneapolis lost men too I'm sure, but they'd rather remember Mary Tyler Moore. Not making any judgements, just different.

In the middle of the downtown area is the 'Hiawatha Line,' a light rail train that runs along the street all the way to the Mall of America. Since I didn't feel like dealing with a parking nightmare, that's what I took. The Mall of America is, indeed huge. There are more than 500 stores inside, not including the amusement park in the center. I bought some new shoes since the old brown ones were right well decimated and a few other little odds and ends. Now realize that with so many stores, there will be a few bizarre ideas. For instance, there was a store that sold nothing but cordaroy bean bag chairs....thats it. No corduroy anything else. No denim or leather bean bag chairs. Just corduroy bean bag chairs. Another store only sold miniature car models. That's it. There certainly is such a thing as too specialized, but if they can make it work, more power to them.

After I made my way back, I was pretty beat and so I took a nap and got freshened up. There was a jazz band playing not too far from me so I went to see them for a bit and came home before very late, I knew that the next day would be a long haul. Of course blogger had to be funky, hence the post now, even though i wrote most of it last night. Anyway, on to South Dakota and the Badlands.