RIP - Pillsbury College

My college alma mater (and Nikki's) just closed their doors forever last week. Pillsbury College had been struggling or well over a decade, and finally had to close their doors for good to avoid going deeper into dept during these already uncertain financial times.

I have mixed feelings about it - the signs were there that this day might come, but it's still sad nonetheless.

I stopped by the school during a trip home from Des Moines for work in late October. It was a beautiful Fall evening, and the memories came flooding back.

The picture above is of "Old Main." This is the administration building, as well as the chapel/theater where I performed in several plays along with my senior speech recital.
This is a picture of the center of the campus. That's the dining hall straight ahead.
Here's a picture inside the library - one of my favorite places during my years at Pills. The furniture has been rearranged, but this is roughly where I'd sit for a couple hours a week reading the most recent magazines, newspapers, and periodicals - as well as doing some class reading. It was quiet - just the way I remembered it.
This is a view from the center of the campus looking out toward the soccer field where I placed for 4 seasons. Clearwaters Hall is on the right - this is where most of the faculty offices were located.
This is the men's dorm - where I lived for 3 years. Not much has changed inside, other than updating the furniture.

Bonding Trip - Chicago Fire Game with Karsten (and Dan)

Cousin Dan had the idea to go to Chicago for an MLS soccer game. Since my parents were still living in Chicago, it made for a fairly easy trip since we could stay at their house while there.

The game was pretty good - Karsten's and my second MLS game this summer. Of the two stadiums, I liked Dick's Sporting Goods Park in Denver better, but Toyota Park in Chicago is quite nice as well.

Summer Vacation: Colorado Rapids Game

One of my personal highlights on vacation was going to a Colorado Rapids MLS match. It was a chance for just Karsten and I to hang out and enjoy the sport we like more than any other.

The Rapids have a new stadium (Dick's Sporting Goods Park) that is just gorgeous. It seats a little over 20,000, and there's not a bad seat in the place. The weather couldn't have been better either - a perfect night for soccer with temps in the low 80's at kickoff, and only dropping to the mid-70's toward the end of the match.

We sat in the cheap seats, which still had great views and sightlines. We could have moved to much better seating once the match started, but Karsten wanted to stay where we were. Our seats were in the section next to the "avid" fans section - they played drums and trumpets, and sang the entire match. Pretty cool - although not the flavor of international matches that I've been too where the whole stadium in singing and playing instruments.

Geoff Cameron is a rookie on the Houston Dynamo, and has been getting reagular appearances for the 2-time defending league champions - a significant achievement. His mom, Diane, ended up sitting right behind me, and I had several converations with her before and during the match. Geoff didn't start, but entered the game at the 70th minute, and created several good chances for teammates to score.



Colorado Rapids are affiliated with Arsenal (you can see the Arsenal banner above the tent on the right side of the photo above. They are sort of a minor league/development team for Arsenal - but there's not a lot of close ties that any serious fans would notice. Nonetheless, Karsten is definitely a Rapids fan since the two clubs are affiliated with one another.


The power went out at the 70th minute and delayed the game for about 20 mins. Three of the four light towers failed. There was still enough light to see, but there were definitely too many shadows for the match to be played until the lights came back on.

Oh, and Karten wouldn't let me take his picture, nor would he let anyone take a picture of the two of us at the game. He's already acting like a teenager - and he's only 7.


The game ended 0-0. A couple goals were disallowed for either side, but it was pretty entertaining all the same. We will definitely go back, and are also planning to visit an MLS game in Chicago later this summer as well.

Summer Vacation: South Platte Park (Littleton, CO)

We decided to ease into vacation and do a nature hike at the South Platte Park in Littleton. It was close to our hotel, offered exposure to the great outdoors, and seemed to have plenty for the kids. It's certainly not the most scenic part of CO, but it was worth the trip.

The nature center offered a couple important amenities: 1) air conditioning, and 2) a flood simulator where kids can build a city of sorts, and see how flooding and erosion have an impact on where we live and the environment. The kids absolutely loved it, and would have played longer than the 45 mins or so we were in there.

Summer Vacation: Hitting the Road

The kids travel pretty well. The only irritating things they do are get on one other (and my) nerves, and make a big mess of the van - but we manage around that well enough. Frankly, what do you expect when you're in a van for around 55 hours in 9 days, and they do that at home often enough - so there were no suprises there
We had some severe storms (hail, heavy rain) between the CO-NE border and Denver, but managed to get this pic of a huge rainbow after we cleared the inclement weather.

Summer Vacation: Colorado

Well, we got home from vacation 4 weeks ago to the day of this writing, and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. Sure things have been crazy, but my biggest barrier to start blogging our vacation was that I knew I'd have to sort through about 5oo photos, make edits, write, etc. It's pretty overwhelming even as I write this.

So baby steps are in order, I'll start by covering the first few days and hopefully have the entire vacation blogged within a week or so.

We decided to go to Colorado this year. Why did we choose Colorado? Well... the best reason is we couldn't come up with anything better to go that was within a more reasonable distance (if you call nearly 1000 miles each way at today's gas prices "reasonable," that is). I lived in Denver for a summer during college while I did my internship, and loved it. Nikki has been there too, so since there's lots for the kids to see and do as well, it seemed like a good choice. I'm glad we did.

As I did last year, here are a few stats from our vacation:

• Miles Driven: 3126
• Hours Driving during 9 days of vacation: ~ 55
• Emergency bathroom breaks: 2 (still room for improvement, but I'm not complaining...)
• States visited during trip: 6 (MN, IA, NE, CO, WY, and SD)
• Survived a Hail Storm?: yes (2 years running now)
• Cost for new brakes on van because people ahead of us didn't know how to drive in the mountains on vacation: $487
• Number of nights staying in hotel: 9
• Number of nights we paid for a hotel: 1 (we used my Hilton points for every night except our last night in Wall, SD - since Hilton didn't have any nearby hotels)
• Stops at McDonalds: only 1
• Moving/Traffic violations: 0
  

I'd like a coronary with that...

I like BLT sandwiches. One of the people in my lunch meeting commented on a 1/2 pound of bacon BLT while looking at the menu, and I thought it was a joke. It wasn't. I had to see what such a beast looked like, and in order to see it, such a monster had to be ordered. Since no one else wanted to order it...well I won't comment any further.

Spring Break - Duluth, MN

Over spring break, we decided to spend a weekend in Duluth. It couldn't have worked out better. The weather was fantastic, tourism was low, and the 2 hour drive was just right.

Saturday had temps in the upper 50's, which is awesome for Duluth in early April. We decided to spend some time at the historic lift bridge, which the kids really liked. The timing worked out well since one of the larger freighters was coming into the harbor while we were there.

We stayed at a hotel that had a waterpark, and that served as a good family event center as well. On Friday, we celebrated Nikki's birthday, part of which was spent cleaning up one of our child's throw-up 4 times that day. The joys of being a parent.

On Sunday we went to the Great Lakes aquarium - which took a few hours to visit. It's mostly stocked with the same fish you see everywhere, but the kids liked it pretty well.

House on the Rock

When we go to visit Chicago, we've started to make a stop in the Wisconsin Dells for the kids. This year, since Easter was at the end of spring break for most schools in MN and WI, the rates were jacked up big-time when we decided to go to Chicago over Easter weekend.

We opted for a plan B: doing House on the Rock instead. This is in the same general area of Wisconsin, but a little off the beaten path. Still, there are signs all along the interstate that we've always ignored, so this looked like a good opportunity to make.

As an aside, the weather didn't cooperate. The Madison, WI area has had record snowfall, and the day we were passing through the area was pretty crummy due to another snowfall of 6-9 inches of fresh snow. The positive is that the House on the Rock had very view visitors - it was almost like we had the entire tourist trap to ourselves.

This is a an interesting place that I guess you need to go through once. Nik and I commented that we won't be bothered if we don't go back for another 15-20 years. The place was hit or miss for me. A few rooms were interesting and unique, most were boring to me, much less the kids. Karsten and Kiera both used the words "dark" and "scary" to describe it. I couldn't imagine this place during peak tourist season and having to maneuver around lots of people. Still, the House on the Rock took several hours just to tour all the rooms since it's a pretty sprawling place encompassing several large buildings that have been added over the years.

Oh, and did I mention that there's shag carpet everywhere - including most ceilings? I'd hate to have to be the one to vacuum this place.

Here are some pics. My favorite was the Infinity room, which juts off the top of the mountain and goes ~100 ft. straight out over the valley. Visibility was bad due to the weather, but the effect was still stunning.
This is a pic. of the Carousel Room. Supposedly, there are 20,000 lights on that thing. I counted them, and that's a bit of exaggeration. I stopped at 599,527, but I'm not sure if I counted some lights more than once since the Carousel was moving the whole time.

Lastly, we were told to check out the bathrooms. They were pretty cool. This is one of the nicer men's rooms.


This bathroom below helps men keep man law #12: avoid using the urinal right next to another dude at all costs. There was easily 5-6 feet between the urinals, and each urinal had it's own sink to boot. On the downside, the picture looks like some dude still has bad aim, if you know what I mean. That, or they just hosed the place down for a cleaning... I stayed away just to be sure.

Where Work Takes Me: Austin, TX

I wish I could have taken this. I grabbed it off Wikipedia


One of the few pictures that turned out. This is Austin City Hall




I cover a lot of ground for work, but Austin isn't a normal stop (nor is it part of my territory). One of my accounts was having their national sales meetings there, so I was asked to help cover.





In many ways, that's a shame. I really liked this city, and I'm definitely interested in going back. Now, I say that even though the temps never got above 40 degrees F (I obviously hoped the weather would be better...), and I could barely see any local sights since the cold temps created a fog that limited visibility to a few hundred yards the entire time I was there.





That said, what I did see impressed. Downtown is modern, easy to navigate, and safe. The airport is one of the best "small" airports I've ever been.





The local cuisine is pretty good, too. The Tex-Mex was outstanding.





We'll see, maybe I'll have an opportunity to go back one day. If so, I'll most likely go gladly.

Places Work Takes Me: Wichita, KS

This was the first time work necessitated that I make the trek to Wichita, KS. While I'm witholding final judgment on this alledgely fine city, I have a few observations:

• It's not easy to get to. It's about a 10 hour drive, so flying is the best way to get there and back. The problem is there aren't a lot of options to get there in a timely manner. I ended up having to take a 9:30pm flight unless I wanted to arrive at 1:30pm at the earliest if I left during the daytime.
• It's not easy getting back. Northwest only has 2 flight options coming home: a 7:30am and a 5:15pm. Not much of a choice at all if I want to get home at a decent time to see my family, but still conduct meetings that day.
• Wichita is bigger than I thought: I was told that the city itself has a population of around 350,000, and the greater metro area of approximately 500,000. I thought is would be closer to 100,000.
• I DID know that the economy is largely based in the avionics industry. Cessna/Citation, Hawker Beechcraft, Boeing, and I'm sure there are a few I'm forgetting. Surprisingly, the houses and economy seems to be very blue-collar. Again, this isn't authoritative - just a first impression.
• It's VERY flat: you can see for miles and miles just be driving on an overpass along the highway. Granted, it is Kansas, but it is definite proof that the world IS flat.

And this is the picture out of my hotel window in Wichita. There are a few things worth pointing out from it.

• Many of those houses had more wood showing than paint on them.
• It was somewhat scary driving through these neighborhoods trying to get to my hotel at 11:30 at night. These streets had no lighting whatsoever.
• However, the hotel and parking lot DID have lots lighting.
• Why is there a 6' high WALL around the hotel? I doubt it's for aesthetics
• This reportedly wasn't a bad part of town.
• The hotel itself was very nice. Probably the nicest Hampton Inn I've ever stayed in (and I've stayed in dozens of them.)

So, I'm still wondering where to rank Wichita. If you have any thoughts or comments, be sure to post them.

Sweet Ride

Yeah, I know this isn't a Ferrari or Porsche, but for a rental car it's pretty good. I drive a lot of rental cars when I'm on the road, but this is one of the best I've had. It beats the plain old Malibu's, Impalas, and Tauruses that I get stuck with far too often

This is the '07 Dodge Charger I had in Omaha last week. It's all "business," with a sporty edge to it. I've driven the similar Chrysler 300, and didn't care for it nearly as much. Another big plus with this particular model - it came with Sirius Satellite Radio...always a plus.

Although it wouldn't be at the top of my list if I were shopping for a new car, it certainly would get consideration.

Places Work Takes Me: Kansas City

I've also never taken pictures of downtown Kansas City either. I know I was ready to take some before, but fog and rain pre-empted those attempts before.

I rarely go downtown Kansas City either. In fact, I think I drove through once, but I've never actually DONE anything downtown. There's a lot to do downtown KC. The sporting events currently take place in the Eastern suburbs at the sports complex along I-70. Downtown does the the "old" Kemper arena and the new Sprint Center arena - but neither has a permanent tenant that calls either place home.

I usually stay in the Overland Park area when I'm in town. This is the Southwestern part of the KC metro area. The reason I usually stay in OP is that it's centrally located where most of my clients for work are.

The "hot spot" in KC is "The Plaza" an upscale area about 2 miles south of downtown. This is where all the great restaurants, high-end retail shopping, and luxury condos and large homes are located. It's beautiful and classy - but I rarely get there either...

There is some great BBQ around here. The best place I've had so far is Gates BBQ - which has several locations around KC. There's a really good Chinese restaurants called Chinese Palace in Overland Park, KS.

Places Work Takes Me: St. Louis

I've been covering St. Louis for 15 months now. In that time, I've never been downtown. I've never even been CLOSE to downtown.

"Why?" you ask?

Frankly, I have no idea. The most logical reason is that St. Louis has the highest violent crime rate over any city in the country. (Detroit seconds the list). Yet, downtown doesn't seem to have the problems. When one crosses the Mississippi River and goes to EAST St. Louis (which is in Illinois), then the crime rate shoots up dramatically. But since I don't cross the Mississippi River, I should still be relatively safe going downtown.

So the best answers I have is that I've never had a reason to go downtown, and it's too far out of the way for me to go down there (since I usually stay in the Western suburbs about as far away from downtown as you can get.)

The ironic thing is that I didn't go to the Arch - which necessitates at least another trip downtown at somepoint in the future.

My reason for going downtown was for a Rams-Chiefs preseason NFL football game. Mat and I were running late due to traffic, so I only had time to snap a few pics while driving.

I'll write more about the Western suburbs another time...

Places Work Takes Me: Des Moines

I just realized that I took these pics back in June, but never posted them. The good people of Des Moines have every right to be upset over my negligence.

Des Moines is probably one of the biggest "small" cities around. It has a big city feel to it, but it's actually much smaller than one would think (around 500k people). The city is pretty easy to navigate and get around. There's not much nightlife downtown to speak of, but then I'm not a big nightlife guy anyways. Scenery wise, Des Moines has an attractive skyline and scenery along the Des Moines river that runs through it.

We had an event at Principal Park which is downtown along the river.

My favorite place to eat is a place called Mojo's in Johnston, a northwestern suburb. They have some amazing Almond crusted chicken fingers that are the best chicken tenders one could ever possibly eat. The entre's change regulary, but it's hard to go wrong with anything you order here.