It's gettin' cold out, yah?

ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA

My trip isn't exactly a pure cross-country run. My first bit of cheating was to fly out from Boston to near the midpoint of the country, namely St. Paul/Minneapolis (hey, gotta save some time and money somehow). I'm staying with my friend Alex, once upon many years ago also a colleague at the Prague Post, where I was a scrub freelancer and he was (sucker!) a staff reporter. The years have been good to him save for an awkward bout with tendinitis in the hands (smacking a keyboard for a living will do that to you). I was relieved to see that he's ended up with a fantastic woman, an Iranian-born opthamologist originally from Nebraska. Sanaz is, I would imagine, pretty much the only Nebraskan eye specialist active in this country with Persian ancestry. But the US is pretty frickin' big, so it wouldn't surprise me if I'm wrong.

Despite the success of his relationship, Alex asked me to write that he's spent the past few nights engaging in noisy, wild sex with several local nubiles. He hasn't at all, but as a friend I have to do my best to shore up his fragile, confidence-hungry ego.

Global warming has hit Minnesota like it has everyplace else, but like a lot of northern places you can feel winter starting to bite here. Though it's not freezing yet, the wind stings a little and that little survival cortex of my brain keeps nagging me to stay inside. This was easily accommodated Friday and yesterday by the handy Skyway, a great name for a very smart concept here in the Twin Cities. Since winter is usually mean and long, the city elders in their wisdom created a network of above-street-level passageways linking much of the downtown areas of both St. Paul and Minneapolis. So you can cruise around entirely indoors, which comes in handy when you want to, say, bar hop in January without suffering frostbite. Although I would imagine it exists elsewehere, the Twin Cities were the first place I've encountered this type of transportation. I walked around in these tubes more than was strictly necessary because, well, they were the SKYWAY and I thought the concept was pretty cool. Plus, you can't beat that name, eh? It sounds so futuristic and hopeful.

Funny Indoor Experience #2 was the inevitable, the unavoidable, the unbelievable Mall of America. This, as all you shopping mall groupies will know, is the largest facility of its kind in our galaxy. It's the size of several airplane hangars and has every classic American chain store known to man...plus some you didn't know (there's a shop that only sells flavored peanut butter products, for example, and trendy place for kids where they can design their own teddy bears). In the middle, as if flavored peanut butter outlets and several dozen Starbucks weren't enough, is - get this - an AMUSEMENT PARK, complete with scary roller coaster and flume log ride. We couldn't quite find the entrance to the roller coaster, Alex, Sanaz and I, so we contented ourselves with simply walking around and browsing in some of the chains. Although surrounded by millions of dollars in commerce and several football fields of merchandise, all I bought in the end was a t-shirt and a gift for the wife. I guess the heavy sales atmosphere and adventure rides didn't have much effect on my buying habits in the end.

Still, I'm sorry we didn't make it to the roller coaster.

Oh, I also scratched another "gotta do this typically American thing" off my list yesterday. The Typically American Thing in question was...Denny's! This, the dark-minded and uninformed might not realize, is the classic US breakfast chain, almost up there in our mythology with baseball, hot dogs and automobiles the size of shanty towns. It's famous for the Grand Slam Breakfast, a tray - sorry, plate - stuffed with eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes and several other unhealthy foods that probably don't belong together. I shied away from the Grand Slam, instead getting an American Slam (the difference is immense, I tell you). One side option was grits, a traditional dish of tasteless mush from our Southern States. But for tasteless mush it was pretty good. Or maybe I was just so satisfied with the eggs, bacon and sourdough toast that it didn't matter. I helped Alex and Sanaz with their pancakes too. Ah, America, land of Monster Food. Bring on the sausages!