The bad weather is over, and so is the tournament

It's 11am at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and we have a new Collegebowl national champion. University of Rochester, who finished the round-robin play in 1st place with only one loss had to beat University of New Mexico twice in the finals to win their first ever championship. New Mexico had a great run, entering the tournament as the wild-card team, and they almost won it all. Congratulations to all the teams on a great championship.

Now I'm ready to head for the airport and sleep in my own bed tonight. This is the official end of the Collegebowl/HCASC/Celtel Africa Challenge season, so we'll all pat ourselves on the back for a good year, and like the Academy Awards, it's already time to start work on next year's show.

MinneSnowta

Yep, it was bound to happen. We woke up early this morning, the first day of tournament play, to find that a light snow was falling. By the time we got to Macalester College at about 7am the snow was starting to come down harder and stick to the ground. I guess our pool-side dinner is off for tonight . . . .

90 Days, 2 Great Rivers

What a difference 90 days makes. On January 30th I was standing on the banks of the Nile in Jinja, Uganda. Now 90 days later here I stand on the banks of the Mississippi in St. Paul, Minnesota. I experienced both rivers near their headwaters. Warm and tropical in Uganda, cold and stormy in Minnesota; who would'a thought?

Mall of America

I spent the day today travelling to St. Paul, Minnesota for the Collegebowl National Championship tournament to be held at Macalester College. We arrived in rainy weather and checked in to our hotel. I had time for a quick workout in the fitness center before the 11 of us here piled into our van for a trip to the Mall of America for dinner.

The Mall of America is the largest shopping mall in the U.S., with over 500 shops and stores, a dozen nice restaurants, and a full fledged amusement park in the middle.

After dinner our group split up. Some rode the roller-coasters, some shopped. I decided to see the whole mall. I walked once around the mall on each of the three levels, a total of almost 2 miles. I also stopped to buy a small bag of the local Minnesotan treat, cheese curds, to share with my colleagues. Cheese curds are lumpy chunks of newly formed cheddar that have not been pressed together to form blocks or wheels of cheese. I understand the locals love them battered and deep-fried. What's not to love?!

Pinks

It was a boy's day today. Marion was working at CMH so I decided to take the boys on a little adventure. We loaded up in the car and started the 65 mile drive to Hollywood, with a detour in Burbank to pick up my cousin, Tony. From Burbank we drove over Barham to Highland, made a quick pass down Hollywood Blvd. in front of the Chinese Theatre and said hi to Darth Vader and Spiderman. A quick left onto La Brea and before you knew it, there we were at Pinks.

It was still early, about 10:45am, but seeing as there was no line we thought we'd get an early snack of a chili dog and glass-bottled soda. Brodie and Nik opted for no chili on their hot dog, but the early hour didn't hurt their appetite any.

After Pinks we headed down to Wilshire and shot over to the La Brea Tar Pits where we walked around the stinky asphalt lake and looked at the wooly mammoths and mastodons stuck there. The boys really loved the Page museum, too. Even on Sunday you could look through the windows into the laboratory and see white-coated workers sorting and cleaning all of those 40,000 year old fossils. Nik's favorite was the Saber-toothed Cat skeleton that morphed into what looked to be a living specimen.

From the Tar Pits we headed over to the Farmers Market. My, how that has changed since the last time I was there! There's a giant up-scale shopping center there called the Grove, with fountains, a giant koi pond, and a double-decker trolley that travels on rails to carry people the 200 yards from one end of the Grove to the Farmer's Market on the other end. We had another lunch at the Farmer's Market, followed by ice cream. Both boys fell asleep on the long ride home, and I don't think they'll be very hungry for dinner tonight.

The Promise of a Sweet Summer

On March 9th I posted pictures of our fruit trees in bloom. ("Spring has arrived") Now, less than a month later, it seems that the blossoms survived the late winter wind storms and the fruit has set.

Here's pictures of our apricot, plum and peach trees taken on this wonderful spring Sunday. As I write this, it's about 65 degrees and the morning fog has cleared away.

This morning after a late breakfast we drove down to the beach to take a walk along the strand. The Ventura River has filled the lagoon where it empties into the ocean almost to overflowing and the pelicans have taken up residence there. After our walk we let the boys play in the sand, but no one went in the water; it is still way too cold for ocean swimming!