Lake Minnetonka is one of a few places that combines two of my favorite things: boating and urbanism. Last Saturday my father, my two kids and I took our boat out for a voyage to explore the lake and have lunch in excelsior. While our Lund “Mr. Pike” boat (and Mercury “Classic Fifty” motor) is more than […]
Austin, TX is a pretty cool city. I was recently visiting the liberal heart of the reddest state, and was able to peruse the streets of the city during a warm & humid afternoon. In many senses, Austin and Minneapolis are eerily similar: both cities contain major world-class research universities, a growing knack for progressive urban design, […]
The following is a meditation on a personal experience and should not be cited authoritatively in academia. It sat half-written in drafts for about six months, and after Wisconsin’s loss to Duke earlier this week, it felt like a nice thing to finish. Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, is my second favorite state. It occurred to me […]
I made it out of the Cities not once, but twice visiting two very different places during the month of August. I spent the first weekend in Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan, and later in the month I was on Washington Island off of Door County, Wisconsin. It was my first real visit to the […]
In honor of the Minnesota State Fair as a bookmark at the end of summer, I’m here to tell a tale of what I did on my summer vacation. I drove west, naturally. My family piled in to the car and drove to Colorado. The great American road trip, we put 2,300 miles on our […]
(I’m going to preface this post by saying: Yes, I know this isn’t technically summer in “Our Fair State,” but it’s NEXT to our fair state and that oughtta count for something, right?) Did you realize the Porcupine Mountains are a mere five and a half hours away? Drive, drive, drive, Bam! you’re there. What’s in […]