Day Five

Much to my chagrin, a mesoscale convective system (MCS) rolled through the Mt. Pleasant area in the wee wee hours (i.e., the time of the night where nature calls us middle-aged types, hence the name).  This, of course, meant plenty of rain (maybe some hail, judging by the sound on the AC unit) and lightning, which tends to wake me up and keep me up.  

After discussing the two plans yesterday, Gustavo and I pretty much decided we’d be going (back) to South Dakota to await Tuesday’s potential funky weather in the Dakotas, rather than wait for local bad weather in Iowa.  Per usual, the atmosphere had a third option: the Dakotas might erupt sooner than planned.  As such, we decided to hedge our bets and drive from Mt. Pleasant to Des Moines.  This took us on local highways through Ottumwa, the home of Radar O’Reilley (no markers or signs, though—sad).  From here, we picked up I35 northward to our final destination for the day: Ramsey, MN, northwest of the Twin Cities (and just 45 miles from St. Cloud!).  I haven’t spent the night in MN in nearly 12 years.  Although it was a rather long drive (400+ miles), it was kept light by judicious recitations of passages from a recent Cosmopolitan magazine, described quite accurately by one of our (female) chasers as ‘girl porn.’  Very enlightening, to say the least.  Not sure I’ll ever be able to think of cartwheels in the same way again.

Our forecasts paid off in two respects: not one severe report in our ‘chasable’ area (so sticking around locally would have been fruitless), and a most wonderful dinner and dessert at Bakers Square, a restaurant chain indigenous to Minnesota.  Very well-received by all in attendance—we so need one of these in Brockport, so if any enterprising folks in western NY are reading this and want to franchise one, let me know. 

Unfortunately, more and more of our crew seem to be coming down with some sort of respiratory unpleasantness.  Gustavo is the latest victim, but Whitney seems to have come around.  Let’s hope it goes away quickly.

Random thought…it’s quite amusing to see what kids leave behind: a book, a pair of glasses (back in Iowa, sadly), flip-flops.  One person went at least a day with his phone in Gus’ possession without realizing it was gone…

Not sure what Day Six will hold…once again, the weather looks questionable, as the severe weather on Monday looks to be too far west for us to get to.  At the moment, our thoughts are northeastern North Dakota and points north (eh?) on Tuesday, so it looks like we’ll be aiming up I94 with a bead on Grand Forks, ND, perhaps with a brief stop in St. Cloud?  One can hope…

The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde once sang that the object of her affection was 2000 miles away on Christmas (a lovely song called, oddly enough, “2000 Miles”).  Here on Day 5, we completed over 2000 miles of driving.  At this pace, we’re looking at 6000 miles by journey’s end.