Tuesday PM

We have yet to receive news today from across the pond.

The trip to see 1 was brief, but enjoyable. We did Sunday dinner at a sports bar near my hotel, and then had the meeting on Monday AM with the reception caterer. The reception place is very nice and should fit our needs without exception.

The wedding hotel is also a nice place. It has the key component to an H clan gathering: a nice bar. Good location. Minutes from the reception site. Minutes from the airport and the Mall of America.

My drive home was a little exciting. A plastic cowling under the front bumper came loose while I was barreling down the road and scared the bejesus out of me. Luckily, I was near an exit, and then near a GM dealer where I was able to get the thing riveted back on in short order. The failure actually traces it's way back to last year's Twin Cities marathon when I was run up onto a center curb by a gal who was clueless at the time. That incident cracked some of the plastic around the front driver's side wheel well and, I think, some of this cowling. In any event, I lost an hour or so of drive time, and $75, but it could have been worse.

Another little item of excitement on the trip was my inadvertent conversion to the metric system on my instrumentation. After my fill-up in southern Minnesota, I decided that I would check my gas mileage on that tank, so I worked the digital keys on the dash to get a trip-odometer to zero, and took off down the road. As I got up to speed and readied to set the cruise control, I looked at the odometer and it said 125! Oops! Obviously, I had hit an extra click on the dial and had changed the readings from mph to kph. And I couldn't go back unless the gear shift was in "Park".

So I spent the last hour on the interstate constantly running the kph to mph conversion in my mind. Then when I stopped at the hotel, I forgot all about it and had the same disconnect when I fired up the car on Monday morning. I made the fix before heading back to Iowa, but it was a little interesting in the meantime.

My pal Pete called me around 8 last night, after I had arrived home and had a bite to eat, and we met up at Gov's for a cocktail, he by bike, and me by Margret. Several familiar faces there, including 4's friend Ashley from Northwestern. I spoke with her briefly as we left, and complimented her on her ESPN screen time last month when NW was at the college World Series.

It was great to return to my bed. The hotel accommodations were nice, but left me a little achy. Those aches were compounded by too much drive time.

So I'm headed out to put on some mileage. My delayed arrival home last night has me down on the weekly mileage.

Be careful out there.