Last thoughts...

So. Our Fargo adventure is over. I accepted the clerking job from Judge Magill on September 30, 2005, and started this blog ten days later.

Between then and now, Fargo went from mysterious northern locale to the object of much research to home. It is, finally, where we spent a year. We had left so much of our stuff behind in Rockville that even before we unloaded the moving van, our Rockville house immediately seemed full and familiar and home. Now, two weeks later, at odd moments, it's almost as if we never left. Well, except for all these damn boxes I still have to unpack.

Looking around the house, the town, and the metro area, we realize a year really isn't that long a time – except for Rockville's nifty downtown, which had been years in the planning but was finished while we were away, everything is largely the same as when we left. We had lived in this house nine years before heading to Fargo, and could have ticked off a tenth here quite comfortably.

But instead we picked up our lives and our stuff and moved it all north for the year. We saw and did and ate all sorts of things we had not seen or done or eaten before. We made great new friends. We became more resilient people. I look forward to seeing how that resilience expresses itself as the five of us face new challenges.

Thank you to those who made this all possible: those who hired, encouraged, and moved us; those who welcomed us and took us in; those who kept us connected to life back in Maryland; those who taught us about the law, North Dakota, and making deer sausage; and those who helped us return. Our year in Fargo will always be a very important year for our family to have lived.

And with that, I close the book of "Fargoing." It was always designed to be a "deployment blog," and our deployment is over. I hope you enjoyed reading about our adventures; thank you for doing so.

Safe in Rockville!

Well, we have ignored R.E.M.'s advice and have Gone Back To Rockville. The trip was uneventful. Jen and I pulled in last night around 9 p.m. Everything was unloaded this morning by a swarm of our friends, to whom we are very grateful.

Here's what led up to it:

Penske, the company that rented us our truck, has a little online quiz if you want to tow a vehicle on one of their trailers. I had planned to drag the Pathfinder back here, as I didn't make any good plans to dispose of it in Fargo. I drove it over to the Penske truckyard and onto the trailer, and discovered that while a 1993 Pathfinder meets the height, weight, width, and length requirements for the Penske 4-wheel trailer, the wheels do not.

The webbing that is supposed to go over the tires and hold the truck to the trailer simply wouldn't fit over the Pathfinder's tires. The Penske guy went back into the office, consulted his system, and said, "It meets all the requirements, but there's a little note there: 'Check tires.'"

So, my fine truck had to be left behind. Ellie is distraught. P. and her husband T. have kindly agreed to handle selling it for us, which is a really big deal, and we thank them. Used vehicles do not have to be inspected before they are resold in North Dakota – it would never pass inspection in Maryland; you fail if you have rust spots!

I think the Pathfinder will have a solid next career as a hunting truck. Older trucks are in high demand in that area in the fall for guys to fill up with sporting gear and take off after deer. It'll be good for that.

Packing up was otherwise without trauma. Well, except for P.'s son E., who we hired along with his brother, his dad, and some of his pals to help us pack up. E. cut his knee on the tin on the back of our washing machine and had to go get stitched up. He had to miss two days (at least) of baseball. It wasn't a very big cut, but it was deep, and was in a place that bled a lot. He dripped all over the sidewalk:

In the end, the 26-foot Penske truck we had rented the year before to take us out there didn't quite cut it, and I had to dash out and rent a U-Haul trailer to get the last bunch of boxes on board.

It looked a little ridiculous, but it worked. I had great misgivings about whether a U-Haul trailer would make the journey in one piece, but it did just fine. The Penske truck had over 100,000 miles on it, and was not real happy taking some of Pennsylvania's hills at any kind of high speed, but it chugged up over each one of them eventually.

Just as the sun was setting, I crossed into Maryland (see right), which is never quite as gratifying as it should be when coming from the West, because it's such a little state, and you feel you really oughta be pretty close to home if you're crossing into Maryland, but really you have about 100 more miles to go.

When Jen and I finally did arrive, we were met by my sister Meg, her husband Griff, and their baby, Benjamin, who was born in March and who I had not yet met. The three of them will be living upstairs for awhile, which we're looking forward to. Also waiting for us were our pals the Hoyes and Mike Detwiler, which made it a very warm welcome. Later, Meg and I walked to Rockville's spanking-new downtown and enjoyed a beer at our new brewpub. Very cool.

The Final Countdown

Well, this is just about it. All the kids have headed back East. Jen and I spent the weekend packing, and we are now awash in a sea of boxes. Judge Bye and his wife held a lovely going-away dinner for the law clerks tonight, and very kindly included me and Jen. My last day of work is tomorrow.

Pinky (right), the Daughter Formerly Known as Katie, had a great time in Alexandria with her Auntie L.J. and Uncle Seth, and has now headed to Atlanta for grandparent time for the next couple of weeks. L.J. and Katie obtained permission to add "a few" pink highlights to Katie's hair; this is what she ended up with, which does not look like "a few" to me, but I'm told I'm overreacting. All I can say is, when the day comes and L.J.'s wee daughter Sylvie, my lovely niece, needs a ride to go get a Mohawk, I'll be there for her.

One really, really sure sign the end is near is that we have started to repeat the events calendar. Jen and I went to the Fargo Street Fair over lunch on Thursday, where we once again bought a big honking bag of kettle corn. This was one of the first things we did when we arrived in town last summer. Here Joey and Ellie were then:

And here they are now:

Judging from the pictures, we are returning the kids to Maryland taller, older, happier, more tan, and a little more clean. I expected a year in Fargo would have most of those effects (particularly "older"), but "more tan" does surprise me.

Though we didn't make it to a Red Hawks game, we did get to the rest of our to-do list – celebrating Ellie's birthday and going to Space Aliens – simultaneously on Friday night:

Here's the main Space Aliens dining room:

Space Aliens is probably the single thing the kids will miss most about Fargo; on Tuesdays, kids eat free and get ten tokens apiece to play video games and win tickets to redeem for valuable prizes. The best part is, they'll provide three kids' meals for every adult meal. Well, this wasn't quite as cool as I'd envisioned; when I took the kids there when Jen was out of town, I ended up sitting at the table by myself for long stretches, keeping guard over hats and coats, usually, while the kids played in the game room.

Joey and I were out until 1 Friday night at Fargo's big Harry Potter book-release party at the Barnes & Noble, the last one ever. Joey wrapped up Book 6 with a few days to spare, and was good and ready. We showed up at 9 p.m. and just squeaked in the door; everyone who arrived a little later had to wait outside until 12:30 or so, when the crowd inside had thinned out. The line stretched two blocks long.

It was quite an event. They took Polaroids of the kids, told their fortunes, had little bottles they could fill up with layers of different colors of sand, and read from the sixth book for the last half-hour before the seventh book was released. At the stroke of midnight, the reader nabbed a copy of Book 7 and started in on that.

They also held a costume contest. Here is Joey practicing his Quidditch moves, as he came dressed as Quidditch-playing Harry:

Here he is after winning second place in the 10-and-under group:

Joey worked out exactly what he wanted to do as he presented himself to the crowd, and executed it nicely. He was well-received by judges and spectators alike. He was awfully proud of himself, and I am proud of him, too.

[Reflecting on the event the next day, I realized that it was the first of many times in my life where one of my children would be the expert at what we were doing and I would be the novice. I could point out those dressed as Dumbledore and Harry, and that was about it. Joey knew the full cast of characters cold, and engaged in intelligent conversation about obscure Potter plot points with grownups.]

Since we were in the third group of those who had reserved books (the 501-750 range!), we had to wait for a good while after midnight to purchase our copies. It was a pretty hellaciously big crowd (for midnight at a bookstore):

The Fargo Barnes & Noble sold 1,000 copies that night.

Ellie and Joey groggily kissed Fargo goodbye – Joey on three hours' sleep – around 4 a.m. Saturday, when Jen drove them to the Minneapolis airport. They flew alone with each other to Baltimore, were picked up by my dad, and are safely on the Maryland beaches.

For my part on Saturday morning, I headed east to Detroit Lakes, where Judge Magill swore me in to the Maryland and Eighth Circuit bars (It was just in time; while I was there, he also signed the papers terminating me as his clerk!):

I chose to embrace the lake setting and dressed casually for the occasion. It was a good choice; it was warm and beautiful at the lakes. I will miss the Magills; they have been warm and gracious to us throughout the year. Judge Magill says he'll miss me; he very well may, but I know for sure he'll miss Ellie; they hit it off really well.

Oh, dear.

It looks like Fargo's winter took more out of the boy than we'd suspected.

Joey's class had their poems – all concerning "The Important Thing" about summer – published on the back of the Forum's sports section today. Joey's classmates cited all sorts of important things about summer: vacations, being able to play, the lack of school, how much fun it is, getting to spend time with family.

And Joey? What does he think is the important thing about summer?:

Here a Year!

We arrived in Fargo a year ago today. I don't have any great insight to attach to this anniversary. We'll be taking off for Maryland two weeks and a day from now. Geez, we have a lot of packing to do.

Here's what's going on in the meantime: I'm wrapping up the last few opinion drafts at work. Jen is trying to get her suitcase back from AirTran, which lost it on her way back here last weekend. Katie is with her Auntie LJ in Alexandria, VA, and will not be back. Joey and Ellie are enjoying one last round of swimming lessons.

Joey is winning the race to finish up Book 6 of the Harry Potter series before Book 7 is released at midnight on July 20. He has been reading all day and all night; when I returned from three days in St. Louis last month, I asked Joey what he'd been doing, and he said he'd been reading Harry Potter. "OK," I replied, "What else did you do?" "Um, nothing else," he said.

We have two copies reserved at the Fargo Barnes & Noble. The plan is for me to go with Joey to this very last Harry Potter release party, bring him back to the house, and catch a few winks of sleep. Then we all leave around 5 a.m. for the Cities so he and Ellie can fly back to Maryland to go to the beach with Grandmas Mary Ellen and Judith. Then Jen and I pack like mad for a few days.

Some things we have to do before we get out of here: Go to Space Aliens one last time. Pack. See a Red Hawks baseball game. Celebrate Ellie's birthday a little early. Finish packing.

For some reason, it hit me hard last night that the milk I was buying doesn't expire until after we're back in Maryland. It's a sure sign the end is near:

Things You Can See in Fargo that You Won't See in Rockville

I've been collecting photos for this post for awhile. (Don't fear – we don't still have snow on the ground here; it was 97 degrees here yesterday.)

Now, this is not a definitive list; it's just things I've noticed. And it's not to say they are unique to the Fargo area, exactly – some may be spotted elsewhere in the Midwest. And it doesn't include things I've written about before, such as sunsets, sun dogs, below-zero temperatures, sugar beets, all-you-can-drink milk, mashed-potato wrestling or the famous fire-hydrant sign with nothing but a fire hydrant on it. But they are cool.  Here goes:

Car plug: OK, this is something I think everyone expected us to see up here, and we did:

This is an electric plug for an oil-pan heater. Outlets are found at some parking lots, but not, as in some places, at every parking spot along every street. I ended up parking inside at the courthouse this year, and we had the garage at home, so we didn't have a need for one. You don't really need them for trips to the grocery store.

Highway gate:

These are swing-out gates at some interstate on-ramps that the police use to close them down. This only happened one time this winter, I think. But out East, there's no mechanism at all for keeping people off interstates; the weather's never enough, and if there's an accident, we just park a police car there.

Roger Maris tributes: Maris is still a hero here in his home town for the record 61 home runs he hit in 1961, breaking Babe Ruth's storied record. He has a museum at the mall (right), and a very impressive homage at the giant Scheel's sporting goods store:

It seems a little silly – Maris' mark has been bested by Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire, and Sammy Sosa – but on the other hand, if Major League Baseball ever decides to wipe its steroids-infected records from the books, Maris may once again be the single-season home-run king.

Snow dumping:

I just thought this was funny – I'd never thought of snow as being something you could litter with. This sign is in Island Park, next to the Y.

Travel agencies:

People flee this town in droves during the winter, and there are travel agencies all over. This one seems to be unusually full-service:

Street Signs. The have some absurdly high-numbered streets around here:

But the funny thing is, it's not in town that they have them – it tends to be out in the middle of absolutely nowhere:

I've seen streets numbered into the 200s. Now that is planning ahead for future growth!

First kid on my block...

I may be the only guy in North Dakota with an iPhone. I kind of ended up with one when I was in Chicago the day they were released.

The Forum, always one to stay on top of larger trends, see "Fargo Star," wrote an article the week before it came out, moaning about how there were no Apple or AT&T stores in Fargo, and AT&T won't write contracts here, so the iPhone wouldn't be available to North Dakotans.

The truth is, it does work here. Not perfectly, but it does work. AT&T's coverage is crappy, but on the bright side I'm costing them money by forcing them to route my calls through other people's cell towers. The reception does seem to be a little better than my old Sony Ericsson phone (which, honestly, did start to die last week and prompt the upgrade), but most of the same dead spots exist for the new machine.  Since we have less than three weeks left here (holy cow!), I think I can put up with it. It worked great in Chicago.

Ka-Boom!

"With the Fourth of July approaching, Fargo police are reminding residents that having, selling or using fireworks within Fargo city limits is prohibited," the Forum reported on June 29.

Have the cops split? They have? Okay, enough of that. On with the show!: "Families shopping for explosive entertainment this Fourth of July are seeking the biggest and brightest burst for their buck, local vendors said," the same newspaper gleefully reported two days later.

We missed this holiday last year, arriving in Fargo on July 12. A few days later I stopped by the fireworks warehouse around the corner from us. North Dakota has funny laws – out-of-staters like us can buy them within the city limits year-round, but North Dakotans can only purchase them for a week or so before and after July 4. I picked up a few items last July and promptly forgot about them in a closet.

Last year, I wondered why the laws were they way they were. Now I know.

These people are nuts for fireworks. Joey, Ellie and I decided to set up chairs on the sidewalk in front of our house instead of crossing the river to see Minnesota State University's show. The show came to us, in 360-degree surround sound. I'd guess a dozen different sites were shooting them off around us – and big ones, too! 

"It'll go all night," our next-door neighbor said a little wearily from his front stoop; indeed, as I write this at midnight, our windows are sill rattling.

The outpouring of amateur rocketry prompted me to dig through the closet and pull out my paper bag of explosives. For one, it seemed like a good occasion for them. And also: I probably don't want to toss them into a moving van in three weeks and drive across the country with them in a 150+ degree moving van.

I checked out my stash – some parachute rockets, three "ladybugs," some things that light up real, real bright instead of exploding or doing anything, and one Mammoth Smoke, the munition of my college years. Without boring you with the details of how I know this, I will just say that Mammoth Smokes are more impressive when set off inside a car driving down an Interstate highway than they are when painted thinly across the vast North Dakota plains.

I kept the kids back at a safe distance, rolled up the windows of the truck and moved it down the street a ways. The very first thing I set off was a ladybug, which spun on the ground for a few seconds before shooting straight into the sky and sparking. I looked up, up, up to see it go, looked down, and there was a Fargo police car stopping in front of me. The officer got out of the car and informed me that all fireworks, including sparklers, were illegal within the city limits. Oops.

The officer then said, to my great relief, that the police's task tonight was to go after the really impressively loud rockets going up all around us, and that I shouldn't expect any more police on my street tonight. Whew! I took this as implicit permission to shoot off my relatively quiet fireworks, and did so.

Watching from home was a good idea. The kids were tired; fireworks can't get going here until 10:30 or so because it stays light so late. The mosquitoes were also out in force, which Joey and Ellie are totally unprepared for – I don't think we saw one bug last summer; this summer is far more typical, and they are ever-present and vicious.

Joey very quickly wearied of slapping bugs off himself, and asked if he could watch the rest of the show from inside.  I think, honestly, that his retreat had to do more with Harry Potter than the bugs. He is in J.K. Rowlings' thrall – most of the way through the fifth book, and trying desperately to finish up everything before the seventh and last book arrives July 20.

Leaving our mark...

The long winter is finally over. Not because it's gorgeous out, but because North Dakota finally has an elementary school listed in the Wikipedia: Bennett Elementary School.

The entry was created by Katie's fourth-grade class. I came in and demonstrated what the Wikipedia was (about half of them knew already), and noted that Bennett had no entry, indeed, that not one elementary school in North Dakota had an entry. The kids took the bait, and we researched the article over two more class sessions, the last one just before school let out for the summer.

I thought it was a cool project, because it gave the kids a good lesson on what the Wikipedia is, how its entries are created, and, more generally, how to research, source, and construct an article of their own on a topic they're actually a little interested in. And at the end of the day, instead of having worked on a project just for the sake of working on a project, we have added a little bit to the world's store of knowledge.

Katie and I took on the task of assembling the research into the article. I was afraid for awhile that we would get distracted by summer and head home to Maryland without getting the damn thing published. But we managed to get it out. Now I'm afraid that the entry will be deemed insufficiently noteworthy for inclusion in the apparently-not-quite-bottomless Wikipedia pit. We'll see.

Hey, be nice!

The senior class of Falls Church, Virginia's Marshall High School were told by their graduation speaker last week to avoid Fargo at all costs.

"My advice to you today," said one of the school's history teachers, Tim Kane: "Work hard, believe in something, be passionate and be persistent in whatever you do or you will end up in Fargo."

"Yes, Fargo, North Dakota — the armpit of civilization. Why Fargo, you ask? Because for me, Fargo, North Dakota, is the physical and spiritual symbol of what happens to you when you die inside."

Awwww... that's not very nice. After all, the East Coast doesn't have to look this far for world-class armpits – New Jersey alone has several outstanding ones, including my native city of Camden. Certain parts of Richmond, in Kane's home state, come to mind as well.

How fitting that the address took place in DAR Constitution Hall, a symbol of ignorance in Washington ever since its managers prevented Marian Anderson from singing there in 1939 because she was black. Eleanor Roosevelt, disgusted by the racism, resigned from the DAR and arranged for Miss Anderson to sing on Easter Sunday morning from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a rapt crowd of 75,000 and a national radio audience. Where's Eleanor when you need her?

Kane's comments were reported this morning in the Forum in a column by its editor, who printed Kane's work phone number and e-mail address, and urged his readers to teach him about Fargo and to "[r]emember to follow his own advice and 'believe in something, be passionate and be persistent in whatever you do.'”

Neither I nor the Forum's editor, apparently, feel like having much of a sense of humor about this. I think it's because the weather has been gorgeous this past week; today is a high in the mid-80s with 50% humidity. We are totally headed to the pool for the day the moment it opens, and I'm not going to take anyone saying anything bad about this town today.

AirSho!

After a week of heavy rain leading up to the Fargo AirSho, organizers were getting a little nervous; advance (nonrefundable) ticket sales were slow. “Whether we put a show on or not, we have $300,000 worth of expense,” one of the coordinators told the Forum. “All we ask is that people take the risk with us.”

The appeal to Fargo's community spirit proved unnecessary, as Saturday morning was beautiful, and about 15,000 people showed up to see the sights, the air show's best day ever.

Also helping was publicity from the Navy's Blue Angels, who took flight practice at low altitudes all over Fargo this past week, providing a window-rattling running reminder that this town was about to have an air show. Jen and I had lunch on the south side of town on Thursday, and the formation of four Angels swept over several times as we ate. Our waitress said the day before they had come by so low and loud they caused sympathetic vibrations in the kitchen's exhaust hoods, which had scared the hell out of one of the cooks. But she said this with a smile on her face – I get the impression that people thought it was pretty cool. The lunchtime flyover did provide the final bit of convincing I needed to drag the family to the show.

I laid down the rules for the kids as we took the shuttle bus from the parking lot: "No matter who asks you, no matter how nicely they ask, no one is joining the Air Force or Navy today. Got that?" We found a relatively dry spot in some still-soggy grass, and set up on our blanket:

One of the planes demonstrated was the Air Force's A-10 Thunderbird II. The announcer claimed the plane featured "devastatingly good looks." Nice try. Even I know that the A-10 – better known as the "Warthog" – is as ugly as it is effective. And boy, is it effective. Up at the top of this post is the A-10 flying in tandem with the P-51 Mustang, a legendary – and good-looking – fighter plane from WWII.

We were also treated to a B-52 flyby:

The announcer encouraged us to walk around the rest of the show, as we could see the action from anywhere, as they had "The world's largest theater screen – the big blue North Dakota sky."

Katie and Joey and I took a look around the displays. They crawled into a few helicopter cockpits and then took turns controlling a missile battery:

I gotta say, I had not seen that before. Best thing was, there were no lines – they just walked into the cockpits or grabbed the stick and started aiming.

Show organizers zipped around in GEM electric vehicles and on oversized Segways with rugged all-terrain tires, the latter being something I had not seen before. One display as we walked in was a bunch of really big pieces of farming equipment. I tried to convince Joey that they were airplanes, not tractors. "We're at an airshow, Joe. Why would they have tractors here?" I almost had him going.

The highlight of the show was, of course, the Blue Angels:

It had been unclear for awhile whether they would perform, as they had lost an Angel in an airshow crash in April. They apparently asked an alumnus to return, and performed with all six slots filled.

The Blue Angels are kind of a funny thing. They're very fast, and very loud, and they like to show off how closely they can pass each other, and how closely they can fly next to each other, often with one plane upside down. But something seemed missing. Maybe it's because these guys are flying fighter jets that are so capable that they can easily do what used to be impossible, or maybe it's because they're such superior pilots that they make it look easy. But somehow their performance came off as kind of sterile rather than thrilling. It was cool to see once, but I'm not sure one would get much out of seeing them again. In some ways, seeing them buzz the town the week before was cooler, as it was unexpected.

Here they are toward the end of their show, doing what I think is called the "Delta Break." I've seen film of a tighter cross, but this was plenty tight for me:


Little-known Blue Angels fact: the group's name stems from one of its founders' spotting an advertisement in 1946 in The New Yorker for the city's popular "Blue Angel" nightclub.

The AirSho was a cool outing. Having said that, it was overwhelmingly, if not surprisingly, militaristic. A few civilians showed up to put their stunt planes through their paces – and they were pretty impressive – but the bulk of the show was showing off machines designed for killin'. Having said that, the A-10 was the only plane for which its description centered on its firepower; the flying abilities of the others were impressive enough that we didn't need to dwell on their killing capacities.

After the show was done, the five of us were treated to a miracle of efficiency: we strolled to the front gate, hopped onto the first bus that pulled up, were taken directly to our parking lot, and zipped right out. "This is just the perfect-sized town for any kind of event like this," Jen said on the bus. (By contrast, the Joint Services Open House at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland draws hundreds of thousands of people annually, and creates traffic havoc in and around Washington, D.C. We had never mustered the courage to go when we were back home; it's convenient that even for Fargo's popular events you don't need to be brave, you can just show up.)

On Sunday, as Katie, Joey and I were out for a Father's Day bike ride, the Blue Angels treated us to a show in the skies above us as we rode north. "Angels at 10 o'clock!" Katie cried out as the diamond formation came into view. Joey joyfully rang his bicycle bell in an effort to get their attention he fully knew was futile. We were lucky to be on a very straight road, as our eyes were skyward for a good portion of the ride. Heading home later, we saw two Angels streak off to the south and disappear into the clouds, presumably heading for their next show.

The Fargo-Ecuador connection...

Our great friend Dan Powers sent greetings this evening, along with a link to a cool map that tickled him. It renames each American state with a country that generates a similar gross domestic product (GDP) each year:

North Dakota, forty-eighth among the states and D.C., matches up to Ecuador (70th among nations at $32 billion). Seventeenth-ranked Minnesota, appropriately enough, is similar to Norway (28th among nations with a $262-billion GDP).

The full map is here.

Boom!

At lunch today, my colleagues J. and P. had a great idea: "Why don't we go kill some clay pigeons?" While in general I'm really not a big fan of guns, I figured this was a golden opportunity to try something I'd never get to do back East.

So after a return to the office of a respectable length, we took off for the sporting-goods store to pick up shells and pigeons, then drove out to a deserted field on the outskirts of West Fargo. It was a beautiful afternoon to be outside.

Here's how it works. One guy places a clay pigeon, a little soft ceramic disc, in a plastic arm. Here are the two together:

He throws it:

Then the other guys shoot at it. We were throwing them low today, because the wind was picking them up pretty well – a few actually boomeranged over our heads. It doesn't take much effort; I'd say it's easier than throwing a Frisbee, and harder to screw up.

In this clip, the camera is sitting on the box of targets in the grass. I yell "Ready!", throw the pigeon, then pick up the camera to film J. and P. shooting at it. Very exciting; lots of wind noise:



I was shooting a 20-gauge pump shotgun with target loads, versus a larger 12-gauge shotgun and more-serious "hunting loads." J. took a good deal of pleasure in having me try out his 12-gauge with the biggest hunting-load shells he'd brought along, which near about ripped my arm off when the shotgun kicked back. Here's the bruise I have at the moment, which will undoubtedly get far more colorful tomorrow:

Want to know something surprising? I was pretty good. I hit my very first target, and then hit about 75% of them from there on out. No one was more shocked than I, though J. and P. were close.

Here's film of me at the end of the afternoon hitting three in a row. You're not going to be able to see the targets disintegrate with YouTube's low-quality video, so you'll have to take my word for it. On the last one, I'd forgotten to pump the shotgun, so I missed my first shot. I then pumped it, fired, and hit it on the second try:


[Please excuse my undoubtedly myriad serious safety violations.]

What P. is saying, as the film ends, is, "I find it very hard to believe that this is your first time doing this." It made my day. I'm attributing it to good coaching from J. and P., and from hundreds of hours over the years of playing first-person-shooter video games.

I was very pleased to have been asked along, and more than a little glad that I didn't embarrass myself in the process. I was also pleased to be able to tell the kids about it and not have to tell them I'd killed anything.

The list of things I've gotta do before we leave Fargo is getting shorter.

Crime Report...

Well, we had a great weekend going to the rodeo and then to the city pool all afternoon Saturday and Sunday.

The only glitch – and I'm only reporting this out of an obligation to make this deployment blog complete – was that we accidentally left the van unlocked Saturday afternoon, and Jen's purse was stolen out of it.

There was hardly any cash in it; we were able to cancel all the credit and debit cards and stop payment on the checks Jen was carrying before anything else happened. (The lack of activity on the cards makes me think that the person simply wanted the cash and ditched everything else – which adds up to a lot of trouble on our side for their gain of $20.)

Still, Jen is out a driver's license and a cell phone. The Fargo cop to whom Jen gave her report said not to worry about it, to tell anyone who pulls you over that your purse was stolen. We'll see how that works. In the meantime, Jen received a call back from a very unexpectedly nice and helpful person from the Maryland MVA who will get her set up with a temporary 45-day license to tide her over until we return to Maryland's warm and humid embrace.

The cell phone is a bit more of a pain. We've been dying to finish up our two-year contract with the ever-pleasant-to-deal-with Cingular, which is up this fall. If we get a replacement phone from them, we'll have to either pay full price for it or get a mildly subsidized phone stapled to an ironclad brand-new two-year commitment. I think I may pick one up used on eBay instead.

Or: Jen suspects I am less than fully upset about the loss of her cell phone because I figure she might let me buy one of Apple's upcoming iPhones (right) to replace it. And while that may now be the case, I can honestly say it didn't occur to me until she said it out loud.

In related cell-phone news, Cingular has very thoughtfully has placed "Off Network" on the main screen of our phones these past few months to remind us on a daily basis that we're costing them money by not being in an area where they provide their own service. When I called to get Jen's phone deactivated, several Cingular folks gingerly raised the issue; I replied that when I'd called them before we left Maryland and asked whether we could get out of our contract because we were moving to North Dakota, they had said, "Oh, no, no, no...." So the daily reminder that it's costing them dearly to transmit our calls on other people's networks has actually been a happy part of each of my days.

Watch out, Utica!

Jen got a kick out of this.

Entering West Fargo on 13th Ave. South, you see this sign:

...which reminded her of an episode of The Simpsons, which features an educational 1950s film bearing an eerily similar title:

Ro-deeee-o!

Last week, Judge B. and I were discussing the family's trip out to the western Dakotas. One thing I was hoping to see while we were here was a rodeo, I said; he immediately suggested the Hawley Rodeo, a local institution held in June each year. I didn't get around to Googling it until Friday, and lo and behold, it was that night and the next!

Jen was a little dubious, but responded to the argument that since I had agreed to go to the Fargo Star competition against my better judgment (and ended up enjoying it immensely), she should return the favor.

The weather looked to be gorgeous Friday night, and looked a little iffier for the rest of the weekend, so we, uh, seized the bull by the horns and took off for Hawley, about 20 miles east of Fargo in Minnesota. The rodeo featured seven events: Bareback bronc riding, saddle bronc riding...

...tie-down roping of calves, steer wrestling, team roping, barrel racing, and for the big finale, bull riding.

We saw our buddy Erin at the rodeo. She grew up nearby and used to barrel race. "It's a girl thing," she said, and indeed, most of the barrel racers were women. They had two breeds of "barrel racers": national and local. What's a barrel race? Well, here's Shannon Porch from Wanblee, S.D., one of the national racers, tearing it up:


The national riders made it look easy; the local riders provided a better idea of how difficult it is to get a horse to make those kinds of turns.

During the internission, they had sheep riding for the kids. We all thought, "Oh, how nice! Like pony rides, but on sheep." You had to sign up in advance for it, which we did not do, and then they picked a few names. Ellie was moderately distraught about not being able to do it.

We should have known – it's not at all like a pony ride. It's more like a bull ride, but kid-sized. They had to wear helmets, and the idea is to see who can hug the neck of the sheep the longest – and not fall off – while the sheep wander around, not really minding their riders. The event led to some colorful spills (right; click on the picture for more detail).

The kids crowded the fence to watch. I thought once Ellie saw all these kids getting tossed off their animals, she would reconsider her desire to do it, but no, she went from moderate to quite acute distress – distress so severe it could be cured only with a few cookies.

The only off note was a full page in the rodeo program entitled "A Sad Parallel" comparing the mess birds make when you put out a feeder to the mess made by those allowed into the United States through our immigration policies. (Though the piece wasn't specific, I think it was referring to our Mexican brethren, not Canadian.) One complaint: "Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box." Oh, the humanity! I had no idea the people of Minnesota wanted so badly to have those migrant farm work jobs for themselves. It was perhaps the most unfriendly thing I've seen since I've been here.

The finale was the bull riding, and it was everything you'd expect. Some cowboys barely made it out of the gate before being tossed high; some made it to the buzzer. The kids crowded the fence again, and were thrilled. I think even Katie liked it; she is taking animal cruelty pretty seriously right now, and was not a big fan of the calves being lassoed, yanked around by the neck, and tied up. But the balance of power in bull riding clearly shifts to the bull – the men seem quite outmatched. At one point, I believe the announcer said, the score was "Bulls 7, Cowboys 4."

About 840 people attended the rodeo on Friday with us. It is the biggest annual event in Hawley, a town of a little less than 2,000 souls. The five of us sat on a blanket and ate quite reasonably priced hot dogs and nachos for dinner. As Jen and I strolled across the grassy hill in search of some food, she graciously admitted she was enjoying herself.

It was a beautiful night, and the rodeo was a great excuse to be out in it.

Dark and stormy night...

Yikes! If this is the last Fargoing post, you'll know why:

Flood!

The rain that fell on us on our trip to the western Dakotas also, apparently, fell on Fargo while we were gone. As a result, the city is in a state of emergency.

Well, technically. All the emergency declaration seems to mean so far is that the city spent the day building a dike between the Red River and City Hall:

Down on the south side of town, where we live, the river is also impressively high:

The Forum is doing its civic duty in this moment of crisis:

City officials also want to remind people to follow several city ordinances regarding temporary dikes.

People are asked not to climb or destroy dikes, enter areas deemed off-limits or operate watercraft in a way that damages flood protection efforts. Violations can result in your arrest by police.

That's right: Please do not destroy the dikes.

The reason we had no mosquitoes last year was that Fargo had an exceptionally dry spring. This spring is exceptionally wet. I just can't wait to see how thick July's cloud of bugs is going to be.

Westward Ho!

We're headed out for a week's trip West, to South Dakota's Black Hills and Medora, N.D. This is our one big shot to see the rest of this region; with Katie taking off East at the end of June, our time here as a family of five is drawing to a close. We'll be back in Fargo sometime Saturday.

Monday
We managed to get out of the door at 8:30 a.m. Monday. We got off to a slow start – "It'll speed up once we're clear of the city," I told Jen. "This is why you shouldn't leave during rush hour," Jen muttered through a smile:

Neither Jen nor I had been to South Dakota before today; the kids had gone with their Doc and Nanny last weekend to Sioux Falls to see its zoo. In fact, I don't think I'd been more than 10 miles south of our house down I-29, and I'd only been that far because one day a few months ago, I thought, Geez, I haven't ever been south of our house on the interstate highway – I wonder what's there? (Answer: uh, not much.)

We headed south, into S.D., and turned west just before Sioux Falls. It was a little unsettling – all the signs for I-90 had big orange signs on them: "CLOSED" Wait – the exit? or the interstate?

Later signs provided details on a detour. I-90, once we got on it for our long shot west, was pleasant – and, for a stretch in there, pink. "Very pretty," Jen said.

This is a funny part of the country we're headed into. Though the farmers seem to be quite busy going about their business, everyone else seems utterly devoted to nabbing the attention and dollars of travelers just like us – people headed to the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. Wall Drug is the most obvious (and make no mistake, we're going to be stopping there), but it has plenty of company.

The first big attraction that drew us in was in Mitchell, S.D.: the Corn Palace. It's a multipurpose arena for local residents and tourist attraction for the rest of us, a minaret-cornered and dome-topped building decorated with thousands of ears of corn:

As a sign inside explained, the idea was to attract people out to Mitchell to live. It was also part of an unsuccessful effort by Mitchell city fathers to wrest the state capital from Pierre; for some reason, the giant corn-covered castle failed to seal the deal. Mitchell needed the help, having been singled out by Lewis & Clark as a place where no man could earn a living farming.

Some billboards along I-90 reveal a simmering battle between those who favor animal rights and those opposed. Someone financed a series of signs dissing the animal-rights movement (one read "Keep nature in balance – wear fur"), each of which is dutifully vandalized presumably just as high as the person with the spray-can could reach.

...

Wall Drug was largely the same as it was when I was a kid. It's the quintessential tourist trap, with thousands of signs for it posted along roads all over the world (we spotted 98 along our stretch of I-90), and the promise of "free ice water" that has been luring travelers off the highway since the 1930s.

The place is a massive collection of kitsch shops and, yes, a surprisingly complete drug store. Its cafe seats 400, though we opted for a little more formal service at a restaurant across the street. The knickknacks were nicely priced – they don't seem to be in it to gouge anyone. We picked up a couple of decks of Wall Drug playing cards that were tucked away in a corner, on sale for 50 cents apiece. We also snapped a few pix in what passes for a 'sculpture garden' – here are the kids astride a jackalope:

As tourist traps go, it is definitely on the friendly side (versus abusive). We were happy we stopped.

We sped west for another hour under threatening skies, then Jen ran into a Rapid City Wal-Mart to pick up a few groceries for the next few days while I stayed outside with the kids. I'm also happy we stopped there, because after a few minutes, the radio station we were listening to went into Emergency Broadcast System mode, warning of a line of storms with 60 mph wind and nickel-sized hail. I don't think I've actually heard the EBS kick in for real before. We were advised to take cover and avoid windows.

I hustled the kids inside, intercepted Jen, and we waited out the storm in the Supercenter. I spoke to a woman, soaked head to toe, who said her husband had been called back to the Air Force base that evening to haul the planes inside to avoid the hail. She said it had indeed been hailing when she dashed into the store. When the storm was fully upon us, the wind was blowing rain horizontally straight into the front doors of the Wal-Mart – very impressive.

Once the storm passed, we set out for Custer State Park, where our cabin awaited. We ended up taking the scenic route in the dark in a light rain, and Jen navigated some extremely impressive switchbacks and single-lane tunnels:

We pulled into the cabin at 10 p.m. mountain time. It looks deceptively rustic on the outside, but is nicely finished inside with two double beds and a set of bunkbeds in a single room. It even has a flat-screen TV, which is a nice space-saver, because it is a little tight in here. Ellie is thrilled to finally get the top bunk. Good night!

Tuesday

Delicious Wall Drug donuts for breakfast. It's raining this morning, and it will rain all day. Jen is keen on hopping on a horse with Katie sometime this week, but the trail rides are cancelled for today. Maybe tomorrow.

We set off for the Crazy Horse monument, the absolutely enormous tribute to the Native American chief that after 60 years sits about a third finished in the Black Hills:

At the base of the mountain is a complex of museums, shops, and restaurants with a Native American theme, though the dessert menu featured strawberry-rhubarb pie and kuchen, a German pie-type item that serves as the South Dakota state dessert.

The monument really is something else. It was commissioned in 1939 by Native American leaders who liked what they saw at Mount Rushmore and decided they wanted one of their own. They found Korczak Ziolkowski, a Polish-American sculptor who had just won an award at the New York World's Fair.

Korczak – everyone calls him Korczak – spent a summer working on Rushmore to see what was what, did some models, took some time off to fight WWII, then spent the last 35 years of his life working on Crazy Horse before dying in 1982. The visitor-center film detailing the project shows how he went from urbane-looking artist to wild-looking mountain man in the interim. His wife and seven of his ten children are still on the job. In its interviews with Korczak's children, the film hints at a little tension between the kids who stayed and those who left.

The monument is financed by sales from the shops, and the $25 per car they charge to visit the thing. The theme of the place is "follow your dream," with the unspoken corollary being, "...no matter how nutty it is."

That done, we headed to Mount Rushmore, the granddaddy of mountain-defacement projects. No, wait – that's not quite true. The grandfather of all of these would be Stone Mountain in Jen's home state of Georgia. I was noodling around before we left on this trip, trying to learn a little about the region we were about to visit, but found the details around Stone Mountain to be ever-more fascinating.

This is off-topic, so I'm going to keep it to one (long) paragraph. The airbrushed version of history is that Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum was lured away from the Stone Mountain project. The truth is, he left Stone Mountain in a you-can't-fire-me-I-quit kind of huff. The project had been commissioned by none other than the Ku Klux Klan (of which Borglum was an enthusiastic member) to mark the spot where the modern Klan had been reborn in the early part of the century. The federal government and the Klan financed the first phase of the project, with the feds minting a coin Borglum had designed to raise funds. The coin was apparently ugly and did not sell well, leading to the rift. The Klan all but abandoned the project after Borglum left and scraped everything he did off the mountain. It was reborn in the 1950s during the fit of Southern pride that Brown v. Board of Education inspired throughout the region. The state of Georgia eventually took over the site and, years later, had to condemn the entire thing to void the perpetual easement the Klan had been granted to hold meetings up on top of Stone Mountain. This story pleases me mostly because it irritates Jen.

Now, where were we? Right, right, Mount Rushmore:

The thing was dreamed up by a South Dakota tourism person, who decided to not be resigned to the fact that South Dakota had nothing to see (remember, this was before Wall Drug). He brought an idea to Borglum, who changed it entirely but did succeed in creating a one-of-a-kind tourist destination out in the middle of virtually nowhere.

Rushmore was carved until 1941, when (a) WWII got rolling, (b) Borglum died suddenly in Chicago, and (c) they ran out of money. The instruction was given to wrap up the faces, drag the equipment off the mountain, and that was that. The plan to carve the four presidents down to their waists was abandoned. While Washington's face is lovingly well-defined, Lincoln's face barely emerges from the rock. A huge pile of rubble, never cleared away, sits right below the boys.

Something I did not know before today was the explanation for why Teddy Roosevelt is perched in the back row. It turns out that the sculpture was supposed to be the four of them jowl to jowl, but weaknesses in that section of the rock forced Borglum to push Roosevelt back further and further into the mountain. I can just visualize Borglum & Co. after each layer of rock was blasted off: "Damn it! Take it back another foot." They're lucky they didn't run out of mountain.

The funny thing is, Rushmore was turned over to the feds at some point, and is now a National Monument, with copious federal spending surrounding it. The site is treated like a shrine of some sort, as if it were to us as the Pyramids are to Egypt or the Wailing Wall is to Israel. The truth is a much better story – it's a half-finished publicity stunt embraced by a young country more willing to see the dream than to shake its head at the execution.

I'd lay money on a bill going before Congress someday that would pay to complete the monument – as long as Reagan were added next to Lincoln.

It's around 4 when we head back to the cabin, and we decide to take the scenic route, returning to the road with the hairpin turns and single-lane tunnels. This time, we turn off to the "wildlife loop" in hopes of seeing some local fauna. I don't know how the park arranged this, but we're not two miles into it before a herd of buffalo crosses our path:

The kids are absolutely thunderstruck. Ellie can barely speak. We snap about a hundred pictures and then drive on. The kids emerge from the car a little later to snap a few shots from a safe distance:

We next encounter elk (we think – maybe large deer), burros, and wild turkeys. The batteries on two out of three cameras are dead by the time we get home – a sure sign of a good outing.

Jen and I feed the kids PB&J sandwiches for dinner, set up a movie on the laptop, and sneak out to the Blue Bell Lodge, about 200 yards away, for a nice, quiet dinner for two. The menu there features USDA choice beef or "Genuine Custer State Park buffalo." I ask the waitress, Really? and she confirms it – some of the buffalo roaming the park are selected to become quite tasty burgers and meatloaf. This is a detail I will not share with the kids unless they read the blog. (Sorry, kids! It sounded too tasty to resist!) As we return from dinner, it is still light out, and we spy a buffalo visiting a neighboring cabin. We drag the kids out to see it:

Wednesday

This turns out to be the best possible week to be here. The season began last weekend for Memorial Day, and it sounds like things were pretty crowded, but then everyone went home, because most schools are still in session. So this week everything is open, but no one is here.

All five of us start the day with a two-hour horseback ride. It's a little chilly, and some dark clouds waft by every once in a while. But by and large, it's sunny and gorgeous. Here is Jen with the kids all helmeted up and ready to go:

Ellie, once again, is up front with the guide leading her horse, and has the time of her life. Everyone does well, and looks good on their horses:

Two riders pass us about halfway in; one of them, a cruel, cruel, woman, leans over to Ellie, and says, smiling, "Are you having fun? Would you like your Daddy to buy you a horse?" "Hey!" I yell, from five horses back.

The highlight of the ride is not two minutes into it, when Jen's horse, which is directly behind Katie's, comes up close to Katie's horse and turns slightly to the left. Katie's horse then poops on Jen's jeans-clad leg.

This ride is a little different from others we've done because we cross water six times, which is quite a bit of fun. Joey is on a pony, which is quite a bit shorter than the horses, and he gets a little wetter during the crossings.

It looks like the park suffered a major fire about ten years ago. The mountains along the trail are a beautiful mix of stark, burned trees and new seedlings. It's a great demonstration of how an ecosystem renews itself:

After the ride, we head south to Hot Springs. We stop several times to gawk and photograph the buffalo that sidle up to the roads we're driving along:

Hot Springs is a beautiful little town that we are told boasts a daily high of about 60 degrees – year-round – thanks to the warm river coursing through it. The river never freezes, steams all winter long, and frosts all the nearby trees.

We go swimming at Evan's Plunge, the town's large indoor pool – the kids judge it a little chilly to swim outside. There has been one pool or another at the mouth of the springs for a hundred years. This one is very large, with two slides, and different areas roped off for the small fry. One slice is reserved for those trying to swing across the pool on a series of rings. I acquit myself reasonably well on those.

The pool is so much fun that we're shocked to find out it's 7:30 as we leave. Jen all of a sudden has a hankering to shoot past our cabin and see the evening show at Mount Rushmore. So we do. It has gone from "a little chilly to swim outside" to "genuinely cold" – not winter-in-Fargo kind of cold, of course, but we've really only brought summerweight clothing. We bundle up as best as we can, and head down to the amphitheater in front of the mountain.

The show is a spoken presentation by a park ranger on the importance of the four presidents, then a pretty slick movie about the importance of the four presidents. I like Teddy Roosevelt as much as the next guy, but you can tell they're straining a bit to justify his presence there. The Father of our Country! The Father of the Louisiana Purchase and the Declaration of Independence! The Savior of the Union! And, um, a guy who really liked parks!

The movie is kind of a standard government-issue airbrushed version of history. Most glaring is that slavery is only mentioned glancingly, even as the Civil War is discussed at length. And you get the feeling that it'll be a long, long time before Sally Hemings gets added.

I was under the vague impression that all this was building up to a laser show on the president's faces, but Jen whispers, No, no, it's Crazy Horse that has the laser show – this is just lighting up the mountain. What?! But, indeed, as the movie draws to a close and they make us sing the national anthem, the mountain is bathed in a medium-dim light. The kids are just happy to be getting back to the car before they lose any fingers or toes.

In our haste to get to Rushmore for the night show, we didn't stop for dinner. We dropped by the restaurant at the mountain for a quick meal of yogurt, Sun Chips, and hot chocolate. Not perfect, but it worked. It turns out that everything closes – even the bars – at 10 p.m. around here.

We stop at the only establishment selling food within 20 miles – a convenience store – get back to the cabin, and put the kids to bed. Jen and I end the evening with a candlelight dinner of apples, pears, cheese, crackers, a few beers, and potato chips with sour-cream dip (the last two being the bounty from the convenience store). Mmmm.

Thursday

We sleep in, say goodbye to our fine cabin, and head north to Medora. We leave Custer State Park via the quite beautiful Needles Highway, so named for the thin rock formations jutting into the sky. The highway was personally plotted out by a South Dakota governor on horseback in the 1920s, and he did a very nice job of it. It features things like the Hole in the Wall, (right), which lives up to its name. One of the one-lane tunnels is only eight feet and change wide:

Jen holds her breath and gets our six-feet-and-change-wide van through it like a champ.

Next stop is Deadwood, home of the cursingest HBO show on the air. I'm not sure what kind of regulatory perfect storm swept through to create the modern Deadwood, but it left behind a sort of old-West-themed mini-Las Vegas. Just about every storefront in town is some flavor of casino.

We eat a late lunch at Kevin Costner's sports bar, upstairs from his casino and downstairs from his fancy restaurant, "Jake's," where the high rollers presumably eat dinner. The place is encrusted with memorabilia, costumes, and photos from his movies. Man, he's been in a lot of movies. When they were good, they were very, very good; when they were bad, they were horrid. I still cry every time I watch "Field of Dreams," so Kevin's okay with me.

We commission an old-timey Western family photo that turns out pretty well and will be shipped home for us. A quick stop in Sturgis to pick up a few bandanas in this motorcycling paradise, and we're on the road to Medora. It's raining pretty hard, and we are in the middle of absolutely nowhere:

A question that has been plaguing us while we have had no ready access to the Wikipedia is whether bison are the same thing as buffalo. I've been telling the kids I think they are, but I am proved wrong as we approach the North Dakota border:

[For the record, the Wikipedia further proves me wrong: "In American Western culture, the bison is commonly referred to as 'buffalo'; however, this is a misnomer. Though both bison and buffalo belong to the same family, Bovidae, the term 'buffalo' properly applies only to the Asian Water Buffalo and African Buffalo."]

We pull into Medora around 9:45 p.m., after miles and miles of nothin' but grass (see above). We haven't seen much of the town yet; the part near our motel appears to consist mostly of bars. The first place we stop looks promising, but when we draw close, it turns out to have a big sign on the door barring entry to anyone under 21 – the restaurant part of it is closed. The bartender directs us across the street to the Iron Horse, which he thinks might still serve food. It does – but just barely. The Iron Horse's bartender tells me her cook left hours ago, but she can still fix some pizza. That'll do, but it's a close call – it's pretty terrible pizza. The beer is cold, though. Jen and I get to drink our first Moose Drool, which we've seen poured at a lot of places out here.

The Iron Horse is a pretty honky-tonk looking place, kinda dirty and loud, but not particularly dangerous. A fair number of yuppies mixed into the dusty cowboy hats. Still, I laugh when I realize that my parents never, ever walked into a joint like this with their kids.

We're there a few minutes when someone turns the jukebox up so loudly that you can't hear the person next to you. Katie and I head over to the jukebox with cash in hand, and find that someone has left a bunch of credits unspoken for. If the music's gotta be loud, at least it should be something we like. We risk a beating by punching in some Dixie Chicks songs and a lot of The Fray, Jen's all-time fav band at the moment. The jukebox, surprisingly, plays them all in a row, which risks us another beating. Hmmm... I thought jukeboxes played their requests in random order.

Jen brings Ellie along when she bellies up to the bar to pay the tab. The drunk guy at the end of the bar looks down, surprised to see someone so short, and takes a break from buying the bartender shots to offer to pick up Ellie's tab. Time to go!

Friday

The Medora Badlands Motel is clean and seems well-run, but man, stepping into the room is like stepping into 1960. A note by the door instructs us not to turn the light switch off, as it controls every outlet in the room, including the TV and the alarm clock. It's in a very nice setting, however:

It's nice in the morning as we head downtown for breakfast at the excellent Cowboy Cafe and then go to see "The Cowboy and His Horse," a free talk given five mornings a week by "Cowboy Lyle," a long-time employee of the foundation that runs everything in Medora, along with his beautiful horse Chocolate. Today's topic is "Grooming," and we learn how one cleans a horse:

We then take off into the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. We check out TR's Maltese Cross Cabin, which is in kinda original shape, but has been moved all over the country over the years. We then embark upon the park's 36-mile nature drive, where we see field after field of prairie dogs, lots of buffalo, and some wild horses:

The views are amazing, and even the kids seem impressed:

About halfway into the drive, we run into a buffalo traffic jam. Six buffalo decided to wander down the road, flummoxing the human drivers on either side:

Jen finally decided to break the logjam, and snuck past them:

We were supposed to have a full evening of entertainment, but rain got in the way. The "Pitchfork Fondue," a steak dinner where the meat is stuck onto a pitchfork and boiled in oil, went on as scheduled, but the "Medora Musical," a "mix of modern country, western, gospel and patriotic music" with "historic, patriotic themes dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt," was cancelled.

I'll admit to mixed feelings about the musical's being rained out. On the one hand, whenever I said we were headed to the western Dakotas, the first thing out of every Fargoan's mouth was, "Are you going to see the Medora Musical?" On the other hand, I'm not sure it's really my and Jen's style of entertainment. On the third hand, the kids would have loved it. On the fourth hand, the rainout policy is to only give half your money back. grrr....

Saturday

We catch another episode in "The Cowboy and his Horse" series, this one slyly called "Ranch Dressing" – cowboy clothing:

Cowboy Lyle took us from hat to boot. Interesting if true: Cowboys originally didn't have belt loops in their pants, preferring to wear them tight at the waist instead, until the rodeo circuit got going, and they needed to have a way to display their prizes: Belt buckles.

We also learned how to properly tie and wear a bandana. Speaking of bandanas, Ellie has been wearing hers from Sturgis on her head, and it gives me a start every time I look over at her. It really is surprisingly tough-looking, even on a little girl. I wasn't quite able to capture the effect; this is the closest Ellie would come to providing a "mean face" for the camera:

We jump in the van for the straight shot back East. We make the turnoff for the "Enchanted Highway," a collection of giant sculptures along a road. We drive a few miles, then look up the details online and find out the highway is 32 miles long, ends 32 miles out of our way in the tiny town of Regent, N.D., and has just six sculptures along it. We turn back, and decide to snap some shots of the world's-largest sculpture that actually sits on I-94:

We next stop in Bismarck for lunch and to check out the tallest building in North Dakota, the State Capitol, the "Skyscraper on the Prairie." I'm disappointed on our quick drive by it; whatever Art Deco charms the building has must be hidden away on the inside:

The rest of the drive is uneventful. Our big Western adventure is over. Asked what they liked most about the entire trip, Katie and Ellie replied, "The bison!" while Joey, being contrary, said, "The buffalo!"

The end is near!

To mangle Winston Churchill, this is not the end of the beginning. It is the beginning of the end.

Joey and Katie's last day of school was this past Thursday. Soccer, tae kwon do, guitar, and ballet have wrapped up. I finished my last bench memo for Judge B. yesterday. We've given notice to our landlord, and there's a "For Rent" sign out front. We're starting to kick around the logistics of moving back to Maryland.

And yesterday morning, halfway into the drive to Ellie's last day of school, I realized with a jolt that she and I had reached the very end of our daily ritual. Fifteen minutes a day, all by ourselves, where the girl and I could talk about life, sing songs, and just be with each other. Next year is going to be very different; she'll head off to kindergarten, and I'll be working long hours at the law firm.

What really stung was the thought that we may never get that kind of daily quality time ever again. Life doesn't lend itself to such things.

May Catch-up...

It's been a busy few weeks around here, and I have neglected my blogging duties. Here's what we've been up to:

Dick Beardsley 5K
Growing up, I had heard my dad tell of a legendary marathon, where two runners (one of whom was Alberto Salazar) were neck and neck at about Mile 18, then ran 4:30 miles for the rest of the race, and finished just seconds apart. But I didn't know the details.

The details came to Fargo! The newspaper ran a big story on a new business in town, The Dick Beardsley Running Company. Turns out Minnesota native Beardsley was the other runner in that race, the 1982 Boston Marathon. His post-running career consists of conducting running camps, speaking motivationally, and, now, pasting his name onto a very nice new Fargo shoe store.

As part of the store's grand opening, Beardsley was holding a 5K fun run, and none other than Salazar – who would have been my running hero had I ever for a moment in my life thought I had any running ability – was going to be on hand for it.

John Brant, the author of a book on that marathon shootout, Duel in the Sun, was also there, and the three men very kindly signed books and posed for pictures:

(from left: Salazar, me, Beardsley. Sorry, Brant) Salazar's post-running career is training runners for Nike and promoting the swoosh. (He signs "Just do it!" with his name.)

It was kind of a thrill running the 5K with the two of them (um, particularly Salazar, with whom I'm much more familiar). They both took it quite easy, and though I finished behind Salazar, he was in sight for most of the race.

Wendy's Wedding!
We all drove down to Knoxville for the wedding of one of Jen's cousins, Wendy. She's great – we would have gone just about anywhere to get to her wedding. Knoxville ended up being a mere day and a half's drive. The wedding was completely gracious, and Wendy was a lovely bride. It was good to catch up with Jen's extended family.

The tricky part was that I had to be in St. Louis for court the following week. So I flew out, and Jen had to drive everyone back by herself. (Once again, the fleet of Nintendo DSes that Danny and A.J. bought the kids for Christmas bailed us out.)

As soon as Jen arrived home, friends and family began to converge on Fargo for....

The Fargo Marathon!
We'd been fearing the logistics of this week for some time. Lots of people were showing up from all over, staying with us and at area hotels. I wasn't getting home until Friday night. The marathon was Saturday morning. Adding to the mix was Ellie's year-end ballet recital, with an hours-long dress rehearsal midday Saturday, and Saturday-evening and midday Sunday performances. Plus two soccer games Sunday.

In the end, since I had wussed down to the half-marathon, getting Ellie where she needed to go became a lot easier. My Judge and his wife had very kindly offered to take Ellie for the morning, since just about everyone else was running one of the events.

Running the full marathon were: Jen, her sister Allison, and our Rockville pal John Hoddinott, a veteran Ibuprofen Warrior. I ran the half. Running the 5K were: a bunch of Jen's parents – Judith, Nancy, and Ken; her sister, Brenda; my dad; and Joey and Katie.

The marathon was everything we'd hoped it would be – exceptionally well-run, very flat (I think the biggest incline during the half-marathon was coming out of a railroad underpass), and not too windy. Unlike the Marine Corps Marathon, which mostly goes past monuments, the Pentagon, and all sorts of businesses, the Fargo Marathon winds through the residential streets of the city, one front yard after another. Many of those yards were filled with Fargo residents cheering us on, bearing hard candies, tissues, and fruit. We particularly appreciated the makeshift water stations.

After dragging everyone out to our place, which is in a fairly unattractive part of the city, it was good for our guests to spend a morning padding through Fargo's most totally gorgeous neighborhoods. It transformed their view of what this city is all about.

John (right) had done so little training for the race that his lovely wife Jane worried his heart would give out during the race. But John is irritatingly well-built for long distance, and posted a great time. Had he realized earlier how well he was doing, he could have kicked it up a notch and possibly qualified for Boston.

Allie (right) also finished in fine form. I was very proud of Joey and Katie, whose racing had been limited to one-mile runs up until that point. I'm not sure Joey had ever run 3.1 miles before; Katie had at least done a little training with Jen. It was the first race ever for Judith, Nancy, and Brenda.

I am exceptionally proud of Jen, who met her personal goals of (1) finishing in less than five hours and (2) for the first time, not throwing up at the finish. Jen trained right through a long and windy winter that defeated my hopes of running the full race.

Here are Allie and Jen at the finish line, with my dad and John in the background:



We made for a pretty good team shot the next day:


Ballet Recital!
All of us but John (who was excused – there's a limit to what you can subject your friends to) poured ourselves into auditorium seats the evening of the race to watch Ellie's ballet school recital. The show ran about two hours, with 25 different dances. Ellie's class danced in the third number, and only the third number. Our guests were very good sports.

I found myself unexpectedly teary-eyed during Ellie's dance. We've been thinking of her as such a big girl these days. She reads! She writes! All these things. But she was so little and vulnerable on the stage with her classmates as they tottered from corner to corner. I think it just really hit me at that moment that No, she's not quite a big girl yet, but it's just a blink away.

Here is the prima ballerina after her show:

Marketplace for Kids!

Katie's teacher has been tearing her hair out for weeks getting her class ready for "Marketplace for Kids," and on Friday I found out why. Every kid in Katie's class prepared a tri-fold display of a product or service they wanted to present. Some were fanciful (an origami service, anyone?) and some were more prosaic (rain barrels).

It looks like every fifth-grader in the Fargo-Moorhead metropolitan area was invited to do the same, and most of them showed up:

(Katie's fourth-grade class was an unusual participant; apparently, her teacher overachieves in this department!)

This appears to be a huge program, held in sites throughout the state. It's sponsored by the state's department of education, its agriculture commissioner, and one of its U.S. senators, Kent Conrad.

"We believe the future of our state's economy lies in the entrepreneurial spirit of our children, the next generation," the program tells parents. "At Marketplace, we want to plant the seeds of innovation in today's students – the civic and business leaders of tomorrow."

Each kid's project was listed in the 44-page program:

As promised, Katie presented the Lego robot she had built as part of her TechGyrls program, and sang the praises of the program:

Katie's exhibit drew big crowds. Predictably, though TechGyrls was meant to lure girls into engineering, most of those whose eyes popped out at her demonstration were the boys. This is Katie in demo mode:

Note that the tall person to the left is Sarah, an engineering student at North Dakota State University who very kindly agreed to accompany Katie to Marketplace for Kids, and helped sell TechGyrls. I think I can safely say Katie was the only kid in attendance with an engineering department backing her up.

Katie's robot featured two independent motors which had to be programmed separately, and a light sensor. Katie made it run a maze with great precision. Here's a close-up:

It was an all-day event. Katie and her classmates presented for about an hour, then went off to three classes, one on inventing stuff, one on North Dakota agriculture, and one on storytelling. Katie was thrilled that the storyteller brought and played a guitar.

Catching Up: Easter

Easter was April 8, but the photos just came off the cell phone. We headed north to the Children's Museum for an egg hunt. Note how well the Easter Bunny is camouflaged:


Ellie, as usual, had a great time:

The egg hunt was fun, and interestingly done. The museum held the hunt several times over the weekend. They basically just tossed the eggs out on the snow, then let the kids skitter scross the snowpack retrieving them. They were all empty; the drill was to snag as many as you could, then dump them into a giant bin, for which you were rewarded with a goodie bag. Very efficient, though it took the kids (and us) a while to figure out why every egg they found was candy-less.

It's been so beautiful here that it seems like it's been a long, long time since we had snow on the ground, but this was only a month ago. I'll amend that – it's been beautiful until the last day or so, when it started raining almost nonstop. All soccer games were cancelled this weekend. It's just windy at the moment; Jen and I hope that it'll stay a little nice for the 5k we'd like to run this afternoon. More on that later!

North Dakota Cinco de Mayo

Two words: Deer fajitas.

Soccer begins!

Red River Soccer is up and rolling again as of this week for its short spring season. The practice schedule is great – Joey and Katie both have practices at the same time on the same days on fields pretty close to each other.

The game schedule, not so good. The spring season is oddly compressed – they have to start it late enough to have a fair chance of not having snow-covered fields, but they have to wrap it up by the time school ends, May 24. Ordinarily, parents shiver under blankets during the first few games of the season, but it was about 80 today and perfect.

For some reason, Joey has 3 games this weekend; he had one today and has two tomorrow. Here he is on the field today:

Katie's schedule is a little more rational, but she has to miss a few games in there, and I think will only play in three this spring. Here she is today:

And for some reason I can't seem to resist Ellie on her bike this spring:

Fargo Star!

It's not usually my kind of thing – I've never watched "American Idol." But the local newspaper, The Forum, is trying hard to staple itself to the ongoing national talent-show fad. It created a local version, "Fargo Star." And each week a chunk of the lifestyle section is taken up with online polls asking readers to weigh in before "Idol" airs, then giving the blow-by-blow afterward.

For "Fargo Star," contestants submitted videos of themselves singing, which were placed online and voted on by newspaper readers week by week. The top 10 of the lot sang live at The Venue last night. Jen, Katie, and Ellie were totally hooked; we'd had friends e-mailing with subjects like "Subject: I need your help!!" to gin up votes for their pals. Also, tickets were free. We had to go.

The Venue itself is a pretty nice venue – reminiscent of Washington's famed and fabulous 9:30 club, with a large standing-room-only main floor and a wraparound balcony. Well, the 9:30 club isn't attached to a casino – there's a difference for ya.

I don't expect that Jen and I will be able to catch an actual concert there in the time we have remaining here. (ooo... wait – looks like "Five For Fighting" is playing there next Friday. We may have to work something out... oh, wait, damn it, no, I'm looking at the 9:30 club's Web page, not The Venue's.)

The singers were... OK. The winner, Kallie Frost (right), was a big jump ahead of the others with her version of ABBA's "Mamma Mia."

"I think she's been doing this all her life," Jen says, evidenced partly by the one judge, a Fargo modeling-agency owner, who clearly seemed to go way back with Kallie. She was so poised that we were shocked to find out today in the paper that she's a 15-year-old high school sophomore from across the river in Moorhead.

Kallie won a day in a local recording studio to produce a demo CD, and a trip to next season’s “American Idol” tryouts. The runner-up, who won a $700 microphone (and placed second in the voting largely with the assistance of the vocal mob of friends she had the audience), said as she won that she'd really been hoping for the microphone.

The judges – all local folks (the modeling-agency owner, a musician, and a choreographer) – seemed to be under orders to mimic "Idol" in one unfortunate way by being unnecessarily mean to the contestants. It seemed profoundly un-Fargo. I didn't like it, and neither did the crowd. It really didn't add anything to the proceedings.

Here's the lineup; click on it to see them larger. They're a pretty Fargo-looking group:

Fargo 911!

I hit the road this afternoon for a training run – a short one, since Fargo's winter has defeated my dream of running the full Fargo marathon. The half should work fine. (Jen – the strong one – has not surprisingly powered through, and is on track to slay the full race on May 19.)

Since I don't have the nifty iPod + Nike training device Jen attaches to her shoe to track her mileage, I have to figure out other ways to do it. Jen suggested I drive the car away from the house half the distance I wanted to run, then run home and back.

Perhaps it was not the best way to celebrate Earth Day, but it worked. Mostly.

I has hoping to run 10 today and drove the truck just two and a half miles out, down the arrow-straight gravel road that shoots south just a block away from us. I pulled the truck over far into the shoulder, not near any of the few houses way out there.

The fields were brown and the sky was gray. But it was nicely cool and not too windy. My tiny iPod obligingly started my run well by picking some Tom Petty: "Well I started out /down a dirty road / Started out / all alone."

I felt okay for the first two-and-half-mile segment, great the second one back to the truck, and not quite okay the third one back to the house, where I succumbed to Jen's kind offer of a beer and a salami sandwich. Which was fine, except that the truck was stuck way out in the middle of nowhere.

Jen wanted to get a few miles in today, so she strapped on her shoes and headed out. When she arrived, she found this tied to a windshield wiper:

(For the record, I digitally removed the officer's number from the scan of the tag.) Man, these guys work quick! I think only three or four cars passed me the entire time I was on the road. Jen theorizes that the cops are out in force this prom weekend, and had our car been full of passed-out revelers, it probably wouldn't have been the first they found.

Spring springs! (reprise)

OK, it's beautiful here now. Ellie's school sent her home with her snow pants the other day, promising they would no longer be needed. The kids are out biking at the moment; Ellie has mastered her training wheels:

Winnipeg or bust!

The five of us spent a lovely weekend in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, after a late-Friday-night snap decision by me and Jen to flee the country for an overnight trip. We'd been lukewarm on the idea until we mentioned it to the kids, all of whom immediately seized upon the concept that none of them had ever been out of the United States.

"Will we be able to understand them?" asked Ellie. I explained that while some Canadians spoke French, they all spoke English as well. "And Spanish?" Ellie asked, hopefully.

Knowing that the paperwork requirements were toughening up, even regarding travel to our northern friend, I made sure to bring Jen's and my passports along. We set out Saturday morning after Ellie's ballet practice for the four-hour trip. Katie noted that we were ditching Fargo on its first nice weekend in months.

As we crossed the border and approached the Canadian immigration booth, Katie piped up from the back with a tidbit she'd heard the night before from our beloved Canadian-native relative: "Uncle Seth said kids need birth certificates to get into Canada." "No [kidding]?" I thought.

No [kidding].

We were waved aside and told to go into the main office. The Canadian border official there explained to us that we needed some sort of documentation for the kids, not so much for his purposes, he implied, but for those mean guys on the American side of the border, who might very well not let us back in without it. He asked us a ton of questions, including where my parents lived and their phone number. But he was firm – we needed some sort of paperwork. Without it, we would have to turn back.

Crap. We didn't have a scrap with their names on it. Not even their YMCA cards. This is Jen, waiting moderately patiently for this to be worked out:


What we ended up doing was calling Maria, the lovely woman who stops by to take care of Indy when we travel overnight. She very kindly agreed to swing by the house, retrieve the documents, and fax them up. Jen explained where all the documents were (right).

Maria found birth certificates for Katie and Ellie, but Joey's was nowhere to be found. The only thing with his name on it there was a savings bond with his Social Security number on it.

Maria trucked over to a supermarket faxed it all from there to the immigration office, and it worked. After about an hour and a half delay, we were free to go (left).

While we were waiting for the faxes to arrive, the immigration official called my father. I knew it had been a mistake to cough up his contact information. I think it is only because Jen and the kids were with me that he resisted every impulse in his body to tell the official something that would have fulfilled his lifelong dream of landing me in a foreign prison. In the end, the only mildly smartass thing he said was to confirm that his daughter-in-law was Jennifer Moore, but to also note that he has three daughters-in-law named Jennifer Moore.

Once we were on the road again, Jen patiently explained to Joey that because we hadn't found his birth certificate, we might have to leave him behind when we crossed back into the United States. "This is my dream come true," Katie said softly. This is why we had three kids, I told Joey, so that we'd still have plenty left over if we ever needed to leave one behind.

Ellie was also all for it, since in her estimation it would reduce the amount of fighting in the household. We pointed out to her that since there would be no one else for Katie to fight, "She'd have to fight you." Ellie wasn't buying it: "Joey always starts it."

Joey wasn't buying much of this nonsense either, though he did meekly inquire about it several times while we were in Winnipeg. He ordinarily knows better than to believe that sort of hassling from us, but I think he sensed that the stakes were so unusually high that it did make him a little nervous. Perfect – I can almost never make him nervous anymore.

We arrived in Winnipeg around sunset, checked into the lovely Inn at the Forks along the river, ate dinner, and turned in.

In the morning, Jen went for a long run around downtown while I took the kids to the Children's Museum, a nice facility that was literally across the street from the hotel. The coolest thing they have is a real diesel locomotive sitting smack in the middle of the building, with a full-size passenger car behind it.

We left downtown, hit one of Winnipeg's two Costcos, then swung around the northeastern edge of the city to the Miracle Ranch for a trail ride:

Ellie was certain she wanted to ride her own horse until about five minutes before the ride started, when she lost her nerve. She managed to regain it just in time to jump atop Sugar, and did very well:

We were out for an hour through the scrub of the ranch itself, with a curious detour through the adjacent strip mine:

For the record, that's Ellie right behind the leader there, and Joey, Jen and Katie bringing up the rear. Joey's horse was "Radigan," and Katie's was "Fudge," which she found significant, since the last time she went riding with Auntie Meg, her horse was "Brownie."

On the way back, the very nice American immigration official accepted the fax of Joey's savings bond without comment. In the end, the only hiccup was the delicious salami we'd bought at Costco: No Canadian beef is allowed across the border. I fetched it from the cooler and found it was pork salami, which we did not have to surrender.

As we returned to Interstate 29 headed to Fargo, Joey was congratulated all around.

Photo update

This is Katie and Joey watching the Eighth Circuit's oral arguments two weeks ago in Minneapolis. They were so good – it was so boring. Even most lawyers don't get any thrill from arguments on collateral estoppel and res judicata:

And this is what it looked like on our trip back to Fargo later that day in the snowstorm. The sun was striking: