-thoughts and ideas

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Return from the North Country

Well I'm back in Tallahassee after spending a couple weeks on my family's grain farm in Minnesota. I'm also back in school to complete a BS in engineering at FSU, though I'm currently taking the back-roads in. Minnesota is beautiful in the Summer. Cold and bitter in the Winters though. I'd like to thank all the staff at TJ's Tavern, in Oklee, for the great hospitality during the open mic sessions (every Wed. night). Excellent pizza as well.

The flight up was a standard nwa flight for me. I've never had any complaints with any of the nwa staff or procedures. I flew into Minneapolis/St. Paul int'l airport and hitched a ride with my brother 300 miles N by NW to the farm. My return trip didn't go quite as smoothly. Since my brother would be heading South before me I bought a ticket on Jefferson Lines (pretty much the only bus service in that area). I bought it a week in advance on the internet. I paid for a full one-way fare from McIntosh, MN to Minneapolis, MN, about $60. Anyway, I get a ride to McIntosh (about 15 miles from the farm) and find there's no designated bus-stop area. We went into the only gas station (located next to the major highway that is the bus-line) and asked if the bus stops here. We were told that it usually did. So we waited, thankfully my ride waited with me, be cause we found out that the bus was running an hour and 15 mins late. Turns out the damn thing starts out in Winnipeg, CANADA! And we were told, "sometimes gets hung up at the border," what the hell? Anyway, so the 1:15 turned into about 1:40 and as I saw it barreling down the highway approaching the gas station, I ran outside to make sure he could see me. That damn bus never slowed down! We jumped into the car to try and catch it in the next town and found it didn't even stop there. I can't understand that, I bought the ticket in advance, he should've known there was a stop in McIntosh. Then when I called their customer service line I was informed that since it was Sat. and Mon. was a holiday, they couldn't help me until Tues. Okay, I called the main-office in Minneapolis and got nothing but a recorded message telling me to write a letter to them if I had any trouble! Oh they'll get a letter.

Anyway, is that the best we can do, shit, is that WHAT we're doing? Isn't it 2008?!? We should be transported anywhere in the US by some sort of Jetson-mobile by now. What the hell is wrong with this place?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully we can catch you again sometime when you're up North.

Good for you in getting a degree in engineering - that's awesome.

Engineering was something I always wanted to go into, but I told myself I couldn't handle the math. In reality, I didn't want to push myself and actually have to work.

Who knows - maybe now that I'm over that fear, I'll give it a try someday.

Anyway, enough about that. Glad to hear you made it back alright. You have some interesting travel stories, don't you?