Monthly Archives: April 2006

Last Friday’s forecast was “gorgeous, sunny and mild” and last time I checked that alone is a good enough excuse to cash in a vacation day. And seeing there’s no better thing to do on your beautiful early spring day off than head down to the Zoo to see the annual Farm Babies exhibit, that’s what we did. It’s a fun time. They’ve got a bunch of baby pigs and chickens and cows and the kids get to run around and pet them and feed goats and all kinds of fun stuff. They even have tractor rides. Rock on.
Go figure, we weren’t the only ones who managed to come up with the idea. The place was mobbed. Not weekend-at-the-state-fair mobbed or anything, but still crazy super mobbed when you compare it to a regular day at the zoo. Add in the fact that it’s early in the season and they’re not fully ready for huge crowds yet (think: bathrooms, concessions, unfinished offseason construction, etc) and it feels even worse. That said, I gotta admit they seemed to handle it pretty well.
Here are some tips for going to the Minnesota Zoo on busy summer days.

• Bring your own food and water. The food at the zoo is expensive and is just normal food court stuff. Also, the lines can be insane when it’s busy. (No offense if a 20 minute wait for cold $4 onion rings is your idea of fun.) Bring a picnic in a backpack, there are tables everywhere.
• Get there early. I think they open at 9, so that’s a good time to shoot for. We go on Sunday mornings during the winter and it rocks. You can sit in front of the giant fish tanks all by yourself and just zone out and watch fish and read the paper and stuff. That’s probably an impossible dream during the peak summer season, but it’s still worth it to beat the crowd if only to avoid the lines at the entrance.
• The dolphin show is cool. On busy days it’s always going to be nutso packed. If you’re only going to be there the one time, it’s probably worth fighting your way in to, so plan your schedule around it. Personally, I’d just avoid it when it’s super busy.
• Skip the monorail unless you’re really into monorails or something. The walk around the loop is nice and it’s not that long. There’s a big playground thing at the halfway point
  

I broke the scooter out of winter storage over the weekend. It was in a neighbor’s garage, along with our tow-behind bike kid carrier thing and a couple of other enormous garage occupants that we needed to move out to make room for the cars. (Kudos to neighbor lady for storing the stuff for us.) Now that it’s 70 out, the cars go back to the street and I go back to 2-wheeling whenever possible. Damn straight.
When I ‘winterized’ the scooter last fall, I followed the instructions in the manual about “storing for long periods of time”. (My old man helped.) We changed the oil, pulled the plug, drained the carb, etc, etc. Go figure, after sitting unused for 4 months, it still started with zero hesitation. It

Also in the sports wrap from last weekend: The Hell of the North cycling event more commonly known as Paris-Roubaix. For those of you who don’t follow cycling, Paris-Roubaix is a vicious single day race in northeastern France. Much of it is run on Napoleonic-era roads made of cobblestone pavers. It is an insanely hard race filled with insane cyclists peddling insanely fast down roads that are basically insane to ride a bike on. Needless to say, it’s awesome.
This year’s favorites were the Belgian Tommy Boonen – who has been kicking everyone’s ass lately – and the American George Hincapie, who has ridden well at P-R before and is the team leader of Discovery now that Lance has retired. I’ll sum up why this race rules with two quick stories.
Late in the race a pack of around 15 riders – including Hincapie and Boonen – broke away from the field. It quickly became clear that the eventual winner would come from this group. The excitement starts building. Then, out of nowhere, while blazing down the crazy-bumpiest-hardest section of cobbles of the entire race, Hincapie’s bike literally just shatters. Handlebars, fork, everything. All he can do is throw his hands up and try to coast over to the ditch, at which point he’s thrown ass over teakettle and like breaks his collarbone or something. Brutal.
On with the race. With 17km to go, this Swiss dude named Cancellara makes his break. People give chase, including Boonen. The gap is around 40 seconds, but is coming down as the kilos tick away. It looks like Boonen may be able to reel him in. Then, again out of nowhere, Boonen is forced to STOP AND WAIT FOR A TRAIN. Oh man that must have sucked. Six and a half grueling hours in the saddle and just when you think you may take it home, a frickin’ train comes roaring by and you have to stop and wait. And how does he react? “Eh, that is cycling” or something similarly mint. Not exactly a Randy Moss reaction.
Official Paris-Roubaix Site [letour]
Live Updates (archived) [letour]

The Masters was last weekend. It’s just so pretty, especially in full HD glory. The final round didn’t shake out to be the suspense-packed ratings monster CBS was dreaming of – and looking at the potential in the final round leaderboard, you almost feel sorry for them – but it was still a good tournament. Special props go to my new favorite player Miguel Angel Jimenez, the ponytailed Spaniard who looked just impossibly cool as he swaggered from tee to green.
Ok, now the bad. Can we PLEASE stop referring to how great a golfer’s “imagination” is. “They’re just so imaginative, so creative.” Barf. I must have heard it 20 times. And here’s the deal: they’re not. They’re not changing the game, they’re just PLAYING the game. Tiger using a 3-wood to chip was changing the game; it was imagination; it blew people’s minds. I certainly didn’t see anything like that last weekend. So save it.
In other news, the green jacket ceremony in the Butler Cabin remains the most awkward 4 minutes in television year in and year out.
Official Masters Site [masters] – An oddly ugly website for such a pretty venue.