Stray Hawkeye

This is a part of the dino saga, if it doesn’t make any sense, read these.

---

After a good night’s sleep, we got up early to go tailgating.  Okay, not that early, it was an 8:00 PM game, but the point here is we went tailgating, and Parker got things started off right.

Does anyone else ever wonder if the beer (Land Shark) was named after this really old Saturday Night Live skit, and for that matter, if they had this particular clip in mind when they got naming right for the stadium where the Dolphins play?

No? Just me? Okay, moving on with tailgating then…

A few hours of tailgating later, night falls, and we learn that Parker can apparently hold his beer substantially better than Sinclair.

Yes, Parker was also standing on the car.  Life lesson?  Never buy a used car that was a rental.  Ever.

So, it was getting closer to game time, and we decided to head into Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium, up the giant spiraling corkscrew ramp, which gives a pretty good view of the tailgating festivities.

Now you may be saying, “Kearn, those last two pictures don’t have Parker in them at all, and tailgating seemed to go by rather quickly.”  Did I mention we were tailgating, and I was drinking?  Good, now that we’ve cleared that up, I’d like to point out that arepas may be the best drunk food ever.  It’s like you took cornbread, but made it into a sort of pancake form, and then once that was cooked, you heated it up on a grill with cheese (um, a kind that’s white, I have no idea which kind) between two of these cornbread pancake things until it was all gooey and warm.  Delicious.  They serve them at Joe Robbie/Pro Player/Dolphin/Land Shark/Sun Life Stadium.  Anyway, after that delicious break, we made it into the stadium, and back to Parker.  Luckily we left ourselves plenty of time to get to our seats.

“To be in the Hawkeye section, yes.  And to be on about the 45 yard line on the Hawkeye side, absolutely.”

Now, you may notice that between those two pictures, Georgia Tech went about 40 yards on offense.  This was basically the only time this happened during the game.  This was also basically the only time Parker was watching.  Now, I tend to not be too superstitious, but this was enough to make me convince Parker to stay in my pocket for the rest of the game, thus the lack of more game pictures with him.  Once it was safe again, he came came out to watch some more.

This is a part of the larger dino saga, if it doesn’t make any sense, read these.

---

After our time on the beach, Parker and I decided to explore the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall in South Beach.  We were a little slow getting there, as Parker decided to stop for a snack.

And of course the bushes are always greener on the other side of the pedestrian walk way, so, we had to try those too.

I let Parker take all the time he want eating those bushes.  “Aren’t plants delicious Parker?”

“Phew, good.”

“What’s that Kearn?”

“Oh, nothing.”

South Beach – where even the mannequins have implants.

Let it be noted that the store Parker is posing in front of in this picture was selling Hawkeye gear.  And only Hawkeye gear.  No general sports merchandise.  Just Iowa Hawkeye clothes and memorabilia, and nothing else.  In Miami.  There was absolutely no Georgia Tech (the other team in the Orange Bowl) stuff, or any other store like it selling Georgia Tech stuff.  And it wasn’t a sports store that just rotates through whatever team is visiting for whatever game – it was an empty store front on Saturday, it was a full fledged Hawkeye store on Monday.  Apparently word gets out about how well our fans travel.

We had walked a ways, so Parker grabbed another snack.

“And you’re sure you’re okay with just eating plants, right Parker?”

“Oh, good.  I mean, I think we can find you something to drink.  How about that fountain over there?”

So we kept walking down to the end of the block, until finally we found…

After Parker had his fill, we decided to head back to the hotel and relax for a while.  We wanted to be well rested for tailgating the next day, so we decided to turn in early.  I tucked Parker into his little dino bunk…

And we slept with dreams of Hawkeye bowl wins in our heads.

If you haven’t read them before, the previous episodes of the dino saga will help make this make slightly more sense.  Not lots of sense, just more than it would otherwise.

In this episode / series, Parker goes to the Orange Bowl in Miami to see the Hawkeyes play.  My going along is part of why there was that couple week long lull of no posting – planning the trip, going down, being there a few days, coming back, getting my feet back on the ground, not to mention Christmas, New Years, some things shifting at work, and just generally having needed a bit of a break.  At any rate, I’m back now.

Also, I’m breaking this episode into 3 parts (this is the first, as the title would indicate) because:

1. There are lots of pictures.
2. There are basically 3 distinct stories.
3. These posts take for freaking ever to make, so I want to stretch it out a little bit and make the effort for each a little more manageable.

The third segment is a little short for reasons I’ll explain in that post, so that one’s more like half a post compared to the other two.  As a bonus though, there will also be one non-Parker, non-dino post of Miami stuff after the third as well.  So, really, it like 2 and 2 half post about Miami.  So, anyway, let’s get started, shall we…

---

As it turns out, Nessie has an in with the BCS people and helped them decide that Iowa should go to the Orange Bowl in Miami so she could see Parker, instead of sending Iowa to the Fiesta Bowl.  Apparently Nessie doesn’t do well in the desert, being a lake creature and all, and it turns out that Plesiosaurs have a surprisingly large say in the BCS selection process.  Who knew?

So, when we heard that Iowa was headed to Miami, Parker decided that we needed to go.  Sinclair stayed behind to hibernate.  Because dinosaurs hibernate, I guess.  That or he’s just lazy and still moping about not being able to find Minne.  Who knows?  He has his moments of being a rather surly fellow, but I think mostly it’s just the cold and dark weather getting to him, cold blooded and all.

So, Parker and I got our tickets and flew down to Miami a couple of days before the game.  The TSA is surprisingly permissive with dinosaurs.  Apparently they’re a well connected bunch.  Anyway, as soon as we got to the Miami airport, we decided we should go find the hotel, settle in a little bit, and then go see what South Beach has to offer.  Without thinking, I had let Parker do some of the planning, like the car…

Also, it turns out Parker packs like a Druish Princess.

And he fit in pretty well in the hotel lobby while they were taking the bags up, too.

Once we got up to our room, Parker decided to check out the view.

As you can see, I pack slightly lighter than Parker, but I still had room for swim trunks and sandals, so, we headed to the beach, at top dinosaur speed, to see if we could find Nessie.

The lifeguard flashed a mirror a few times in Morse code to signal to Nessie for us.

After we sat on the beach chairs for a while and tried to talk with Nessie as best we could from that distance, Parker got a little restless and wanted to play.

Two hours later…

“Hmmm, Parker, would you like to play on a little bigger sand castle?  I think I see one over there you might like, and it doesn’t look like anyone else is playing on it right now.”

“Sure, where?”

“Right over there…”

“Wow!!!” … running….

“Oh, you know what else we should do? …”

Parker was a little miffed at me after that, so I put the camera away for a while.

---

As a side note, how often do you see a post with references to Space Balls, Moby Dick, Baywatch, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Monty Python, and an obscure Sesame Street record all in the same place?

Previous post in the dino-saga here and here.  And yes, it took me forever to get around to downloading the pictures from my camera for this episode, so it’s a little behind the times, but it keeps you up to date with the saga.

---

Sinclair has been hanging out at my place for quite a while now, and after getting rested up after his long journey from Florida, we started our search to see if we could find Minne.  So far we’ve had no luck, but it appears from her twitter account that she’s planning to come back in the spring.  After much consoling and a few cookies, I got Sinclair to accept that he won’t be able to see her until then.  In the mean time I’ve been distracting him with Hawkeye sports.

Sinclair took me up on the suggestion that we go down to the Iowa vs Minnesota game this year and go tailgating.  Nessie sent me a letter and said that she was going to swim up to meet us there, but that Mississippi current was too strong for her, and unlike Sinclair, every time she asked a barge captain for a ride, he’d scream in fear and mutter something about needing to “cut back” and run away.  However, she told me that she had a certain feeling we’d meet another Iowa fan at the game if we told her where we’d be tailgating, so I sent her the address.

We drove down to Iowa for the game the night before so we could sleep a little there and go tailgating.  We got up early, but Sinclair was pretty restless.

So I told him to go for a little walk to burn off some energy, since he seems to be good at that.

“Come to think of it, Sinclair, are you old enough to drink?”

“Oh, I suppose that makes sense, kind of.  Ready for another?”

“Sure.  Are you guys hungry?  We’re a little too lazy to do actual grilling tailgate food, but we do have some cookies and chips.”

“Sinclair, that’s an awful lot of beer to drink that fast, especially for someone your size.”

And I think we all know where that leads.  About 20 minutes later it was almost time to go to the game…

“Here Sinclair, have some water.”

“Thanks, I think I might stay back and take a little nap.  Parker can use my ticket and go to the game with you guys.”

“Are you sure you’ll be alright?”

“Yeah, though it is a little chilly.  Do you have anything I could borrow to cover up with?  I’m cold blooded and all…”

“Sure, here, hop in the car.  I happen to have an old Iowa Marching Band raincoat that you can cover up with.  It even has the old fuzzy fleece liner in it.  I’ll even tuck you in.”

So, we started walking to the game.

Parker made some friends along the way too.

It took a little while to get in, but we got there just in time.

It was a little quiet for a while after that.

Parker got a little bored during half time…

He takes after the defense.

A little while later, they got ready to kick off the second half, and we’re all lucky Parker was there.

Parker quickly ran down and restrained the unruly fan.  After all, we’d hate to see the Minnesota team catch fire for the first time since Decker got hurt.

The second half was, shall we say, less than photogenic.  But at least one fan in front of us did get pretty excited.

Until we finally arrived at the greatest (if also most blurry) play in football, the victory formation.

A side note, dinosaurs are incredibly slow on steps.  So, it took a little while to get down there and we missed Floyd, but we did get to see…

So, after the meanie security guard, we decided to go meet the band.  They were much nicer, one even let Parker try his horn.

Then we went over to meet the cheer leaders, they were pretty nice too, and seemed to like Parker…

Over all it was a fun game and a great day.

Until next time Mr Kinnick, until next time.

After my post suggesting Halloween costumes for our local lake creature, and Nessie’s comment on it, Nessie sent me another note:

Hi Kearn,

I forgot to mention, I have a little buddy down here too.  His name’s Sinclair.  When he saw your post about Minne and her website, he couldn’t wait to get up there.  He’s pretty young, and has lots of energy, and kind of wears me out, so I thought it would be good for him to burn off a little energy with an outing, so I let him go ahead.  I gave him some directions to Minneapolis, but my directions might not be the best since I haven’t been there before.  I also gave him your address so he could get a hold of you when he gets there.  Hope you don’t mind.  He’s quite friendly.

Oh, and be sure to have a little extra food on hand.  I packed him a lunch before he left, but I’m sure he’ll work up quite the appetite on the trip.

I’m moving a little slower these days, so I think I’ll just plan to meet up with you at the Iowa Minnesota game if these fins can hold up to that strong Mississippi current.  See you then,

Nessie

Sure enough, tonight I heard a little tapping at my door, and when I opened it, there stood a little tiny, shivering green dinosaur.  I could tell from his tattoos that this must be Sinclair, so I brought him in and got him some hot cocoa, a blanket, and some lawn clippings.  He thanked me, and I asked him how his trip was.

“It was good, and there were all sorts of wonderful things and nice people along the way.”

“How did you manage to get up here so quickly?  It’s a long ways from Florida, I didn’t think I’d see you for at least a few more days yet.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t walk the whole way, I made friends with a sea captain, and he gave me a ride over to New Orleans, and then a barge friend of his gave me a ride up the Mississippi.  It was a really fun ride, he even let me ride up front!”

“Then, once we got up to Minneapolis, I saw a waterfall in the river, and I got scared, so I jumped off the barge and swam over to the shore.”

“As soon as I got out of the river, I saw a little path going up the hill, so I thought I would go up and see if anyone could help me find my way.”

“As luck would have it, as soon as I got to the top of the hill, there was a big guy sitting right there, so I asked him if he knew how to get to Lake of the Isles, but he didn’t say a word.”

So, I asked one of his friends there.

“Thanks Mr Guthrie!”, I shouted, and headed toward the big bubble.

It seemed sort of quiet, but it must be a wonderful place to have all the huge inside space when it’s so cold out, they must use it for everything thing here.  It must be busy all the time!  I guess I must have caught it on the one quiet day of the year.  So, I kept going, and turned right, like Mr Guthrie told me to.

Then I saw all these giant square rocks sticking up into the sky.

Then I saw a building that I read about on Stray Hawkeye, the headquarters of the Star Tribune.

I had to get my picture with their sign.

But then I wasn’t sure where I was going again, so I decide to ask someone.

“Sorry, I’m terrible with directions,” he said, “Lucy might know though.”

“Thanks Lucy!  And my that’s a pretty colored dress you have on.”

“Thank you Sinclair, and good luck on your trip!”

So, the directions said I’m supposed to follow the train tracks to Nicollet Mall, and then turn left.

I decided to stop for a snack, I was getting awfully hungry from all that walking.

That should hold me over for a little bit.  After a couple blocks, I check for directions again, just to be sure.

So, I started walking down Nicollet Mall. It’s a busy place!

I was getting really cold, especially with no hat, so I decided to go inside for a little bit, and try out the skyways.

Let’s see, just up the escalator here.  Hmm, I might stop for a little snack while I warm up.

I decided I should go back outside, so I could get my bearings again, and right there were some of Minne’s goose people friends!

I decided to go make some friends.

I was just thinking, I could use another snack, and then…

I didn’t see any trays, so I just helped myself.  I got a full tummy.  And you know what I saw next when I started walking again? A playground!!!!

That was awesome.  But, I should probably keep walking.  Bye bye playground!

Okay, over the bridge, through the garden, and then through Kenwood.

So, I rinsed off my feet, and then walked through Kenwood.  Not much interesting there, just lots of big houses.  The people back there must have huge families to need that much space.  Even a lake monster would have a hard time filling some of those houses!  So, I just kept walking.

So I eventually found my way over to the part of the lake where Minnie was supposed to be, but she wasn’t there.

Then I remembered that Nessie had given me your address, so I decided to come visit you before it got too dark out, and see if you knew where Minne went?”

“I’m sorry Sinclair,” I said, “but I don’t know where Minne went.  Actually, I don’ think anyone knows where she went. We’ll need to investigate.  But first, let’s get you ready for bed.  You must be exhausted from your trip, we can work on figuring all this out in the morning.  Now go brush your teeth.”

“Do I have too?”

“Yes Sinclair.  We don’t want you to end up with cavities from all those snacks you had today.”

“Okay.”

---

Where did Minne go?  Will Sinclair ever find her?  Why did he travel so far to see her in the first place?  And what does all of this have to do with Iowa Football?

Find out next time, on another exciting episode of Lake Creatures Of Our Lives!

Like giant flippered boulders through the hourglass, so are the pleosaurs of our lives.

Quick back story: There has been a lake creature floating around the Chain of Lakes in Minneapolis this summer (seriously).  She appeared in early July and has been touring the lakes since.  In mid-July it was “adopted” by the Minneapolis Park Foundation, and has since been nicknamed Minne.  I think she’s the great great grand niece of Nessie.  She looks like this:

Now, onto the actual post, and yes, this is the most coherent way I could think of to put all the thoughts together…

---

Dear Minne,

I was out running around the lakes and saw you out there again, over in the west part of Lake of the Isles now.  Sorry I haven’t written sooner, but you keep moving around and are a little hard to keep track of.  Besides, where does one address a letter to you?  “Lake Creature, About 50 feet off the west shore of Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis, MN 55405″?  So, I figured I’d try a blog post instead and see if you happen to read it.  Anyway, while I was running, I was thinking, with it getting cold out like it is, we really need to get you ready for the winter here.  After all, I figured I should do what I can to help out a fellow stray.

The winters here can get pretty rough, and the lakes freeze.  Don’t worry though, even though it’s cold, you’ve still got a couple months.  The lakes take a while to cool down that much, plus, I’ve got a plan, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

So, I’m not sure where you’re from originally, but we celebrate Halloween here.  We dress up in costumes, and go around asking for candy, and people actually give you candy on this day!  So, I thought we should get you a costume to help you fit in a little more.  While I was running tonight, I was trying to think of how we could dress you up.  The first thing I thought of was that we could put a jack-o-lantern on your back.  Like this:

It would be pretty festive, really simple and easy to do, and would really get you participating in the holiday.  Then I thought about it a little more, and it would probably roll off in the wind, and you’d have to hold pretty still.  Besides, who wants a rotting hunk of gourd on their back?  Not me.  So, I kept thinking.

My next thought was that you could dress up as a pirate.  It’s a pretty classic Halloween costume, and you’ve already got the nautical theme going:

But then I thought about that a little more too.  The hat would probably fly off pretty quickly, and I’m not sure how you’d hold onto the pirate flag.  Plus, we can’t really see your hook / peg flipper (do you have flippers or legs under there?).  So, I kept thinking.

Next I thought zombie.  But that would probably be way too scary for little kids around the lakes, and you already missed the zombie pub crawl this weekend.  So, I kept thinking.

My next idea was Superman – a classic first Halloween costume!

I like it, but I’m not sure the cape will look all that good when the wind isn’t blowing just right, and I’m not sure how you feel about spandex, being a lake creature and all.

So, I kept running and kept thinking.  Anyway, it’s getting cold out, and some birds are starting to visit the lakes.  And then I thought of the perfect Halloween costume for you, something that would be a great costume, fit you perfectly, and really make you blend in to the Minneapolis lake scene.

A little down for the body, maybe some foam or cotton stuffing to make the tail stay up, a little face paint, and a beak with an elastic strap to keep it on.  Not only will you fit right in, it will keep you warm for the next couple of months too!  Plus, you totally have the neck for it!

Besides, this way you can make some friends with the geese out there as they pass through, and get some good tips on where to spend the winter months.  I’m sure they know all sorts of great places!  I think you might like the everglades.  Some of them might even let you travel with them.  I’m sure they’d love to have you leading the “V”!  Of course, maybe you were thinking this already, I saw on your Twitter account that you said “When it becomes cold, I turn into a snow bird”.  Maybe we strays think alike after all!

Anyway, let me know if you need some help with the costume, I’m not great at sewing, but I could give it a shot,

Kearn