And that 494 is only 6 lanes wide, but to cross it they need 8, more than the freeway and as many as 35W running parallel.

I have nothing to add here other than the 494 corridor through Bloomington, with the 8-lane overpasses every half mile, is the most appallingly overbuilt car infrastructure imaginable. I can't fathom the cost of it.

Please keep in mind my kids will be 54 and I'll need them to be wiping my ass by that age, so a 4-bedroom single floor home would be preferred.

Always a popular destination in the early fall when the leaves start changing. There's a gondola that takes you to the mountaintop at Lutsen that's great for hiking

I remember seeing the half-rocky Moose mountain silhouette on the first day and thinking "oh my god, that's the biggest mountain I've ever seen" (which was true!). And I remember my friends and their adolescent ways.

If you get a chance to visit Lutsen in the deeps of winter, take it.

Either way, every time I hear that song I think of that trip. Seeing the ore shipyard so big you don't know how long it is. Seeing the smoke come off Lake Superior in the sunlight in the morning.

And I won't go the same weekend that we always booked as teenagers (MLK holiday weekend), always the cheapest date but reliably the coldest by farmer's almanac. Probably -10F. The -50 wind chill weekend. It's a miracle we have all our toes.

It might be obvious but I recall those years very fondly. It's been over two decades and half a dozen of us still go on ski trips together.

Haven't been back to Lutsen in maybe 7 years, but will go again soon when my boys are old enough to get off Ullr mountain.

It's enormous. By night it looks like some kind of soviet megaproject.

That may have been the first time I was enthralled by our state and its history. The wilderness, the industry, the monumental scale of it. And no small thanks to a timely lesson from Gordon Lightfoot.

Well about 20 miles past the tunnel is the Cleveland Cliffs ore transfer station, which is absolutely massive. None of us knew it was coming, but it's this mile-long shipyard, abandoned in winter, with railways right over the road to dump ore directly onto the ships.

Amongst the burned CDs of the late Napster era, someone had a mix with Gordon Lightfoot's song on it, which I don't think I'd ever listened to intently before. I'm pretty sure we played that song after the tunnel, now in the complete darkness of 6pm in northern Minnesota.

Driving up past Duluth in the evening, I don't think any of us had ever been that far north. And as you get out past Two Harbors on 61, you come to that huge tunnel through the mountain cliff, the Silver Creek tunnel, and I think there's a "Eisenhower Public Works 1951" sign or some such.

But once we pooled together the money, and we had driver's licenses and a minivan, we booked a cabin in Lutsen for a holiday weekend. Probably 18 or 19 years old. It was a Big Deal to us, I mean who in their sane mind would rent a cabin to 19 year olds? These were Mapquest years.

Like I recognize that this is a store, sales are the idea, department stores have salespeople.

But how dare you address me, here, between the upmarked USB cables and the cases of diapers, to ask if I have a minute to save money on my phone plan?

Many people are saying!

Seriously, for twenty odd years now I've had "it seems like the gales came right on-time", in the exact cadence and melody, etched into my brain

bsky.app/profile/josh...

They should play trailers in the office for other diseases you can get