Travel Log: The Great Midwestern Road Trip #3
The Great Midwestern Road Trip Part III: Be in Minneapolis, Embrace the Mystery, Get Moist, & Get Close
[From June 4th to June 13th my family piled into a rental car and drove through eleven states straight down the middle of the country. This is Part III. Click here to see all parts.]
Minneapolis
You should really go to Minneapolis. I don’t really know why, but you should. Admittedly, there isn’t a ton to do there, but I think there are some pretty good things to be there.
I think Minneapolis’s best attribute is that it’s a liberal city without any smugness. Imagine San Francisco without the word “organic” or New York if people had any awareness about anything west of the Hudson River. That’s the magic. It’s hard to describe. Manny’s Steakhouse, which was our first stop, is a prime example of what I’m talking about.
I can’t look at our rental car without hearing the horn honk “Dixie” in my head and thinking how those Duke brothers needed to be thrown in jail.
A Manny’s for All Seasons
Our flight was ridiculously delayed and there was no chance we weren’t going to be late for our dinner reservation. In haste, as we were making our escape from the airport in the bright orange Dodge Charger my son insisted on choosing from the rental lot, I entered “Manny’s” into my map app. An address popped up and we left.
And that’s how we arrived at Manny’s Tortas.
If you’re in Minneapolis, you should totally go to Manny’s Tortas. It’s probably way better than cussing loudly in front of your kids, entering new coordinates into your map app, and accepting that your own stupidity has now made you even more late for your fancy reservation.
It turns out I never needed to get so worked up. The people at our intended Manny’s were there and patiently waiting, either happy to seat us just a few minutes before closing, or really good at pretending to be happy. When told about the Manny mix up, our server’s only reaction was to tell us that the other Manny’s was also very good and that we would’ve had a great meal there too.
That is so Minnesota.
The whole steakhouse is so Minnesota. It’s a high-end restaurant where quality is taken very seriously, but the servers dress like butchers. They wheel out the meat cart and expertly spiel each cut, but they casually call the Double Porterhouse “the bicycle seat” and smack it each and every time as they do so. (If you’re there all night, one of my favorite things to behold is the recurring seat slaps like punctuation.) The host, dressed to the nines, didn’t seem to judge us for coming in our straight-from-the-airport ragged attire, and when my son was not-covertly-enough pointing to the testicles on an oil painting of a bull, he encouraged my kid to take a picture in front of the painting with his hand raised in a cupping shape.
These are my kind of people. They take the meat too seriously, but not life.
Picture courtesy of Manny’s Steakhouse, where you should really go.
For a place where you’re likely to spend more than $100 per person, the menu is also remarkably non-pretentious—steaks, fish, salads, hash browns, mac and cheese, and pies. If you’re feeling really high brow, you can get as fancy as asparagus. Good lord, I love Manny’s just thinking about it.
I wish I had pictures, but, you might recall, we rushed in from the airport. The pictures wouldn’t do it justice anyway.
Embracing the Mystery
No, the first picture I took on my trip wasn’t from my wonderful birthday dinner. It wasn’t the city skyline, the mighty Mississippi, or even the wrong Manny’s. The first picture I took was of this door.
Why this door? Well, because this isn’t a door at all; it’s a mystery.
When we checked in, I assumed it was an adjoining room where someone was vacuuming. Sure, it was past 10:00 PM and I didn’t see signs of housekeeping anywhere, but there was just no other explanation. It sounded like vacuuming.
I figured someone must’ve spilled something in their room and called the front desk. These things happen, and that seemed more and more likely when the vacuuming stopped about five minutes later.
Well, not so much “stopped” as “paused.”
The vacuuming started up again. Ah, they must’ve missed a spot. People are always missing spots on TV, so that makes sense. And then it started again and again.
By 11:00 PM I started to suspect there weren’t that many spots to miss and that this wasn’t a vacuum at all. The sound went all through the night—a few minutes on and a few minutes off.
Obviously, I would’ve preferred it to stop, but, if that wasn’t an option, staying steady all night would’ve also been great. I think I could’ve gotten used to it, but we’ll never know. On and off. Off and on.
The next morning I made a reference to the all-night-dentist working in the next room, and my kids believed me. “Oh, that’s what that was!” my youngest shouted out. Of course that wasn’t true (or was it?), but the fact that they thought the constant whirring of drills was true is pretty telling.
It was time for another travel epiphany: getting around is more pleasant if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t think they deserve all the things that would be pleasant.
Why shouldn’t I be next to some sort of machinery that is forever winding up and down? It must be necessary or useful, right? And, if so, someone has to be next to it?
Embracing the mystery was a fun part of the trip.
In contrast, embracing this sign in the bathroom would’ve been awkward with my whole family around. I guess the second epiphany is you have to be careful what you’re embracing, especially if you’re not fully dressed, and while you might not be fully dressed without a smile, a smile does not “fully dressed” one make.
Starting the Day Right
After possibly the sweatiest workout of my life (the gym at the Hyatt Centric is amazing), I got into an elevator alone, then felt terribly embarrassed as each passing floor added young conference goers—wall to wall—who could not imagine the sopping breadth of my midlife lather. Worst still, they were like pharma reps or young money or something, which are like the trimmest, hottest professions.
I’m sure there is an equation that exists in polite society, even if never recorded, about appropriate proximity being inversely related to your moistness. As wet as I was, no one really should’ve been closer than 30 feet, yet here were twelve of us in a tiny elevator. Old building. Slow.
It was such a bad experience that I would bet good money it changed the agenda of their conference. There was no way they wouldn’t need time and space to process as a group.
All I needed was a shower, a good wringing out of my clothes, and a plastic bag to stuff them in. The hotel provided all three.
If you’re looking for a breakfast place downtown, you could do a lot worse than the Hen House. It serves traditional breakfast and lighter fare, looks like a Pinterest board came to life, and the staff can almost veil their contempt for you. (That could be a me-specific problem.) Plus, the doors have super weird hinges. (Not pictured.) I’ve never regretted going there.
Speaking of veiled contempt, on our way to the Mississippi we found this public piano and my wife pounced. She is pretty good. She played Chopin, some old church hymns, and “Happy Birthday.”
It seemed nice enough to me, but this guy (left side below) hated it. He didn’t say anything. He just fired up a new dirty look every time she started playing.
Apparently Prelude Op. 28 No 15 brings out a real Trump-debating-Hillary vibe for this guy.
Which reminds me, did you hear about the furious Minnesotan? He got so mad, he almost mentioned it out loud.
We left the piano and crossed the river on the Stone Arch Bridge with Mr. Sunshine intermittently hating us and seeing if it was medically possible to tuck his shirt in any tighter.
Top: In the background you can see Stone Arch Bridge. No one know where it gets its name. Bottom: My kid did this for some reason.
We also saw U.S. Bank Stadium, which is where the Vikings lose in the playoffs. There was a guy there washing the windows. My wife asked if there were stadium tours, but I guess he was only trusted with exterior matters. He seemed genuinely, oddly confused. No matter. We still enjoyed ourselves. Skol!
The guys washing the windows aren’t allowed to know the secrets on the other side of the glass.
Boy added for scale.
Family portrait.
Again, there wasn’t much to do, but it was a great place to be.
Now that I was sufficiently sweaty again (it was in the mid 90s and filled with humidity and wildfire smoke), it was time to go have lunch with old coworkers who were too close for my moistness. (Thanks for paying, Anthony. I’ll get you back if you come to Salt Lake.) While I did that, my family drove to Wisconsin and had ice cream so now they can all smugly say, “Yes, I’ve been to Wisconsin.”
Then it was time to push on out of town.
Coming up next: nature’s splendor, a giant otter, and a weird bathtub.
Man being in Minneapolis.
