Iowa recap for posterity

So I got to take Noland on the grand tour of Iowa AND Minnesota – and I don’t care what he says – he had a good time! We kicked things off going to a Mongolian grill in a strip mall in the West DSM suburbs with Susan and a bunch of her friends to celebrate her birthday - which we timed our arrival with fabulously I might say. Then we headed a bit further in towards town to hang out on the patio of one of our old haunts and have some drinks – however about 10 minutes after we arrived the skies opened up and we were forced inside. But with $2.75 Long Islands as the nightly special – that was alright with us – and the evening was a great festivity of chatting with Susan, my friend Debbie and others…especially when I get to tell Susan’s new “only know her as the proper Principal middle-manager type” friends about her sordid past…heh heh heh……the best was after we relayed some (quite hilarious I’m sure) story to them, each of us bouncing back and forth with the lines filling in details – that this young girl turns and looks at us both and says we have the same sense of humor, with a bit awe that there could be some one else with as weird of a sense of humor as Susan – I was flattered.

The next day it was the grand tour of Des Moines, from the Drake Diner to the campus itself
and then of course the tour of all of my old apartments – the one nestled cozily in between a McDonalds, a Pizza Hut and a KFC, the house where our creepy landlord who lived in the house next door had his own “wink wink nudge nudge” special greenhouse in the back, the apartment where the bum slept in the hallway until he was found dead in a lawn chair by the swimming pool, the “Melrose Place” apartments as my friend Dan used to like to call them and of course the Yocum – where Susan was across the hall, Myriam was my roommate – and probably the best few years in Des Moines were spent….sans chasing bats out of Susan’s place and crazy Carl the handyman who stole our booze. And who says nothing exciting happens in Dead Moines?

Downtown Des Moines, including feeling up the statue that’s anatomically correct under his armor,

the insurance building that looks like an Absolut ad, and all the rest followed…finally ending up at a new dive in town called High Life that lives next door to the old Hairy Mary’s – which has relocated and gone way downhill from what I hear, but in it’s day was a great punk rock club - Noland enjoyed such fine creative drinks as a Tangermeister – yes that would be Tang and Jaeger, while Susan and I stuck to PBR while we chatted with my old friend and nemesis Bob ‘the Moron’ Moural. The journey continued through several more old favorites from when I lived in Des Moines. I think Noland was most impressed with the Des Moines Yacht Club - oh yes, even DSM has a Yacht Club. But don't start worrying that we went all fancy on ya...the fine establishment has not a blue blazer or spec of water anywhere in sight... And we got to see more old friends, become I believe among the first to learn that Chad and Laurie and expecting, and have an all around good time out.

Then it was north-bound to the far out Minneapolis suburbs for the wedding – or reception actually – of Dan and Nicole. It was great to be able to be there for them – Dan has always been a good friend and has always been there for me – and to get to see Bob again after his retreat from Seattle back to the Midwest – he seems to be doing really well and glad he made the move. We hung out for quite a while, but after a dozen or so pints of bad beer and politely biting our tongues (REALLY HARD) at comments made by Dan’s friends at our table such as “it’s not really fair to ask the wealthy to pay more in taxes…. they do so much already” and “ It’s obvious that Fox is the only channel where they aren’t attacking the white Christian family all the time, NBC, ABC, and even CNN and NPR are so obviously biased.” We had to call it night and head back to our lovely Jacuzzi suite......