Minnesota wild rice, uffda!

Whenever we go to Dominica's, I always request Salmon or other seafood because she takes requests and she's an amazing chef. Also, I have no idea how to cook fish so I totally take adavantage of the situation.  And wisely when I request fish, Dominica always makes her famous Minnesota Wild Rice on the side. It's the absolute perfect partner for seafood. Prior to this most recent trip, whenever I thought of Minnesota, I thought of wild rice!  It's still disputed by some, but many claim this Minnesota Wild Rice is the only true wild rice left in the world; Native Americans still plant it, care for it and harvest it in canoes on the northern lakes of Minnesota.  I guess, the wild rice stuff they sell at Walmart is actually #fakerice, Uffda! Oh yeah, we also learned, Uffda, in Minnesotan, is an expression of surprise and excitement similar to wow or rad. It's of Scandinavian origin and the spelling is inconsistent;  Minnesotans today seem to spell it Uffda while old scandinavians spelled it Oofda. Either way it means the same thing, WOW! And while Minnesota is just two states away, I learned MN has a lot of unique cultural items like hot dishes, and lutefisk!

Now about the Minnesota trip, it started as a tiny seed of an idea--A seed that sat dormant for a long time and then at the last possible moment it decided to grow and bloom all at once!  You see, Mird is a real "puzzling" gal. Yes, she LOVES a good jigsaw puzzle.  A few years years ago she discovered a puzzle contest in Minnesota (yes puzzle making contests exist...who knew?!).  Ever since, she's been dreaming of going to compete in that contest.  The puzzle contest is part of a larger Winter Carnival, a super cool winter festival, held each year in St. Paul since like 1885! The carnival has a royal court, an ice castle, sculptures, sled hills and of course every decent festival has a good ole ROAD RACE. When we learned we could run a race and compete in the puzzle championship all in one trip, we knew we had to go!  Well as with most of our running adventures, it took me a LONG time to convince my husband that it was a worthy voyage, but on Christmas he gave me the trip (just what I wanted) and after a seriously persuasive email exchange with the puzzle contest coordinator because the contest was actually full, we booked out trip!  It was all very whirlwind-esque; In about two hours, we suddenly had our Minnesota adventure planned, plane tickets, childcare and all. We were headed to Courtney's homeland for a grand running adventure and her family was going to show us the good old fashioned Minnesota hospitality! I've since learned Minnesota hospitality is every bit as good as the more well known southern hospitality!  Courtney's family was so amazingly kind, fun and caring all weekend!

Fast forward  roughly three weeks from that whirlwind planning day and you find the three of us boarding a flight in GRR headed straight for the Twin Cities.  It was pretty much blizzard conditions for the airport drive so we were all a bit stressed out, but we settled down once we breezed through security and were in our seats with time to spare. We slept our way to MN and spent the day carb loading, bar hopping and hanging out with Courtney's family. The following day was race day and it brought with it frigid air temperatures and even more frightening wind chills, but us Michiganders were not afraid.  We suited up and headed to the starting line with impressive levels of positive energy despite what Mother Nature had dished up for race day! Check it out!








     

Vern, Courtney and Mird ready to run!  We headed out ran a great race and made it to the puzzle contest just in the knick of time!  The team consisted of Leiah, Mird, Courtney and Amanda they were known as the Michi-Sota Puzzlers!  The contest was a 500 piece winter scene puzzle made by Puzzle Twist especially for the event.  They finished in a time of 1 hour 15 minutes and  made us all proud! Surprisingly, it was exhilarating watching the contest!  It was held in the Landmark Center which is a beautiful old building in the heart of St Paul that has an amazing balcony which housed us spectators and a huge open room for the teams.  I kept going up and down the stairs checking the progress of the puzzlers while purchasing various snacks from the snack bar.  I decided it was good training for the upcoming 5-mile hill challenge I signed up for and also I'm too impatient at times like this!  As teams finished, the announcer informed us and he also gave us great animated comments like, "please stay off the floor so the athletes can move freely around their tables" and "There you have it folks, our champions finished in 37 minutes!"  For the rest of the weekend, we joked that Courtney and Mird had completed a Duathlon since the Puzzle Announcer had referred to all the puzzle makers as athletes!

finish line fun!

After the puzzle contest, we headed to Courtney's sisters apartment to clean up and then we were off to Mall of America for a grand shopping trip! Generally, Mird and I hate shopping, but we actually had a really great time shopping.  We bought cheese, clothes, souvenirs and, of course, some Minnesota Wild Rice! Also, we goofed around as much as possible....obviously.

#MallOfAmericaRocks 

 

These shoes have run thousands of miles with me and they're still going strong!  A little gorilla tape fixed them up one more time and they powered me on to second place out of 38 women 40-49 years old!  This seemed like the perfect ending to my story, but it didn't end there with a Hollywood happily ever after...

 

The story ended with our flight home which didn't go nearly as smoothly as our flight there.   Mird and I got to spend a lot of quality time with TSA personnel and these shoes were nearly confiscated after the cake mix I had bought my Mother In Law set off the explosives sensor!  If you want to hear the full story of TSA that day, you'll have to go out on a run with me or Mird soon!  I will now think of uffda, hot dishes, gorilla tape and Courtney's family when I think of Minnesota!

Vern and Mird St. Paul Minnesota 

Sercurian Financial Winter Run 

January 26, 2019

 State Number 13