Minneapolis photos -- just two months late!

As mentioned before, I zipped off to Minneapolis for a few days in May for the annual American Society for Indexing (ASI) conference. I don't really have any pictures of the conference. Rest assured, lots of indexers sat around in hotel conference rooms and discussed indexing. It was very interesting and loads of fun (for me, anyway) but not really all that photogenic.

I did, however, pull out the camera on the final afternoon when a batch of us from the conference went for a walking tour of the old mill district and the falls on the Mississipi. So, here we go...


Yes, it's true. I'm in Minneapolis.

Look! A rare natural phenomenon: a vast herd of free-range indexers.

For reasons unknown, several wedding parties gathered at the site of the abandoned mills for their wedding photos. I can only assume this means that Minnesotans love flour mills.

Famed "Indexer to the Feds" Chuck Knapp contemplates new construction within abandoned stone walls -- a striking contrast of modernity and history that speaks of the passage of time and our own mortality -- and thinks, "Man, I could use a beer." (Hey, it was warm and we had already walked quite a ways.)

The most amazing thing to me was that the entire layout of the flour mills around the falls on the Mississippi is almost identical to the layout of the paper mills around Glens Falls on the Hudson River in New York. This is just a cool photo of the cliffs and the chutes along the river.

A better look at the old mills on the West shore.

The lock and the falls.

More flour mills along the East shore. Apparently they grow a wee bit of wheat in Minnesota.

We walked out across the river on an old rail bridge that has been converted for pedestrians and bikes. This is looking back at downtown on the West shore.

That's about it for the tour. But as we walked back towards the hotel and dinner, Chuck and I came across at least a half-dozen statues of Minnesota Twins All-Star catcher Joe Mauer. We took this to be evidence that in addition to loving flour, Minnesota LOVES Joe Mauer:

... and we found that even trying to look as athletic as Joe Mauer caused us great thirst. So we quickly found an Irish pub at which we could rehydrate. Thank goodness. You wouldn't want to cramp up after an expedition like this.

That's about it for my trip to Minneapolis. I had a good time, even if this was the only time I saw the sun for about three days.