Brand on the Brain!

I live in Northeast Minneapolis and do not have a car, so the Parkway Theater seems so far away from me. But with new management, they have been having such great movies there that it I simply must deal with my distance-fever.

Last Tuesday, I was lured down there by a Gene Kelly/Frank Sinatra double feature. It was very rainy, so I put my bike on the #11 bus and took a long nap-filled bus ride nearly all the way there. It was showtime by the time the bus got to 46th and 4th, so I rode as fast as I could the last few blocks. By the time the double feature was over, the rain has stopped, so I had a nice power bike ride home.

Yesterday afternoon it was the new Guy Maddin film that lured me. My intention was to bike all the way down to the theater on Portland Avenue, but there was such a headwind and it was so muggy, that when I saw the rail tracks by the Metrodome I waited for the next Hiawatha line train and took it down to Minnehaha Parkway. Then I had such a lovely ride along the parkway to Chicago Avenue and I even had time to have a coffee before the movie started. After the movie, I had a nice tailwind that got me home in just a little over half an hour.

I get that brand on the brain about distance, and way south Minneapolis seems so far, and St. Paul certainly seems so far, that when I actually do the trip and go there, it all seems like a big to do over nothing. But it also is good to see distances for what they really are - distances. My car-owning friends think nothing about crossing town. Maybe I think too much about it. Maybe the happy medium is somewhere in between, and maybe there is a nice off-street segment of the trip to make it a little less painful, and even awe-inspiring autumn beautiful.