Beulah, Baseball, Musical Cannibalism and the Twin Cities

Earlier this year, my friend Steve invited me to travel with him to see Miles Kurosky¹ on his solo tour. Under normal circumstances, Steve would go see him in St. Louis, as he lives a short distance from there. However, Miles has decided to safely forego² a show in St. Louis. However, in a bizarre twist, he's instead opted to play at pizzeria in Rock Island.

Which brings me to the travel plans Steve proposed. Our options were essentially limited to the Midwest to facilitate quick and direct travel, which left dates over Easter weekend. The options were as follows:

A) Friday, April 2, in Minneapolis. A hip town with lots to do beside attend a concert. Airfare is relatively cheap, and there should be plenty to do.

B) Saturday, April 3, in Omaha. It's in Nebraska³.

Believe it or not, we seriously considered Omaha. But then Steve pointed out the Twins' new stadium was opening that same weekend with a pair of exhibition games against the Cardinals. So why not work baseball into the equation?

So with a little phineagelling⁴, we worked out the plan: fly to MSP⁵ on Friday, April 2. Check into our trillion-star hotel that we have for $3.58/night. Go see Miles Kurosky, who is apparently going to play some Beulah songs, too. Wake up on Saturday, April 3. Go to Target Field to watch Those Darn Twins play the Cardinals. After that, we *could* go see Spoon, who is in town that night, but the show is sold out and tickets are going for amputation-esque prices. Instead, we will probably check out Cymbals Eat Guitars⁶ on Saturday night. Then we return Sunday evening, probably after spending the afternoon at the airport, as Steve has a couple of passes to the Delta lounge, which may or may not have free (or cheap) food and drink.

Steve's plan was to fly directly from STL to MSP on DL and would return through MKE on a split ticket with YX and DL. But then YX canceled his flight outright, so he had to call YX and DL and expedia and rebook. How fun⁷.

But now, as it stands we'll both get there Friday afternoon and leave Sunday around 5 p.m.⁸. My outbound flight leaves from ORD on one of the venerable DC-9s [see below] that Delta inherited from Northwest. The last Delta/Northwest DC-9 I flew on was built in 1968, which probably makes it old enough to be cool again, right? Delta has said that the biggest DC-9s will remain in service for an indefinite period of time, though they will be retiring some of the older ones.



In contrast, my return flight will be on a shiny, new Embraer E-jet (see below⁹) operated by Compass Airlines for Delta. They're supposed to be nice airplanes to fly on.


Expect a full recap, in multiple parts, in April.


¹ Miles Kurosky was formally in the noise-pop group Beulah. They were a swell group. His first music video can be seen here; please refrain from taking psychedelics prior to viewing.
² To you grammarians who scoff at my split infinitive, I tell you to quickly go straight to hell. Also, everyone who lives in St. Louis gets murdered. Everyone. It's a fact. Look it up. It's in Chapter 4 of the Internet.
³ Sorry for the sound effect. I was expecting it to suck less. But you get the point. How exciting could Nebraska be^3A?
^3A For the record, I plan on including a link to a car fire in every post from here to forever.
⁴ And misspelling.
⁵ Really cool people who are totally in the know speak about airports in terms of their IATA codes. ICAO codes are for losers.
⁶ This band is comprised of cannibals who play cannibalistic instruments. I'm not sure, but they're probably zombies and they probably just play Queen covers. Or they're a really noisy pop band.
⁷ In case that paragraph didn't contain enough links, here are a few more.
⁸ Sorry family, I will be attending the heathen holiday of Opening Day (more or less) this year.
⁹ This picture is actually of a Shuttle America E-jet operated for United Express. Compass Airlines flies the same type of airplane, but it will be in Delta or Northwest colors.