Moving through security at Reagan-National, I hear my name on the loudspeaker for final call. Toiletries and laptop in hand, I jog to the gate. Desserted, no crew member at the boarding-pass-scanning-station. Yet, the door is open...
We are flying over over an endless field of snow clouds. Thick, fluffy, and packed, a blanket of snow hanging in the sky. The Delta flight attendants are attentive and feed us rounds of coffee and snacks.
The Minneapolis Airport is enormous. Everyone is wearing dark colors. Americana accents into cellular phones. I go underground to get to get to a taxi, a white minivan. Organized, efficient, polite.
The woman at the front desk chattily checks me in, agrees to my request to put my Amtrak Guest Rewards number on the reservation, and asks me if often take "the Amtrak." She tells me likes London and Venice (the latter in late Spring). She is exquisitely friendly.
The hotel reminds me of the airport, though it is entirely deserted.
We go the University of Minnesota Basketball game. The stadium/arena is warm, cozy, and full of tall college students in bright yellow and maroon. The home team wins. We're off to "Top Ten," a local bar and get Molson and subs. our hosts talk about MN politics and tells stories of Paul Wellstone. I get the feeling that I am in an enchanted kingdom.
My first five hours with Minnesotans are wonderful. They are chatty, charming, laid-back, honest, polite, warm, and bright.
There's foot of snow on the ground.
Loisaida is a term derived from the Latino (and especially Puerto Rican) pronunciation of "Lower East Side", a neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City. Loisaida Avenue is now an alternate name for Avenue C in the Alphabet City neighborhood of New York City, whose population has largely been Hispanic (mainly Puerto Rican) since the late 1960s.
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