Feeling Minnesota

I’ve been in a fantasy football league for about 20 years. I’m still the new guy in the league celebrating its 25th year. In non-COVID years, the league gets together to draft in person. It’s a fun “guys” weekend but we’re not in our 20s or even 30s anymore, so the activities related to the draft weekends usually involve going to a baseball game or other tourist destinations rather than late nights out at bars or clubs. Or so I’ve heard! Based on my schedule and the start of the kids’ school year, I’ve only attended a few drafts in person. Atlanta was fun, Jensen Beach, Florida was interesting, and the Northern Virginia drafts were a blast. Still, after a long break from being at a draft in person, I decided I was definitely going this year. This year in Minneapolis! And the Minnesota State Fair! And with Weird Al Yankovic! Maybe! 

On Thursday morning, I received this email from American Airlines:

Disruptive weather conditions are forecast to impact portions the Northeast, which may affect your upcoming travel on American Airlines. Your flight is currently on time, but we are offering options if you would like to proactively change your travel plans. That means you could travel on a different date or time or use a different airport to make your connection.

I watched Good Morning America in the morning, and though they discussed severe storms between Vermont and Virginia, I didn’t think much of it since the local weather showed thunderstorms starting around 5:00 in the DC area. Our flight was at 3:50. My friends and I got in the car to drive to the airport around 1:15, and just as we left my street, we got notification that the flight was delayed. Our plane was coming from New York and got stuck thanks to poor weather there. Not ideal but not terrible. We went back inside my house and played video games as members of my family arrived home from school surprised to see me and my friends still there.

We finally left around 4:00 and parked at a hotel near DCA since I made parking reservations there. As an aside, hotel parking for the airport is a great deal. With tax, you usually pay about $15 a day to park in a covered garage and you get a shuttle to the airport. Daily economy parking at DCA is $25 for an open-air parking lot and you still need to take a bus to the terminal. We ate dinner at a restaurant at Pentagon City, walked back to the hotel, and arrived at the airport for a 7:55 flight. 

Through security, we got notified at 6:51 that the flight was delayed to 10:00. Lovely. A few minutes later, another notification that the flight was delayed to midnight. What? Then 2:00 AM, then 4:00 AM, then 6:00 AM. What the what?

The weather was the problem earlier but now it was air traffic control issue. We talked to someone at American at the airport who confirmed that the flight was delayed to 6:00 AM the following morning and assured us that we’d be fine leaving the next day. You see where this is going, right? 

We debated about getting the car to go to our respective homes to then try to meet up again before 4:00 AM, go back to the hotel since we had the parking reservations, and then Uber/Lyft to DCA since the shuttle doesn’t operate that early. Seemed like a lot of time and hassle spent to get little sleep, so we decided to get a room at the hotel for the night. Got a great price and Alexis and Tony were extremely helpful. You know, let me plug the Embassy Suites at Crystal City National Airport. Nice rooms with a free breakfast and great staff. And if this Embassy Suites wants to be the official blog of Sean's Ramblings, we can talk! 

And at just after 10:00 PM, we got notification that the 6:00 AM flight was canceled. Not delayed, cancelled. Completed cancelled. We called American and asked about options. We looked into leaving out of Dulles or BWI or even Richmond or Philadelphia. Or flying into Duluth or Sioux City. The “best” option was flying out of DCA around noon to get into Dallas for a 3:30 PM flight to get us into Minneapolis at 6:19 PM, over 24 hours later than the originally scheduled flight. We took it.

After a tasty breakfast at Embassy Suites, including the chef at the omelet station “cooking” two donuts on a grill with cheese in the middle (hey, we planned on spending the entire day at the Minnesota State Fair and the flight cancellation significantly decreased the amount of time at the fair and opportunities to eat fair food), we made it back to DCA and on to Dallas-Fort Worth. 

And then another delay at DFW. Ugh. We landed just before 7:00, got a ride from the airport, and arrived at the front gate of the fairgrounds at 7:33. I got cheese on a stick just minutes later.

We arrived at our seats just minutes before Weird Al started the show.

Weird Al was fantastic. Such a fun show with lots of costume changes. While most of Weird Al’s songs are silly, he and the band are seriously gifted musicians. Although most of the exhibits and venues at the state fair were closed after the concert, I enjoyed a deep fried apple pie with cinnamon ice cream. 

We were unsuccessful in buying a bucket of cookies since the lines were outrageous. These cookies by Sweet Martha's Cookie Jar are a really big deal. However, outside the venue, we saw three guys probably around 18 with more cookies than they were going to eat. We approached them with a $1 bill in hand, explained that we were from out of town and wanted experience the state fair cookie, and offered them money for a cookie. In hindsight, this seems really creepy. Even at the time, I felt like this.

 

They ended up being Minnesota nice and gave us a cookie for free. 

As for the rest of the weekend, I played fowling (which is a football meets bowling game) and whirlyball (basketball meets lacrosse in bumper cars) for the first time. I was fairly useless in helping our team successfully complete a difficult escape room played in multiple rooms and floors. I ate famous blueberry pancakes and an infamous burger. Went to a Twins game too. We stayed at an awesome sports-themed Airbnb with bubble hockey, video games, a poker table, and a hockey room. Oh, the fantasy football draft also happened. My team has a lot of high-risk, high-reward possibilities which is a nice way of writing that it probably isn’t very good. But you don’t care about my fantasy team.

So that’s it. Or is it. On the flight back from Minneapolis, about 35 minutes out from our scheduled arrival, the captain announced that there were thunderstorms in DC, so he was instructed to slow down and basically hold the flight south of Pittsburgh. He said we don’t have a lot of extra fuel (which you definitely don’t want to hear as a passenger!!!!), but enough to get to DCA and that we’ll land about 40 minutes late. Fortunately, the storm moved past the airport, and we only arrived about 15-20 minutes behind schedule.

The overall verdict is that it was an amazing weekend. I was one of over 200,000 people who attended the Minnesota State Fair, marking a record for the biggest attendance on the festival's first Friday, but I only got a small taste of the event. I'd love to go back, but I think the lesson here is that I'm never flying to Minneapolis again (at least from DCA)!

By the way, I never saw the movie referenced in this post's title.