Welcome back, dear reader, as I bring you along for our recap of day two.
Morning: Exploring Hopkins
A solid sleep-in was exactly what I needed to recover from a moderate day of travel. My mom had prepared homemade monkey bread for breakfast, my favorite breakfast treat!
After we ate, Antonio and I got in the car so I could show him around my hometown. We drove down Main Street, saw my old high school, and stopped to shop at some local stores.
First, we went to Ultimate Collectibles, which now sells comics as well as trading cards… uh oh… and as you might’ve guessed, I bought cards and comics. A few Harley Quinn comics and two F1 hobby boxes were money well spent, at least to me.
The other shop we visited is called Axe-Man, a zany little store that is equal parts thrift store, hardware store, and joke shop. I highly recommend checking it out if you can, I was moments away from buying a video camera (it required actual film and a secondary box to actually record, so I passed). Instead, I walked away with a phone charger and sharpening stone, because why not?
After we returned home, my mom took us to LTD Brewing in Hopkins where we sat and took ridiculous photos, drank some nice beer, and even endured some catcalling from some kids on a school bus, which was funny but certainly not what I expected from the day. After our beers, it was time to go, we had plans on…
The Boat
When we got home, my dad was already hooking up the boat trailer to his SUV, so Antonio, my mom, dad, and brother, along with myself, hopped in and headed to Lake Minnetonka.
We boated around, pointing out huge lakeshore mansions, until it was time to head to our reservation at a restaurant on the lake.
To set the scene, those beers had made their way through the system and were ready to be released. Unfortunately for us, many of the docks were taken, so we had to go to the way back in order to find a place to tie up. In my hurry to tie up the boat, I knocked my glasses off, straight into the water. My brother recalled the singular motion in which he saw my glasses fly off and my jump in after them. I remember the instance differently.
I had already imagined this exact situation earlier in the boat ride, but said nothing, for fear that I would speak this horror into existence. As we know now, that image was a premonition, rather than a thought experiment. I successfully retrieved my glasses at the cost of wet clothes and a wet phone still in my pocket.
The dinner more than made up for my spill as I had a lovely breaded walleye with a side of perfectly steamed vegetables and a side of potatoes.
After a quick boat ride back to the launch area, I got to tow the boat back. We played a game of Yahtzee and my brother smoked us. After that, I finished sorting through my F1 cards, played a game of NHL with my brother (which he won, in somewhat questionable circumstances -jk it was all fair), and then headed upstairs to call my fiancée before bed.