Road Trip to Mankato

So this past weekend I took a road trip up to Minnesota to visit my friend Kyle and celebrate his 21st birthday with him.  After a long week of classes and work I hit the road on Friday afternoon.  It's about a 5 hour drive from Omaha to UM-Mankato.  Luckily our other friend Jeremy was able to come to so I picked him up in Sioux City on the way.  It was nice to have company on the long drive.  Jeremy and I enjoyed the trip and had some great music pumping and good conversation too.  Jeremy and Kyle have been two of my closest friends for about the past 8 years, but we all go to different colleges.  Needless to say, getting together with them is a rare blessing.  We have a great time together, but because of sport, school, and work schedules we really don't get to see each other much.  To be able to spend the whole weekend with them celebrating was a much needed break from the school routine.

On Friday night we got to Mankato and loaded all of our stuff into Kyle's apartment.  We met all of Kyle's baseball buddies and headed down to a local bar and grill for dinner and a very competitive game of darts (which Jeremy and I won).  After dinner we hit the Makato bars in order to make the most of the 2-for-1 deals that end at 11. Yay for Cherry Bombs :).  The bars in Mankato were a lot of fun, and all within walking distance from each other.  We made sure Kyle made the most of his night and got home late after great night!

On Saturday we all slept in....real late.  I hit up Caribou Coffee (apparently MN hates Starbucks) immediately.  We just hung around the house during the afternoon and watched a movie and reminisced on the good-ole-days of AHS. oh boy.  We also took a little tour of the University of Minnesota-Mankato where Kyle goes to school.  Definitely a pretty cool school.  I loved how their student union had a bowling ally and pool tables! Creighton.... take a hint.  Unfortunately I was left behind during the locker room tour... not sure why we needed to see the baseball locker room at all (unless it had been shower time (; ), but I wasn't too disappointed about missing that spot.  Kyle's sister and her husband showed up around 5 and we hit up Mexican Village for some Margaritas and Nachos! The Margaritas packed a surprisingly powerful punch which made the food taste even better than it probably was.  Jeremy and I were planning on staying over Saturday night and heading downtown with everyone, but the weather started to get bad.  Jeremy and I ended up driving home from Mankato Saturday night.  I dropped J off in Sioux City and got back to Omaha a little after midnight. I was kept awake by the lightning show in the sky and of course some great tunes from my BackBeats.

Overall it was a great trip to MN.  The only downside was that technology completely failed me.  My computer screen (that has been getting progressively worse since I cracked the LCD screen in Nov.) went completely black, and I left my phone charger in Mankato. Awesome.  Luckily my computer is getting fixed and US Cellular gave me a free charger for the week until I can get mine back.  You might be wondering how I'm writing this wonderful blog if I don't have a computer (you probably didn't even think about that.... and you probably don't care) but luckily Creighton has done something right and has some sweet new mac desktops in the Coba lab.  Looks like I'll be living in here until my computer is fixed. Until next time...

Old school pic of Jeremy, me, and Kyle!
Love these guys :)