Cleveland, Ohio - I'm spending three days in the area to visit some relatives and enjoy some R and R before making the final push to Maine. It's been very strange being here - I started this trip far, far outside the orbit of my life up to this point, and it's weird to reach my own personal event horizon. From here on out, I'll be passing through landscapes and areas that will no doubt feel familiar to me, even if I only saw most of them out of the car window from one of innumerable trips down I-90.
Handily enough, the impressive Cleveland Public Library has USB ports on its computers, so here's a whole backlog of photos to marvel at.


Minneapolis - My first real urban biking of the trip. Fortunately, it's a great city to bike in. This was taken from a pedestrian bridge over the Mississippi, one of many concessions the city has made for crazy folks like me.




Minneapolis - "Spoonbridge," in the city's sculplure garden. Kinda self-explanatory.







Minneapolis - The new avant-garde addition to the Walker Art Center. As my friend Ruth correctly pointed out, it very much resembles a rock-'em sock-'em robot head. I was hoping there would be a giant coiled spring in the middle of the lobby, but no luck.





Tom: Hey, Ganesh, is this heaven?
Ganesh: Well, actually, heaven is more of a Judeo-Christian concept. We tend to believe in...
Tom: Ganesh! Is this heaven?
Ganesh (sighs): No, it's Iowa.



Dyersville, Iowa - Speaking of Field of Dreams jokes, here it is: the original movie set. The funny thing is that one guy owns the land under most of the field, while his neighbor owns left and center field. So they've set up competing gift shops at either end of the field. There's definitely no love lost between the sides, but fortunately no one's gone and built a wall through the field or anything.




Dwight, Illinois - Every town likes to honor its state champion high school teams, but Illinois does 'em one better. Or posibly three or four better. There were signs like this at every town. I tried to track down Brian Krug for an autograph but couldn't get through his entourage. Man, FFA used to be about the milk.





Cleveland, Ohio - My second city on this trip. I can't comment on what it's like to bike through it, though, as I won't do that until Friday. Nice place to stroll around for a few hours, though, and they've got a great baseball stadium.





Cleveland - So who wins the battle of the goofy public art: giant-cherry-on-spoon or giant "Free" stamp? That, I suspect, is in the eye of the beholder.