Shining beautifully beacon bright
illuminating darkest night
by day becoming landmark white
calling to the lost or in distress
bringing them to lands sweet caress
with hope of survival and success
Shining beautifully beacon bright
by day becoming landmark white
lost souls rejoice at wonderful sight
salvation there for all to see
the place to find humanity
bringing me to my destiny
Poem by forty two
Digital Sketch by JR Corkrum – “Yaquina Bay Lighthouse”
To give you a little insight into my youth, I am a product of a Catholic School education. My grade school years were spent at St. Matthews School in San Mateo, CA. While I am no longer a practicing Catholic (I refer to myself as a recovering Catholic), much of what I learned at St. Matthews is still ingrained in me. One such lesson I learned early and often was that there was no finer educational institution than the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. I was taught that I could have no better higher education goal than to go there for college degrees. Needless to say, I didn’t make it.
A couple of weeks ago, I just happened to be in Indiana to attend a certain race on Memorial Day in Indianapolis. When I planned the trip a few months ago, I decided to go early so I could finally see for myself this legendary bastion of college education and collegiate sports. It was, in a sense, a pilgrimage that started all those years ago.
So, two days before the Indianapolis 500, my friend Dave and I headed north out of Indianapolis for the 2.5 hour drive to South Bend. We drove through some beautiful farm country…fields filed with crops separated with what I refer to a mini-forests…lots and lots of trees. It was a beautiful drive.
With only part of a day to spend in South Bend, we covered the highlights of the Notre Dame campus…the football stadium and practice fields; “Touchdown Jesus”: the huge religious mural on the Notre Dame Library; the library itself; The Golden Dome; the Notre Dame Basilica; the Grotto; and, of course, the bookstore to pick up some Notre Dame t-shirts. We also ate lunch at The Legends restaurant, next to the football stadium. You can guess about the décor in that place. It was all exciting and great fun to see.
As you may have heard, football is huge at Notre Dame. We could not get close to the stadium as it is undergoing major renovations. I look forward to seeing the final product on TV when college football gets underway in September. And, right across from the stadium is Touchdown Jesus. More about that in another edition.
If I had to name one thing that impressed me about the campus, it was the campus itself. There are far more open spaces than buildings. It is like one big park, beautifully landscaped with huge trees, bushes, flowers, and long meandering walkways…and some beautiful, mostly old buildings here and there. Walking from building to building is a great experience. It is peaceful there, just as a college campus should be. While most western college and university facilities are crammed together (Stanford being an exception), Notre Dame is wide open beautiful parkland. I envy those folks who got their education here.
The photo here is of the Golden Dome, a campus landmark that sits on top of the administration building. If you ever visit Notre Dame, be sure and go into that building and stand under the dome. That is a special site all its own. I will share that with you in another edition as I will share some images from other amazing campus sites. Hint: walk into the Basilica and be transported back in time to a magnificent European Baroque cathedral. WOW!
Of course, the large campus bookstore is the place to go for great Notre Dame memorabilia at surprising reasonable prices. And if you are a sports fan, be sure and have a meal at The Legends restaurant. Just be sure to bring proper walking shoes because it is a big, big, beautiful place.
Yet another item checked off the bucket list.
This is a big mall! I am talking about the Mall of America. If you go to Minneapolis, you can find it right next to the airport. Its a fun place to wander around and see how big a mall can be…and that is what I did. I didn’t spend any money except for a cup of coffee at one of the Starbucks. Yes, there is more than one Starbucks inside this massive mall.
It is shaped basically like a rectangle so one can walk all around it...I did that too, bad knee and all. Opened in1992, the stores are are located on three levels, although I have seen a fourth level for offices. And speaking of stores, there are over 400 of them. Wow! Hard to believe I could walk past almost all these stores without buying anything but coffee.
I noticed on the directory that both Apple and Microsoft had stores here. So I decided to check out the Apple store first. But amazingly the Microsoft Store was located right across from it. Talk about two rivals being so close together. Anyway, it made it quite easy to visit both of them. The Apple Store looked just like most of the Apple Stores I’ve visited. The Microsoft Store was quite a bit larger. That day, they were demonstrating the Vive VR headset which I tried out for 15 minutes. That was really fun. If you want to read about it, check out yesterday’s tech blog.
What is really unique about the Mall of America is the very large amusement park in the middle of the mall. I said large and I mean LARGE. It is called the Nickelodeon Universe. It is big enough to hold 3 roller coasters and several other large rides. While I did not go on any of them, it was fun watching the whole operation. It is quite a place.
The different parts of the center all look different. This picture shows the south side of the square. Look close and you can see all three shopping levels. Of course, there are many kinds of restaurants and fast food joints throughout the mall. At the insistence of my friends we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe. Never again!
Something I learned after my visit was that the mall was built on the former site of Metropolitan Stadium, at one time the home of the Minnesota Twins baseball team and Vikings football team. A plaque in the amusement park commemorates the former location of home plate, and one seat from Met Stadium was placed in Mall of America at the exact location it occupied in the stadium, commemorating a 520-foot (160 m) home run hit by hall-of-famer Harmon Killebrew on June 3, 1967.
I am so glad I got to spend time there. I’ve heard about it for years, and since I was staying an hour’s drive away from it in Eau Claire, WI, I had to pay it a visit. Glad I did!
It’s been quite an adventurous two weeks. But I am back home, safe and sound with a great many memories…not the least of which was the 100th running of the Indy 500, “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” It was a special three days, capped off with the big race on Sunday. As previously mentioned, I’ve wanted to go to an Indy 500 race since I was a little boy listening to the race on the radio from my home in the Bay Area. After listening and watching the race for all these years, I finally made it…how fitting it was the 100th running of the race.
The photo above is not from the race. It was taken two days before the race at the very last practice. The Friday before the race is called “Carb Day,” which is short for carburetor. Even though these fast cars no longer use that device, the name and the tradition continues on. On this day, at the start of a one hour practice, all 33 cars charge out of the pit area on to the track at once, which is what you see here. They come out mostly in order of their starting positions, previously determined on the weekend before the race during two days of qualifications.
So, the first car you see here has the pole position of the race. It is driven by James Hinchcliffe, a driver who came close to death last year and watched that race from a hospital bed. He was critically injured in a crash during practice run. Because of that, he was a sentimental favorite for this year’s race and excited everyone by going the fastest during qualifications and winning the pole position. He beat out the second place car by 1 ten thousandth of a second.
Behind him in the blue car is Josef Newgarden…and directly behind him in the yellow car is Ryan Hunter-Reay, a former Indy winner. These three cars would battle for lead on Sunday for the first half of the race. Hunter-Reay would collide with another car coming out of the pits and would finish way down in 24th position. Newgarden would eventually finish 3rd while Hinchcliffe finished 7th.
So who won on Sunday? It was a 24 year-old rookie named Alexander Rossi. He started in the middle of Row 4 (11th position). I am not 100% sure where he is in this photo, but I am pretty sure he is the blue car directly behind the silver car and in front of the yellow car.
It was an exciting moment when all these cars came roaring out the pits at the same time. While this was only a practice, you would have thought it was the race itself. These cars roared around the track at close to 220 miles-per-hour…pushing their cars to the limit, passing other cars when possible and testing the cars for final adjustments. The fans in the stands could feel this practice was very close to a real race and the drivers all said afterwards they felt the same thing. They all want to win the 100th race as for them it would be the pinnacle of their racing careers. Alexander Rossi has little idea how his life will be changed forever.
During this practice, cars came in and out of the pits so their crews could make minor adjustments to improve the cars speed and performance. On race day, the cars start on the track, not from the pits. That is what makes the Carb Day Practice so special, especially for first-timers like me…seeing and hearing the cars live and close up for the first time. It was definitely goose bumps time. Wow!!
