Notes on Fargo

Well, surprisingly, Fargo is booming. I’m not sure what the driving force is, but there is a huge amount of new roads and buildings. People are everywhere. Since land is cheap (N. Dakota’s population is something like 500-600,000), the roads and three and four lanes wide in each direction. The talk is that it, like the Twin Cities, has a broad base of businesses. No gambling.

For Jan and Feb the average HIGH temp is around 19-20 degrees!!!!!

Went to the old downtown. Nice, but not especially quaint as some older towns in the west.

I take back what I said about the blondes. This morning, I saw a lady trying to make a waffle on one of the flip ‘em things. You know, it’s a swivel heating device. You poor the mix in, rotate it, and wait for the timer. Well, she was trying to, like, pick the whole damn thing up and flip it. She had a baby in one arm and a little kid standing beside her. The mix was pouring out onto the counter and steam was hissing out around the edges as she was yanking and pulling and twisting on the thing. I asked if I could help and she said, “It says to flip it but I don’t know how to do it.” I just laid the handle back in the cradle and turned it over. She said, “Oh, I didn’t how it was that simple.” SHE WAS BLONDE.

Hey, I shaved my head last night. Well, not totally. And it’s not like I meant to. What happened was that I forgot my beard/hair trimmer and had to go buy one. The little buzzer I got had an attachment that, I found later, wouldn’t really do the job so I took it off and took a shot at my hair with just the blades. Well, it took the hair down to the scalp. So now I have to do the whole thing, right? Oh, well, it’s not like I was looking for hot dates on this trip anyway. Hell, if I put a tattoo on my neck I’d look like a Nazi jail gang member, or else a member of MS-13.

Well, need to run to the Harley shop, grab some oil, do some more investment work, and hit the road. Rain coming later so I need to get down the road.

PS: I can tell that from here I’ll be jumping off into the west. The blank horizon on the west side of town looks the same as the sea outside of San Francisco…fathomless, distant, almost foreboding. It will be like stepping off the edge of the world.