Day 7 -- Minneapolis

Yesterday, we went to White Bear Lake, one of Minnesota's huge number of lakes. Although Joanna lives a short walk from Lake Calhoun, we chose White Bear because you could windsurf on it. And it was a nice warm windy day -- a good day for windsurfing.

Okay, I could go on trying to trick you into thinking we windsurfed, but surely you know us better than that. It was Steve who was the windsurfer and he had a fun and exhausting time doing so while the rest of us strolled and swam at the lake. Then, we barbecued and picnicked.

The weather for our whole trip has been quite hot, with every day in the 90s. Today, though, the heatwave is supposed to break and the high is only supposed to be in the 70s.

In the evening, we took about a 2-mile walk down to and along the Mississippi River.

Perhaps the most interesting part of our day was in the morning when Laura and I went to the cafe across from Steve's apartment, where we are staying. We struck up a conversation with a fellow, James, who was clearly a grown-up hippie. We talked for a while, chatting about how we were moving cross-country and him reminiscing about his time spent in San Francisco during the "Summer of Love".

After a while, we asked him what he did in Minneapolis. He told us he was a "common laborer, and an inventor". We, of course, asked the next question -- what did he invent?

At first he was fairly coy. He said he held a patent on an invention that related to one of the world's most well-known icons. For a minute, we thought he was going to make us play "Guess the Icon", and it's a good thing he didn't since my guess was going to be the golden arches of McDonalds.

But, after a moment, he revealed that the icon was the yin and yang symbol. He spent the next fifteen minutes going on and on about hidden diamonds, circles within circles, God, the Big Bang, and I don't know just what else. We made a rather hasty retreat from that cafe, but I certainly will think of James whenever I see the yin/yang symbol in the future.