Sorry for the absence. It was a pretty busy vacation, with my brother’s heterosexual commitment ceremony followed by the very busy rugby tournament. I will share a few brief notes.
The trip started out with a shitpile of a flight out of DCA thanks to Delta. I guess there were big storms in the Midwest which delayed my first flight, it got worse from there, but I managed to take a nice photo of National Airport before I flew out:

The photo was taken with the PhotoFX application on my Motorola Droid, which is sort of a knockoff of the iPhone’s Hipstamatic in case you were wondering. It really enhances cell phone photos nicely.
Anyway, the delay out of DC made for a flight rearrangement to two Delta planes, both of which needed repairs. This made my miss my flight from Minneapolis to LaCrosse, but I got a rental car to drive home the rest of the way, which got me in at about 2:30am. I was stopped by a hot scruffy police officer who was concerned that my brights were still on. Perhaps I was too agreeable to whatever he asked, and he let me free with no ticket.
The car actually gave me a little more freedom in my hometown to drive around when I wanted to, so I think it was worth it. I did some geneaology work and mostly confirmed a lot of information that Homer had painstakingly gathered for me. I took a lot of photos of family tombstones, possibly not the right ones, and I have to sift through them to figure out who was whom.
I also visited the World’s Largest Six-Pack in LaCrosse:

The wedding went well but there were lots of cupcakes left over which I was glad to help get rid of. I also had a nice dinner at the Trempealeau Hotel with mom. It rained every day so I didn’t get the chance to go down on the bike trail as much as I wanted to.
I drove back up to Minneapolis for the rugby tournament, which was possibly the most exciting Bingham Cup tournament for the team ever. The level of play for many gay teams has improved, particularly Los Angeles, New York and our two teams. I was with the B-side, and we managed to beat Sydney in the semifinals and made it to the finals, losing in a valiant match to Sydney 10-7. The As placed 4th in their division.
I met Sean and Darren one evening early in the tournament schedule at Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis, and it was good to meet them both! I told Darren that his relatives had the greatest representation in my hometown cemeteries and that they bred like rabbits. There are very few pics of me from the tournament, I was fairly busy getting ready for the matches, but several of us on the team shaved down to dirty ‘staches, which I kept for the weekend.
The flight back was much nicer than the first, and I took a day off to settle in and I’m glad I did. Before I left for the trip I hit a curb fast with my 20 year-old Trek, and bent the rim. When I took it in they declared it to not be worth the repairs, which I had suspected was coming. So I bought a new Specialized Sirrus Sport commuter/road bike:

My former bike was so old and beat up I never worried much about it getting stolen, but now I’m paranoid my new baby will get lifted. But I got a better lock for this one and I don’t leave it out much so it should be OK.