The first thing I saw when I walked off the plane in Sioux Falls, South Dakota was a giant banner reading “WELCOME HUNTERS!” And there had been a lot of guys in camo at the Minneapolis airport. So I guess it’s that season.
When I picked up my rental car, the clerk asked me if I was in town for hunting or business. I mentioned I was off to Mitchell for the McGovern Conference and that seemed to stump him so I said it was sort of business.
His instructions to Interstate 90 seemed simple, but they went against the signs, and I ended up driving ten miles out into the country following I90 West signs only to get to a ramp that was closed because of construction. I circled back around and got on the highway, thinking that if I was just a little less cautious I could pull off onto the side of the highway and just turn around, because the construction had narrowed the freeway down to one lane in each direction running right next to each other. Instead, I went all the way back into Sioux Falls and got going the right direction. That only took forty-five minutes and didn’t put the trip off to an auspicious start.
On the other hand, once I was back past the construction, the freeway was straight and relatively flat. After noticing my speed creep up to 90 at one point (90, in the dark, in 25-degree weather, maybe not the smartest thing), I kept it down to the legal 75 and made it to Mitchell finally about a quarter to midnight.
Twelve miles out of town, right at 11:30, a big meteor flashed straight ahead of me. I’m reading Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle In the Dark right now, so I’m not going to make anything portentous out of it, but it was rather cool to see.