We were planning a big day at the ball park and it would have been perfect if William could have come with us. But he had made commitments to help with the Memorial Day programs at the local towns, so we had to go without him. It turned out that he had a lot of fun spending the day with friends after the program was over, on the river. They ended up spending the whole afternoon tubing. I was glad that they did something fun.
Before we started for Minneapolis, we stopped by our town’s Memorial to show Kyle and Alli. It rained just a little bit the night before, but it shouldn’t mess up the days activities. What happens in the local towns is that the high school band plays with the kids marching and then there is always a guest speaker. Very nice, and I wish I could have been in two places at once because I’ve never missed our boys marching before. But I guess that’s just what has to happen today.
Visiting the Memorial in town this morning
Then off to the ball game we went. We decided to take the railway into the city which works really well. You pay just a couple of dollars and then you don’t have to worry about where you’re going to park your car. It’s an easy way to get around in that part of the city. The tickets that we had for the game were just fantastic! We were so close to the field that we could actually see sometimes if it looked like a strike or a ball while at home plate. The weather was also just great! Our seats were under the overhang, so we sat in shade the whole day. Some of the other people that were sitting in the sun were looking pretty hot as the day went on. We were a little worried that the game was going to go into overtime. They were tied at the 8th inning and it was looking like an overtime situation again. What happened to us one time when we were at a Twins game, was that they were tied and then the first overtime happened, then the second overtime happened. And there is some discussion in our family just how many innings that game went. Some say it was 20 innings because we did the 7th inning stretch a couple of times. They reopened their concession stands and literally ran out of everything! So when this game was tied for sometime, we thought.. oh no, here we go again! But the Twins pulled it off in the bottom of the 8th and everything was good. 
Before the game
Fantastic seats!
Then back to the car we started. We hopped on the railway again to get to our car. Now everything was good at the beginning, but it suddenly turned bad. What I mean by bad was on about the third stop, a group of 5 girls that were about 14 years old got on. Sounds kind of harmless doesn’t it? But the problem was that they were so loud and so very, very obnoxious. They were swearing more than they were not swearing and again, really loud. Now Daryl and I have been in situations where you’ll be by some kids that are thinking that they are really cool, and eventually they’ll settle down. This was NOT one of those cases. What these girls were doing was saying really bad things about the people around them and then was looking for a fight. They were so bad that this one boy about 7 years old was trying really hard not to cry. Finally this lady that was around 45 (?) and weighed about 120 pounds had just about enough. She said that she was tired of listening to them and they needed to stop with their language and yelling because there are kids on the train and enough was enough. This really made these girls mad and then they started to sing some really bad rap songs and again very bad language. Then they said that no one would say this if they weren’t racist. Now it was getting ugly. About 5 others were telling them to calm down and stop with their swearing and yelling because no one was going to put up with it anymore. The girls now were ready for a fight. And to be honest, I thought that there was going to be a fight. People were yelling and it was just crazy! These girlds told some of the passengers- what are you going to do? This one guy said that he was going to stop the train if they kept it up. Well the girls dared him and this one lady pushed the emergency button. This kicked it up a notch for the girls. They were calling this lady just about every mean name that you can think of , and was about an arms length away from her. But no one backed down and finally the girls said that they were going to get off the train. The emergency contact for the train asked why the alarm was pushed and the lady who pushed it said that these girls need to get off the train and not to come back. The girls said that they now wanted to get off earlier anyway and moved to the door. When the train had stopped, there were two policeman standing there waiting for them. By the time the doors closed, the girls were sitting on a bench with the two cops beside them. The whole train just cheered as we left these girls behind. They were so mad, and so were the people on the train. But I thought a lot about this lady who finally stood up to them. She was right beside us, and after everyone caught their breath we had a chance to talk. She was in the service for 17 years and said that if we don’t show our kids that this type of behavior is unacceptable, how will they ever learn? Her son, who looked about 9 years old said that he had his hand on his phone the whole time because he was getting so scared for their safety that he was ready to call 911. But after seeing how brave this one lady was, I’m thinking he had nothing to worry about. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. For a small part of this whole ordeal, I thought that someone was going to get hurt or maybe even stabbed. But no one did, and now we can check off our list for being on a train when a fight broke out.
One the way home we saw a car with a surf board on it. The car had Minnesota license plate on it, but where do you think he was going? He was heading south, so that meant he was going towards Iowa. I’m thinking he’d better have a lot of gas in his car if he’s looking for some good surfing! The sunset on the way home was really nice and I quick snapped a photo. I always like when the sky is so colorful in the summer. Someone told me once that it’s so colorful because of all the dust in the air. Whatever the reason, it can be a really pretty display sometimes.
Check out the surf board on top of the car. Surfing in Minnesota?
Beautiful sunset tonight