Trip to Minnesota - Day 4

Friday morning we woke up early. Probably because we were still stuck in the Mountain time zone. After checking out of our Comfort Inn whirlpool suite and collecting some orange juice as part of the free continental breakfast offered by the hotel we hit the road at 8 a.m. Since Sioux Falls is close to the South Dakota-Minnesota border, we were in our target state in no time at all.

The weather service had issued a Severe Thunderstorm Warning for several areas of South Dakota and Minnesota the night before and rain was falling when we reached the hotel. When we left Sioux Falls that morning, it had stopped raining. The news media reported that a camper had been blown over and a tree had fallen over onto a house during the night.

We continued along I-90 until we reached a fair sized town called Worthington. In Worthington we got off the freeway and filled up our gas tank and grabbed some breakfast biscuits from the convenience store deli where we got our fuel.

Then we were off on Minnesota's County highway 60. This road was under construction -- being widened -- and went from a two lane road to a divided four lane highway and back again. The road seemed to be a popular route for truckers as we were often sandwiched between semi trailer-hauling trucks. Fortunately for us, these particular truckers shared an appreciation for speed with me so sharing the road with the hauling machines was not a problem at all.

At the town of Mankato County 60 turned into US Highway 169 which took us into the Twin Cities.

We made it to Eagan around noon. Using our road atlas we were able to locate an intersection between the highway we were on and Lone Oak Road where the Cray Research campus was. We had no idea where along the road it was, so we just drove east hoping we'd see it.

Finally, I could see some buildings tucked away behind some rolling fields of wild grass and trees. I turned on the next road, Lone Oak Drive. Then we could see the Cray sign near the driveway for Performance Drive. We knew from Cray's WWW Page that Performance Drive formed a loop around the entire Cray campus.

We were too nervous to just walk in and announce our arrival so we just drove around the campus and then headed back out. We thought that we should contact someone at the relocation company and ask them where we should go. We found a convenience store a couple of miles east of Cray on Lone Oak Road that had a pay phone. I deposited a quarter and dialed the telephone number only to be told I had to deposit 25 cents. I complied by sliding another quarter into the designated slot. Nothing. So I hung up and waited for my change to fall into the coin return. It did not.

Christine got out of the car to investigate why I had an expression of exasperation on my face. After explaining what happened to her, she located a number printed on the phone to call for repair. She picked up the receiver and dialed the number. An operator answered an listened as Christine explained what happened. Christine then asked me for the phone number I was trying to dial and the operator called the number for us.

The woman at the relocation company gave me directions to Thomas Lake Pointe-- the apartment community where we were going to live. We drove there and went to the office. The girl there was from another community and was just there to answer calls as everyone who was normally in the office had gone for the day. After a few moments of confusion she discovered that our keys were not there but that Terri, our representative from Cray, had come to pick them up. We tried to call Terri but could not reach her.

We decided to leave for an hour and grab some lunch and then try Terri again so we went to a nearby Subway for some sandwiches.

After lunch we checked to see if we could get in touch with Terri again with no luck. We decided to go over to Cray again. When we got there, Terri was there and asked us why we didn't just follow the directions in her earlier e-mail.

I felt pretty stupid for not printing her message(s) out because it had been five days since I had been able to read to my old e-mail.

Terri had our keys and our information packet. She gave us a brief tour of the Cray facility and showed us where our new housemate, Justin, worked.

We went back to Thomas Lake Pointe and located our building and went inside. In our apartment we found two bedrooms each with a queen sized bed, nightstands, and a dresser. However, the beds had no sheets. In the living room was a sofa and loveseat as well as a TV cart. The TV cart had dust on top of it where a television obviously had sat but no television.

This disturbed Christine and I because we were under the impression that our apartment would be fully furnished with bedding, towels, cooking and eating utensils, telephones, and a television and VCR.

Dismayed and confused, we walked over to the rental office and used their phone to call Terri. She told us that Oakwood Corporate Housing had not come to furnish the apartment and would probably do that in the next hour. It was nearly 3 p.m. So, we went for a walk around Thomas Lake.

The walk around Thomas Lake was nice except that it was very warm and humid and Christine and I were wearing long pants.

About 45 minutes later we walked back to the apartment to find it in the exact same state as before. It seemed Oakwoods truck was running a little late.

We decided to drive into St. Paul and have a look at the city. That was fun. Unfortunately, it began to rain not too long after we arrived in St. Paul. It rained like I had never seen it rain before. Rain poured so fast and so hard that our windshield wipers were not fast enough to clear the water off the glass they were wiping. When the rain finally eased up a little there were rivers running down the streets and deep puddles for me to drive the car through. That was fun.

On our way back to the apartment we stopped to purchase some groceries. It was after 6 p.m. when we finally made it back. Justin was there and told us that when he arrived at the apartment three men were standing outside the door with boxes waiting for someone with a key to the apartment to show up. They had only been working for about 20 minutes when we arrived.

We moved out stuff in trying to stay out of the way of the men hanging pictures, installing phones, putting down bedding, and unpacking kitchen utensils.

Finally, we were settled into our new home... and we were tired.