As evidenced by the fact that all sorts of biking has broken out, despite high water and epic flooding in parts of the Twin Cities. I am not one to stop for photos while I bike but if Nokomis is still stupidly flooded the next time I ride by, I just might have to... So what else have we been doing with our first summer as a married couple you might ask? Well, all sorts of fun things!
Not long after my last post, we departed for our honeymoon trip to Montreal & Quebec City. I uploaded the best of the photos to my Flickr page here:
Honeymoon Album. We had a fantastic time in Canadia and I really enjoyed dusting off my French skills. Using them for email at work is not enough, I've discovered, particularly when dealing with the totally crazy French-Canadian accent. But I muddled through and everyone was super nice. I highly recommend repeating our exact itinerary to anyone. A great trip!
While we were on our honeymoon, the Twin Cities newest light rail line had it's official grand opening -
Welcome to the Green Line! We were a bit bummed to miss all the 1st day celebrations but, fortunately, the train was still running when we got back. We took that first Saturday and had some excellent Green Line adventures:
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| A green line train, waiting and ready to go. |
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| The platform at Victoria Street, our first stop. |
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| Our first stop was Que Nha, our favorite Vietnamese restaurant in town. |
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| We then took it to the end of the line, the newly restored St. Paul Union Depot. |
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| Metro Transit's shiny new service facility, just past the SPUD. |
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| Construction has begun next door on the new stadium for the St. Paul Saints. |
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| Finally, we stopped at Tin Whiskers, a new brew-pub/taproom in downtown St. Paul. |
In other news, you may have seen
elsewhere on the intertubes, from
members of my very own family, that my employer, The Toro Company, just celebrated the 100th anniversary of its' founding. It started off with a
Centennial Celebration on the actual day, July 10th, 2014. The mayor of the City of Bloomington (where Toro HQ is located) and the Governor of our great state both came to speak. It was declared "Toro Day" across the whole state. We also had all sorts of equipment and historical items on display, in addition to our shiny new building, for all our guests to see:
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| This is a RT600 Trencher, one of Toro's newest pieces of equipment. |
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| Hayter lawnmowers, built by our subsidiary in the UK. |
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| Toro Commercial equipment. |
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| A very early predecessor of the Workman vehicle above. I like the color. :-) |
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| One of our first big hits for residential customers, the Snow Hound snowthrower. |
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| More cake. This one was just destined to look pretty though. |
Last night was the big celebration at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. We had something like 3000 people there between employees, retirees, customers, and vendors. It was a great party, in true Toro style. I feel very fortunate to have picked such a great place to work. In other news,
my former employer has been sold to a French boat-building conglomerate. I made a good decision, I think.
The rest of this weekend will be spent immersed in sports - Le Tour and of course tomorrow is the final of the World Cup. I am rooting for Germany and looking forward to an exciting match.
Comments
A Hayter lawn mower? That's a strange name.