Searching for Easter

In 1992, my friend Tisha and her boyfriend Fritz very kindly drove about 80 miles out of their way to pick me up to take me to Tisha's mom's house for Easter dinner. The day was warm and spring bulbs were in bloom. I listened, many times over, to the Cowboy Junkies' Black-Eyed Man while I was doing whatever I did until they came to pick me up. Every Easter since then, I've played the album (and the song Oregon Hill at least twice), which oddly (given the lyrics) makes me think of spring and flowers.

A few years ago, my friend Matt and I started going for Easter rides. That's how I have that great photo of me kissing the big bunny sculpture along the creek. Today we went Searching for Easter,* or things that made us think of Easter. It was a fun multi-city scavenger hunt, with mixed results.

I've never seen a bunny costume like this.
I thought maybe it was a statue, but then it waved.
I had to stop on my way to meet Matt.

The angle isn't great, but the rabbit was very nice.

Matt and I rode to the Swedish Institute which has this
temporary golden egg sauna. The photos of the
inside look really cool. It is intended to be an incubator
of ideas and discussion.

We rode downtown, crossed the river, past the U, and to the
Conservatory. We were in search of tulips, and thought there'd be
some outside. We found blooming bulbs inside. And Easter lilies.

A perfect burst of spring color. Pretty soon,
Minnesota will be green. It is rather brown still.

We rode to the capitol to see if they had any flowers or rabbit
statues or secular eggs. Nada. But the sun peeked out and
we admired the beauty of the capitol and the shiny gold statues.

We tooled around St. Paul, rode up the Smith Avenue Bridge for the first time since it was refurbished, and saw the river from the bluffs. After parting ways back at the Fort, I saw a bald eagle and a deer, but that's pretty common, so I didn't take any photos of them.

Now that the snow has melted everywhere, I need to start looking for hills to start training for the ride I'll do in California. I have some in mind, but given the high water on the river, they aren't accessible yet.

http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/GoMaggieGo


*IMDB tells me that there are at least 200 shows or movies with "Searching for..." as the title. I didn't see any called Searching for Easter. I should have filmed today's adventures and made a documentary. A very, very short documentary, after all necessary editing occurs.