A Minneapolitan story
So it was pretty early winter, December I think, probably just a bit before Christmas. It was my freshman year in college, and my brothers senior year. I was at the University of Minnesota (HUGE school, about 50,000 students) and living in a dorm about 4 miles from where my brother was living/going to school at a small art/design school. I was visiting him, classes were done and I had no finals, he was done with his classes too, and there were two girls from england that were at the school for the semester he'd become good friends with and they were leaving in a few weeks
so while I was over one night, he, and they, and a bunch of his other friends and I decided to take a bike ride
it was a beautiful night
the top picture is what you need to be picturing
because that's exactly where we went
it was probably about -5 or -10 celcius, no wind whatsoever, crisp and clean and quiet (it was a weeknight) so we bike out, wearing hats and scarves and long underwear and jackets and gloves, but not so bundled up that we couldn't move or felt uncomfortable, and we biked through the city streets which were deserted, about 10 of us, my brother had a case of beer in his backpack, we're weaving and passing each other
we get to the greenway, which is basically just an old railway line that's been converted to a bike path that runs through the city, it's got gardens and urban farms along the sides, and it's sunk below the level of the city for much of the length, so it feels separated.
I still didn't really know my way around so I was just going with the flow, and suddenly we get off the greenway and are in this beautiful neighborhood, all old houses with snow covering their roofs and lawns
we bike past these and get to the lake, we are at a point where the path runs right up to the lake and there is a wall with a rail to keep people from falling in, so we get off our bikes and my brother decides to see if we can walk on it yet. He holds onto the railing and lowers himself to the ice, he stands on it but it cracks up all around him so he hauls himself back up.
we drink some beer and decide to throw rocks at the ice to see how thick it is (if we ban break it)
the first rock we throw bounces and creates that crazy, strange, mystical sound so we spend the next 20 minutes hunting for rocks and marveling at how strange it is.
Then we get back on our bikes and complete the circuit around the lakes, ending up back at his place to smoke some weed warm up listen to music and fall asleep
it was one of those rare perfect nights