First things first. The SD trains look awesome! The transit people were right. The pictures don't do it justice. But here they are anyway. It was hard to get a picture of the whole train at once, so you might have to use your imagination a little bit.
Meghan, Eileen and I started the day out with a one-hour, ten-minute roundtrip ride on the Hiawatha line of the Metro Transit. Then we headed over to Titan Worldwide (the company who works with the transit authority) to meet with Tom and Robert and to warn up our toes. They gave us a full rundown of what we could do (smile and represent SD with pride) and what we couldn't (carry guns). :)
We stopped to eat lunch, and the rest of the day was spent prepping to meet with the cowboys, taking pictures of the train on the platforms and in the streets, riding the train and wrangling the cowboys once they got into town.
It's worked out quite well that we're so close to the Mall of America because it's the starting point of the light rail line, and we have easy access to that platform (among other perks). We also enjoy the nearby airport, which provides us with timely wake up calls and periodic frights throughout the day.
We're also slowly but surely learning more and more about our pals here in Minneapolis. We learned this morning that if it's cold and if it's early, we need to tread lightly. This early morning crowd flips a 180 at night...as we found out from a new SD fan who has already booked a vacation back to the Black Hills this summer. We met a rambunctious fellow on the train who had been to SD a few years ago during the 4th of July, and loved it so much that he's already planning his next adventure. And we haven't even broken out the cowboys yet!
As our day comes to a close, we found it to be quite an eye-opener. Stay tuned for the introduction of the Wild West.
