I'm A Travelin' Man

The original schedule, when I came out here to Minnesota, was that I would be going home last Saturday night. This would have allowed me to go to at least the Sunday festivities of last weekend's Orlando Comic-Con, where I had free entrance arranged with a press pass and an in-person interview scheduled with Mike Kingston, creator of the new comic book "Headlocked" for Athena Comics Guide. Alas, that was not to be and I have made arrangements for an e-mail interview with Mike which will appear soon over at Athena. I was very much looking forward to meeting him in person and discussing his comic book creation.

My new schedule has me arriving home this Friday around noon, which unfortunately means I will not be able to attend the BlogOrlando meeting that starts Friday morning. By the time I could get my baggage and get from the airport to the meeting site most of the tracks will be over. I REALLY enjoyed last year's first BlogOrlando and was truly looking forward to this year's with it's multitude of informative blogging tracks that were scheduled.

But, that's the way things go and I knew things like this were a possibility when I took this position.

Sunday I slept in and then got up, showered and drove a few blocks over to downtown Rochester. I parked the car and spent about 90 minutes just walking around taking pictures of the downtown area, the Mayo Clinic and one of the most interesting Barnes & Noble bookstores in the country I suppose, the Chateau Barnes & Noble.



The Chateau Barnes & Noble was originally a theater, one which Dr. Charles Mayo laid the cornerstone for in April of 1927. It was originally named the Chateau Dodge Theater because the Dodge Lumber Company had previously stood on the site. By the time construction was complete 6 months later, the $400,000 theater opened with the movie, "Spring Fever."

It has a very rich history which, unfortunately, I don't have time to recite at the moment.

The outside is designed as a French Chateau and the theater marquee remains but with the Barnes & Noble name in place of movies that showed here, such as "Gone With the Wind" in 1940. The box office also remains, though now it serves to display books rather than to sell 25 cent tickets to see a newsreel, cartoon, movie and comedy act.

The first 2 floors on the inside have been designed as a Medieval village complete with castles, arches, streets and a starlit sky above on the ceiling. It is absolutely magical when you step inside, especially as you take the escalator up to the second floor and see the castle walls that seemingly rise up at your arrival. I was wishing so much that Cindy could have been here to see this and walk through it with me because I know she would have enjoyed it and been entranced by it even more than I was.

Anyway, I took lots of pictures of it and they are over on the Flickr badge if you want to see them. I hope to get the others of downtown Rochester and the Mayo Clinic uploaded soon.

So, I return Friday afternoon to Orlando, but then 16 hours later Cindy and I leave to drive up to North Carolina for a 3-day weekend to look at some more property. We return home on Monday afternoon and then the rumor is that I will possibly be getting back on a plane soon thereafter, but to where just yet I don't know. Possibly back to Minnesota, possibly somewhere else.

That's why I'm A Travelin' Man.

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