My Grand Casino Story

The doctor started this piece as a place holder some time ago, 4-July-2007, but just not got around to finishing it.

Last night (3-July-2007), a pack of us went to dinner at a Thai place, during the discussion while we made the interminable wait for food, we started talking about casino’s… I told my tale about the MS-150 overnight at Grand Casino, and our friend Denise thought that I should write up my “Grand Casino” story.

A little background

Grand Casino had a advertising campaign that had “real” people tell their stories about the circumstances around why they went to the casino, and how they made some pile of dough, or met the love of their live, or how some other “interesting” thing happened to them.

So I had been telling the tale about the Sunday morning, 12-June-2005, when Jill and I woke up so I could complete the last leg of the MS-150 bike ride.

The Story

Saturday, Jill had come up to Hinckley and brought all our gear (I was riding with my friends Duane and Sheila) so that we could camp at the Pow-wow grounds at the casino.  The bike ride leaves Duluth on Saturday morning, does an overnight at the Grand Casino, then continues on Sunday morning and ends up Century college, where you start the ride on Friday by dropping off your bike and riding in a motor coach to Duluth.  You can haul all your stuff to the College and then the ride will transport it for you, but since my friend Craig, who lives in Duluth, said we could sleep Friday night at his house, we decided to skip hauling all our junk, pack it in Jill’s car, and she would drive up and meet us when we were done on Saturday.

All went as planned… on Saturday… we arrived, found Jill, set up the tent; a very little two man deal that I borrowed from my friend Kirk.  The tent is just barely big enough for two people to lay down in, let alone get dressed in.  But that was my task that morning… I had to put on my bib-shorts, Under Armour Hot Gear compression T-shirt, and a riding jersey.  Now, I’m not “sculpted” by any stretch of the imagination like the following image of the T-Shirt I was attempting to pour myself into; which, when you look at it in its unoccupied state, looks like it’s about the right size for a ten-year-old.

So I had woken up, resigned myself to squeezing into this t-shirt; got it out, and as I was pulling it over my head said, “Time to stuff the sausage into the casing.”  This hit Jill as a very funny remark, and she started to giggle and laugh about it, which got Duane and Sheila laughing about it in the tent next to ours.  Recently Duane said, “That’s how I want to wake up every morning; to giggling….”

So that’s my Grand Casino Story… I didn’t win a pile of money; I already am married to the love of my life; so you just get the funny thing that happened when we were there…