Frozen Four recap

Before Gus tags me for violating the one-week rule....

We went with our friends Paul and Amy to the Frozen Four in St. Louis last weekend. Liz and I also took the off-day to visit my brother and sister-in-law near Springfield, MO. Some quick thoughts:

• Springfield (pop. ca. 200k) looks almost like a real city now, a far cry from it during the '80s. Instead of Waldenbooks in Battlefield Mall and Hooked on Books on S. Campbell, now a Borders and a Barnes & Noble almost face each other across Glenstone.
• We had lunch with Curtis at the finest Mexican restaurant in M'field. And M'field is no longer dry! Have the Baptists been outvoted or the bootleggers switched their business to meth?
• St. Louis has long struck me as the westernmost eastern city. It reminded Amy of Baltimore. There's something to this: a wintry downtown? Dingy brick buildings throughout the city? Anyone have thoughts?
• Maybe I'm spoiled by Toyota Center in Houston, but Scottrade Center in St. Louis seemed very dingy (the concourses are clad in slate blue restroom tile) and dated (the colors under the roof are teal blue and yellow--who decided against Blues blue?). Of course, the arena is, what, 15 years old? Time to tear it down!
• We toured some wineries near Dutzow and Augusta, MO (about 40 miles west of St. Louis). Blumenhof has a red with the taste and mouthfeel of port that Liz and I enjoyed. Plus the hills and winding roads reminded me, in an enjoyable way, of growing up in the Ozarks. That doesn't happen very often!
• Along I-44 westbound around milepost 110, someone a few years ago put up a homemade billboard, "If Cardinals build highways, we'll build stadium." The homemade billboard is still up even though new Busch has been open for a year and, as I understand it, the State of Missouri declined to fund it. (Instead, our hotel and rental car taxes funded it, I reckon).
• Forcing Paul, a baseball hater, to walk past all three accessible sides of new Busch was kinda cruel. Though the statues outside the NW (left field) corner reminded me that baseball has a tradition and history in the US that is only matched in North America by hockey's in Canada.
• Minnesotans tended to recognize and comment favorably on our Houston Aeros sweaters, even though I wore a Fighting Sioux hat for both days of games.
• If a single male were looking for non-skinny German/Scandinavian-American girls, he could have found more than his share.
• North Dakota lost on Thursday to Boston College, 6-4, driving Amy into a funk.
• Worst fan award: the BC fan sitting in Sec. 303, row H, who left the championship game after Michigan State went up 2-1 with 18.7 seconds remaining. A goal in 18.7 seconds is very possible! Plus, it's the championship game! Even if you think the refs and the TV producers are biased against you, stick it out!