Divide By Zero - a blog by Kamran Ayub

My girlfriend lives in Minot, ND during the summer and since I just can’t get enough of her I decided to visit for a week. Since I am back now, safe and sound, I should probably talk about it!

I took the train from Minneapolis to Minot and boy, was it interesting. I think this is normal, but my train didn’t even arrive for departure until an hour later than it was scheduled. Then, it finally arrived in Minot about 3 hours later than its scheduled arrival time.

On the way back, the train was scheduled to depart Minot at 9:42pm and it came at… 12:30am. Luckily we only waited 45 mins because we knew in advance that it was late. I got back home 10:30am instead of 7:12am.

Amtrak: “We’re Never On Time.�

Anyway, traveling aside, I had a really fun time. Here are some of the highlights.

Matchbox 20 Concert

If Matchbox 20 came to town I wouldn’t go see them. However, since we had tickets for free, we decided why not? It was a good concert, it was a lot of fun.

Rob Thomas can actually sing so it was a pleasant surprise. I recognized many of the songs and it kind of rekindled my appreciation for them.

Minot Zoo

The zoo in Minot is small but it was still fun to visit. There were a lot of different animals but I enjoyed this snake:

The monkeys and the jaguars were fun as well.

Shot Gophers

A real redneck sport, shooting gophers was a lot of fun at the farm. See, gophers are like mice, there’s too many and they eat things that you need, like grass.

Thus, we went on a little excursion on my girlfriend’s grandparents’ land to exterminate some of the lil’ critters. We drove around in the pickup, aiming out the window at the varmints and blasting them to sweet oblivion.

Previous guns I’ve shot include a rifle, magnum pistol, and a Kalashnikov (AK-47). I wouldn’t say I’m amazing at shooting but I’m not bad either. I might have missed only 3 shots at the 5 or so gophers I killed.

Warning: These pictures aren’t for the faint of heart.

Take, for example, this beautifully gruesome sniper headshot of this poor creature:

I mauled him pretty good there. Took his head clean off pretty much. See also this neck kill of doom:

And… well, just see for yourself:

Gruesome? Perhaps. But someone has to get rid of these things. There’s always some up there whenever my girlfriend and her dad go gopher hunting.

Mom’s Cooking

My girlfriend’s mom took it upon herself to create some of her signature dishes for little old me. It’s funny because neither my girlfriend nor her sister liked most of the things she cooked… but I did!

Because I said I’d review her cooking I will have to abide by my promise: 5 stars!

Whirl-A-Whips

Ever heard of a Whirl-A-Whip? Apparently they were popular back in the 50s/60s. Now the only town that makes them is Stanley, ND. So naturally we drove 45 mins to go and try these wondrous creations.

Here’s at its core what a whirl-a-whip is: ice cream mixed with anything you like, where the mixed stuff is basically powder and flavors the cream. It’s like a sunday or a malt but it’s “whipped,� so it’s like a Blizzard meets Cold Stone flavoring-style.

It was really good but I feel that it wasn’t a whole new experience like everyone was saying. I like Cold Stone better, actually… I still haven’t tried anything better than Cold Stone.

Still it was a fun and unique experience and the whirls and while they weren’t an Earth-shattering experience they were yummy.

Other things

There were other things that we did that were also fun but aren’t really worth recording on this blog. I had a lot of fun and I hope to go up there again sometime… but maybe not by train, damn.