A Trip to Dundas

It’s July 4th and I am on a dirt road in the middle of freaking nowhere.

This is on the tail end of a journey that started five hours earlier in Minneapolis.

The heat wave made my life miserable during the first half of the week. The air temperature is close to 100 degrees which makes sleeping virtually impossible. All I can do is sit around in my soaked underbritches thinking about how hot it is.

The night-time sweatfest also means that I am washing my sheets and pillows every day. This goes on for about three days.
By July 4th I had enough. I haven’t slept well in three days and I am determined to find an AC unit.
Target tells me that no store in the metro area had air conditioning units or fans. Wal-Mart also sends me away. The first Home Depot only has this ridiculous $550 unit that has to sit upright for 24 hours before use. The second Home Depot tells me that they are sold out of everything.

What irks me during this enitre process is that the store employees keep looking at me like I am crazy for inquiring after an AC unit. The real question during a heat wave is not “why didn’t I get an AC unit earlier?” but rather “why the hell did no store stock up?”

It’s like a store being surprised that people want to buy flowers on Mothers’ Day.

I eventually find my way to the Coon Rapids Wal-Mart, which is about 25 miles north of downtown Minneapolis. They tell me that their next shipment of AC units is at 10 p.m., but that they’d sell out before the end of the evening. I move on.

By that Wal-Mart is a Menards, which is like a Midwestern Home Depot chain. The Menards employees said that they are sold out of AC units, but they heard that the Menards in Dundas still has air conditioners.

Of course I have never heard of Dundas before. I plug it into my GPS and decide that the promise of AC is worth the journey to this town of 1,300 that is 70 miles south.

After an hour of driving, GPS directs me off of the highway and through cornfields. The town eventually pops up and there are a lot of trucks and beards.

The town is cute enough, but seems way too small to support chain stores until I realize that the town abuts a highway. In addition to the Menards, there’s even a Kmart Supercenter.

The Dundas Menards is absolutely massive and has a lovely old lady working the AC unit section. She smiles when I tell her where I’m from.

Sales Lady: “Oh, you’re not the first one to come from the cities. We have a guy from White Bear Lake on his way and that’s about 68 miles north of here. Oh, and we just got a new shipment in by-the-way. You can have your pick of any model you want.”

Yes, yes, freaking yes!

Within 10 minutes I’m shoving my $200 air conditioner in my hot car, avoiding an Indian woman barreling through the parking in her Dodge 4×4, and heading home.

Of course my GPS freaks out and keeps telling me to go on random dirt roads. The entire time I’m hoping my tires don’t blow and that Jeepers Creepers doesn’t come on the radio.

I make it back home eventually and spend the next hour trying to figure out how to install the stupid air conditioner. The poor writing and low-quality pictures in the manual are thoroughly unhelpful, but I figure it out somehow with minimal sobbing.

Now my apartment is a glorious 72 degrees and I can sleep. Hallaleu.

I didn’t go out or do anything for the 4th because I was too excited to have air conditioning. I did go out the night before however, to the Saloon. It was packed. And there was drag!

It was also Latin night though, which is highly ironic.

The next “holiday” for me is my birthday on Monday. I still haven’t decided whether I’m doing anything or taking the day off work. Probably not, but we’ll see.