Author: Dan Gilchrist

Members of the baby boom generation may not be getting the hover cars or personal helicopters that the futurists of their youth forecasted, but it appears they will have a self-balancing, battery-powered two-wheel scooter. As the focus of one of the biggest hype campaigns in recent memory, the Segway scooter is slowly being rolled out…

There’s ice on the banks of the Mississippi, a fact I might have put to good use if I’d noticed earlier. As it is, I’m halfway across—and neck-deep in—a backwater somewhere near Fort Snelling. I can only hope these are the last few steps of a run organized by the Minneapolis Hash House Harriers. The…

The other day, the Minnesota Zoo announced the birth of a baby dolphin. The zoo is soliciting $25 sponsorships to help pay for the little calf’s all-fish diet. Once she’s weaned from her mother, she’ll eat up to 20 pounds of fish a day. Where will all that fish come from? Perhaps our thriving local…

The sugar glider is an adorable, furry animal that measures about a foot in length—roughly half body and half tail. This expensive flying marsupial comes from the Australasian rainforest, and it’s suddenly become popular here and nationwide. The animal is named for its attraction to sweet tree fruits of the rainforest canopy, and its ability…

For 23 years, Rick Lindsey has lived aboard a renovated World War II warship that he salvaged himself. Previous owners had stripped the ship of everything of value, including the deck planking and pilothouse. Eventually, it was abandoned in the St. Croix River. There the wooden hull lay, half submerged, until Lindsey found it one…

Coming down the water, with a wide-open mouth of vibrating teeth, the milfoil harvester is a light blue paddle-wheeled contraption worthy of a Dr. Seuss rhyme. Or maybe it’s something Jules Verne would have moored at his lake cabin. The combine-like machine is a common sight on Twin Cities lakes, ever since the early 1990s…