MOA... Means of Attack? Method of Analysis? Most Overrated Athlete? Metabolic Organic Antidote? Nope... Mall of America!

With two weekends off now, between Phoenix and Gainesville, after just having run Pomona and Phoenix back-to-back at a breakneck pace that seemed like one big thrash of a doubleheader, we have this odd mini- vacation to get through before we crank it back up in Gator Country. It's not a vacation in the "go somewhere" Chevy Chase vacation sense, because we still have plenty of "desk work" to do (as well as a third- grade art project I'll tell you about) but having two free weekends in a row is quite a bonus, so Barbara and I decided to have a big old "date" on Saturday, and we ended up having a ton of fun. Plus, we need to enjoy these weekends while we have them. By my count, we are racing on 15 out of the next 20 weekends...

More on our "date" in a bit, as I try to take this chronologically through "Free Weekend No. 1" by picking up where I left off on Friday. On the media front, we've booked Tim onto a couple of radio shows for next week, leading up to the Gatornationals. He'll be on an internet radio show called "Radio Nitro" on Monday, March 8, at 8:00 p.m. (EST). You can find that at racefanradio.com. Then, on Thursday morning he'll be doing a local radio call-in with a station down there in Florida, but I'm not sure of the call letters for that station yet.

In addition, I've been trading emails with Brandon Mudd, who does the PR for Gateway International Raceway down in St. Louis, and they've requested a one-hour autograph session for Saturday March 20 (the weekend between Gainesville and Charlotte). That's the day their season ticket holders come out to pick up their packets for the 2010 season, but it's also a day on which Tim has a commitment in Springfield, so we're working on getting Daniel down there for that. D Wilk is going to sign his share of autographs in the coming years, so we might as well give him a jump start on 2010...

As I showed on Friday's blog, the massive snow pack is really starting to melt now, but what we had going on then is nothing compared to what we have in the works right now. Despite the fact we'll most likely have another snow storm or two before things finally turn green, we are now officially in the throes of "The Big Melt" and it's kind of cool to watch it happen. We hit the mid 30s on Friday, then got a degree or two warmer on Saturday, and by Sunday we were tickling the 38-degree mark, under bright sunny skies. It's going to stay mostly sunny all week, and the low 40s are in the forecast for Wednesday and Thursday! We haven't been above 40 degrees since December 1.

All that sunshine and the above-freezing temps led to what looked like a rain shower, as snow on the roof melted and dripped down all day yesterday. The huge icicles that were clinging to the eaves and the slats of our pergola were becoming dangerously big, so I had some fun knocking them down, with both a shovel and a hammer, which left a pile of broken icicle dreams laying on the ground next to the hot tub. We've got a long way to go until it's really spring (for instance, as warm as it feels it's actually 26 right now) but you have to start somewhere, and this is the start.

On Saturday, Barb had some appointments in the morning but by just after 12:00 noon we were ready to head out for a full day and night of activities. The "date" part didn't officially begin until after the first stop, unless you consider a visit to a granite countertop showroom to be potential "date" material, and for some couples I suspect that might be the case. Unfortunately, we arrived at the showroom at 2:07, only to find out they close on Saturday's at 2:00!

Now, I'll admit we probably should've checked with the store to see what their hours are, but what sort of retail business closes at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon? Doesn't that seem like an arbitrary and illogical time to close, just when homeowners have the time to be out and about looking at stuff? I'm not sure when we're going to have time to head back over there, so here's hoping that 2:00 closing time didn't create a big delay in the bathroom project.

 From there, we headed straight to MOA to begin our fantastically fun afternoon and evening; just a couple of kids out with the family car and no curfew. We started to get an idea that we weren't the only ones going to Mall of America, though, when we were about a mile from the exit off I-494 and traffic seemed oddly heavy for a Saturday. From the stop light at the top of the exit ramp (it took us four cycles to get through) to actually finding a parking spot and stepping out of the car. took a solid 30 minutes. All to go a half-mile... The place, as we say, was packed!

I don't usually make it over to MOA more than once a year, and typically it's for one specific purpose on a weekday, to minimize the whole immensity of the experience, but this time we were going to do some shopping, have a wonderful dinner at the fabulous Napa Valley Grille restaurant, and then we had tickets to The House of Comedy, where Bryan Callen was the headliner. More about that after a few fun facts about MOA. Feel free to use these to impress your friends and neighbors.

1. Mall of America is the largest shopping mall in the United States, and only the mall in Edmonton, Alberta is bigger

2. With two massive parking structures, as well as surface parking lots, MOA has about 20,000 parking spaces

3. It is not an urban myth that MOA has no central heating system. It has none at all, and the main public areas are warmed by the lights, the huge skylight above the amusement park, and the people. As a matter of fact, even during the coldest parts of the winter the air conditioning system often has to run non-stop, just to keep it comfortable. Individual stores do have their own heating and cooling systems, which they can control, but there is no gigantic furnace hidden anywhere, for the common areas

4. There are more than 500 stores and 50 restaurants at MOA

5. If a shopper spent 10 short minutes in each store, it would take 86 hours to finish a complete visit

6. Laid out in a square, with the anchor stores in each corner and the amusement park in the center, each lap around a level of the mall is . 59 miles

7. MOA has its own zip code, and on any given day it is, effectively, the third-largest city in Minnesota

8. A full 30 percent of the shoppers at MOA have come from more than 150 miles away, making it (by far) the biggest tourist attraction in the upper midwest

Considering how long it took us to park, and how hard it was to find a spot, we're guessing there were at least 70,000 people there when we arrived. I'm not sure what the "capacity" is for MOA, but considering the mall attracts upwards of 40 million people per year, it has to be common for it to host more than 100,000 on a given day. Imagine that!

We hit a few stores on our way to our shopping destination, Discount Shoe Warehouse. DSW is the one store I am always willing to accompany my wife to, when she wants to go shopping. I'm not even opposed to going to our local Woodbury DSW on my own, to be honest. You never know what you'll find, but you know you'll get some killer deals, and in the end I walked out with a pair of black shoes that might become my new track footwear, and a new pair of Adidas running shoes for the gym. That's a very short list of purchases for a big trip to DSW, but sometimes you just don't see anything that deserves to be purchased.

 From there, it was up to Level 2 and the Napa Valley Grille, a fine dining establishment that would rate highly wherever it was located. The fun part there was the fact we got to meet two of Barbara's former IBM colleagues, from way back in the day when she first started at Big Blue, fresh out of Penn State. One of the guys actually hired Barb at IBM, to get her career started and both of them still work for the company, all these many years later. I was "out of the loop" for most of the reminiscing and old stories, but I just enjoyed watching how much they enjoyed it, and we all had a fabulous dinner. For the record, I had the Walleye.

After dinner, it was up to Level 4 and The House of Comedy. We took our seats, and were just relaxing at our table waiting for the show to start, when a nice young man came up to us and started chatting. His name is Sean Phillips and now that I have his business card I can tell you that all it says is "Sean Phillips. Professional Magician." He sat with us for a while, just the three of us, and he explained that he's far more of a psychological magician than a "tricks" guy who might pull a rabbit out of a hat or wave the "abra cadabra" wand or saw a lady in half. In the next 10 minutes, he proceeded to completely blow our minds.

His first thing was to have each of us hold our right hands out, and then he had Barbara close her eyes while I was allowed to keep mine open. As I watched, he held my right wrist with his right hand, then gently ran a finger from his left hand down the outside of my forearm, and as he did that he asked Barb "Did you feel that?" She said "Oh yeah, you just touched my arm." Gulp. I was watching, and the guy never touched her at all, but Barbara insisted she felt it. Okay then...

Next, we each interlocked our fingers and held our two hands out in front of us, then pointed our two index fingers straight out, parallel to each other and aimed right at Sean. As he squeezed my two fingers back together, Barb's fingers came together too, even though she was doing all she could to keep them apart! Just to show me there was no collusion there, he then did the same thing with Barb and I looked in amazement as my fingers involuntarily came together. Let me tell you, it's a weird deal when you watch your own digits do something you're not controlling. Wow...

His final "trick" did involve a prop (a quarter from his pocket) and it was really neat, but the those first two, where I sat there and watched it "magically" happen beyond any of my comprehension, were over-the-top. Great work, Sean! We exchanged business cards, and I got an email from Sean yesterday. We now officially have one more name on the Team Wilk blog reader list, and we'll have to get the guy out to a race, I'm thinking... Talk about entertaining your guests in the hospitality area!

Once the show started, we got a look at the surreal but fun backdrop on the stage. It's a bendy/curvy cartoonish illustration of both the Minneapolis and St. Paul skylines, and it looks like it's part Dr. Seuss and part Salvidor Dali. Pretty cool, actually.

The first comedian was a really funny guy named Andy Woodhull. His act was mostly "bit oriented" but he was quick enough to ad lib quite a bit with the folks at the front tables, and frankly both Barbara and I were laughing so hard I needed to keep a napkin nearby to wipe away the tears. He's a very talented stand-up guy, and if you ever have a chance to see him you should.

Now, for Bryan Callen. His credits are enormous, as he was an original cast member on "Mad TV" and was on that show for quite a while, but most of you will probably know him from the role he played as Eddie Palermo, the owner of the Las Vegas wedding chapel in the movie "The Hangover." As soon as he took the stage I recognized him, and about an hour later, when he left the stage to thunderous applause, I was exhausted. His act has some obvious "bits" in it, but a lot of it was very much improv, and once he got going it was uproariously funny. I'm talking very high-energy "never stop laughing, can't believe what I'm seeing, who thinks this stuff up?" hilarity.

All in all, it was a heck of a date for two old fogies who don't get a chance to do that sort of stuff very often. We'll have to do it again!

Last night, after I made dinner on the grill for the first time since 2009, we watched one of the greatest and most exciting hockey games ever. We would've loved to have seen the USA pull that out, but you can't ask for better action or a more hard-fought game, and once you get to overtime it only takes one shot to end it. Sadly, someone has to lose. GREAT stuff, by both teams, and although it was obvious the USA guys were crushed when they lost, they should stand tall with those silver medals. Those may be the most well-earned silvers in Olympic history.

Also, I'll join in with the rest of the NHRA contingent by congratulating the USA-1 bobsled team for winning the gold! A lot of people in our sport feel a connection to the bobsled team now, thanks to guys like Jeg Coughlin and Morgan Lucas, who have been so instrumental in making the annual Lake Placid competition a part of the NHRA fabric. I hope someone can get the guys from USA-1 out to a race, so we can all meet them and congratulate them for their amazing gold-medal performance. Well done!

Finally, major kudos to Canada in general and Vancouver in specific, for putting on such a memorable Winter Olympics! Fabulous. Now we go back to regular TV... Rats.

Okay, time to finish my third-grade level art project. It involved printing out some pics I took with the Nikon, cutting them down to size with scissors (which I did not run with), making and printing a little text piece on the laptop, and then using a glue stick to lay it all out on a piece of poster board. Next step: Get it laminated and then take it with me to Gainesville in a protective tube.

Hey, we needed an updated sign for our pit area, to direct fans to the Motorcraft/Quick Lane souvenir trailer where our stuff is sold, so I might as well do it myself. Six years of college and a 30-year sports career haven't all gone for nothing, and I'm proud to say I'm still able to ace my "arts and crafts" class...

Next up, building cylinder heads out of popsicle sticks!!!

Have a good one, gang.

Wilber, out!