The Wake

A note from your campus editor:

Spring break can mean many things. Some students spend time dodging prostitution peddlers while others rest at the keys of their computers. Staff writers of The Wake’s campus section have written about their experiences from this past spring break.

Watertown, MN

On Monday of spring break, I held baby lambs while my mom castrated them. According to Mom, only the best 10 percent of lambs “miss the cut,” if you will. While the elite rams are free to wander the farmyard, cruisin’ for ewes, the neutered lambs are left to a mundane life of eating hay and sleeping in crap until their inevitable slaughter.
It hit me when I came back to the Cities for the rest of break: I had aided in stripping baby lambs of one of their only joys in life: humping everything in sight. How could I have endorsed such a cruel activity? Further, what’s left of my masculinity after castrating so many eager young rams?
I knew I had to do something to re-establish my manhood, something flamboyant like shooting a woolly mammoth with a laser or burning a cross in somebody’s yard. After some drinking, party-hopping and general merry-making, some friends and I decided to visit the Dinkytown train bridge. Luckily, a train was passing under when we got there.
I had my pants unzipped before I got to the bridge. Once we got to the top, three of us shamelessly pissed all over the train as it lumbered westward. I’d like to imagine some calling this act symbolic, representing a peasant uprising against oppressive industrialism. Others might pass it off as booze-induced mischief. Whichever side wins, I still found joy in pissing on a train. And, though I may have extinguished the glint in many a lamb’s eye over spring break, the stars still glittered over Dinkytown on that Friday night.
- Nick Neaton

Cyberspace

My spring break was more exciting than most could experience. I got to travel to a faraway land, relax along the shores of an exotic beach and did some sightseeing in a foreign country.
And it didn’t cost me a penny.
With the use of a free online game and some imagination, I was able to enjoy many of the same experiences other students have during the exciting but expensive spring breaks.
The game, Achaea: Dreams of Divine Lands, is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game which allows people to play as a self-created avatar. The game is text-based, meaning there is no visual aspects except for a text description of your avatar’s surroundings.
To start my vacation, I gathered some supplies, packed a lunch and headed to the small port village of Shastaan where I was able to board a ferry headed for the tropical island of Ulangi.
Upon arrival I decided to take a walk across the beach. After exploring the area, I set myself down near the borders of a marshy forest. The sound of waves sliding up the beach mingled with the whistling of a brisk wind through the trees, creating a relaxing atmosphere.
Feeling hungry, I spread out my packed lunch consisting of roast mutton, grapes and lemon pie. Then, I pulled out a bottle of tequila and drank the day away while tanning and sleeping in the warm sunshine.
Needless to say, a good time was had by all.
– Dave Brakke
Las Vegas, Nevada

Going to Las Vegas, or “Sin City,” I expected to see showgirls, strippers, flashy lights, dirty old men and a street full of drunks. When I got there, that’s exactly what I found! While in Minneapolis, laws forbid one from carrying an open container of alcohol in the street; in Vegas this practice is almost encouraged. One can head to Kahunaville for a Big Kahuna, then walk down the strip. When it’s empty, stop at the nearest bar and get another large drink to continue down the street.
While my friends and I wandered down the strip carrying our Big Kahunas and Big Ritas (from Margaritaville), we passed by men and women on every corner flipping cards promoting prostitutes. Some wore T-shirts proclaiming 24-hour services of women able to reach one’s hotel in 30 minutes or less, others stacked cards onto barbed wire fences or slyly slipped cards into backpacks of unbeknownst tourists. I’m not sure if these men and women are for or against the practices they advertise, but I know they’re doing a job few Americans would be willing to tolerate: standing on their feet for hours late at night flipping cards at tourists to promote prostitution. I wonder about the pay, benefits and legality of these jobs on the street. They stood next to rows of magazine stands carrying pictures of more naked girls willing to perform certain services for men with money. Las Vegas is filled with opportunities good and bad - for women who’ve lost their way in life, men who must pay to get laid and for me, of memories of a Spring Break spent talking, laughing, drinking and dancing with great friends.
- Peri Riddel
Thief River Falls, MN

My spring break was supposed to rock. My friend from high school and I couldn’t afford to go anywhere warm, so we opted to drive to Canada and flirt furiously to score free drinks. Too bad we didn’t make it there.
After soloing to the radio for more than 300 miles, I arrived in our meeting place and hometown, Thief River Falls, population :8,000. Bigger than most small towns, true, but a far cry from the bustling city.
“Well, I don’t know . . . I don’t know about going to Canada . . .” my friend said once I arrived.
WHAT?!?
On a Sunday night, the only thing to do in Thief River Falls is go to the bowling alley or drink beer out of a truck bed while shivering in a snow bank. Since six inches of snow still laid on the ground, we opted for the bowling alley.
No doubt about it; my friend chickened out on me. I drove back to the Cities the next day. Why not? There’s a lot more to do down here and, believe it or not, it’s actually warmer here too. Somehow I didn’t expect the trek back to my hometown to make me feel so out of place. Little is tying me to the place I was born; my family has packed up and left Thief River behind too. My displacement was obvious. Thief River Falls was a hallow echo of the rocking spring break I was supposed to have.
– Kay Steiger
Interstate 85 through Georgia & Alabama, 3:00 a.m.

“We’re driving to Florida,” I heard from outside my tent.
As the sun went down, these weren’t exactly welcome words when our destination was 12 hours away. But with a pile of rain on top of us and our campsite, I couldn’t really argue. It was time to go.
Driving across the country through the middle of the night brings you into a world only truckers usually dare to share space with.
Without streetlights or even the beams of a full moon, you’re sent speeding into a gaping, black hole with nothing around it but more darkness. The only thing guiding you along are the white lines, flashing in front of your car’s headlights. You can drive across an entire county without seeing the rear reflectors of another automobile.
But every fifty miles or so, you begin seeing a hazy glow up ahead. The glow becomes a line of streetlights. Those streetlights become buildings, sometimes skyscrapers. In our case, we drove through Atlanta, a monolithic city compared to Minneapolis. With nobody else on the road, we freely sped through Atlanta. The unusually quiet city, with its miles of artificial light, were comforting compared to the abyss we’d traveled through the hour before. I felt I was in a destination, rather than the uncertainty of the countryside.
We did this all night; speeding in and out of the dark into cities both large and small.
Perhaps delirium made me think of graduation coming in May. I thought about speeding through four years of college, comforted by knowing where I was. But as May approaches, what’s ahead of my headlights is becoming blurrier and blurrier. For the first time in four years, I have no idea what’s past this town. My degree grants as much certainty as the countryside.
- Eric Magnuson