The Royce Files

A former room-mate of mine was from Proctor. He was a cross country ski champion. And there was another guy from Proctor, Garry Bjorklund , who was pretty good runner- he broke high school records and was named an All-American numerous times. He also competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal in the 10000 meters. In Proctor I found no monument to my room mate or Garry. Instead I found a giant of a monument at the top of the hill- a Duluth Missabe and Iron Range Yellowstone class locomotive .

The DMIR once served Duluth and the region Actually there are more than 2 railroads operating in Duluth and Superior. At one time there were 11. But that is entirely different topic. Just next to I 35 sits the Lake Superior Railroad Museum This post is going to focus on the 2 passenger railroads in Duluth. Yes, there are 2. Most know the North Shore Scenic Railroad that has its headquarters at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum .Their operation is top notch and features numerous excursions throughout the year. Last year I rode a Pizza Train. It was a very memorable excursion up the North Shore from Duluth to a little bit past the French River. It of course included pizza and an onboard music performance. We sat in an old Northern Pacific coach and then sat in a double decker Chicago Northwestern commuter car. GE 50T Industrial Switcher as seen from safari car Perhaps the lesser known of the passenger railroads is the Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad but that is...

George M. Cohan overlooks Times Square The first lines of the musical George M! are "George who?" Indeed the George I write of today is no other than George M. Cohan Though he liked to claim July 4th as his birth, George most probably was born on the 3rd in Providence, RI. My first encounter with this song and dance man draped in red, white, and blue was my freshman year of high school. I was in the cast of the Park High's fall musical George M! The biographical musical from the 1967 Broadway season is a behemoth of Cohan story and musical material. It did a fair business on Broadway and starred Joel Grey as Cohan. In an odd turn of events, the Park edition of the show had a considerable amount of re-writes, clocked in at just over 3 hours. Not sure our audience was ready for that kind of time commitment. A guy named Mike played Cohan and I was the unofficial understudy- I did not know that until he was late to one of the performances. I think I wrote more about ...

While breezing through the web I cam across a post about social media posts (it was actually a re-post of a re-post of a post.) The info-graphic by the MyCleverAgency offers enough tips to make you a pro at social media posting (and we need so many of those :) right?) So if you want to be a Google+ expert look below. The tips you never knew you needed to know

Our rundown would not be complete without a few straggling heroes out there pounding the pavement in Fargo.  Wonder woman leads a small pack of runners through the streets of Fargo. Fortunately she did have her golden lasso of truth to round up the bad guys getting in the way of the runners. The Justice League turned out this year running besides each other in  unity against evildoers and sore calves. Good to see Green Lantern was represented this time. Superman has also grown a beard in the time it takes him to run 26.2 miles. And finally the superhero who should have been on more shirts this year- The Flash. How could running shirt manufacturers forget this speedster? I hoping to see more Flash in the future.

Our rundown continues. This time with one of the top franchises out there- Spiderman. Well actually Spiderman and Spiderwoman are represented here. This Spiderman is a bit of a rebel with 2 different colored shoes. It is a bit hard to see the spider emblem on his chest. This Spiderwoman is displacing good stride

Our next hero in the rundown is The Batman. From the comics I believe he was a rather fit guy. He did not have a super power per se- he was just a decent detective with a little vigilante thrown in for good measure. No Robins appears in the race so the caped crusader had to run alone. There may have been more but when a blob of runners come down the avenue trying to focus on the shirt is a bit difficult for my camera. Oh, 2 out of 3 are women- so I guess Batgirl would be more appropriate. She has the matching socks but no grappling hook Original Batgirl colors. I could actually imagine that this guy is Batman.