Bret may go to China, but David goes to North Dakota

Had a fun trip up to Grand Forks, ND, the 50th state I've visited in my life -- I've now blacked out my bingo card. I was speaking at a conference up there. The invitation came from Greg Gordon, on the faculty there now, with whom I worked in Hawaii. I stayed at Greg's house, and we went to the world curling championships, currently underway in Grand Forks. This town of 50,000 has a state-of-the-art 12,000-seat hockey arena (Wayne Gretzky once described it as the finest hockey facility he had ever seen); all 12,000 seats are upholstered in leather. No question what the hot ticket is in this town. Unfortunately the UND "Fighting Sioux" lost in the NCAA "Frozen Four" semifinals yesterday, dashing their dreams of an 8th NCAA title.