The Rendezvous Coffee Shop in Isanti, Minnesota at 310 Dahlin Avenue, with zip code 55040 and phone 763-444-3999, is owned and operated by THE most universally-liked canoe racer in Minnesota … Warren Thunstrom.  Warren has been canoe racing since the 1980’s at least.  He is infamous among his fellow racers for his lack of taste in clothing because he wears unlikely combinations of different color crumpled shirts and shorts that look like they were rejected by the Salvation Army.  I like to call him “Warning Thunderstorm” though.  Warren earned this super-hero-canoe-racing name during a very stormy night in Crosby, Minnesota a few years ago.   It started when a dog sled racer decided to host a canoe race and consulted with a fanatical long distance canoe racer, Dan Kruzer, to come up with an all night endurance challenge canoe race. 

Warren drives a small old diesel-engine car and makes his own bio-diesel fuel for 50 cents a gallon using vegetable oil he gets from fast food restaurants.  His brother, Brett Thunstrom, jokingly calls it the French-fry mobile because you can smell the odor of French-fries in his car’s exhaust fumes.   Of course, the small car has a bolted on car-top rack that can handle up to two canoes.  Typically, there will be a pair of river smelling tennis shoes hanging from the back of the canoes by their tied together shoelaces.  As my wife can attest, the practice of keeping wet tennis shoes inside the car to dry out after a paddle results in a very bad smelling interior.

This Page was last update: 9/29/2004; 9:59:10 PM
Copyright 2004 Rick Lorenzen
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