Warning: Do not trust car gas gages to be an absolute device for measuring fuel levels. I learned the hard way tonight. Kyle and I were heading down to the Tigers game and ended up running out of gas on the inside lane of a four lane interstate. After fighting other cars to get back to the outside, got the car stopped and hiked up the embankment on the side. We find ourselves smack dab in the middle of desolate inner city Detroit. We start walking around to find something and absolutely nothing is around. We end up flagging down a cop, and he decides to help us. He also has no idea where a gas station is, so he says "hop in". I am now experiencing my first ride in one of Detroit's finest rear seats, with the back divider wall and everything. Its so tight back there you can't even really put your feet in front of you. Cop drops us off at the gas station, and tells us good luck and takes off. I was hoping he'd run us back, since its a little over a mile to the car, but we were still greatful, none the less. We buy a gas can, and start walking back. Within 2oo feet of walking back, an awesome black woman stops and ask if we need a ride. (I mention her race, to make a point later in this paragraph.). She runs us back to the car, we fill er up and we're off again heading down to the ball game (20 minute delay total, not too shabby). Here is the point that I'd like to make, after Kyle and I talked about this a bit. If this situation is reversed, black person in heavily white neighborhood, I'm highly guessing that no one would stop and help them, at least not where we live. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Detroit, but I've never experienced a more racist/segregated area in my life. It goes both ways here, blacks feel uncomfortable with whites, and whites feel the opposite with blacks. I believe Detroit city statistically is around 80% black, which just shows you how segregated this region is. Its amazing to hear what coworkers say about the city("I haven't been down there in 20 years"), and I'd like to believe that I am in some little way might change just a few peoples thoughts.

Ok, about the ballgame. By the way the Tigers Are Awesome! 53-25, best record in baseball. I can remember three years ago taking my parents to their 100th loss, the year that they almost set the record for most losses ever in baseball with 119, one shy of the 1962 Mets. How quickly things can change. Finally saw my first Tigers win after my third game this year. Roger Clemons was pitching, so the place was packed and the crowd was jacked. Tigers ended up winning 4-0 with Clemons taking the loss. Whos your Tiger? (Inside joke here in town, its their catch phrase in all their commercials). There were also fireworks after the game, which was pretty enthralling. If you've ever seen fireworks in a small enclosed area, they are much more powerfull, and reverb quite nicely off of walls. A good start to the upcoming 4th of July holiday.

I had the pleasure of hosting my sisters, Corinne and Camille, this past weekend. I think that it may have been one of the first times ever, that its just been the three of us, without mom and dad. Its pretty cool now that we're all "adults" and the new dynamic that exists. We spent some time in the city, Detroit Science Center, Small Plates (Excellent Tapas restaurant, absolute best cut of meat I've ever had in my life, a 4 oz. tenderloin), and walked around town a bit. I also took them over to Windsor, Canada, since my sister, being all of 20 years old, could gamble and drink here. The legal age for these activities in Canada is 19. Its funny to see all the young kids going over to party on the weekends. We really didn't do much gambling or drinking, but she still got a kick out the experience. It was weird buying my sister a legal drink. Ah, the joys of living 15 miles from an international border. I had made a previous commitment on Saturday to attend a Young Automotive Professionals Conference at the Chrysler Proving Grounds, so they ended up hitting the zoo by themselves and then we hung out Sat. night, and they took off on Sunday. Back to the Chrysler Proving Grounds story, in the morning they had speakers, but in the afternoon, the event turned into a huge ride and drive event, with I'm guessing around 50 vehicles. They had guys giving rides in Vipers on a road course at 120, an offroad, mudbogging course, with Jeeps, and a cool event where they had reversed the steering on a Jeep (left is right, and right is left), where you had to navigate some turns. They also had a ton of vehicles you could drive yourself on a 4 mile loop. I heavily enjoyed any of the SRT vehicles. (Approx 400 hp) Lets just say that the 70 mph speedlimit that we were supposed to obey, may have been slightly disobeyed. Ok majorly disobeyed, but we were still careful. My favorite vehicle of the day: Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT 8, absolutely amazing.

Friday I accomplished something I've been meaning to do for a couple of years now. In fact I had started a journey a while back and bailed halfway through. Yes, I'm talking something of great life importance here. I finally circled the entire thumb of Michigan on my motorcycle. If you've ever met someone from here, when they tell you where they're from they always hold their hand up and point where their town is located. The lower part of Michigan somewhat resembles a mitten so this method usually works pretty well. Well I took Friday afternoon off, and began a 300 mile journey across farmland, beachland, and forests. Pretty cool ride, for most of the trip you're riding along lake Huron, which was absolutely awesome. I also stopped off on several little sidetrips along the way which was entertaining. At the end of the trip though, I was so sore, I couldn't stand to be on that bike another second. Overall it was a 7 hour ride. You can see some of the highligts, the big cow was the best.

On another motorcycle related topic, I finally sold my old bike. I used Craigslist.com for the first time and am here to sing its praises. For those of you unfamiliar with craigslist, its basically a huge online classified add, which is tailored for your metropolitan community. Well anyway, I put the bike up last Sunday, and by Monday afternoon I had already received 3 or 4 calls. By Tuesday night the bike was sold for 200 bucks more than I bought it for, over two years ago. It was the most painless transaction I've ever gone through when selling something, I highly recommend it.

Saturday, my buddy Mike had his annual Hokie/GM/Corvette barbeque. A very interesting group of people by the way. The party consisted of Virginia Tech people, along with people from work, and a large group of people from his local corvette club. Great weather, and we even managed to get in some semi-competive volleyball (semi, being the key word in the past sentence). Mike also got a keg, which we all drank, but only he seemed to induldge in, which made for some good entertainment at the end of the evening. Our buddy Jason, also brought over his 1948 Buick, which was his dad's first ever car. Pretty cool . The Corvettes also provided a little entertainment of their own.

Went to a very cool car show over the weekend. It was for the Detroit Institute of Opthalmology, and had some very rare cars all the way from back in the 1930's up to current generation concept cars. It was on the ground's of the Edsel Ford Estate, which was absolutely beautiful. Edsel was Henry Ford's only son, so he had a little money, and actually became president of Ford at the age of 27.
A Cadillac Sixteen, gorgeous

They certainly don't make em like this anymore, some sixteen year old would have this sucker off in like two minutes in any parking lot. This was a Pierce Arrow by the way.
This is the eight oldest Volkswagon Bug known to exist, kind of ugly, but cool non the less.One of the most georgeous paint jobs I have ever seen in my life, this guy did all his own work, wouldn't do it on my own car, but still outstanding.

My buddy Allen's car, a Subaru WRX, that he's sunk 80k into. Why would someone do this? Very cool licsence plate, probably wouldn't work on the Saab though.

This past week wasn't too eventful. Work has been slow, and I didn't take a vacation anywhere this weekend : ) So here are a few random images from the past week.

Headed on down to the Detroit Festival of the Arts on Sunday and was pleasantly surprised. Most art festivals seem to be simply vendors peddling there goods (which is entertaining), but this one had a large number of musical performances, and live sculpting (is that the verb for sculpture?).

Tea anyone?Or how about a nursery ryhme?Maybe a haircut? (Don't ask me what this is, but it was pretty cool when set to music)They also had some college students from Wayne State, who created these huge sidewalk chalk drawings of famous works of art. I don't think the photos do these justice, as they were even
more impressive in person.

A little Da Vinci A little Warhol










With the great weather up here in Michigan this past week I was also able to put about 300 miles on my bike. Its amazing how much fun one can have and end up right back where they started. A couple of nights started out as simple rides and a couple of hours later I would find myself in Toledo or Ann Arbor. Good times. No I'm not a University of Michigan fan, but I thought that this picture turned our pretty well.
Toodles!

Mark up another one of my new all time favorite cities. Boston was awesome. Beautiful scenery, great public transportation, and very walkable. I went out with my roommate Kyle Smith, and my buddy Mike Cummins. We left early Saturday morning, at something like 5 am, (for those of you who know me well, thats not a good time for me), and got into town around 8:30. Hello cold weather and rain. Not exactly what I had in mind when planning a trip to New England in June. In fact I had brought along only one long sleeved shirt and no jacket, so this became my primary clothing for the weekend. We also had no rain gear (umbrella or poncho), so we were pretty much in for whatever God had in mind to throw at us. First day we pretty much planned all indoor activities due to the rain, however the issue of getting to these so called activities was still a problem. Well Kyle and Mike being the smart people they are (a lot of sarcasm was in that statement), thought we'd walk to the New England Aquarium. "Oh, Ben, its not that far." Approximately 15 minutes later, we arive at the aquarium and I am absolutely soaked and miserable. Oh, by the way, it turns out that there was a subway stop approximately 1/2 block away. My mood at this point is pretty well depicted in the photo shown, supplied by Kyle. The aquarium was pretty cool by the way, and one of the most interesting aquatic creatures I have ever seen was there and called a Sea Dragon. The thing looked just like a leafy plant, but yet was some sort of fish. We spent the second half of the day at the Boston Museum of Science, which the highlight for me was the worlds largest Van de Graaff. Those of you from the good ol days of Fairfield High School will remember this device from physics and Mr. Ulrich. In those days we called the generator the "Big Ball," and would begin to chant in class, "Big Ball, Big Ball...." until Mr. Ulrich would get the thing out and let us play with it and shock each other. Well this one was huge and threw off electric sparks approximaletly 8 feet long. Pretty cool. The one in high school would shock you from maybe a 1/4 inch away.

Day two turned out to be a little nicer, still cold, just not as rainy. We headed up to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, which was very moving and informative, and on our way back probably had one of the more interesting things on the trip happen to us. We saw a drug addict jump on the subway tracks and severly hurt himself to the point where he couldn't get up and was laying about 5 feet below us on a live subway line, with what looked like a severely fractured broken arm. I've always wondered what I'd do in a situation where someones life is in danger, and I pretty much froze up and had no idea how I should help this man. Kyle went up and got a transit officer, while Mike and I made sure that no trains were coming by while he laid there. There was also something like a 480 volt live power line right beside the guy too. within minutes they shut the line down and around 20 firefighters and policeman show up. Pretty sad situation, in talking to the officers they say bums often try to commit suicide in this manner and thats probably what he was doing. He was pretty out of it, and you could see heroin needle marks on his arms. We ended up having to give out our contact information, and gave some statements and ended up leaving once they oppened the station back up, I'm hoping I don't end up receiving a phone call or a something in the mail about this. Off to better things. Harvard and MIT. Harvard was an absolutely beautiful laid out campus with awesome buildings, while MIT was a bit more industrial although still very magnificient. I guess that kind of explains the difference between a liberal arts school and a technology school.


We also began on this evening a little joke of which we started posing with any sort of stature/bronze figure we could find. Well Boston being a historical city, these statues were everywhere. I thought I'd supply a small sampling for your viewing pleasure.






























We finished up the weekend with the historical side of Boston. There is this really cool walking trail that goes past 15 or so historical sites such as Paul Reveres house, the Old North Church, and things like that. It finishes up at Bunker Hill and the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides). There was also an old 1940's era Destroyer battleship called the USS Cassin Young, we showed up at just the right time and were able to take a below deck tour, and I think we bothered the tour guide a little with all of the buttons and levers we were flipping and pushing. I still don't see how people lived on these things. In some of the beds there was only around a foot of up/down space. Something like this makes we even happier I never signed up for the Navy's nuclear power officer job, I heavily considered in college. Another cool site was one of the graveyards that containted the graves of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and several other notable figures, who weren't notable enough for me to remember here.

Have a great week!