I learned a valuable lesson this weekend. If an attractive woman seems overly friendly, stay away, stay far away! This little lesson stems from the canoeing trip, me and 11 other friends took this past weekend up in northern Michigan on the Rifle river. We went up Friday afternoon camped two nights and did a 28 mile canoe trip on Saturday. I'm not an expert canoer by any means, but consider myself quite capable in the water. Ok back to the story, my buddy Kevin and I were partners and as we were coming down the river there was this huge crowd of people partying on the bank of the river. This girl starts wading out into the river and asks us whats in our cooler and if we have any beer. Well, Kevin and I being the friendly people we are (and appreciative of any attention we get), tell her to go ahead and take a look in the cooler. She comes up to the canoe and immediately starts rocking us and dumps us. We both are pretty pissed, and I end up trying to get her back by tackling/pushing her down, but the damage had been done. She ended up getting some more guys behind us which made us feel a little better. Overall it turned out to be a pretty good trip however, and we even ended up tipping ourselves over another time. Theres nothing like trying to fish your clothes, food, and cooler out of the water. I've never seen so many people on a river before, it was like a freaking traffic jam in some areas. Lots of booze, and lots of girls flashing their boobs for plastic beads, you've got to love a nice family afternoon with the kids going canoeing. I also came to another realization this past weekend. I'm not a huge fan of camping. I love the outdoors, and all the campfire/food stuff, but the whole no shower, everything gets damp, and the hot/humid conditions I can't get past. Man I'm turning into a wimp. Oh, well.

After an eight year hiatus, I made an effort to get back to my hometown county fair this past weekend, The Elkhart County 4-H Fair. I've heard its the third largest county fair in the nation, but anyway its the event of the summer back home. Everybodys there, and this year I made sure I partook of the festivities. I'm also a 9 year 4-H Swine Club veteran, so I know a thing or two about raising animals for the fair. I ended up running into a ton of people, around 40 or so. Some of them I hadn't seen since high school, and it was interesting to see who was married and how many people had a significant amount of children already. I lined up to meet some friends while I was there, and found out that Haley Lantz (pictured in last weeks post), recently became engaged and is set to be married in November. She had been dating the guy all of one month, although knew him previously from their church, Nappanee Missionary. Okay, this dating thing when you're older scares me, when things can happen that fast. Congratulations Haley and Marty! Another cool little tidbit from the weekend was the Sunday night Vespers service at the fair. My friend Luke does sound for a band Takeaway Me, that was the opening act for Mark Schultz. They performed in front of one of their largest crowds ever (8000) and ended up selling a ton of merchandise, and put on a good show. No post could ever be complete without including a picture of Ross Beehler trying to milk a fake cow.

I'll have to say I just went through one of the most boring weeks of work I've ever gone through. GM finally didn't make us take 2 weeks off for our annual summer shutdown but yet about 50% of everybody still took 2 weeks off. So not much was going on. Helped my buddy Mike over the weekend with some home renovation. For those of you who know Mike, he likes to dive into things. This guy is currently redoing his garage, kitchen, and bathroom, all at the same time. I think I would have went with one project at a time, but such is Mike. Theres nothing like ripping out 50 year old insulation and plaster. My lungs greatly appreciated it, and I'm sure I probably took about 5 years off of my lifespan. I did wear a duskmask but those only go so far. Hes been going for 2 weeks now and the garage is almost finished, bathroom is 50% done, and kitchen 25%. Its been a good learning experience for me since I've done almost none of this work before, but I do understand why most people contract out a large majority of this work.

When I was at my parents last weekend, I broke into the old photo vault and had a blast. And since they now have a scanner, I went crazy! Its amazing all the memories that come back when looking at ones life. I thought I'd post a few here for your enjoyment. It was also funny looking through the photos and I don't think that I found one that had all five of my family members in it. Weird. Okay, onto a couple highlights.

A young Ben: Now tell me thats not a cute kid.
First day of either Kindergarten or 1st grade: Scared out of my mind, Nice Snoopy lunch pale, and I believe a Garfield book bag.
Some old Friends (Me, Zach Worthman, David Allen, Kurtis Baumgartner)
Junior Prom: Me, my date Amy Kinnel (Neild), Haley Lantz, and Ross Beehler
Senior Prom: Haley Lantz, Jason Lecount, Me, my date Emily Elrod (Lecount)

Had a great time in Indiana this past week. Spent 3 days at my mom and dad's and then headed on down to Indianapolis to visit my friends Chris and Chrissy and see the house that they have been working on for I believe 9 months now. Got to see some people back home that I hadn't seen in a while and caught up on some sleep. Highlight of the visit was getting my grandma on my motorbike and taking her out for a little spin. I tried to scare her a bit but she was one tough cookie. Also had the opportunity to have dinner with friends Joe and Emily and her brother Jason and his wife Michelle. They both have their own kids and its an interesting dynamic to have friends with kids now. We went for a walk and when some of the kids saw my motorcycle, they imediately wanted to sit on it. Its just a man thing I guess, its in our geans. Pictured is Emily's 1 1/2 year old son Fisher, and Jason's 3 year old nephew. Jason has a 9 month old of his own named Cooper.

Chris and Chrissy's house was amazing. They had redone all of the floors and they were beautiful. Its one of those really old houses, with a lot of character, where nothing is quite perfect, but looks incredible. They had all of their Purdue friends over for a rousing night of Clue. Had never played the game in a large group before and it turned out to be quite fun. We ended up hitting the Indianapolis Zoo on Saturday which was pretty good for a medium sized city zoo. My favorite: The polar bears. They also had a gardens section with a really neat butterfly house. Being surrounded by hundreds of butterflies can be quite the tranquil experience.

The weekend ended on a little bit of a sour note for me. I ended up taking back roads all the way back from Indy to Detroit on my cycle and got one of the worst speeding tickets (Ohio) I've ever gotten. 78 in a 55 out in the middle of no where, surrounded by corn fields. It was only a little over a hundred bucks and I'm really hoping it doesn't make its way back to Michigan and end up on my insurance (fingers crossed). A motorcycle at 80 feels a lot slower than a car at 80 by the way. There is something about the state of Ohio that I have trouble with. I think I've gotten around 6 speeding tickets in my 11 year driving career and 5 of them have now been in Ohio. So far none of them have ended up on my record so hopefully thats a good sign. And yes, I know I need to slow down!

What a great way to kick off my forced week of vacation (GM annual summer shutdown). I spent this past weekend paling around with Dan Cochrane and Debbie Pittman of Cedarville University fame. Dan was in from Baltimore visiting a mutual friend of ours. Well mutual friend may not be the correct term for someone I hadn't seen in seven years, but I'll say that after spending three days with the two of them, she's now back on the mutual friend list. And don't worry Debbie, I don't think you'll leave that list soon, now that we know the two of each other only live about 3o minutes apart! We took in 4th of July activites on Saturday at The Henry Ford. The Detroit Symphany Orchestra was giving an outdoor concert, with fireworks following, and it was an absolutely outstanding event. I had never seen fireworks set to a live orchestra which made them all the better. I also saw one of the most impressive renditions of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", sung by a performer who was only 11 years old. Absolutely amazing, she also sang several other songs and if it wasn't for her "young girl" voice you could never tell she was just a kid.

Sunday we headed into Ann Arbor and took in the sights and sounds of the University of Michigan. Debbie knew some cool spots and we visited their law library, which was one of the most impressive library structures I have ever seen. We ended the evening with an awesome meal at a place called Zanzibar, and at the end realized we were the last people left, and the place had closed an hour and a half earlier.

Monday was my day to shine as we headed into Detroit. I absolutely love showing people the city and trying to turn preconceived notions around. Detroit as most of you know doesn't exactly have what I would call a stellar reputation. Heck, it doesn't even have a good reputation with locals here. I find though, when you point out the things the city has to offer your heart can start to turn a little for it. We even asked Dan at the end of the day if we had changed his view of the city, and he said we had. Success! Ended up touring some cool buildings, city parks, John K. King Used and Rare Books, which has over 1 million used books in his store, and hit up the Heidelberg Project, which is one of my favorite things to show people from out of town. The Heidelberg Project is a neighborhood where a gentelman has basically turned into an artistic display. He uses various objects in yards/houses and creates some vary stunning visual displays. My personal favorite is his interpretation of Noahs Ark. I'll leave you with a couple good action shots of me eating an eclair at a local bakery in Detroits Greektown District. Looking forward to the week ahead as I'm heading back to mom and dads for a couple of days and then off to Chris and Chrissy's in Indianapolis.