I didn't want to go into this, because this is something that should probably be kept as a deep dark secret, but I can't hold back any longer. My roommate, Kyle Smith, can't handle rollercoasters anymore. He was exposed at Cedarpoint this past Friday. It started slow, and built into a big event where the man got litterally sick. It put a damper on the day, although we still managed to have a good time, well, at least I did. I was able to do a couple of the big coasters and also check out the two newest rides that I had not ridden since I hadn't been here in two years, we did have to leave a littel earlier than scheduled though. MaxAir was really cool, its like a big swinging wheel that rotates you around as it swings. My favorite new ride however was Skyhawk. A huge 120 ft high swing. It wasn't so much scary as it was an awesome sensation. Imagine the swings we rode on as children, and now imagine that swing being 120 ft in the air, and you're looking directly at the ground! A little bit of a surprise for next year is that they tore out the old log ride and are putting up yet another roller coaster from the looks of things. If anybody is up for a trip some time next spring let me know.

I also managed to run into a couple of people that I had no idea were going to be there. I've gone tons of times where I knew people were there, and yet couldn't find them. Anyway, I ran into my pastor from back home in Indiana, John Randolf, and his two youngest daughters, and also a gentleman from work. I had no idea that the Randolfs were going to be there and had to do a double take when I saw this girl waving at me from across the midway.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend.

Toodles!

Saturday here was the big Woodward Avenenue Dream Cruise. This is the automotive event of the summer here in Detroit. They estimate its around 30,000 classic cars and 1.5 million people spread out over 16 miles of road. There are some pretty rare and interesting cars that show up, and my parents enjoyed it a lot more than they thought they would. We ended up actually driving the thing, and it took 2 hours to go 5 miles.

We also checked out Superman Returns in IMAX. Yeah, I know the movie has been out for like four months now, but I hadn't caught it yet. I don't know if any of you have ever seen a regular movie on an IMAX screen, but its quite the expereience compared to a normal movie. They even had about 20 minutes of footage that was in 3D. Very cool, these movies in 3D are of the type where you actually feel like you can reach out and touch the objects in front of you.

Well it was the weekend and Kyle and I didn't have any plans. So what are two single guys to do? Call some girls and line up dates? Nah, we decided to take a motorcycle trip. After debating the strategy for a while we deciding doing a little two dayer around lake Erie would be perfect. We'd take off Saturday morning, stay in Niagra Falls that night, then head on over to Buffalo, and back around down through the States on Sunday. We didn't really plan a route, we just tried to stay as close to the lake as possible and to head east on Saturday, and then head West on Sunday. Perfect plan. The weather turned out to be gorgeous and actually a little too cool towards the evening hours.

The ride through Canada was interesting, after getting through the border crossing (bye the way, pulling out money and identification is not easy when riding a motorcycle.) Kyle is pictured on the right, right after we crossed into the great Maple Leaf Country, I'm on the left a little later into the trip. Speedlimits are a little slow here, 80 km/hr, which is only around 50 mph, so traveling was a bit slow, and of course we followed this speed to the exact letter of the law : ). I've never seen so many greenhouses in my life, we traveled about a 10 mile stretch where there was nothing but greenhouses on the side of the road. Some were up to an acre in size. We even saw a region where they were growing tobacco. We also stumbled upon this huge wind farm. It was like a scene out of a science fiction movie. There had to be 40 or 50 of these huge three bladed towers all along the lake shore generating electricity.

Ah, Niagara Falls! One word of warning, do not show up without hotel reservations on a Saturday night. We had to stop at about 10 places before we found something that had rooms that were either available or weren't a complete rip off. The lovely Kingsway Motel, located right next to two strip clubs and a massage parlor. This place was high class! Only 130 bucks a night. We'll take it. At first they only had the honeymoon suite available with one queen bed, and a heart shaped jacuzzi, but at the last second, another guy checked out and we were able to get a room with two beds. Now wouldn't that have been romantic? The one thing I hate about Niagara is it is almost a little too toursity. The falls are simply amazing, the sound, the mist in the air, all that, but the whole town is just one little concentrated tourist trap. I had never seen the falls at night which is an entirely different experience than the day time views. We even managed to get ourselves into a little mischief here. There is an incline railway that leads down to the falls from all the hotels and Kyle didn't want to wait in line. So what do we do, we take off for the woods, and descend up a 45 degree embankment and for the next 10 minutes I'm doing everything I can to get up this freaking hill thats almost 200 feet in elevation. Good times. Good idea Kyle! For some reason he seemed to have an easier time with it than I did. And by the way, it was also pitch black out.

The trip back to Detroit through the States turned out to be an excellent ride. There are some absolutely beautiful roads through wine country in Western New York. We ended up stopping in Cleveland for a couple hours. Toured the Walter G. Mather boat, which is a 700 foot freigher that use to haul iron ore on the great lakes. The accomodations on the boat actually didn't look too bad. Well guys being guys, we again had to do something stupid while in Cleveland, so we thought it would be funny to unhook these huge chains that they had as fences on the water. What we didn't plan on was not being able to put the thing back when we were done. Why do guys do stupid stuff like this? I honestly have no answer for this. We also stopped off at a Czechoslovakian restaurant in Vermillion, which had one of my favorite appetizers of all time, Sourkraut balls. My mothers relatives make these every Thanksgiving, and while these didn't quite stack up they were good none the less.
So you're asking yourself, I wonder what one looks like after spending 800 miles exposed to the elements on a motorcycle. I'll offer up a picture of my helmet as an example that this mode of transportation can get a little nasty sometimes.

Ross and Sarah Beehler, married friends from high school, came up to spend the weekend this past week. They had never been to Detroit in the summer time so they were looking forward to the trip. Lets just say last time they came up it was around 10 degrees out and we tried going to two different events that we couldn't get into. One involved 4 hours in traffic and a monster truck rally that sold cash only tickets that we were cashless for. Man that was a fun time.

I was also able to score a Pontiac G6 convertible for the weekend, so that was a bit of a bonus, although convertibles with the sun beating down, actually get a little old, believe it or not. We started off the weekend by visiting the Edsel Ford home, which is the home of Henry Fords only child Edsel. The home is amazing with its 60 rooms, many of which actually have wood paneling that was brought over from 16th century English manors. It was built in 1929 for around 3 million dollars which is now the equivalent of 35 million. So at 6.5% interest over 30 years that works out to about $221,223.81 a month. Not too shabby. They also stated that their heating bills were just a measily $125,000 for the entire year.

Saturday we headed on over to the Henry Ford museum, that Henry Ford established. They had a temporary baseball exhibit going on and we were actually able to see one of the original Honus Wagner baseball cards which is the most sought after baseball card in existense. Some highlights: the limo John F. Kennedy was killed in, the chair Abraham Lincoln was shot in, George Washington's camping gear from the Revolutionary war, the bus that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on (I'm sitting in that seat in the picture), the original Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, and a ton of other items. That evening we headed on down to downtown, and accidently ran into a free scrimmage that the Lions were having, and even brushed paths with the legendary Barry Sanders (pictured). The Tigers were also playing, and somehow we were able to score tickets from the box office, to a game a month ago I tried getting tickets to, but was sold out. Not sure how that works out? Anyway, the baseball game ended up being the best game I had ever been too. The game ended with a two out walk off homer in the bottom of the ninth. Absolutely amazing! Overall everything we ended up doing turned out to be the exact opposite of what had happened on their last trip (bad was now good). It was almost like a Seinfeild episode.