Today was pretty much a travel day, so once we escaped the Grand Ripoff Hotel, we headed out for a 5+ hour trip to Ann Arbor, home of some college, so I hear. We cruised along through a sparsely populated area of Canada for most of the way, making good time even though Dudley Do-Right was in a car a little ahead of me for a good 50 miles (or 6,826 kilometers, but my math may be off on this - I never got the hang of the metric system, like why do you have to multiply to go from Celsius to Fahrenheit, but divide to go from kilometers to miles?). That is, until we got to about 5 miles from the border and then WHAM, not moving. After about 20 minutes of going 6 feet or so, I was able to get off an exit and hit some back roads that I noticed on the GPS. This seemed to save me a little time as I came back onto the highway right at the toll booth, and right at a bathroom.
The bathroom was a godsend. Had I not gone then I might have either had to get out on the bridge to the US and go in Lake Ontario or use the mostly empty iced coffee cup in the car, because once we got through the tolls (after waiting 10-15 minutes when they decided to hold up all traffic for some reason before the toll), we still had to wait another 45 minutes or so in traffic to get across the bridge to go through the customs guy. And just my luck I got Niedermeyer in the line I chose, as this guy was the only one out of about 7 lines that was actually checking cars and trunks. Every other line seemed to be OK letting every Tom, Dick and Guy into the US, but my guard had to ask how much I spent on my fancy schmancy Canada hat. Once we passed his test we were finally officially back in the good ole U S of A.
We then stopped shortly for a late lunch at a Jimmy John's (Debbie's favorite) and were back on the road. I had seen that the Motown Museum was kind of on the way, so we stopped there at around 4:30 for a tour. None of us is really a big Motown fan, but this was one of the best museum tours we have been on during our journeys. The tour guide did a very good job of explaining things, and I think we all, kids included, learned a little about the Motown history.
After the Motown tour (no souvenirs!) we headed to Ann Arbor. We are staying in a Hampton Inn, and while the room is much smaller than the one we left in Toronto at the Hotel de Snobby, we are happy to be here. We didn't hang out in the hotel too long, and instead headed for dinner on the Michigan campus.
A little background is needed here. Earlier in the summer, we took the Tuckers to our favorite hoagie place in Philly, Lee's Hoagies, when on the way to Delaware. We were excited to go there, as both Debbie and I had many meals from there when we were at Penn, especially since we lived right around the corner, each of us for 2 of the 4 years at Penn. Most of the time when I was in school I ordered the tuna hoagie, and still have very fond memories of all of the tuna hoagies I ate (I'm still working off some of them today). But in hindsight, a tuna hoagie really isn't much more than tuna on a white bread roll. Sure, I jazzed it up with lettuce, provolone and hot peppers (in my younger days), but when it really comes down to it, it's tuna on a white bread roll. Matt Tucker was especially disappointed in the tuna hoagie I ate, and has been very quick to tease me about it since. He understands that the tuna hoagie has emotional significance to me, but that doesn't stop him from giving me the business about it.
So, to make things even, we decided to have dinner tonight at the famous Zingerman's Deli. This was the first time that we have actually been able to eat at any place that is in our Food Book that we lived on last summer. When we got to the deli, the help there was very accommodating, and explained how it works there very well. Brian was fond of the idea that you could sample anything you wanted, and tried out a few cheeses. Other than Amanda, we all opted for some version of a Reuben (Amanda went with Matzo ball soup and a latke). And to be fair, it was much tastier than a tuna hoagie. It still doesn't have the significance, but I will admit it was very good (although I still prefer the sandwich at Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh). Anyway, it was good enough that we may end up back there tomorrow night so we can try something else.
After dinner we found a Barnes & Noble so we could get Brian a book to read (he finished the book he was reading) and headed back to the hotel to do some backlogged work (since we were on radio silence all weekend) and some laundry.
Tomorrow we have another busy day ahead of us, as the plan calls for us to head to Comerica Park to do a tour of the Tigers' baseball stadium at 10 a.m. and then we will try and do a tour of a Ford manufacturing facility in Dearborn. Debbie had the thought to see if there was such a thing, and it turns out there is one not far from Comerica. I am sure the kids will be thrilled when we wake them up early.
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