Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Detroit! (part two)

Sorry, it's been a while since part one of this story, which you can read here.

AND SPEAKING OF SILLY
After getting read the riot act by the hotel upon check-in, the first thing we see in the elevator the next morning is a man in a kilt and a cowboy hat. I have no explanation.

ROBERT'S RULES OF TRAVEL ORDER, #2
In every hotel room, one of the following will not drain properly: sink, bathtub, toilet. This rule presumably extends into alien worlds.

A NEW BLOCKER COMPARED TO AN OLD GLOVE
This glove has caught a ton of pucks (and dropped a few). It was as white as the blocker last year when we bought it:


A HIGHLIGHT
We were looking at a website that had elaborate architectural renderings of each letter of the alphabet done by an Italian artist in the 18th century.

When we got to "J", it was missing.

"Where's the 'J'?" Eli 13.0 asked.

"There was no 'J' in the alphabet until the late 19th century," I said.

"Oh, okay," he said, continuing to look through the letters.

"Actually, its addition was quite controversial," I said.

A few more seconds passed.

"WAIT A MINUTE," he said.

F-ING CHERRIES
We went to Ann Arbor on Saturday--it's only a 30 minute drive from where we were staying, and we all thought it would be cool to see the university and the enormous football stadium (which seats 110,000).

There was a "tournament" match (an exhibition, really) between Manchester United and Real Madrid, but I figured attendance for that would be 35,000 tops. No big deal.

There was quite a bit of traffic going into Ann Arbor, but Google Maps neatly rerouted us around almost all of it, so no worries. The city was crowded, though, so we parked in the first garage we saw downtown.

Gloria wanted to try a southwestern restaurant downtown that had excellent Yelp reviews. Southwestern food in Michigan is conceptually a high risk, obviously, but I went along.

I ordered a tostada with buffalo brisket. In theory, that's pretty safe. In practice, it was buffalo meat between corn cakes--with cherries.

Cherries?

The salad had cherries. I get that. I like cherries. Just not on a tostada.

"How was your food?" Gloria asked.

"The buffalo brisket is fantastic," I said. "But there are cherries in this!"

"Cherries?" she said, laughing.

"F-ing cherries," I said.

It became a running joke that everything we ordered--omelets, pizza, pasta--would have cherries. Some of it did.

So we finished lunch, and started walking toward the stadium--and 108,000 people joined us. It was, in a word, crowded.

When we finally reached the stadium, we couldn't get in, of course, so Eli and I took a few comedy photos of what we could see.




"NO BAGS ARE ALLOWED IN THE STADIUM," boomed a voice over the outside loudspeaker.

"What about purses?" Gloria asked.

"No purses," I said.

"Oh, I'm sure they allow purses," she said.

"THIS INCLUDES PURSES," the voice said.

"I can't believe that!" she said. "Maybe they have lockers for purses."

Eli started laughing. "No, mom," he said.

"They do not have 40,000 purse lockers," I said. "I say that with one hundred percent confidence."

The worst part of walking along with 108,000 people? Turning around and walking AGAINST 108,000 people.

WHAT? DIDN'T THEY HAVE AGRICOLA?
We stopped at a convenience store on the way back to our car, and in front of us at the counter was a guy who was so drunk he could barely walk. What did he buy? A giant box of Magic: The Gathering cards. Why would someone that drunk buy Magic cards? Why did a convenience store SELL Magic cards? I have no idea.

He walked out in front of us, staggering along the drunken tightrope.

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