Airlings and Bouffages
Posted September 2, 2010 – 5:11 am in: JournalI am now reading “Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages.” If you’re not familiar with the initials OED, they stand for Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is one big whopping dictionary. It is also as comprehensive as any lexicon of English words can ever be.
The fellow who wrote the book I am now reading, a masochist named Ammon Shea, took upon himself the task of reading every word in the OED in the period of one year. He not only read it, he took notes and wrote about it. His book about the reading of the OED is much smaller than its subject matter. It consists of only 232 pages.
Among other things he does in his book, Shea lists and defines (briefly) some of the words he found most interesting. Many of the words are obscure and no longer in use. Many of them are odd, cumbersome, and difficult to pronounce. In fact, Shea states that many of the old words in the OED do not have pronunciation keys because they are so long out of use that no one alive today knows how they might have been pronounced. In a way, that’s good. You can say (or try to say) those words in public and no one can accuse you of mispronouncing them. Well, they can accuse you but they cannot prove it.
I’ve taken a special liking to several of the words that Shea presents in the book. Airling is my favorite so far (although I’ve only just started the B chapter). It is a wonderful word. Pronunciation is easy. It’s light on the tongue. It’s fun to say: Airling. The best part of the word, next to the fun of saying it, is the definition: “A person who is both young and thoughtless.” What a fitting word to match the definition! I can imagine a young person without an intelligent thought in his or her head. When I think of such a person, I think of airhead and also of bumbling. Don’t ask me why, I just do. So, at any rate, AIRLING seems like the perfect word to describe a bumbling airhead. I love it.
Another word that Shea mentions in his book is bouffage. Say it “boofidge” or “boofazh,” whichever way makes you feel good. The important thing is what it means. You probably have had many of these (I’m hoping), and I’d bet that you would say that you are always looking forward to another one. We spend much of our time thinking about them and plotting ways to get more. We can partake of them alone, with a partner, or, in some cases, with a number of others. When you have one, you feel pleasantly satiated and often think about the experience (and sometimes even talk about it) when it’s over.
What does this word mean? If you haven’t guessed by now, here’s the definition: “An enjoyable or satisfying meal.”
“I enjoyed a bouffage last night with my wife.”
“We had a bouffage yesterday and I was up half the night remembering it.”
“That bouffage on Wednesday was to die for.”
You get the idea.
I love airlings and bouffages. Both the words and what they represent. I can remember many satisfying bouffages attended by our very own airlings. Ah, sweet memories.
No Comments | Tags:23 Miles, 1 hour 28 min
Posted August 28, 2010 – 9:06 pm in: Fitness, JournalI drove to Buckner Park this morning, put my bike together, and rode 23 miles. I drive to Buckner Park occasionally and ride from there because Bass Road is heavily traveled by car and truck drivers and it has no shoulder to use in case I’m in danger of being kissed by a passing vehicle. Hadley Road is closed between Bass and Illinois Rd, so there is more traffic on Bass than normal.
It was a great morning to ride a bicycle. I actually got started a little later than I had planned because I slept later this morning than usual on a Saturday morning. I shorted myself on sleep over the past week, even more so than I normally do, so I decided to catch up a bit.
I wondered how a longer ride would affect me, since I haven’t done one in a month. Biking to work diminishes my desire to hit the road after work. Weekends have been busy lately and haven’t afforded me much time for a marathon bike ride. Not only that, but when the temps are in the 90s and the humidity is high I’d rather read a book and just daydream about biking.
Nothing unusual occurred during my 23 miler, except that I passed a guy riding a road bike and wearing a fancy yellow jersey on Arcola Road east of County Line Road. I spotted him crossing the tracks west of Arcola. I was peddling at a pretty good clip anyway, but seeing him up ahead got my adrenalin flowing and the challenge was on. I’m sure he saw me coming up behind him because he was wearing a mirror clipped to his glasses, like I do. He made no effort to speed up, though, and I greeted him with a “Good morning” as I passed him. He reciprocated. I checked him out as I went by and he appeared to be in his 40s, maybe 50. Not that it makes much difference, but respectable bicyclists worth their salt are observant of how they stack up against others on the road. I wasn’t out for a leisurely jaunt to sniff flowers and count butterflies. I wanted as much of the road as I could get in the time I was out. The other biker might have been out on a 100 mile ride, so his slower speed would be understandable.
I was not only out for a fast ride, however. I did notice some things along the way even though I didn’t stop to smell the roses.
I noticed one cornfield had been harvested and many others were nearing the harvest stage. The last time I took that route, corn stood tall and green and was still actively growing. Soybeans are looking good and are still lush and green. Our hot humid weather has accelerated the maturing of most crops and an early harvest for nearly everything is expected. Soon the air will be filled with dirt dust and sundry other particulates from the reaping of the crops. If this hot dry weather continues, the full blown harvest will cause many sinus headaches and some asthma attacks.
My ride today took 1 hour and 28 minutes. My average time per mile was 3 minutes 49 seconds. My average speed was 15.6 miles per hour. If anyone finds fault with my math, comment below. If I had been running at that speed instead of biking, you’d see me in the Guinness Book of World Records. The record men’s marathon time of 2 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds is held by Haile Gebrselassie. Haile ran the fastest marathon on record, completing the 26 miles, 385 yards in 2 hours 3 minutes 59 seconds. His average speed was 12.7 miles per hour. I would have beaten him this morning.
I’m feelin’ good.
No Comments | Tags:My Wrists Are Skinny
Posted August 25, 2010 – 5:19 am in: FitnessI have several physical features that I’m stuck with, but which I’d like to revise. One of those features is my wrists. They are skinny. This might not sound like a serious problem to some people. In fact, it’s not a serious problem for me, either. It’s not a problem by any measure. But it’s something I take notice of at least once or twice a week. I think I notice my wrists 
because they are attached to my hands. I see my hands very often. They are placed before me for many hours of the day and I have many opportunities to look at them, and then look at what’s attached to them. That happens to be my wrists.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of physical training over the past year. Much of this training involves weights and my arms. I can’t say I expected that the exercising would give me mighty wrists, but after having survived the training regimen of Erin Long, Brian Carpenter, and a few others, I’ve noticed that my biceps and other muscles look different but my wrists do not.
I guess some things just don’t change much, no matter what happens. Or perhaps my wrists are more buff than they were eight months ago and I just can’t tell the difference. Not that I have any idea what buff wrists look like. I know that my feet are larger than they were a few years ago. I know this is true because I’ve outgrown several pairs of shoes. I can’t explain this change, but it might just be due to the aging process. Or perhaps I need more understanding now than I did as a youth.
I haven’t taken the time to measure myself lately. I’d bet that I’m shorter that I was when I was twenty. I’m sure my butt takes up less space. My abs, even though Erin crunches them relentlessly every week, aren’t quite what they used to be. Forty years of bending over tables, desks, and keyboards has done quite a number on my spine and back muscles.
Wait a minute. I’m getting depressed by this spontaneous inventory of my body parts. I started this by discussing my wrists and now I’m critiquing the whole enchilada.
Perhaps I should look on the bright side. I don’t think my wrists have deteriorated over the years. They perform the same function they did when I was much younger. I don’t suffer from pain or other discomfort in them. They continue to transfer motion back and forth between my hands and arms. They don’t get in my way. Their skinniness probably has some advantages that I’ve just overlooked.
So now I feel much better about my skinny wrists. They might not look impressive, but they’re doing just fine the way they are.
In the words of a famous big-wristed philosopher, “I am what I am and that’s all that I am.”
3 Comments | Tags:Strings Everywhere
Posted August 23, 2010 – 9:21 pm in: JournalI’m reading a book titled “The Elegant Universe” by Brian Greene. The book’s subtitle is “Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory.”
The book is Greene’s attempt to tell the history of superstring theory, which is (or rather, might be) a Theory of Everything, or T.O.E. Superstring theory (or string theory) is an attempt by physicists to tie together quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity. The basic idea behind string theory is that atomic stuff like electrons and quarks are not points but 1 dimensional strings. The existence of the strings has not been proven, partly because they cannot be seen by any technology we possess today. String theory is an idea that has been in development for decades and will probably continue to be worked on and agonized over by the world’s most astute scientists for many years to come.
String theory is not easy to understand. I won’t bother trying to explain any more than I have above, not because you wouldn’t understand it but because I am not capable of doing it. Yes, I’m reading the book and yes, I’m trying real hard to make sense of it. I’ve read a number of books about physics, quantum mechanics, and relativity over the years that were written by scientists but were intended for general readership. I have about as good a general understanding of such stuff as any other common person. But don’t ask me to explain any of it because the words it takes to put the ideas across are not in my vocabulary.
Like any T.O.E., string theory encompasses just about everything that physicists know anything about. That’s one reason that it’s so difficult to fathom. A theory that contains everything must by nature be an awesome theory. Everything is a lot of stuff, and an explanation for all of it, even if the explanation is considered beautiful and symmetrical by physicists, is bound to get pretty complicated. Take, for example, one aspect of string theory that deals with dimensions. Some string theorists believe that our universe is made up of as many as 11 dimensions. An important part of the dimension portion of string theory is the Calabi-Yau manifold. A simple representation of that abstruse entity can be seen in the image above. The Calabi-Yau is supposed to convey the complexity of a six-dimensional space. Can you imagine residing is such an environment? The dimensions higher that the four we know (length, depth, width, and time) can apparently only be found in subatomic space. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a good place for them.
I have not yet finished Greene’s book. I will finish it soon. When I do, expect to know a bit more about string theory than I did before I started reading it. That will not necessarily make me a better person, or better prepare me for life’s ups and downs. But I believe it will make me realize that there is there is a whole lot about our universe that I know little about because I cannot observe it. In those cases, I depend on scientists to do the observing for me. I just hope that when they do, they have the words in their vocabularies that will help me understand a small portion of what they have seen. No strings attached.
No Comments | Tags:Aboite Center Road and Biking
Posted August 19, 2010 – 4:58 am in: JournalAboite Center Road was opened for traffic this afternoon. This is very gratifying to me.
The most advantageous aspect is that I’ll be able to bike on Aboite Center Road (ACR), over I-69, 
from Coventry Lane to the rear entrance of the Lutheran Hospital complex. I will then meander through the drives and trails of Lutheran to the traffic signal on Jefferson Blvd, where I’ll cross Jefferson and end up at my place of employment. Pretty slick.
Speaking of slick, one day last week I crossed the closed section of ACR at Coventry Lane with my bicycle. I pushed it across rather than ride it because paving was underway and only one lane of the road had been paved. I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but a portion of the road was covered with the thick oily stuff that the construction crews put down before asphalting begins. I walked through that stuff and it splashed onto the tops of my shoes and onto my lower legs. I felt very uncool.
In my bike commute during the past few months, I’ve been riding south across ACR on Coventry Lane and ending up at the main entrance of Village of Coventry on Jefferson, then riding along the city-bound side of Jefferson, across the entrance and exit ramps of I-69, then on to my place of employment. This portion of my morning and afternoon rides is interesting but also harrowing. I have seen one other biker peddling along this section of Jefferson Blvd and he was on a very long distance ride to parts unknown. His bike was laden with saddle bags and carriers of various types. He was definitely not of local origin, meaning he probably had no idea what he’d run into in that stretch of road. It is of another dimension.
After people get used to being able to cross I-69 on ACR once again, the section of ACR between Dicke Road and Jefferson Blvd will be closed. This closing will be in effect until sometime in October according to news releases. If the construction on that portion of ACR is anything like the other section that has just been completed, numerous delays will stretch the completion out to somewhere near the end of the year. That will have a greater impact on me during the days of snow and cold when I’ll be driving my car. If I can’t take ACR west from Jefferson Blvd, I’ll have to drive through Village of Coventry. This path is much more fun on a bike than in a car. Perhaps the increasing change in climate will make the coming winter more like spring, then I can bike through December, January, February, and March.
Eventually, the Aboite Trails network will connect the Towpath trail (behind my place of employment) with the trail that runs through the Lutheran Hospital complex and then to the new trail that is yet to be completed on ACR. I can hardly wait.
Bicycling is so fun.
No Comments | Tags:Held Hostage
Posted August 17, 2010 – 5:58 am in: JournalI’ve been held hostage by the ongoing work on Aboite Center Rd. Friday afternoon, biking home after work, I attempted to cross Aboite Center at Coventry Lane. I was able to do so, but had to walk my bike across and step through a 20 foot width of oil that had been deposited on the base layer of asphalt in preparation for the finish layer.
My shoes and bike tires were polluted with the stuff.
Paving on Aboite Center continued yesterday and is not scheduled for completion until tomorrow, August 18. If I had another viable path I would use it. The Aboite Trail being constructed on Covington and Homestead will not be completed for quite some time. In the meantime, that construction has caused the narrowing of Covington and makes it dangerous for biking.
Biking west on Covington from Copper Hill is fine until the trail ends. Then you must use the road itself and hope car drivers see you before striking your bike and sending you tumbling over the I-69 bridge and onto the Interstate pavement below.
So I’ll drive to work again this morning and hope that Aboite Center will be reopened tomorrow as planned.
I’ve been hearing a lot over the past few months about the local efforts to encourage bicycle commuting. That is probably a good thing, considering the many advantages that are gained from bicycling as opposed to driving a car. Among those advantages are weight loss and personal fitness for the biker and cleaner air for planet Earth. The problem is that I don’t see many people actually doing it. When I bike to work in the morning and back home in the afternoon, I rarely see anyone else on bicycles. Generally, the bikers I see are on the Aboite Trails and they are not commuting but just out having fun. As far as I know, I’m the only person (out of hundreds) at my place of employment who regularly bicycles to work. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone else who even bicycles to work from time to time. Granted, many people who work where I do live in outlying areas miles from the office.
Changing people’s automobile commuting habits will be difficult until there are more pressing reasons for people to change them on their own. And if you get really serious about wanting to stop driving your car to work, sell your home, move closer to work, and then watch as your employer moves to a different building on the other side of town. It’s always something . . .
2 Comments | Tags:Fitness Update
Posted August 11, 2010 – 8:49 pm in: FitnessI returned to Erin Long‘s open training session Monday evening after two weeks off. The first week of absence was due to vacation. The second week was due to a bad cold.
During my two weeks away, I unfortunately didn’t do much to maintain my muscle tone. I did manage to get three pretty decent jogging sessions in while we were in Canada. I walked quite a few miles, too. I hit the floor several times for some quick pushup sessions. But that was about it exercise-wise. No crunches, no dumbbells, no lunges, no knee bends, no suffering.
You might think that Erin would cut me some slack, especially since I had been sick during the previous week. Well, you’d better think again. Erin is not prone to such behavior. She put me through some rigorous routines, mostly concentrated on the upper body but also stressing my lower parts. No part of me was spared.
Taking a quick inventory of my muscle pain, I find that my pecs, quadriceps, brachioradialis, triceps brachii, gluteus maximus, latissimus dorsi, and sternocleidomastoideus are all in various states of shock and awe. In short, I’m in a world of hurt.
Thanks, Erin Long, for making me think about the various and sundry mechanisms that make me a human being. Before I met you, I never knew there were so many. And that they could hurt so much.
Peace.
No Comments | Tags:Every City and Town In the World
Posted August 11, 2010 – 5:23 am in: JournalSomehow, while farting around online the other night, I stumbled across a file containing every town in the world. Yes, EVERY TOWN. At least, that’s what the file owner says. (The data was created by MaxMind, and is available at http://www.maxmind.com. ) Not only does it contain the name and nation of each town, but it also contains the latitude and longitude. And not only does it contain all this neat stuff, it is also FREE.
Not one to pass up a bargain, I decided to go for it and download the file. It was zipped, of course, in the txt.gz format. The zipped file took about 30 seconds to download via my trusty Frontier FiOS 20Meg Internet connection. I know the math doesn’t work out on the data size/download time, but sometimes you’re hindered by the other end of your connection. At any rate, the downloaded file is 31.1 meg in size. I unzipped it, and the resulting text file is 123 meg.
Not sure what I’d find when I opened it, and not even being sure that I could open it at all, I tried Notepad. Notepad successfully opened the file after about 4 or 5 minutes. When I saw the contents, I realized that the data was delimited. In other words, it was set up as fields separated by commas. This type of text file is very useful when you want to import the data into a spreadsheet or database. My first thought was to use Microsoft Excel, so I tried that. The file opened quickly, but a warning window popped up telling me that only a portion of the file was opened. I checked the number of rows and saw that there were 65536, the maximum allowable in Excel 2000. Only a very small percentage of the total file had been sucked into Excel. This was not good enough.
I then tried to open the file using Microsoft Access. This worked out nicely. It took seconds for the data to be absorbed into an Access table. The table is complete, holding each and every town in the world (all 2,699,354 of them) along with the nation and coordinates. I am very happy.
But now what happens? What possible use can I make of such an overwhelming amount of data?
I enjoy looking at maps and discovering unusual and humorous town names, so I can spend some time doing that as I scroll through the table. There must be lots of strange and exotic town names out there. I’m excited.
One thing that threw me off at first is the identifier for the nation. Each identifier is two letters, and the data is sorted by nation (using this identifier) and then by town name. The first nation is “AD” and the last one is “ZW.” It turns out that the nation identifiers used are the Internet country codes. A list of these codes can be found here.
If you’re wondering (or if you’re not), the first town listed is Aixàs in Andorra. The last town is Zvishavane in Zimbabwe. The name of my home town, South Bend, is duplicated several times. But the US state in which each is located is not identified. You have to locate the place by the longitude and latitude to determine where it is and which state it is in. So the data could use some enhancement to make it really cool.
Concerning the coordinates, Google Earth is a good tool for that. You can input the coordinates and GE will take you right to the place. You can be a globetrotter without leaving your easy chair. What would really be fun is to run the coordinates of every town in the database. I wonder how long that will take me . . .
Just kidding!
2 Comments | Tags:Not to Worry About High Temps
Posted August 10, 2010 – 5:16 am in: TalesWe hear a lot these days about “average” temperatures around the world. Although some parts of the world are seeing temperatures rise (such as at the polar regions where old ice is melting fast) other parts experience cooler than average temperatures.
It’s important to put this all in perspective, and a recent discovery has been helped to do just that. It shows that just about anything is possible, and it’s entirely possible that Old Mother Earth is taking care of herself.
A team of geologists from the University of Helios has managed to stumble across the hard evidence of Mother’s personal hygiene. In an awe inspiring report published in Scientific World Journal, the Helios team reports that they have discovered a pocket of extreme cold in an obscure region known as Los Cabahaches in Paraguay. The cold in Los Cabahaches, in fact, is so extreme that its temperature is not measurable. Scientific estimates of the cold range from minus 270 degrees Celsius to minus 272.5 degrees Celsius. Since absolute zero (the point at which molecular motion reaches its minimal state) is currently recognized as minus 273.15 degrees Celsius, the cold in Los Cabahaches is much more than bone chilling. It is a point at which molecules begin to doubt their own existence. It is a frigidity that makes time stand still.
The area of Los Cabahaches is estimated to be approximately 90,846 square kilometers, slightly larger that the state of Indiana. This place, unheralded and mostly unrecognized in the rest of the world, has put upon itself the task of equalizing the temperature of Earth so that global warming is not an issue. As long as Los Cabahaches (and a gradually increasing area surrounding it) can descend into a terrestrial deep freeze of heretofore unheard of proportions, the average mean temperature of Earth will remain relatively constant (all things considered).
So now we can breathe a bit easier. Mother Earth will take care of herself. She doesn’t need us to tinker with the climate in feeble efforts to save us from the disaster of increasing average mean temperatures. She will see to her own affairs.
There are only a few negatives associated with this latest scientific discovery. The glaciers will thaw, hurricanes and tornadoes will increase in frequency, many animal species will decline and eventually die off, and crops will be increasingly difficult to bring to fruition. But at least we’ll have a reasonable average mean temperature.
I say take what you can get and be happy with it.
No Comments | Tags:Canada Trip Part 2
Posted August 9, 2010 – 5:01 am in: JournalWe left Niagara-on-the-Lake on Thursday morning, July 29, after breakfasting with the other guests at Mi Casa, Michael and Sandy from Toronto. Nearly all of the people we met at breakfast on this trip were from Toronto. In past years, most of those we met were from either the US or other countries and very few were Canadian. This is yet another indicator of the economic times.
We drove about two hours to reach Stratford, Ontario. Stratford, believe it or not, lies on the Avon River. Yes, William Shakespeare was in the minds of those who named the town and river. He’s also on the minds of nearly everyone who frequents the place these days, since the world renowned Stratford Shakespeare Festival takes place there every year. It’s almost impossible to ignore the presence of the festival. Many shops and restaurants exhibit Shakespearean influence, whether by name or motif or product. The town sports four playhouses. This year, twelve different productions take place in these theaters. Although Shakespeare provides the inspiration for the festival, his plays usually make up only about a fourth of the total productions. Other genres and other eras are represented in the annual Stratford playlist. This year, the wide range of fare can be seen in such titles as “Evita,” “Kiss Me, Kate,” “Peter Pan,” “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris,” and “The Tempest.”
We checked into the “Almost Home” B & B late in the afternoon. We met the hostess, Sandra Buss, for the very first time when she answered the door. We usually stay inside the town of Stratford, but by the time I scheduled our trip I had trouble finding a B & B with en suite bathrooms. So I settled on one just outside the town. We were very pleased with our choice. Sandra is a gracious hostess and makes very good breakfasts. Her rooms (only two) are new, very clean, and extremely comfortable. Her home is in a suburban area that lies on the edge of farmland. The only distraction from the otherwise quiet surroundings was provided by an occasional train that passed nearby. This didn’t bother us, since we live close to a railroad and seldom are awakened or otherwise inconvenienced by the roar or the whistles.
I purchased tickets for two plays in Stratford well in advance, unlike my strategy for the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. In the case of one play, “The Tempest,” I’m very fortunate to have done that. Christopher Plummer plays the lead character, Prospero. Because of Plummer’s presence there was much interest in the play. The production was a complete sellout and no tickets were available on the day of the play. Our seats were in the balcony, three rows back and in the center. We couldn’t have asked for better seating. At the age of 84, Plummer is a very large and forceful presence on the stage, especially playing a character who is supposed to be larger than life and able to summon supernatural powers. We saw the play at 8 p.m. on the day of our arrival in Stratford.
There were several other roles of note in the play, including that of Ariel (Prospero’s ethereal servant played by Julyana Soelistyo), and Miranda, Prospero’s daughter (played by Trish Lindström). These actors supported Plummer admirably but are also strong actors on their own. All in all, the play itself was worth an 8 hour drive. The acting quality, the strong storyline, and the special effects all combined to make “The Tempest” a memorable event. Whenever I think of Christopher Plummer, I’ll remember him as Prospero in Stratford, Ontario.
After the play, we went to “Bentley’s,” a favorite of ours and a place with good food and an excellent beer and wine list. Sandra Buss, at “Almost Home,” told us that she didn’t care for Bentley’s and made it a point not to frequent the place. But we returned there anyway and were glad that we did. As usual, I ordered a pint of Creemore Springs lager. Barb had a glass of single malt scotch. We shared a plate of something that was very tasty. I wish I could remember what it was.
On Friday, we spent some time visiting shops in Stratford and tasting the local fare. We had lunch at a place called The County Food Co. They have great sandwiches, salads, and pizza. They also serve Balzac’s coffee. Good stuff.
We saw Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” Friday evening. Sandra Buss, at our B & B, told us that she was very disappointed in that play and that she and her daughter had walked out after the first intermission. Considering what she told us about Bentley’s Tavern, I couldn’t help but wonder whether her evaluation of “As You Like It” might be a bit different than mine. It was.
I admit that seeing Shakespearean actors wearing 1930s era costumes, some of which looked like German Nazi military uniforms, was a bit unsettling at first. But the costumes and the stage settings, after a while, lost significance as the play developed and the actors took control. By the end of the first (of two) intermissions, I was completely absorbed in the story. Rosalind’s efforts to hide her identity by posing as a man, and her ongoing attempt to remain hidden while having daily encounters with the man she loves, is not only humorous but also very touching. Rosalind is a strong, intelligent woman, and is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters.
We were very much pleased with “As You Like It,” and with our visit to Stratford as a whole. The next morning at breakfast, we told Sandra that she had probably walked out of the play too soon to have made proper judgment of its merits. She said she would have to revisit the play and give it another chance.
This year’s trip to Canada finally came to an end. We checked out of “Almost Home” on Saturday morning and drove west toward the St. Clair River and the US border. Although we had a great time during the previous six days, we were ready to return home. This readiness was tested, however, when we got to within a few miles of the Blue Water Bridge. We were tied up in a long line of traffic trying to cross the border. Nearly three hours after the traffic jam started, we finally showed our passports to the US Customs agent. After about 60 seconds of questions and answers, he waved us through the checkpoint. I’m not sure what caused such a logjam at the border, but we were certainly glad to put it behind us.
We spent Sunday trying to ready ourselves for the coming work week. One day of preparation was not enough.
1 Comment | Tags: