Category: travel

Mjadara and Cabela’s

Published October 25, 2008

Mjadara from Lebanese Grill in Shelby Township, MI.

Today Danielle and I headed out to Cabela’s in Dundee, MI to find a winter jacket for her. Unfortunately, and contrary to what others had told us, the store did not have a decent selection of plus sized jackets. In fact, they only had one style of plus jackets, in four rather poor colors, without having the particular size which would fit best. Also, the store was nowhere near as impressive as I was led to believe, particularly in light of its place as a major local tourist destination. Except for a rare gun area the store didn’t have any particularly special items. It did have a large mountain in the center covered in stuffed animalsand a bunch of dioramas around the sides also full of stuffed animals which seemed a bit over the top, but not as over the top as the giant bronze statue of two bears fighting over a moose skull located in front of the store.

Heading back we decided to swing by REI in Ann Arbor thinking that we’d be able to quickly stop at the store and get back on the express way. Due to the ramp nearest to REI being closed and initially good traffic at the point where we could exit we pushed on further into the city and ended up stuck in game day traffic. To make it even better, this was the MSU / U of M game. We ended up stopping off at a Cottage Inn and getting a bit to eat while waiting out the traffic.

Before heading out to Ann Arbor we met up with a friend of ours named Sarah and had lunch at Lebanese Grill. I had a large plate of mjadara (as seen above) which was absolutely excellent, Danielle had some beef shawarma, and Sarah had a chicken fattoush salad. Mmm!

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Cedar Point

Published October 6, 2008

Looking up at Wicked Twister as we waited in line to ride it.

A few months back Danielle and Sarah had received free tickets to Cedar Point for donating blood at an American Red Cross event at Eastern Michigan University. So, on Saturday Danielle, Sarah, Bo, and I drove down to Sandusky, OH and the park.

After a breakfast at Perkins (sort of like Denny’s or IHOP, but not crap) we headed into the park.

Part-way through the day we were going to take the train back to the front of the park, visit the car, then get some food, but weirdly we ended up running into Brian Cors and his wife Debbie. They were waiving to us from the train and while it took us a few minutes to recognize them from that far away, eventually we realized who they were and made arrangements to meet up with them. We all wandered around together for the rest of the day, in and out of the HalloWeekends haunted areas, and on various rides.

Here’s the list of rides and attractions visited between Danielle and I, in order:

Troika (Thrill Ride)
Wicked Twister (Roller Coaster)
Corkscrew (Roller Coaster)
Witches’ Wheel (Thrill Ride)
Gemini (Roller Coaster)
Cedar Creek Mine Ride (Roller Coaster)
Mean Streak (Roller Coaster)
Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad (Tranquil Ride)
Iron Dragon (Roller Coaster)
Mantis (Roller Coaster – Steve only)
UNDERTAKER U (Haunted House – Danielle only)
Terror Island (Scare Zone)
Raptor (Roller Coaster)

In order to get a better feel for using the Olympus Stylus 850 SW I brought it along on the trip, so there’s a few photos of the rides and such available. These photos can all be seen here in the album Cedar Point (October 2008) if you would like to see them.

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London in November

Published September 11, 2008

This morning Danielle and I booked a vacation to London in November. We’ll be staying at the Holiday Inn Express LONDON-EARL’S COURT from 09-Nov through 17-Nov. Total cost only ended up being $1900-some for the two of us, flying on unrestricted NWA tickets non-stop out of Detroit.

Now to figure out what to do in the UK… We’d like to visit some people from here and #llamasoft, and hopefully some interesting places. Plenty of wandering is in order, too.

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North Country Trail (Kalkaska Area)

Published August 28, 2008

My bike on the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, MI just northeast of the Eagle Lake public access.

This weekend Danielle and I headed up north to my grandparents house to both visit them and see the area. We spent time in Traverse City, Petoskey, a number of places between, out in my grandparents row boat, and generally had a good time.

On Monday (25-Aug-2008) I headed out to the local segment of the North Country Trail (NCT) starting at Pickerel Lake, as detailed here. In short, this was a really, really, really nice ride along narrow, winding hiking trails through all manner of Northern Michigan terrain. The trail seems intentionally routed between trees to keep ORVs off the trail, but it’s still very (and legally) bikeable.

My ride on Monday only ended up being about 15 miles of NCT itself as the long slow uphills and frequent sharp turns made for slow going, but there were also some really nice, smooth downhill sections. All in all, it’s an excellent trail for casual, relaxing, get-out-into-the-woods riding. Here is a graphical map of the route I rode and here is 25-Aug-2008_NCT.gpx detailing the route.

Except for a rear mech full of shrubbery and a slight fear of running out of water I had no problems along the way. I’ve had a lingering problem with shifting at both ends of the bike, and I have come to the realization that I need to replace some chainrings and the rear cassette as they are both bent. My chain has also stretched quite a bit, so I’m thinking that I should probably just replace most of the drivetrain soon. I might even do the whole shifting system, but that may be a bit drastic (read: costly).

Here are the photos I took while on the ride:

· My bike near the North Country Trail trailhead at Pickerel Lake in Kalkaska County, MI.
· Low fallen trees across the trail on the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, MI east of Pickerel Lake.
· What I believe to be a well head just off of the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, MI.
· Warning: Hydrogen Sulfide sign on some oil / gas drilling equipment just off of the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, MI.
· My bike on the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, MI just northeast of the Eagle Lake public access.
· A pump at an oil well just off of the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, MI. It wasn’t running.
· Oil extraction equipment just off of the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, Michigan.
· More oil extraction equipment off of the North Country Trail in Kalkaska County, Michigan.
· A bunch of leaves and twigs that got caught in my rear mech as I tried to ride away from Eagle Lake. Whoops.
· Small spur of the North Country Trail heading down to Eagle Lake in Kalkaska County, MI.

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Point Hope, AK

Published August 4, 2008

The person who won the 8GB iPod Touch auction I had posted lives in Point Hope, AK prompting me to ask how they ended up living there. Hopefully they’ll reply, because a place that remote is simply fascinating to me. In case you don’t know, Point Hope is a tiny place of 750 – 850 people located here, quite a ways north of the Bering Strait.

Beyond the aforementioned Wikipedia article, here’s another interesting article about Point Hope from the Tikigaq Corporation, and here’s a short story from a missionary about flying in and out of the town.

I guess it’s safe to say that I’ve now shipped iPod Touches for .11% of the residents of Point Hope.

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Lots of Driving

Published July 8, 2008

These last two days have found me driving to Lansing each day to work towards sorting some work stuff out. It was about 240 miles each day, and thankfully that’ll be reimbursed.

Today when I got home I ended up going on a 15-16 mile bike ride, just to get out and about a do something. Unfortunately, after the 55 mile ride and today, I’ve found that the spokes in the new wheels are creaking a bit, and some of them are quite loose. I think I will need to take them to someone who can properly tension / readjust them. I’d do them myself, but the tool is $55, and I’m still without a truing stand.

Now that I’ve finished replying to email and balancing my checkbook I think I’ll relax for a bit, then get some sleep. I’ll probably need it.

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Bus Routes To Work

Published June 30, 2008

I just decided to look up the bus routes to work, via this area’s wonderful SMART bus system.

It turns out that there actually is one bus route which I could take to work, number 559. The closest stop to my house is Lakeside Mall and the nearest to work is Hamlin and Squirrel, meaning that I have to cover 3.4 miles from my house to the stop, then around another .75 miles after the destination stop (without sidewalks) to the building I work in.

The times are also pretty pitiful, with the westbound buses (yes, there are only two) leaving at 5:51am and 6:48am, arriving at 6:14am and 7:11am, respectively. The eastbound (home, again only two) busses are at 3:33pm and 4:38pm, arriving 4:38pm 5:00pm.

This isn’t really usable. If you’d like to see the route for yourself, look up route 559 here.

I think I’d have to get up particularly early bike the first segment, hope the bike rack on the bus works acceptably on the highway, bike the last bit, then find a place for my bike. I may as well just bike the whole thing.

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Indian Springs Metropark Underwater Viewing Room

Published June 29, 2008

Sitting around the edge of the underwater viewing room at Indian Springs Metropark.

Here is a photo of the underwater viewing room in the Environmental Discovery Center at Indian Springs Metropark. It is an acrylic cylinder with a domed roof, and an arched walkway leading from the basement of the building. Here is a photo of the pond behind the center, with the underwater viewing room visible as a light spot in the pond.

Wanting somewhere to wander, Danielle and I headed over to the park this afternoon. Everything was going well until we tried to head down some of the nature center trails which were much more insect infested than we would have prefered. I had numerous deer flies on me at any given time, and one of them bit my head. Of course there were also mosquitoes. Lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes.

(This photo was taken with a Peleng 8mm fisheye lens and is posted without cropping or other processing. I personally find it interesting how well a lens like that works for photographing the inside of a curved room. I feel that defishing and/or cropping would have made it less interesting.)

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Scott Lamkin + Jessica Runck

Published June 17, 2008

This weekend I drove a total of 1040.4 miles, taking Danielle and I down to Peoria, IL for the wedding of my cousin Scott Lamkin to his girlfriend Jessica Runck.

I’m currently too lazy (busy?) to caption the photos, although I hope to get to that sometime this week.

I don’t envy the photographer’s job in working on the wedding photos themselves, as the ceremony was held in a hall at the Boy Scout Camp (Wakonda in Chillicothe, IL) which was lit by both high pressure sodium lights and cheap fluorescent lights. I’m not sure how one could properly color correct it, but you can see the weird color straight from the camera above.

The drive was fairly uneventful, although on the way there we passed through a storm alogn I-94 which provided ~80MPH headwinds and rain. I had to tail a semi in order to have a point of reference, then after getting through the storm we found rest areas without power, downed trees and billboards, and an overturned semi. On the way back we took I-80 / I-90 through Indiana and Ohio, mostly paralleling a rather large (and beautiful) thunderstorm the whole way.

We stopped by Danielle’s house to visit some with her family before heading back to my place, and when heading back on to I-75 for the remainder of the drive home a quite beautiful sunset presented itself.

Now I think it’s time to eat lunch. Maybe I’ll post more about this trip after captioning the photos.

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Peoria, IL

Published June 14, 2008

I just drove through downtown Peoria, IL in about five minutes doing the speed limit (55 MPH). I’d also forgotten just how flat some parts of the US can be, and we’re not even west of the Mississippi.

There was a tremendous storm encountered as we were somewhere in Michigan west of Ann Arbor which threw such blinding wind and rain at the car that I had to follow a semi’s tail lights in order to have any sense of direction. Thankfully it passed in about 20 minutes and the rest of the drive was relatively uneventful.

Dinner was eaten at Cracker Barrel where I had some cod, mashed potatoes, fried okra, cornbread, and some of Danielle’s food which she didn’t eat. Food there really isn’t that bad. It’s a bit salty and portions are huge, but it’s better than just eating fast food.

When we arrived at the hotel our keycard was in a lockbox and the staff was just shutting down for the night. When I asked about internet access the person just wrote down the password on a piece of paper and told me that “it’s wireless so it can’t detect your room so you won’t be charged [the $4.99 per stay fee]”. A quick connect to the AP with an SSID of goesh (I don’t know either), web-based login as user Sam Iam of Iam, Inc., access test to foxnews.com, and everything else is just an ssh connection to either Troy, MI or Reading, UK.

Now, sleep.

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