Archived News starting from 06-12-2009 and earlier
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With Lisa in
full sass mode, I was forced to visit Gatlinburg Tennessee, the official home of overpriced crap. After a full day of looking at endless rows of stores selling the same junk I was rewarded with the one enjoyable part of the trip, the
motor nature trail. It's exactly what it sounds like, you drive your car high into the mountains (
3150 ft to be exact) and fill up on nature. Our nature included a deer, black bear, and
something for Lisa to stare at. Having had our fill, we rushed back to the hotel where I was told to cheer on the Penguins in some game called hockey. They eventually won the Stanley cup which was more than enough reason for Lisa to down several beers and pass out. Vacation success.
A trip to
St. Louis started with Lisa learning how her 300 annual bottles of beer are brewed at the
Anheuser-Busch Brewery tour, which was free as long as you promised not to pee in the beer. After getting sufficiently buzzed in the free sample room, we took a boat ride to confirm the St. Louis river front was as unexciting as Detroit. Then it was off to the giant arch for
sexually suggestive photos and a ride in the
munchkin elevator where Lisa was
outed as a demon and we were politely asked to leave. After some
inappropriate animal touching our adventure concluded.
On the way to Illinois for our 3-state road trip, one of many crapped out Honda encounters on the highway had me exceeding 100 MPH, so I decided to just keep on going. A tempting feature of my GPS is a maximum speed record that
saved the speed at which a loud thump scared the crap out of me and woke up Lisa. My immediate thought was I destroyed my car 500 miles from home, but after confirming I still had power the smell of burning plastic finally convinced me to pull over. My discovery that the lower radiator air deflector had dislodged and dragged itself into uselessness only confirmed my poor choice of reinstalling it with my after market bumper. An Indiana highway trooper quickly pulled behind me adding to the excitement while I finished removing the few remaining bolts still holding it to my frame. As he approached, I presented him with my broken air deflector and toolkit, which was enough to convince him I wasn't stoned out on drugs or carrying illegal immigrants. Satisfied and apparently oblivious to my jail-time speeding, he departed just in time to miss me throwing the air dam into the ditch and continuing on my way.
Our road trip to Illinois begins with Lisa
playing Xbox in the car, or at least until my crappy inverter oveheated and shut down. You know your obsession with a game console has crossed a line when you take it with you in your car. Denied her
Carcasonne crack, she was left with no choice but to
map out various unremarkable stops along our route while I
crawled behind two semis pacing the highway at 65 MPH for half an hour. Fortunately our hotel had internet and an hour of
1 vs 100 gave us the fix we so desperately needed.
A visit from the Flatlanders initiated an unprecedented double movie feature with Jaird, Keith and
Stavos. First up was the new Terminator, followed by a half hour break at Hooters, then Star Trek. Terminator ranked an average of 6.5/10 while Star Trek was a unanimous 10/10. Saturday started with the
same group tackling
Island Lake bike trail with Jaird voted as the one most likely to give up, but surprised us all by biking the full 6 miles of dirt trail. After a stop at Hamburger Hut to replace all the fat we burned, we took a trip to a local RC dirt track while Lisa slept off her hangover from the night before. An angry RC driver high on Nitro yelled at me for parking on the grass so I ran over his RC car and laughed maniacally. A bonfire to drive out the flatlander infection resulted in
various trippy photos but the stink of flatlander was not cleansed.
After hearing about
Five Guys burgers and fries on the intertubes, it was decided today would be a
work outing to sample their cuisine.
Senator Kelley, fresh off his morning of Facebook work from home, joined us for the adventure and documented it with his myPhone. Luckily, we arrived at 11:30 and got our food quickly before the line extended out the door. With In and Out pegged at #1, I can safely rank this as #2. The burgers were great, and the fries were also cut and fried in the restaurant (no frozen/pre-packaged) like In and Out. While 8 guys eating at a restaurant called 5 guys may sound gay, it was actually more of a metro sexual event, complete with a ride in the metro sexual Pontiac Solstice.
UPDATE: Looks like Obama got my message and decided to
do Five Guys today as well. We got a
great photo together while he was there!
The
Commerce Sonic is
moving along nicely. Compared to the last update when the parking lot was
just dirt, it now has a full parking lot and order taking stalls. Still no opening date anywhere, but my excitement level has risen from a 2 to a 4 about this new location. My 45 minute penalty for a Sonic urge will soon be reduced to 5.
Alas, my dreams of owning a 300hp Focus RS
have been dashed by Jost Capito, head of the Ford global performance division. His fancy word "homologated" didn't lessen the pain either, and he's now officially on my kill list. I can only hope the whimped down version we'll get instead has some tuning potential, the only good news being it will cost less than half what the RS would have cost. Investigation into import fees commencing.
All the Taco Bell locations in metro Detroit are being either renovated or torn down and rebuilt completely. The new "classier" building that replaces it looks more like an upscale restaurant than a fast food location. I'm classifying these new buildings as "
Demolition Man prepped" since sometime in the near future, Taco Bell will be the only restaurant to survive the franchise wars, and will sport this same upper class appearance. The building itself doesn't bother me, but having the drive through operator introduce himself before taking my order, and finding peppermints mixed in with my food creeps me out. At Taco Bell I expect my order taker to say nothing and maintain a look of disillusioned defeat, my food to be crushed into pieces, and the building to have heavy amounts of grease and dust in every corner. Changing all 3 at once can only mean the new morality laws will soon be passed and they'll start serving the protein paste in place of tacos. On the plus side, I'll finally discover how seashell buttons can replace toilet paper, and Lisa will finally have to stop dumping salt on her food as it will be illegal. Hopefully Denis Leary and his counter-culture gang can bring back the Taco Bell I used to know and love.
A half-off
deal on floor coating prompted me to
take the plunge and apply it to my barn floor. After dropping off a truck load of junk at salvation army, filling three trash cans with garbage, and reorganizing I finally had enough room to completely empty the barn. My initial power wash yielded gallons of gunky water, with the follow up de greaser resulting in even gunkier black water. 4 more wash cycles later and the water finally ran clear. Fast forward to today after the floor completely dried, add 4 more hours to apply the coating and the transformation is complete. While the price indicates it won't last forever, it's definitely an improvement, and oil spills should only require a wipe instead of kitty litter. A barn inline skating party is in order.
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