The moons aligned this past Friday evening as the married contingent joined me for a road trip west to Kalamazoo to visit friend Mike. The road trip process has definitely changed since our younger days as what used to be conversations of running wild and doing silly things has now evolved into discussions about physical therapy. Yep, Father Time does that but not to fret for us forty-somethings; these married guys can still take it up a notch when out of the chains. I sure couldn't keep up with them. Love the road trip and what a great group to spend it with. It brought back memories of road trips of the past (queue the way back machine....dweep, dweep, dweep...)
One of my favorites was a trip with Al, Doke and believe it was Eddie back in the early 90's. I can't believe we covered it all in a weekend but after the 50+ hour work week (we were working our asses off those early years), north we went Friday night to Al's parent's place near Traverse City, hung out there that night, dug out Doke's truck from the driveway the next morning and went south to the Grand Rapids area to hang out with friends there Saturday night. We covered some serious territory on one of those weekends when there was no itinerary. Those are the best.
Another memorable ride was when Gus and I went to visit Jim down in Fairborn, Ohio, also in the early 90's. My car at the time had a defect where the brake calipers would not release correctly. With that, the brakes were pretty much "on" a good portion of the time. Mix that in with a little slush/freezing rain and we were doing some pretty good fish-tailing on I-75 on the way down. A safe trip it was I'm happy to report but definitely a steering wheel gripper.
Meeting up with friends at college was usually the motivating factor for the road trip. There was one trip in particular that makes me wish we had cell phones (and some common sense). It had to have been 1986 or 1987 and Jim, Gus and I went for no particular reason to visit Mark C. at MSU. It was probably mid-late May as State had late spring semesters back in the day. I was still a Chippewa at the time. Rather than calling ahead to Mark prior to leaving like a wise person would, we just assumed he would be there so west down I-96 we went and onto Akers Hall for a surprise visit. Upon entering Mark's floor, we soon learned he went home to Milford (where we left from) for the weekend. All was not lost, however, as the people in the dorm took us in as their own. We had a few soda pops with them and had a great time. On the ride back to Milford, we were following this race car being towed. The driver name on the side was similar to "Bob Rahal" but wasn't him. We could not stop chanting his name while giggling like schoolgirls. And we ended up hanging with Mark later that night back in Milford!
There are many, many more road trip stories to tell but we'll leave those for the campfire chat. A fun time it was in Kalamazoo Friday evening though. A shout out to our driver, KC, for safely transporting six very large human beings from the hotel to downtown. That van's shocks hit maximum pressure on that ride.
Trail Head
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| Bell's - what a beer selection |
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| Mike and I reflecting on a cold beverage about to come our way |
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| band on the move - "Scythian" they were called - good pluckers/fiddlers |
