When my friend Jimmy went to “college” at Northwood Institute (now named Northwood University), I used to drive up and visit him just about every weekend. Northwood offers degrees in Automotive Dealership Management among other things of that sort. Many students are the obnoxious children of auto dealership owners and drink attend school there. In the fall, the shcool has what is known locally as “auto show”. It’s a good excuse for auto manufacturers to show off cool cars to the future alcoholics students. Apparently they’ve pumped up the name a bit lately and hired a publicist.

I was feeling much better on day 4 than in the evening of day 3. We went to my hometown of Milford and drove past the house I grew up in (from the age of 5). We also stopped by the bridge that crosses the Huron river right next to it. The boys and I got out of the car and I let them run around to explore the area for a little while. They thought it would be pretty neat to live near a river. We live near a wash, which is sometimes a river, but it’s not really the same.

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The current owners of the house I grew up in have fallen down on the job when it comes to maintenance. The house and yard look terrible. It’s obvious that the driveway hasn’t been touched since my parents had it paved before my high-school graduation party in 1989 (it was gravel before that). The paint on the garage doors is weathered (and by today’s standards, ugly) and the landscaping is completely overgrown. There is also an inexplicable amount of “junk” at the top of the driveway. You know what they say; you can never go home. Which is a saying that turns out to be true.

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We also drove by my elementary school, Johnson Elementary, and the church I attended while growing up, which happens to be where Jamey and I were married.

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Like our house, the church has also fallen into disrepair. If you look close enough, you’ll see that there’s a gas grill and some miscellaneous patio furniture on the stone porch and the slate roof is damaged. Apparently the place has been turned into some type of hypnosis center. It’s difficult to see because of the awful looking storm windows, but there is some amazing 100-year-old stained glass in the church.

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From there, we drove past Jamey’s house that she lived in as a teenager, in Commerce Township (formerly Union Lake), made a stop at the cemetery where my grandparents are buried, and then to our friends’ house in Oakland Township for dinner.

Day 4 was a nice day.

In the evening of Day 3, I went out with my brother-in-law, Cabe (who doesn’t contribute to his blog anymore), and my friend Jimmy.

Before picking up Jimmy, Cabe and I stopped by his home Kart track, Kart 2 Kart for a rematch. I’m going to have to start visiting my local track on a more regular basis, because Cabe and I are pretty evenly matched. I’ll fix that. Below is a list of our raw lap times:

If you throw out each of our single fastest and slowest laps (Cabe’s slowest lap was earned by intentionally letting me pass him so I could lead for a while), you have this:

So my average lap time is only three hundredths of a second faster than his. I’m still faster, but I’m going to need to improve in order to retain family bragging rights. Game on.

We left the Karting place and made our way over to Jimmy’s house. The three of us headed down to Royal Oak for dinner in my rented 6-cylinder Charger. We ate at Mr. B’s, where I ordered the tasty “Slop Burger” and two pints of Guinness (in succession; I didn’t order two at once).

Let me set the tone for this next part by saying that I don’t smoke cigars very often. On average, I smoke maybe one or two cigars each year. So, we each bought a cigar (actually, Cabe bought mine). I chose a medium wrapper Churchill-sized one. I don’t remember the brand. We smoked and talked for a while in the cigar shop’s smoking room and then moved out onto the sidewalk. A storm was brewing that night making for windy weather conditions and I accidentally inhaled the smoke a couple of times (a big no-no with cigars). After an hour or two of walking, talking and joking, the storm was imminent, so we went back to our car in the parking garage.

The moment we reached the car, I immediately felt ill. We sat there in the car, in the parking garage for a good twenty-minutes before my body decided that I was indeed going to deposit my dinner onto the concrete; which was not fun. After a few more minutes, I declared myself a “bit better” and we left and went towards Pontiac to drop Jimmy off. I only drove about four blocks before I needed to stop and eject the remaining contents of my stomach. Luckily, I was able to pull onto a side-street and mostly stop the car in time.

While in the throws of this particular eruption, my body abruptly informed me of another problem on the not-too-distant horizon. Apparently, at dinner, I must’ve ate too much cheese (I’m lactose intolerant, and sometimes Lactaid tablets don’t do their job). I needed to find a bathroom. Fast.

Still driving and on the lookout for a clean bathroom at 11 PM, I turned North on Woodward Avenue. After making a quick stop in a Wendy’s parking lot in order to dry-heave, I spotted a McDonald’s that for some strange reason appeared to be open. I looped around and pulled into the parking lot only to see a neon sign that read, “Drive-Through Only”. At this point, I had tunnel-vision. I needed to find a restroom now or there was going to be an “incident”.

While driving through the parking lot of McDonald’s, Jimmy spotted someone standing next to a parked 2007 Mustang GT 500 convertible (they’re not out yet). It was blue and looked like it could be the press car that’s been making the rounds lately. The hood was up. “STOP NOW”, Jimmy exclaimed. “That’s a new GT 500 back there!”

I informed Jimmy in no uncertain terms that while I’d love to see a new GT 500, I had other more immediate concerns at the moment. I had spotted a pool hall a short distance from the McDonald’s and I raced over there and while still feeling incredibly nauseated, quickly headed directly to their bathroom. I have a personal policy of only going #1 in public bathrooms; especially since men’s rooms are notoriously filthy. I was willing to make an exception in this particular case. The bathroom was your typical small bar bathroom, and not particularly clean but I didn’t care. After verbally chastising Cabe and Jimmy for following me in there to pee, they left and I was able to…well…you know.

We then went from the pool hall to a gas station parking lot about a mile up the road. I needed some water (which Jimmy ran in and bought for me) and possibly to dry-heave some more. After sitting there for 30 minutes, I switched places with Cabe and let him do the driving. I was too nauseated to drive anymore. We made it another several miles before I commanded him to pull over at a Shell station. It was 11:56 PM when I entered the station and inquired with the attendant as to the direction of the restroom. I instantly ran off in that direction, entered the restroom (which was a door off the main store), closed the door, and found out the lock was broken. After a short internal debate, I decided I didn’t have much of a choice.

When I emerged from the bathroom, all the lights in the station were off and the attendant was patiently waiting for me so he could go home. I profusely thanked him for allowing me to use his bathroom at closing time. I walked out and got back into the car.

After what seemed like an eternity, we dropped Jimmy off at home, and after only two additional stops to allow me to dry-heave (once on the shoulder of the freeway), Cabe dropped me off at my hotel. Ugh, I feel sick just telling the story.

Thanks Cabe and Jimmy for putting up with me and not letting me die.

An old friend of mine, Jack (hi!), found my blog and sent me this old photo that was probably from the Summer of 1990. In the center, doing the gay pose (I’m going to get hate mail for calling it that) is me. On my right (your left) is Jack and on your right (my left) is my friend Jerry, whose sister I posted about last year.

Jack asked why I’ve never posted about my Geo Storm. The reason is because the Geo brand became the butt of jokes almost from the time it was conceived. So yes, I had a Geo Storm. I had a loud exhaust on it with a custom built header (I was ahead of the curve on the import thing), tinted windows, and I Iiked it. So what. Move along.

The best boss I ever had was Tom Rachfal. He was the Vice President of Sales when I was a Regional Manager for Tapco. I heard that he left the company not too long after we sold it. He always treated me fairly, with respect, and never gave me any grief over my family connection to the company; although I worked really hard to make that a non-issue.

One of the things I miss most about working for him is when he’d get a piece of information about a customer of mine and if I wasn’t in my office when he walked down to give it to me, he’d leave it on my desk with a note saying “Mark – WTF?”

How can you not like a guy that is so direct?