Rockin' the Michigan

August 13, 2009
Today is the flight to Michigan. Katie and I are on different flights. Her’s is straight to Lansing and mine is to Detroit because it’s way cheaper. From Detroit, I have to take a two hour bus to Lansing. My flight is supposed to leave at 12:40, but it’s delayed. Then it’s cancelled. They can only get me on a flight at 4:00 to Cleveland and then to Detroit. Instead of a straight flight, now it’s 3 hours later and it’s two flights. At Cleveland, the plane’s AC broke and the flight is delayed and seems cancelled. I’m smart and awesome and book a flight to Grand Rapids, which is an hour to Lansing. It’s better than waiting 12 hours for the next flight. Turns out they’re not as shitty as I thought and the flight is still up, but delayed an hour. This delay causes me to miss my 9:00 bus so I have to take the 11:00PM and arrive at 1:00AM. What the fuck. I bitch all day and the best I can get is a $100 voucher. Fuck that. I need to now write a letter to them and try to get a refund or something.
Straight from the bus, I drop off my stuff at the Marriot, where she used to work, and we go to The Riv. It’s a divey bar, but the bouncer takes a really hard look at my ID, but eventually lets me go. The place is mighty cheap compared to the city. Shots are like $3. A small pitcher of beer is $5 or something. After such a long day and a few drinks, it’s a good time to pass out for the next day.

August 14, 2009
I’m going to be short about stuff. I’ll give the deets about the more fun stuff. East Lansing is an interesting place. It’s a college town for MSU, one of the biggest schools in the country. It’s clean and nice, has a bunch of college food places, and bars all in a 4-5 block radius across the street from the campus.
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&q=marriott&ie=UTF8&radius=0.69&sll=42.733774,-84.478984&sspn=0.015666,0.027337&rq=1&ev=p&layer=c&cbll=42.735633,-84.481531&panoid=DPUzuwipUAXTfEZi2I69Mw&cbp=12,1.1,,0,2.78&ll=42.735697,-84.48173&spn=0,359.972663&z=15
Go have a gander.
Anyway onto the day, start off at the Peanut Barrel for lunch. Outdoor seating, good prices, down to earth awesome sandwiches/burgers. Then lots of packing. Then Noodle Company for dinner. It’s a chain, but has a lot of ethnic varieties and is really impressive for a chain. More packing. Pregaming. Because I had so much for dinner, I deicde to pregame hard. Rum, Jager, and tequila because Katie has leftover liquor sitting around. I take about 5 shots and 2 drinks. We start off at The Post, a bar/loungey place with a small dancefloor. We have a shot and move onto the next place.
Rick’s is all downstairs. It’s really big down there with booths and a pretty decent size dancefloor. Live band. Cheap drinks. Holler. By now, I’m super drunk. We meet up with Katie’s friend from work, Emily. More drinking and dancing. It’s hard to stop drinking when shots are $3. Keep ‘em coming bartender.
At one point, it gets blurry. We walk over to Mena’s for a “dub.” I’ll have to explain how good it is later because I’m super drunk. Katie tells me we share a chicken one and eat half of Emily’s. I apparently really liked Emily’s. I do remember going outside a bit stumbley and we take a cab back to the apartment. The bars close at 2:00, how lame, but we spent some time at Mena’s and I’m so shwasted that I just pass out. Turns out Katie is up for partying it up more and having some more drinks, like a champ, but I’m too out of it. Darwin loss.

August 15, 2009
Wake up at 9:00 because Katie’s sister, Chloe, is over with the car. Katie’s car is at her mom’s. Awkward introduction because I’m all hungover and shirtless. We go over to the bagel place for breakfast. Then it’s a whole day of moving shit. It’s hot. It’s a lot of heavy lifting, sweating, yikes. While moving something for Emily because she’s taking some of the furniture, I get a splinter. I’m a bit creeped out by them since I have a bad memory as a kid. It doesn’t hurt much, but Emily eventually takes it out for me. How nice.
At 5-6:00ish, we to go Mongolian BBQ. A weird place and Chloe’s favorite. Basically, they give you a smallish ceramic bowl. You walk down the buffet putting in assorted meats, veggies, and noodles or something. Top it off with your choice of sauce, then they putting it on a big stove thing and cook it for you.
http://onemansblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/bds-mongolian-grill.jpg
An interesting concept, but the food is meh. I ended up getting straight beef and not much bitchsauce veggies and stuff.
At 6:30, three hour drive from East Lansing to Traverse City, where Katie’s mom lives. It’s out in a way rural area, it’s on a cherry farm. Have a slice of some awesome asparagus quiche. Have a rum drink, while Chloe, Katie, Katie’s mom, and I play a board game. Sleep by 12:00 because of long day.

August 16, 2009
Wake up, move Katie’s stuff out of Chloe’s car, she goes off to her sorority house at CMU or whatever. Then 30 minutes off of the farm to Traverse City, where there’s actual stuff. We go to Poppy Cock. Delicious restaurant. Three yummy soups, curry pasta, and she gets a fish sandwich. Then off to Morsels, which sells bite size desserts that are really rich and delicious. An interesting little shop.
http://www.morselsbakery.com/
We get back, check out the hot tub. I thought I’d hate it, but it’s actually not bad. At night, we drive out to Cherry Republic. A cool store that sells all “cherry” products.
http://www.cherryrepublic.com/
Katie’s mom buys a few things that I think my mom would like and has them shipped to home with a personal note. She wants to thank my mom for having Katie over and stuff. How sweet of her, that’s adorbs. My mom ends up calling me later and really appreciates it.
Then for dinner, we go to this outdoorish place that has live music, even though it’s country. Darn country, there are like 3-4 stations for it out there. What a weird place. Good thing we don’t have any.
I get a pulled pork while they a major hamburger. I wish I got that. I end up having Belle’s Oberon, a Michigan beer. Katie has cranberry vodka’s and her mom has wine.
On the drive back, we blast I’m On a Boat at full volume through the rural roads. When we get back, we have a few drinks and play SNL Trivial Pursuit, which is way too hard, so we switch to Trivial Pursuit, 90’s edition, which isn’t too hard.
Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Katie’s mom is like the coolest ever? Katie told her about my chalked ID, which she was fine with. It was like hanging out with Katie’s older sister. She got all the references and even the next morning when I had to help Katie write a few last things for CollegeCandy, her mom was trying to figure out this game application on Facebook. Coolsauce.

August 17, 2009
Katie’s mom makes pancakes for breakfast. We move stuff into her car of stuff that needs to go back to her dorm. Then we’re off to drive to Alpena, where her grandparents have cabin. We drop by Gaylord on the way, you can see the fun I have with that on Facebook. It’s like a four drive across the entire state. We take some really backroads to get to the cabin. It’s really, really nice and is right on the water, Lake Huron. We get there in the afternoon. I get to meet her dad, her grandparents, and her aunt’s and uncles on that side.
For dinner, we have some nom nom. Her dad grills up a really delicious, rare venison. Some fresh beans and ciabatta. Good stuff. We end up sleeping at like 10-11:00 because that’s when everyone sleeps and it’s been a tiring few days.

August 18, 2009
Somehow we pull off a 14 hour sleep. I guess it’s the moving and weird sleep schedules. Some cereal for breakfast and then onto the beach. However, it’s way buggy and we hang out a bit until her dad gets back and takes us out on the boat. It’s a nice day even though the water is bit nippy.
For dinner, we help her grandmother make some fresh pesto out of a food processor. That’s fun. Burgers for dinner with an ice cream sundae. Then off to sleep early again.

August 19, 2009
For some reason, I sleep three hours, wake up at 2:00ish and cannot go back to sleep. I stay up until 5:15. We get up at 5:45 to get a move on it down to East Lansing because we have to move out of the apartment before 12:00PM. After a quick Goodbye and a McDonald’s breakfast, it’s a 3-4 hour drive. We get back to East Lansing by 11:30ish. We move the shit out and throw some stuff out. We load her car up, but that’s not enough. I move stuff into a cab and we go to her new dorm on MSU campus.
Move stuff into the dorm, it’s early, so it’s only law students and international students, Asians. It’s all fuckin’ Asians that you’d think that something was wrong. However, it’s over two weeks before official move in so I guess the proportions messes my perception.
There are a few trips back and forth from her aunt’s house where she has stuff stored. It’s a huge mess of lots of stuff. Finally by 8:00ish we order some Chinese/Korean delivery. At night, we go to The Post for a few drinks.

August 20, 2009
I get a Potbelly’s Sandwich for breakfast, which I end up eating later. It’s meh. I hold onto it because we go to Mena’s. Turns out what I had the other night is a tortilla wrapped in chicken and loaded with other yummies.
http://www.mennasjoint.com/menu.html
It’s way delicious.
Then a 5 hour drive all the way up the state to Mackinac Island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Island
It’s an interesting place. Katie worked there for many summers, but hasn’t been there forever. We’re going to hang there and stay with her friend from when she worked there.
On the drive up, it’s heavy pouring so that sucks. However, we catch some booze because we’re gonna be partying hard up there and stop at the supermarket at Gaylord. Awesome city name. Check the Facebook, it’s so weird to see a huge liquor section at a supermarket.
We go over the bridge, park by the water, then take a boat to the island. We have to walk from the dock to the hotel. It’s a small little island that’s quite touristy. It’s got lots of cute little shops though. It’s loaded with horse carriages and people on bikes because cars aren’t allowed. Go figure…
We meet Kate, her friend who still works there. She drop our stuff in her room, they have employee quarters. Then we go off to dinner at the Village Inn. I’m not hungry and have green bean fries. Katie’s been pumping up the “pasty,” but no offense, not as good as Tuck Shop. Take that.
We go back to Kate’s room. I pregame hard drinking loads of Diet Faygo (funny name for off brand Cola) and vodka. The girls don’t have too much. At this point, I’m way drunk and we’re doing the “Bar Crawl.” We bought this shirt that has the 12 bars of the island and the goal is to drink at all of them and have the bartender sign your shirt.
By the time we get down to the bars, things get blurry because I pregamed way hard and drink more at the bar. I get really tired and have to keep telling Katie to cut me off. I get sleepy and you can see me like that on Facebook. And the shirts. We end up going to 9 of the bars because three of them close early. Weaksauce.

August 21, 2009
For “breakfast,” we go to the Seabiscuit. It’s really good there and you can see the awesome whitefish sandwich I have with onion rings. Then we walk around the island, seeing the fort, going into the foods on the island, checking out the famous Grand Hotel, etc.
Kate gets off work at 5:00 so we go to Goodfellow’s for dinner. It’s expensive and sucky Italian. Bleh.
Then we get back and realize that we missed the 7:00 ferry and have to take the 8:00PM ferry back to the main land. Then it’s about 4 hours from Mackinac to East Lansing. I’m supposed to switch driving midway, but the roads aren’t lit and I don’t like Katie’s beast of a Buick Century. She doesn’t like me driving, so she drives the whole way through. Biggby Coffee is a stop on the way. I really like it and like it more than Starbucks. We stay in for the night because of all exhausting driving.

August 22, 2009
Sushi for breakfast and we order a bit too much so I’m stuck forcing a roll of sushi down my throat. It’s rough, but sushi is too good to turn down. Then we go to Meijer to get stuff for the dorm like groceries and a TV cable/controller.
Hang around dinner time at Udon Sushi Bakery, which is a really interesting place. Interesting décor, order from a handful of Asian dishes with pictures, bubble tea, serve yourself sides in the fridge, Soul Caliber PS1 you can play, and pictures of all the Asians that hit up the place. We have spicy soup stew bowls and rice. Then we get back and go out at 12:00 for a few drinks at Harper’s. It’s a really big place that has their own brew. It’s a good beer, but the story is how cheap the drinks are. The shots are like $1-2 each, so it’s def worth the $5 cover. Leaving tomorrow.

August 23, 2009
I wake up at 8:00. Shower, pack, and go to the diner for a burger for breakfast. Then a 2 hour bus ride to Detroit airport. The flight is fine and on time. Arrive in LaGuardia at 3:20. I take the bus from the airport to Main Street Flushing. Then the N20 home by 5:00ish. No one’s home. I sit around for a while until people come over at night, Bolanos, Josh, Doug, Alon, Evan, and Scott.
We play a few games of pong, I work on some whiskey Cokes, and we check out the Top 500 Songs of 2000s Pitchfork List. After that, we hang around at Josh’s place. I have a beer and a gin and tonic. By now it’s probably 3:00ish so we go to Burger King since I didn’t have dinner. Two Whopper Jrs, an order of onion rings, and a Diet Coke. While driving there, the cops for some reason make a check point because they pulled someone over. Bolanos isn’t above the legal limit, but I’m drunk in the car and it’s just really annoying to deal with that and he gets ID checked. The officer just quickly lets us go though.

August 24, 2009
I get woken up by mom at 9:00. I figure that I don’t have my phone charger and I left it in Michigan. Mom took the car so I walk to the AT&T store for it. It’s $30. I then go to the Sprint store and get it for $20. I have to return the other one. I go to H Mart to get some sushi for breakfast since there’s nothing to eat in the house.
After spending an hour on this business because there’s so much waiting at the stores. I then find out from Katie that I apparently took it. I go back and find out that I actually did bring it with me in a different bag. Jeez, fuck me. It’s been such an annoying morning and it was all for nothing. Fuck that shit. Then I also get sick from the sushi. However, I shmooze around for the day watching TV because I need to catch up on that. And also writing this thing. Writing about the entire trip and stuff is really time intensive.