This weekend
On Friday night, I headed out to armyofjuan's housewarming/St. Paddy's Day party at his new place in Detroit. Once again, I found myself in an old warehouse district, being converted to lofts. However, this loft space was more like a rock club: the crumbling brick interior painted in black, grey, white and red. One wall was adorned with a mural that was either a rabid, monochrome Ray-man rabbit, or someone's nightmare idea of Harvey from that old Jimmy Stewart movie. The bar was very nice and well stocked, and Nicole, one of armyofjuan's room-mates kept us all in shots and a wide variety of tunes ranging from 80s retro, to goth/industrial to gangsta rap. In short, it was a very cool time.
What wasn't cool was the fact that the roads had iced while I was there. I had a very harrowing 25MPH drive on I-75 home from Detroit, multiple people had lost control and caromed into accidents, some right in front of me. I clicked on the Second Gear Start mode of the Camaro, downshifted into Second and was mostly fine, except for overpasses. Fortunately, I made it home without any mishaps on my part.
Then there was St. Paddy's Day itself. Bro' and I had planned a particularly interesting one this year. We decided, more or less spur of the moment, to head up to Clare, MI to see what they had going on, as well as getting ourselves stocked up and kitted out for Turkey Hunting season at General Jim's Army Surplus and Jay's Sporting Goods (convienently located right next door to one another. At General Jim's I bought the very last East German Airborne tactical vest they had in stock (it was half-price, fit me perfectly and I couldn't pass it up!) and an air-tight, waterproof locking case, which I'll probably retrofit into a handgun case.
Next door at Jay's shred1976 went about as nuts as Hiro Protagonist in the bike pro shop. We dropped a combined total of over $300 on two complete sets of Natural Gear clothing for turkey hunting, hats, turkey calls and turkey loads for our shotguns. The upside is that we're now totally kitted out for our weekend hunt in May.
After that, we decided to drive by our cabin to see how it was handling the winter and check out Long Lake in its iced over, frozen winter state. We experienced the novelty of walking around over the same places that we usually swim, in summer. Don't worry, we were in no danger, the ice was over 10 inches think and could have easily supported a snowmobile, in addition to pedestrians like us. We then spent some time conversing with our local hunting contact at the general store, before heading into Clare to celebrate St. Paddy's Day.
I'm glad Bro' was doing the driving, because after all the Jameson's, Guiness and Harp that I drank, I was in no shape to drive. In addition to being--well, Irish on St. Paddy's Day--I was also irritated that the musician at the Doherty Hotel was playing crap like "Jesse's Girl" today. We started requesting U2, the Pogues and the Cranberries, all to no avail. Eventually, we tried, and failed, to get a table for dinner, and decided to head back to the Budd Lake Steakhouse for some actual solid food. (It should be noted that Bro' was drinking only Sprite, bless him!) It should also be noted that the Budd Lake Steakhouse lived up to the recommendations we had received.
All in all, today was a great day to actually be Irish-American!
What wasn't cool was the fact that the roads had iced while I was there. I had a very harrowing 25MPH drive on I-75 home from Detroit, multiple people had lost control and caromed into accidents, some right in front of me. I clicked on the Second Gear Start mode of the Camaro, downshifted into Second and was mostly fine, except for overpasses. Fortunately, I made it home without any mishaps on my part.
Then there was St. Paddy's Day itself. Bro' and I had planned a particularly interesting one this year. We decided, more or less spur of the moment, to head up to Clare, MI to see what they had going on, as well as getting ourselves stocked up and kitted out for Turkey Hunting season at General Jim's Army Surplus and Jay's Sporting Goods (convienently located right next door to one another. At General Jim's I bought the very last East German Airborne tactical vest they had in stock (it was half-price, fit me perfectly and I couldn't pass it up!) and an air-tight, waterproof locking case, which I'll probably retrofit into a handgun case.
Next door at Jay's shred1976 went about as nuts as Hiro Protagonist in the bike pro shop. We dropped a combined total of over $300 on two complete sets of Natural Gear clothing for turkey hunting, hats, turkey calls and turkey loads for our shotguns. The upside is that we're now totally kitted out for our weekend hunt in May.
After that, we decided to drive by our cabin to see how it was handling the winter and check out Long Lake in its iced over, frozen winter state. We experienced the novelty of walking around over the same places that we usually swim, in summer. Don't worry, we were in no danger, the ice was over 10 inches think and could have easily supported a snowmobile, in addition to pedestrians like us. We then spent some time conversing with our local hunting contact at the general store, before heading into Clare to celebrate St. Paddy's Day.
I'm glad Bro' was doing the driving, because after all the Jameson's, Guiness and Harp that I drank, I was in no shape to drive. In addition to being--well, Irish on St. Paddy's Day--I was also irritated that the musician at the Doherty Hotel was playing crap like "Jesse's Girl" today. We started requesting U2, the Pogues and the Cranberries, all to no avail. Eventually, we tried, and failed, to get a table for dinner, and decided to head back to the Budd Lake Steakhouse for some actual solid food. (It should be noted that Bro' was drinking only Sprite, bless him!) It should also be noted that the Budd Lake Steakhouse lived up to the recommendations we had received.
All in all, today was a great day to actually be Irish-American!