Saturday’s Miles: 22.8 Total Miles: 1,354.1
Over the years of writing journals of
my trips I have often mentioned that I generally spend nights in one of the
Choice Hotel brands. Most of the time
they are very good to excellent. In my
old hood of Waterford, MI I have stayed at the same hotel for many years
now. It was originally a Comfort Inn but
a few years ago they stayed in the Choice Hotel umbrella but changed the brand
to Quality Inn. I pick this hotel
because of its location. It is perfect
for me to see friends and places that are important to me. Over the past few years, with each stay, the quality
of the Quality Inn drops. I have always
said that all I need is a reasonably clean room with a bed and running
water. I will say that I DO have a bed
and running water and the room is reasonably clean…..BUT….with the exception of
the TV, microwave, and mini fridge EVERYTHING was unplugged. The lamps, the clock, the coffee maker, etc.
all sat with their cords uselessly hanging to the floor. The bathroom light fixture has three bulbs
BUT only one was working….the eerie lighting kind of makes me resemble Bela
Lugosi. The message light on the phone
was blinking but the instruction card that is usually attached to the
phone…..missing (I have a wash cloth over the flashing red light). And the hairdryer doesn’t work (and, yes, I
did plug it back in). I will survive
because, as stated above, I have the important bed and the running water gets
hot when needed. Still, it is
disappointing that a really nice place has diminished in quality so much. Ok….off the soap box.
I was graciously invited to join some
friends at a restaurant not far from the hotel called Coppertones. It is a nice family dining place that locals
go to in droves. As I walked out to the
bike…..oh, by the way, I luckily brought a handful of plastic grocery bags with
me in case I needed them. The hotel’s
covid policy is that if a customer is staying multiple night they do not do a
make up of the room unless you ask for it.
Since I am wearing old clothes to be discarded daily I have used a
grocery bag for all my trash and on my way out to the parking lot I throw my
bag away…….the housekeeper may wonder “what the heck” when after 5 days there
is NO trash in the room. Anyway, out to
the parking lot I went and started to prepare to get on the bike. An older guy walks up and starts talking
about the bike but what he was really doing was setting up the conversation to
talk about HIS car. He had a purple
Dodge Challenger R/T which was obviously a midlife crisis purchase. We talked for a bit on why he was here
(visiting his brother) and ALL the bells & whistles his car had. We wished each other a good day and he went
off and started his car…….I can’t tell you how it ran but it sounded hot.
The ride to Coppertones was a fast on
as it is only a few miles from the hotel on the same highway. I got there before my friends so I just
grabbed a stool at the counter. I was
marveling at the Saturday morning breakfast crowd. I like little diners like this because so
many of the people who came in were greeted by their names when spotted by
various waitstaff. It always reminds me
of the theme song from the TV show, Cheers….”You
wanna be where everybody knows your name”.
That is so very true. If you have
a store or restaurant or bar or store/bar/restaurant that you go to and they
know who you are and greet you when they see you then it is most likely that is
where you will continue to go. Their
prices could increase to maybe 5% more than their competitors and you would
probably still go to them because they know you. As I sat on my stool for maybe 10 minutes
waiting for my friends I saw a lot of faces light up because they were where
everybody (more or less) knew their name.
Then Ann and Helen came in. They are sisters that I have known since high
school. Shhhhh, don’t tell Helen but I
had a crush on her back in high school (when I wasn’t rescuing Annette) but her
heart was “stolen” by a fellow classmate.
Well….I suppose “stolen” is the wrong word since no one, especially
Helen, knew about the crush. We had a
great talk and a super breakfast.
From the restaurant I went to my old
neighborhood. I will go back there
before I go home but this was a fast ride down my block to take a picture of a
neighbor’s house. It has been years……way
more years than either of care to admit……since the neighbor or I lived there
(for me it has been 49 years) but when she found out I would be around there
she asked that I “say ‘hi’ to the old neighborhood”. So I whipped down the block stopping in front
of her old house, snapped a picture, and sent her a copy asking “look
familiar?” I didn’t really ride around
the neighborhood but plan to before I head back to Florida.
Then I went to the Mt. Hope Catholic
Cemetery in Pontiac, MI. We all like to
think that we were someone’s favorite……well, I WAS someone’s favorite. I was my grandmother’s favorite and, trust
me, all my siblings and cousins will confirm that statement. My grandmother lived with us from the time my
next oldest sister was born. Both my dad
AND mom worked and she helped with the house and raising the 5 of us
siblings……although she raised ME the best!
About a year after I returned home from Vietnam she passed away and was
buried at Mt. Hope. I find cemeteries to
be a great place to meditate and reflect on things and even more so when at the
grave site of a loved one. I brought a steel
brush with me because the last time that I was here a hard mossy substance was
growing on her little store. I cleaned
it off and it looked almost like new.
While there I meandered around the
cemetery looking for some other grave sites that other people had told me
about. They would try to give me
“directions” on how to find a grave. It
is still a very daunting task to walk around looking at thousands of grave
stones for a certain name. One
description I got was “over by the road near a couple pine trees”. That was well and good but the cemetery is
bordered on three sides by roads and there are, give or take, 80 million pine
trees. Needless to say, I didn’t find
that grave.
I took the long way back to the hotel so
that I could sightsee a little bit. Like
it is for just about anyone that travels back to their growing up home…..a lot
has changed but a lot has stayed the same.
I look at the house where 8 of us lived and I think…..HOW? I never felt crowded. Then again, I was a kid and a kid never feels
anything. We had 4 bedrooms and one
bath. Thank Heaven’s I was a boy and
only needed a bath once every two or three weeks…….boys apparently were a lot
cleaner than girls. So many things are
gone……my high school is now a Krogers, my favorite corner store is a field, the
mall where I hung out for soooooo many hours has been bulldozed and is now a
HUGE empty field, my first “real” job was an early fast food restaurant but is
now a modern T-Mobile store, the local movie theater is a strip center of
stores, and the list goes on. But, at the
same time, so many things are still there……the beach .9 of a mile from our
house where I spent hours upon hours…in fact, as many hours as possible between
Memorial Day and Labor Day (a Michigan summer)…..is still there and as nice as
ever, the neighborhood has kept its personality and is still a place where kids
can ride their bikes from dawn till dusk without a care in the world, the
bowling alley where I bowled and played pool and drank and danced is still a
great place for bowling and all the other stuff, the churches I attended are
all still standing and doing their part in keeping the worshiping of God
relevant, and more. Riding around like
that full of happiness and sadness at the same time.
Back at the hotel I gave Lisa a
call. Being a Saturday I didn’t have to
call and wake her so I gave her plenty of time to get active by herself. Then I called one of my daughters to go over
my schedule while I am in their neck of the woods. That left me with about an hour before I had
to get to the Pontiac Lake Inn.
I got a message a few days ago from one
of my old neighbors asking if we could get together at the Pontiac Lake Inn,
aka PLI, for a burger while I was here.
I asked if Saturday between 3 and 4 would be ok and she agreed. I just HAPPENED to mention it to a couple of
others…….just in case they might want to stop in. The PLI is only about 3 blocks from the
hotel. I mean, heck, I could walk to
it. But this is America and I don’t walk
ANYWHERE. I hopped on the scooter and
enjoyed all the scenery of those three blocks and pulled into the PLI. I was a
little early so I figured that I could get a sandwich and be done eating before
I had to do any socializing. Silly Me!
As soon as I walked in the door I heard
someone call “Bova!” and there were good friends Steve and Pat sitting at the
bar. We moved to a table and just as we
sat down more friends came in. Before I
was ever able to order a sandwich not only was I sitting with Steve and Pat but
had been joined by Jack, Linda, Maria, Ann, Helen, Kathy, Mike, Rick, Coni, and
Kirk. It was a great couple hours
covering old times, new times, and somehow finishing a grilled cheese sandwich
and an order of fries. Maria brought me
my annual ration of tamales………a tradition that stems from her mom bringing them
to my parents house as a Christmas Eve treat.
All I can say is “yum”.
I got back to the room and gave Lisa a
call. When we hung up it was approaching
7:30 and, to tell you the truth, I was wiped out. I haven’t had a lot of down time since
leaving my house and I was ready for some good, old fashioned, do nothing
relaxation. So, by 7:45 the hotel room
light was extinguished.
Sunday’s Miles: 22.8 Total Miles: 1,354.1
Ahhh, Sunday is here. This the traditional day of rest for many of
us and I have decided that today will be a good day to let my body regroup a
little bit. I don’t know if I should say
this too loud but all this traveling and visiting and Twinkie eating isn’t as
easy as it was 25 years ago.
I woke up deciding go down and have
breakfast here at the hotel. Keeping
with its apparent objective of not being up to my standard the breakfast room
was dark with a handwritten sign taped to the wall saying “Breakfast Closed”. I went back up to the room and through a
notice on Facebook that I was going to go to the Highland Grille for breakfast
at 9:00 if anyone was interested. That
gave me about 2 hours to lay around and do nothing.
I know that some people….maybe even most
people….would flick on the TV and watch something, anything to make noise and
keep their attention. To be honest, I am
not a huge TV person to begin with. I
like to keep up with current events but only for 1 hour a day and even then I
try to sift out the news from the commentary that is disguised as news. I like Jeopardy. I am not good at it but I like it and I do my
happy dance when I get more than two right.
I like sit-coms because they don’t require a lot of thought AND the shows
have a beginning, a middle, and they actually end. I hate the “serial” dramas that NEVER end. When they reach the end of the time slot they
just do a cliff hanger for the next show.
I want it to start and end in the same time slot. I can’t stand daytime TV. You only have to watch a couple hours of it
to understand why some of our society is a little, dare I say it, whacky. When I am on a vacation or a trip I just do
not watch any TV. Heck, the Canadians
could invade and take over important places like Ely, MN, Derby, VT, or God forbid,
Mt. Rushmore. I have no idea what is
going on in the world but I figure that it will only take me a day to catch up
once I get home. So I did the next best
thing. I lay on the bed and I checked my
eyelids for any possible leaks.
At 8:45 I grabbed my helmet and out I
went. Out in the parking lot I met Mr
Purple Challenger again. He was checking
out and we had a little chat about nothing in general but it is always nice to
talk to people. I hopped on the bike and
headed out of the parking lot. Highland Grille
is almost directly across the highway from the hotel and I looked at it as I pulled
to a stop leaving the hotel. WHAT? It was dark.
There were no letters in the sign.
There were no cars in the parking lot.
The Highland Grille is apparently a thing of the past.
I headed up the highway in a different
direction for a few miles to the Great Lakes Family Restaurant (for us old timers
it used to be a Big Boy). I pulled in
there, updated Facebook where I was, and went in for breakfast. Since I knew that I was going to spend a good
portion of the day laying around I decided to order a BIG breakfast so I had
plenty of material to turn into fat…….2 eggs, 5 sausage links, hashbrowns,
toast, biscuits & gravy, large orange juice, and enough coffee to not only
keep me awake but to keep me going to the bathroom for 2 or 3 hours.
I finished breakfast and took a nice
round-a-bout way back to the hotel and I settled in for the day. I napped a little. I watched You Tube some. I played a few games. I napped a little more. I did a video call with Lisa and it was time
to call it a day. I am positive that I
have recharged my body and that all of my breakfast has lodged itself in various
arteries.
I’ll be back at it tomorrow. As good as doing nothing is, sometimes doing something
can also feel good…….as long as you don’t have to call it a JOB. I’ll talk actcha some more later.
If you enjoyed your read give this a Like and
Share. Also, feel free to drop me a line by email at donbova1966@yahoo.com,
in messenger, on my Facebook timeline, or a comment on the blog. Lastly,
if you have missed previous chapters all you have to do is find them over to
the right and catch yourself up.
No comments:
Post a Comment