To home and there and back again.

Well, I've arrived safely back at the home of my youth. I flew into Bishop International Airport, in Flint, MI. It is, apparently, the second fastest growing airport in North America this last decade. Mr. Bush flew into BIA last Friday for his fund raising trip to Clarkston, MI. As per usual, he ignored the obviously problematic issues of living in America/Michigan these days and got down to the important task of raising political donations for a Republican Senate candidate. Oh, he also talked to the Ford heir about the miraculous job Ford the III has done running the car corp. into the ground. The president's mysteriously benign yet infinitely troublesome presence was felt in other ways, but I'll get to that later.

On Wednesday, my family had gotten word that my shipment to Windsor was waiting at the depot and that I had to get it immediately. Well, for us, that meant "sometime on Friday," so my mother and I took out the two bench seats in her minivan and drove down to Detroit/Windsor to pick them up. I got to Detroit in an impressive 1.5 hours. The traffic gods were kind. Now, I love irony. I love it so much, I'd love to kiss the shiney, be-spectacled jowls of the traffic engineer that laid out the Fischer Highway [aka I-75]. As you're entering the first ring of sprawl surrounding the once great city, somewhere around 8/9 Mile Roads, and pass under a warren of overpasses and bridges, you're presented with the humble silhoutte of St. Josaphat Catholic Church. You see it from an angle, it's three bell towers arranged so that its two smaller ones tightly flank the larger central tower. But that's not the irony. The irony is the Renaissance Center, home of General Motors, stands immediately behind it. The scale of it's enormous cock-and-balls styled profile, is muted by the distance to the core and serves as a dark-tinted frame for the little red brick St. Josaphat. If you're ever in town, I'll take you to see it. It's beautiful. And, depending on the traffic, you'll have anywhere between 30 seconds and 30 minutes to appreciate it!

Once in Windsor, after a couple wrong turns, we quickly pulled into one of the Greyhound depot loading bays [which were curiously labled "DO NOT PARK IN LOADING BAYS"]. Quickly, because there's not really much else to do in Windsor besides the strip clubs and casinos. After sauntering into the loading dock office, and presenting my claim tickets, the clerk informed me that they would get the 11 pieces right out for me...

I had sent 16.

After a harried and frustrated 30 minute ordeal of nervously waiting for them to recount and double- and triple-check the delivery slips, it was discovered that there were, in fact, actually 15 pieces.

"Oh wait, soory," says the clerk. "Here's the other one. *chuckle* Soory aboot that." 11 becomes 15 becomes 16. Third time's the charm!

At the U.S. border, with a minivan packed to the brim with large, mysterious boxes and 5 identical hockey bags, all I had to do was walk around and open the doors. I knew I should have sent myself 80 kilos of BC pot... Oh well! Next time! On the way back, however, after a getting gas [which is back down to $2.35 a gallon] and eating lunch at McDonalds [blech!] things got interesting. You remember that Mr. Bush was in Michigan? Well, Clarkston is between Flint and Detroit on I-75. Fortunately, we missed the highway being shut down, but between the gigantic Jesus sign and our exit, there were 3 state troopers, 10 county cops, and a cop on a motorcycle, arrayed under and over the overpasses. My mother and I thought there was some sort of massive sting operation or traffic enforcement going on. We didn't know until later that it was because Mr. Bush was in the area.