kitchtrips

My old man’s that old man,
Spent his life livin’ off the land
Dirty hands, and a clean soul
It breaks his heart seein’ foreign cars
Filled with fuel that isn’t ours
And wearin’ cotton we didn’t grow

He’s got the red, white,
And blue flyin’ high on the farm
Semper fi tattooed on his left arm
Spends a little more in the store for a tag
In the back that says U.S.A.
He won’t buy nothin’ that he can’t fix
With WD Forty and a Craftsman wrench
He ain’t prejudiced he’s just made in America

– Toby Keith

Friday 28 July
Suttons Bay, Michigan

What a day Friday was. I actually started by waking up around 1am needing to use the facilities, and discovered that the inflatable mattress I’d been sleeping on had partially deflated, and I’d slipped into a sinkhole in the middle, with all my sheets and blankets. Not to be deterred, I just kept on sleeping and woke up at about 7:30am. I was so tired after the long day of flying, it didn’t even matter.

We headed up to Michigan about 9am, a six hour journey that seemed more like 60 because, about an hour in, the air-conditioning in Mike’s SUV died, and we sweated out the rest of the way. I can’t accurately describe how amazing it felt to reach Traverse City and feel the breeze off the lake. Mike is taking the car in to a garage here tomorrow morning to try and find at least a temporary fix to get some air-con for the ride home. We’re all fingers-crossed, hoping we have some cold air going south, because it’ll be brutal.

Traverse City and Suttons Bay are beautiful. You hear a lot about the disrepair of Detroit, but there’ much, much more to Michigan than the Motor City, and up here, it’s stunning. The scenery, the weather, the abundance of outdoors activity. We’re across the road from the lake, and our rental house – thanks for having us, Donahue’s – is really awesome. Getting indoors and being enveloped by the air-conditioning was amazing. The cold beer we were offered didn’t hurt, either. The weather up here is amazing for drinking.

Pretty soon after we arrived, Mike, Kevin and Kevin’s brother Brian went to the rehearsal, leaving Nathan, Jane and I behind to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. The venue was the family of the bride’s summer house, an absolutely amazing property that’s been in their family since the 1800s, a short five-minute drive from our rental.

It was a big night there, eating and drinking until well after dark, and when we headed back to the rental house with Kevin’s cousin Bobby who is crashing with us this weekend, Brian suggested that we get the fire-pit going, and we sat around for a couple hours with Kevin, drinking and chatting, and headed off to bed around 1:30am. A really epic evening, ended in the best way.

I’ll post some photos of the house seperately.