I know many readers are waiting for a recap of the trip this weekend, so here goes nothing. I’ll try not to glaze over any important details, but I’m sure if I do and will fill in the blanks.

We left Boston around 8am, and hauled ass, stopped at Don Pablo’s in Rochester for Queso and lunch, and then got back on the road. I missed an exit in Buffalo and had to do a quick turnaround, but our border crossing was uneventful. Once we were in Canada, however, things got messy. The short version is that we ended up going east instead of west. Names omitted to protect the innocent, lets just say things went bad. Unfortunately, this meant that we went 30 miles in the wrong direction during rush hour. This really killed the good time we were making. Corinna took over driving and decided to prove that Chuck Yeager is a pussy and put the pedal to the medal. We arrived at Amy and Andy’s around 11pm, drained but managing to drink and chat until 3am. I apparently passed test one, meeting the first bit of family, but was still nervous about meeting her folks in the morning. As an aside, the Raz’s dogs are crazy…. :)

After a bit of sleep, we woke up around 8 or 9am and got all prim-and-proper like before going to Corinna’s parents’ house. Ok, so by “prim-and-proper” I mean “no swear words on my t-shirt”, but hell, my standards are a bit different from the norm. :) We drive like 15 minutes and her ‘rents are missing.. After some “set to silent” confusion they came over and we ate brunch. I wasn’t thrown out of the house or anything, so I guess I did OK… We then went to Corinna’s brother, Tom’s workshop. He was very busy putting the finishing touches on his latest work to take to Mythic Journeys where he is a featured artist. We also screened Midnight Zombie Maniacs for Coco’s fam, and everyone liked it… We helped Tom put together his Minerva, which was pretty cool. His work is amazing… I wish I had the ability to translate the noise in my head into something tangible.

After leaving Tom’s we went bike shopping for , and she ended up getting some kind of comfort bike from TRU. Fortunately it fit in Hawkeye, so we were able to bring it back to Boston. Paul and Amber met us for dinner at the house and then we saw Shrek 2, which I wasn’t really expecting to like, as I am not usually into animated films. There were some funny parts, but as a whole it was pretty ho-hum. That’s just my opinion, though, and since everyone wanted to see it and seemed to enjoy it, I just kept my snobby mouth shut. :)

Sunday the two of us went to Paul’s house, which is the house that Corinna grew up in. It was a neat house, and it was cool seeing all the mods that Coco’s father had put in there. We didn’t stay very long, but Paul and Amber were coming out for the barbeque the next day.. After seeing the house, we went to visit one of Corinna’s friends in Ann Arbor. Her friend has two kids, one 4 and one 12, so I was on “distract the kids so we can talk” detail… I went style acting like a spastic toddler in the back yard while they caught up. We also went to this diner which was pretty cool. There was a goth kid sitting in the back with a Skinny Puppy shirt and LPD pin… I kept looking at him, I was dressed pretty nerdy, so he probably thought I was judging him or something… He was surprised when I started talking to him about the new SP album… :)

After our visit was finished, we headed to Coco’s parents new house (they are trying to sell the other) which is kinda close to Ann Arbor. It is this really tiny one-bedroom place set on 5 acres of land. They have plans to renovate and expand, but not until the old place is off their hands. Anyway, we went to dinner at this local place, Stivers. It was divey, but I’ve never been known to turn my nose up at a divey place. I ordered Roast Beef and a Jack and Coke. I think the Coke was there just for color, because the drink was REALLY strong. Afterwards the four of us tried to decide on a PPV movie, but Coco’s stepdad just wanted to watch the Pistons game.

We slept on the floor, which was kinda difficult because it was a cement floor.. At some point that night I started bouncing Croc Hunter impressions off of Kim, cracking up Coco’s mom. After her parents woke up they traded us the living room for their bed, so I got in a few good hours of sleep. We then headed to Ann Arbor to drop something off at the same friends house and run some errands for her mom, who was preparing for the big Memorial Day barbeque. The barbeque was alot of fun, there were 8 of us (4 of us Amy, Andy, Paul, and Amber), and there was tons of great food and drink. Some bogo-pictionary was played, where I spent most of my time just guessing random words loudly. I even cracked up Paul at some point, which was apparently a big deal. Eventually everyone had to split, including Corinna and I who were staying at A&A’s that night so we had a bit of an easier trip back to MA Tuesday morning. Goodbye’s were exchanged and Hawkeye growled. We shot some hoops when we got back to A&A’s, watched some South Park and other bad television, and eventually went to bed.

The trip back to MA was pretty uneventful… We stopped halfway in Rochester for some Schaller’s, and made it back to MA in about 12 hours, which is pretty much on the money of what was predicted.