Grand Rapids Road Trip

And suddenly, here I am on the other side of the state! Dave and I drove to Kalamazoo yesterday and stayed the night at a Holiday Inn in Grand Rapids. I'm typing this in our darkened hotel room, listening to the sounds of traffic streaming by on U.S. 131.

Unfortunately there's not much to tell about this odyssey so far. We arrived in Kalamazoo about 12:30 and met with one of Dave's former students, who is now a high school band director himself. We all went to lunch at the Eccentric Cafe (that's the name of it -- I personally would not have pegged it as eccentric) at the Bell's Brewery. We chatted a couple of hours and went for coffee before dropping him off and high-tailing it up to Grand Rapids.

The funny thing is, the whole reason we were going to Grand Rapids in the first place was to have dinner with Dave's friend Annie. But she came down with the flu and couldn't meet us. Since we had prepaid hotel reservations we drove up anyway and had dinner at the restaurant ourselves. (It was OK. But just OK.)

Today we've got some errands to run here  -- Dave wants to see the house where he lived for six years -- and we have more people to see in Kalamazoo. Then we're zipping back across the state to rejoin Dave's parents.

(Photo: A cemetery in Wyandotte, near Detroit. I don't have any pictures to speak of from Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids -- not yet, anyway.)