Category Archives: travel

gettin’ the heck out of dodge

roadtrips

Weekend In Dayton

Not really in the mood to write too much, but I figured I’d post a short update about my trip to Dayton this weekend.

Mom arrived Friday evening, shortly before I got home from work. We ended up going to Ruby Tuesday’s for dinner after Aaron left for work, then getting some low-carb munchies at Wal-Mart before heading back home. —What did we do all evening? Hmm. Talked, pumped up the air mattress, played a little online. Crashed out around 11-ish, I think. Turns out Aaron came home from work early at 12:30am. (Damn… I hate it when I just miss seeing him by an hour or so.)

Left for Dayton around 9am on Saturday. Ate breakfast at a diner along the way. Arrived at Grandpa and Grandma Cook’s house in Centerville (south side of Dayton) around noon-thirty. Talked, looked at photos, copied photos with the digital (which actually seems to have worked out well), went through some genealogy with Grandpa, ate dinner, played Scrabble, called Amy and Aaron, talked on the back porch, went to bed around 10:15pm.

Got up around 7:30am on Sunday. Had a small breakfast, relaxed and talked, and left for Union around 10:15—Grandpa and Grandma had to be at church by 11am, anyway. Arrived at Amy’s house in Union (after a few missed turns) a little after 11am, to discover that Mom’s allergies go absolutely haywire in a home with two dogs and two cats. Heh. Amy was the naviguesser as we headed for a hotel to check in, then on to the Air Force Museum. Saw lots and lots of planes, some of them pretty cool, and watched an IMAX movie (narrated by Tom Cruise) about the International Space Station. Pretty friggin’ cool. Headed back to the hotel after a few hours and left Mom there to fend for herself while I went back to Amy’s house. Grilled hamburgers and bratwursts, talked with her and her grandmother, left just before dark to make my way back to the hotel. Watched the olympics with Mom. Called Aaron on the cell. Went to bed a little after 11:00.

Got up around 8:00 and packed up our stuff. Mom checked out the continental breakfast and snagged herself a small piece of danish, bringing me a small apple. Headed out toward Toledo around 9:00am or so. Arrived home at 11am. Once Aaron woke up, we went to lunch—first attempt was Quizno’s, which was insanely packed; next, we tried to get into the parking lot of the Garden Cafe on Reynolds, but the left turn just wouldn’t happen during the lunch rush; finally, we ended up at Nick’s Cafe, where Aaron and I hadn’t eaten in years. The Nickburger is immense, even without a bun; I had to ask for a box for the last third of mine. Then we visited Low Carb Solutions, where Mom bought us a crapload of low-carb goodies, and some for herself. After that, we came back to the house, relaxed for a few minutes, and Mom left for Parma around 2:00pm so Aaron and I would have some quality time together before he had to leave for work.

Overall, this was a relaxing mini-vacation weekend. Pleasant, slow-moving, and generally non-stressful, even with the driving. I snapped at Mom a couple of times, but I think she knew I didn’t really mean it. It was nice to have some real quality time with Mom, especially since she’ll be moving to Texas in a month or so, and goodness knows when we’ll make it down there for a holiday or a vacation. This could be the last quality time I get with my mother for a long, long time.

vacation

The Vacation Thus Far

So far, you already know about the Art Fair and the Zoo trip. Next, on Tuesday, we visited COSI in Toledo, and were particularly disappointed to find that it was nothing like the Cleveland Science Center. At COSI, there are a zillion hands-on exhibits for the younger kids, but very little for big kids like us. The highlight of the day was the Distorted Gravity Room, where the room is built with the floor at probably a 45° angle, if not greater, and with no right angles in the doors or windows. Makes it very funky to try to walk from the entrance door to the exit. Weird, wild stuff.

But that was the highlight of our visit. Overall, I think we spent an hour and a half or so at COSI.

Today we drove out to Sauder Village to see how the settlers and old folks lived. I brought my 35mm camera, but ended up not taking very many photos at all, since most of the interesting stuff was indoors. Aaron and I both had a great time, even so. In each one-room building is a Sauder worker or volunteer, dressed in period clothing, who explains the building and the history behind it. We ended up looking into one original home, a replica of the first home in the Black Swamp, a one-room schoolhouse, a farmhouse, a community jailhouse, a mill, a printing press (including two linotype machines, for the VCT-minded—very cool), and various other buildings, in addition to walking around the grounds and checking out the museum building. Fun time, definitely worth the price of admission.

So, that pretty much concludes the major trips we’d planned for this week. Sometime tomorrow we plan to go see Fahrenheit 911 and maybe hit some earlybird garage sales. Friday we had considered going to a Clutch show in Flint, but I think we’ve opted against it at this point. We may go to the Art Museum for free. Saturday, there’s the community garage sale on Clymena, then we’re going to the Full Moon Walk with Kris and Jamie. We’ve still got some stuff left to keep us occupied, but no more major road trips.

In other news, we happened upon the Concert for George Harrison on PBS tonight. Not something I would have thought to rent on my own, just to watch, but seeing it on PBS was actually pretty cool. It featured a bunch of people we didn’t know, plus Clapton, Petty, George Harrison’s son, Ravi Shankar, Ringo, and McCartney, and Monty Python. Good concert, well-produced.

And I’m out. Word.

vacation 1 Comment

Vacation *insert Go-Gos tune here*

Eleven AM on a Tuesday, and here I am, chillin’ at my computer downstairs. Good times.

So, to catch everyone up on what’s been happening at the Schnuth abode: we’re both on vacation. I return to work one week from today, and Aaron doesn’t go back until the following Monday. Our original plan, way back when we requested our vacation time, had been to attend the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, but we had to choose between buying a house and going to our very first Star Trek Convention.

Then, I had thought that maybe we could use our new tent this week. However, Aaron brought up the fact that it’s the middle of summer, and it has the potential to get damned oppressively hot lately. With that in mind, we opted to wait until Labor Day to go camping.

So, what are we doing this week? All the shit in Toledo and the surrounding area that we haven’t done yet (or haven’t done for a while).

Ann Arbor Art Fair - photo by Aaron Schnuth (c)2004

On Saturday, we went to the Ann Arbor Art Fair. In years past, we’ve always missed when it was, so we were thankful to have gotten a flyer from one of the artists at this year’s Crosby Festival.

Anyway, Aaron and I went with Kris and Jamie, leaving Toledo around 9:30am or so. We arrived in Ann Arbor at the mall shuttle pick-up around 10:30am, paid our $3 per person round trip, and off we went. When we got to the fair, Aaron and I discovered that not eating breakfast had its disadvantages, and that we were starving. So, around 11am, we headed into Amer’s and were delighted to find that they have some pretty decent salads there. Yum.

The rest of the day was spent looking at art (obviously), sitting on the grass in the diag and talking, browsing various stores (including, of course, Wizzywig), taking pictures, and just generally enjoying ourselves. I think we left around 4:00pm, and by then we were completely drained from walking all day. Great time, though.

As for the rest of our mutual vacation… Sunday was our normal errands / groceries / laundry day, and yesterday we went to the Toledo Zoo. Today we’re planning to go to COSI, tomorrow we may go to Sauder Village, sometime this week we’re going to see Fahrenheit 911 (since I haven’t seen it yet), and we’re contemplating going to Cleveland to check out the Rock Hall in its entirety. (We browsed the first floor during last year’s Gravity Games, but we didn’t get beyond that.) We may also visit Aaron’s grandparents while we’re in Cleveland, but I think the jury’s still out on that. Although we would be allowed to sleep in the same bed now, if there’s one big enough for the both of us…

On Saturday, it sounds like Frieser’s neighborhood is having their ‘hood-wide garage sale, so we’ll be checking that out, then on Saturday evening we’re joining Kris and Jamie again for the Full Moon Walk at Oak Openings Metropark.

So, even though we’re not really going out of town this week, we’re still having a pleasant vacation. Oh, yeah… I was so ready for a break.

roadtrips, weight loss

Gravity Games

Hey, remember this from the front page?

Week #1
9/7 – 9-13
No Dew Week

Week #2
9/14 – 9/20
No Pasta Week

Week #3
9/21 – 9/27
No Candy Week

Well, nix that. I’m joining Aaron on his full-on foray into Atkins, starting Monday. (That’s tomorrow.) I’ve got my Atkins profile up on their website, and checked out some recipes. Aaron’s gone full-force and bought the carb-counter book and the Atkins cookbook, and borrowed another low-carb cookbook from the library. He likes to eat more meat than I usually do, anyway, so I think the hardest thing for him is going to be cataloguing the carb content of everything that goes into his mouth.

Me, I’ve already broken myself of my Mountain Dew addiction, and I’ve pretty much cut out pasta. Those were the hard parts. Now I just have to get up early enough to eat breakfast, and remember to make myself a lunch before I go to bed the previous day (since I won’t just be grabbing a frozen meal from the freezer on my way out).

So, we’ll see how that goes. I’m looking forward to it myself.

Yesterday, Aaron and I headed out to Cleveland for the Gravity Games. For those of you who aren’t big “Extreme Sports” freaks, the Gravity Games includes skateboard vert (ramp) and street (men’s and women’s), freestyle motocross, wakeboarding, inline skating street and vert, and bike dirt, street, and vert. We watch it on NBC every year, and it’s been in Cleveland for the past couple of years, but we haven’t gotten out to watch it live. This year, though, since we got the heads-up at the Taste of Cleveland, we went out and got tickets for this bad boy.

We left around noon, and got there around two-ish. Found parking for five bucks, walked the couple blocks to the Games, brandished our tickets, received loose-fitting wristbands, opened my camera case (for no one to actually search it), and we were in. We walked around the Festival Village, which was basically the marketing and merch fairway, and got some stickers and a sampler CD of some kind. Could have gotten more stuff, had we actually been able to approach some of the booths, but the stuff we got was pretty much shoved at us by booth attendants out in the middle of the fairway.

We wandered over and found a bike dirt venue, where kids were allowed to go down a ramp and do their best trick on a five-foot dirt hill. I finished up the roll of film that was in my camera by snapping photos of the kids, and of the one guy who was running the show, who would go down the ramp occasionally, to keep it interesting. He turned a backflip almost as soon as we got there to watch, so I didn’t get that on film. 🙁

One of the great things about the Gravity Games being in Cleveland (besides the fact that it’s close enough to drive) is that your ticket gets you into the Rock Hall for half-price. So, we spent about an hour and a half, I think, wandering around the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. And we didn’t even get upstairs! We decided that our little taste of the Rock Hall was just enough to make us want to go make a day of it sometime in the future.

Bob Burnquist, Rune Glifberg, and Andy Mac watch one of the lower-ranking skaters (Sandro Diaz?) pull off a tailgrab. (c) Pat Wright, Gravity GamesAround 4:00, we headed out and tried to find a spot in the bleachers by the vert ramp. It took some patience, and several seat relocations, but we ended up on the top row of bleachers, right by the WKYC Channel 3 sign. (So, if you happen to watch the Gravity Games on some Sunday afternoon in the next two months, and watch the Men’s Skateboard Vert Finals, look for us.) We ended up watching the Women’s Skateboard Vert Practice and Demo, so we could have our good seats for the Men’s Finals later that evening. I spent one roll of film on the Vert ramp, so we’ll see how that comes out.

It was great being able to see some of the skaters live: Bob Burnquist, Andy MacDonald, Bucky Lasek, Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Rune Glifberg… Too bad there was no Tony Hawk, but I guess you’ll have that when you retire. *shrug*
We headed out around 9:15pm — after the Finals were over, but before the scores were announced. Made it to the car, found I-90 West, and stopped for dinner at a TGIFridays in Westlake on our way home. Got home around 12:30am or so, which is early for coming in from an out-of-town excursion. Usually it’s 3am. 🙂

So, good weekend. Yeah. And Aaron’s got the next four weeks off of work, so he’ll be home when I get home from work every day. w00t! That makes things a little better, too.

travel

One Month Without A Blog (Oh The Horror)

I’m glad to know that my blog has been sorely missed by some (and moderately by others). I was being optimistic when I made an offline entry two and a half weeks ago, thinking that ecom meant it when they said my credit card would be reprocessed in 24 hours…

Where to start… Jeez. I never thought I’d actually use my website to communicate with people, no matter how small an audience. You seven people are important to me, dammit! 🙂

OK… here’s the narrative of what you missed.

Week After The Wedding: Honeymoon, duh! Monday was a travel day — got to Cummington, Massachusetts in roundabout 12 hours, give or take eating and fueling. Aaron drove the whole dang thing. Tuesday we drove up to Mt. Greylock, the tallest peak in the state. Wednesday we drove out to Boston and spent the evening and night there; Thursday evening we drove back. Friday we left Cummington and headed west to Niagara Falls, where we spent Friday night. Saturday afternoon we completed the drive home, only to get the message that Memaw had just died that day (shortly after we had driven through Cleveland, in fact. How weird). What a downer. Called work on Sunday, left a message that I’d be out for three more days.

Week Before Last: Didn’t really need to take all three available days of bereavement pay, but I did. The funeral was on Tuesday in Parma, and I drove there because Aaron had to drag his ass out of bed much earlier than he would have liked. He slept a good deal of the way there. Got there, ate lunch at Mom and Gary’s, and steeled ourselves for the funeral. The "viewing" was the first hour, although Mom had opted to have the service be closed-casket. I provided a nicely matted and framed Olan Mills portrait of Memaw back in the early 80’s, before she even went gray — the way I remember her best. The viewing was a little strange, because I saw people I hadn’t seen in years and was glad to see, despite the circumstances. Also, Aaron and I received many congratulations on our recent marriage, in the shadow of Memaw’s death, which confused my brain. I wasn’t all that mournful to begin with, but I was downright happy after a while, seeing my Aunt Connie and Brother Squire from church and all. The service was small, relatively brief, but appropriate — come to think of it, the drive to the cemetery was longer than the service, I think. 🙂 We ate dinner afterward at a local restaurant where my step-brother Philip works as a cook (he’s 16 and just got a car, fyi). I guess the best part about the whole affair was that Mom got back together with her best friend Connie.

Last Week: Full week of work? Wow. Same old shit, finally. Oh, yeah, and we picked up our wedding proofs.

This Week So Far: Flew to Fort Worth, Texas on Saturday (and boy are my… oh, nevermind). First airplane ride since I was less than a year old. Fun. I want to do it again, despite having to remove my shoes for the nice metal detector. Texas was actually OK; we visited the Water Gardens (featured in the 1970’s sci-fi flick Logan’s Run), Cowtown (the original Fort Worth downtown, complete with fake gunfights on the hour and more cowboy hat stores than you can shake a shotgun at), and a water park (with a wave pool and enough innertube rides to keep me happy and my face out of the water). The Smoke clan is actually much cooler than you would think, given only Gary as an example. Mom and Gary stayed until today, but I bailed on Tuesday. Got home around 10pm, went to work the next morning. Since then, things have been pretty normal again.

Don’t worry, I’ll supply a better, longer, and illustrated version of the honeymoon soon. I’ve just been disinterested in updating lately, since, well, no one was going to see it.