Carter and I stayed in Portage, Indiana last night. Wonderful place. Actually, all jokes aside, we found a wonderful forested park called Imagination Glen Park only five minutes from our hotel with ten miles of sweet, maze-like mountain biking and hiking trails complete with banked turns, dips and dives, and twisty bits. Obviously, we hit that this morning (day 2) for a nice little 50 minute trail run before breaky. True to form, he found every little mud bog and water hole possible.
The best part of our trip yesterday was definitely our two hour pit stop in Ann Arbor. I try to schedule our stops in college towns to increase the chances of finding food I find palatable. Plus, college towns are usually just better than po-dunk nowhere towns. Also, after my unpleasant experience in a small-town diner in Wyoming on our last road trip heading east where the server handed me my breakfast while smoking a cigarette, I'm a little sensitive. To continue the college town trend we're stopping in Iowa City (Univ of Iowa) for a lunch break today, and we're staying in Lincoln, Nebraska (Univ of Nebraska) for the night.
The worst part of our trip yesterday was definitely customs and immigration on the U.S. side. I had to import the car and that really threw them for a loop. It took forever. I had to wait for over thirty minutes in their tiny, dingy office with dozens of other people before my name was called. Upon saddling up to the counter the dude informed me car imports were the one thing he couldn't do, and I had to sit back down. Another fifteen minutes went by, and the next available "agent" couldn't do imports either. Meanwhile, Carter is in the back of our car wondering where his papa is, and they've already ransacked our car and made no attempt to put anything back. The first thing the "agent" said to me as we pulled up was, "How many pills you carrying?"
"Excuse me. What sir?"
"Pills. How many pills of codeine do you have?"
"I don't have any pills of codeine." "And if I did, I wouldn't share them with you, dick." I thought this part, but managed to refrain from saying it.
Finally, the only nice person I encountered the entire hour I was there, and I met a few, came out of nowhere and processed my paperwork without making me feel like I was guilty of something nefarious in less than five minutes. So simple. Typical experience with U.S. Customs.
Apparently we're heading into a pretty gnarly storm today. It looks like we might pass just south of the nasty business, but we shall see...
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