April in A2

Time to start clearing out the blogging backlog while I have a chance; more posts coming soon, I promise…
Back in mid-April I took a weekend to go visit Alex in Ann Arbor again. We hadn’t hung out at all since Christmas break, and Alex was due to leave for Colorado for the summer barely a week later, so time was short to fit in a visit. I had hoped to go a couple weekends earlier in the semester too, but they didn’t work out. But fortunately Alex had a weekend where he was going to have a manageable amount of work to do, so I eagerly made the trip on the 16th. It was a really good, enjoyable visit, and we had a great time hanging out.
I got pulled over about five miles after I got on the Ohio Turnpike, though. I was in the left-most of the three lanes, approaching an overpass. There was a cop car sitting off the left shoulder underneath the bridge, as if he had just recently pulled someone over. When I was still about 100-200 feet from the cop, his lights went on, and I knew he was pulling me over for something. I couldn’t figure out why though, because I was going just 72-73 mph (in a 65 mph zone). So I pulled over, and the cop (I think he was a state trooper) asked if I knew I was going 75 mph. I was really surprised, and told him I thought I was going only 72. He said, “If you were going 72 I wouldn’t have bothered you, but you were going 75.” He asked if I’d like to come see the radar gun, so I said sure. He invited me to walk back to his car, and then motioned for me to hop in the passenger seat (after he cleaned some stuff off of it). He showed me the gun, and sure enough, it said 75. While he was running my license and registration, he started talking about how the rain was unbelievable, how it seemed to be following him everywhere he went that day. I mentioned that I’d gone through three bands of rain since PA. I wasn’t sure what else to say. I mean, a cop being chatty while I’m sitting in his passenger seat? It was kind of odd, and I was a bit nervous. Anyway, then he asked me if I had any other speeding tickets. I mentioned that I had only one, back in 2003 in Minnesota. Then he asked me if I had ever been cited for any moving violations in the state of Ohio. I told him no. Then he said he was just going to give me a warning, and that I should slow down a bit and be aware that my speedometer might be a little off. That was close, but I was really grateful that I didn’t get a ticket. It did have the effect of slowing me down a little bit the rest of the time I was in Ohio, that’s for sure! This wasn’t my first close call with speeding in Ohio either; in November the lady right ahead of me, who I’d been tailing for an hour because she was the fastest car on the highway, got pulled over. Ohio cops LOVE to pull people over on the Turnpike, that’s for sure.
So anyway, I made it to Ann Arbor without getting pulled over again, fortunately. Alex & I went out to dinner at The Original Cottage Inn, and got some great pizza. Then after that we watched “Return of the King.” Alex hadn’t seen the LotR movies, so over Christmas break we watched the first two movies, and then completed the trilogy on this visit. It seemed like he enjoyed them, even though they were “long.” 🙂 On Sunday his girlfriend Anne said that while she was glad I got him to watch the movies, she was dismayed that he saw the movies before reading the books, hehe.
On Saturday after we got up we decided to go on a good long run. I’d been working hard on upping my mileage in the weeks leading up to my visit so that I could go on a long run with Alex, and we planned out a route of 6.8 miles. For me it was ambitious, as earlier that week I’d just done my longest run since high school, of 5.8 miles. Alex routinely does 7-10 mile runs, but he hadn’t gone running in 3 weeks because he was so busy. It was a cold, windy morning, too, and for a couple miles in the middle of the run we were going straight into a 25-mph headwind, which totally sapped my energy. As soon as I stopped the first time I knew I was doomed to stop several more times. I was disappointed with myself that I had to stop to walk so many times, especially on a run I’d been working hard toward being able to do, but I was still glad I ran the longest distance I’d ever run. And it was fun to run a completely different route (in a different city) than I usually do. Hopefully next time I go on a run with Alex, it’ll be for a good distance *and* without any stops.
Alex needed to do some homework, so we spent most of the afternoon in his office in the AOSS building on campus, which I hadn’t seen before. I knew a homework party was coming, so I also brought along some work to do, mainly a couple “journicles” to read. We went back downtown for dinner late that evening, to Prickly Pear. It’s a pretty small but popular southwestern restaurant, and the host said it could be a 45-minute wait. Compared to the 2.5-hour wait when we tried to go there last October the night before the PSU-Michigan football game, 45 minutes was not bad at all. They must be used to customers being willing to accept long waits, because they gave us pagers that could range all over downtown. So we took advantage of the freedom to roam and grabbed a beer at Conor O’Neill’s in the meantime. But oh man, Prickly Pear was awesome — the best margarita I’ve ever had, plus excellent mahi mahi fajitas. Mmmmm!! And it was the first time Alex had been there either; I didn’t know this until he told me that night, but he said he deliberately held off going to Prickly Pear until he could go with me, since we tried to go that one time back in October but were turned away by the really long wait. It was a small thing, but I really appreciated that gesture by my best friend. 🙂
On Sunday Alex was playing keyboard with the worship team at his church, so I tagged along and spent the whole morning there — for the rehearsal, and then both services. I might’ve considered leaving after the first service, except I needed to get Alex’s keyboard, which was being used in the service. (Alex graciously agreed to loan me his keyboard for the summer so that I could use it at Mike’s wedding in Green Bay.) Having been on the worship team at my church for 2-3 years with two services, I’m not unaccustomed to spending that much time at a church, hehe. After the service Alex invited a few of his friends over to his place for lunch, so I stuck around for that too.
When I was loading up my car though, I noticed that my rear driver-side tire was low. Really low. So low that a tire pressure sensor wasn’t registering anything. It’s not a comforting feeling to have a tire down around 10 psi right before leaving on a 400-mile drive. Alex & I drove down to a gas station a half mile away that had free air, so we pumped up my tire. I was rather paranoid about it, so I stopped fairly frequently early on just to check on it, but fortunately it didn’t lose any air the whole way back to PA. It still hasn’t lost any more air since then, actually.
So I guess I had an “interesting” drive both on the way to and from Ann Arbor on this visit, but I’m very glad not to have gotten a speeding ticket or a flat tire on the interstate! I think I could do with a little less excitement or stress on my next road trip!