I’ve stumbled upon some facebook videos that I actually like. Amateur online videos generally drive me nuts. Things I hate about these: 1) Sometimes they are toooooo long. I mean with nothing happening FOREVER or even at all. 2) Quick little videos that don’t make any sense. Whut just happened? 3) Big family videos. How many kids do you have and why are you putting them out there on the internet? How many of them are gonna move to Timbuktu without leaving a forwarding address when they reach the age of majority?

On facebook I am delighted to have stumbled upon Jase and Josh, two British guys who are doing a little drive-through of the Great Lake State. In January. A cold and snowy January. They were most of the way up the west side of the state and went sledding at Boyne Mountain (I skied at Boyne a billion times in my misspent youth) and one of them (Josh, I think), did something to his back(?) (not sure if the sledding caused that or not) and spent a couple of nights at the hoosegow. They had to make a decision about whether to continue on to the yooperland and they decided YES! They are in Marquette now. Yes, they did miss Sault Ste. Siberia. That may have been a good thing. Today (yesterday?), a jeep was going waaaay too fast for conditions coming along the curve on Ashmun (the main drag) north toward Easterday, spun out, jumped a couple of four foot snowbanks, and crashed into a house.

I love Jase and Josh’s videos. They are 10-15 seconds each, so they are short, but we KNOW what’s going on because they narrate them. I would call them amateur but very well done. So I am following them.

The photooo is another one from 2006. I can’t think what car we navigated up that ice hill with. The Dogha (Dirty Old Green Honda Accord) maybe? At that time we did not own an SUV, except for the Jeep Wrangler, which at 14 years old, I doubt we drove on that trip. The Dogha was a great car and could handle snow like a champ. But that ice? Not sure…

The other thing that initially puzzled me about the timing of this photo is that it was 2006 and my dad died in 2006. But then I remembered this was January. We must have been up there for my birthday and my dad was alive and well on that trip. 10 days later (or so), he was on his daily walk down the escarpment when he fell and smashed his pelvis. The Commander called me to say they were being air-ambulanced to the Henry Ford hoosegow in Detroit. I made daily trips over there for three weeks or so. They fixed that and he was ground-ambulanced back to the yooperland and installed in rehab at what was then called Tendercare, a couple blocks from their house. Alas, he did not thrive, which was not unusual for someone that age with that kind of injury, and died in March.

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