Life of Wry

Damn.. last day. I could stay weeks more. I love Ann Arbor and all it offers (like, you know, Peter and Maya for starters). Don’t like last days.

It was a great one, though!

Started at oh, dark, 6:10. That’s a full moon setting. Don’t be fooled by the brightness of this photo.. it was dark. I’m on Sarah’s porch waiting for Lisa to pick me up.

Lisa and I are joining MJ for their thrice weekly walk (Mary Jo, who she’s been running — now walking — with several times a week for 28 years!). They are both marathon runners. I enjoy joining them when I’m in town (not for marathons, not for runs). This day, Stephanie joined as well.

We parked at Sweetwaters in Kerry Town and walked down to the same river access point across from Casey’s Tavern. Their route is slightly different than my other river walks this week, but it’s still a 3-4 mile fast walk in 30-degree weather. INVIGORATING.

MJ and Steph then left for work, Lisa and I had coffee & a scone at Zingerman’s. I was back at the BT by 8:00am. Nice way to start a day!! (Remember that, Kari.)

I had to wait an hour for breakfast, so got cleaned up, then joined all those cute prospective grad students again and heard about their various wooing events from the day before.

Today’s cafe experience was a new one — Avalon — on Main, near Liberty. Sat for hours there, then met Lisa at the BT. We had some time to kill before heading off to a Tesla protest .. so went first to a very nice gallery, run by the local artists’ guild…

… where an artist friend of L&C’s had some pieces. Hard to see bc of all the reflection, but here’s an example of her water colors.. this one of the Nichols Arcade (a well known shopping area in A2) that won first place in this most recent exhibit:

Then we sat at the TeaHaus for an hour or so drinking unusual teas (I had chocolate chili, subtle but pretty good).

and THEN, it was time to go protest at the Ann Arbor Tesla dealership! I’m guessing there were about 300 people there. Each week the number grows, having started with one woman and a sign a few weeks ago.

Some pics.

We basically marched back and forth in an elongated circle the length of the very long Tesla property. It was quite satisfying. Some chants, mostly just pissed off white senior citizens. Not all old people, but that sure seems to be what makes up a lot of the opposition these days. Educated boomers. Some signs:

And a dog, just to show it’s not all retired white people.

Lisa and I, after all our marching and chanting, then headed over to Bill’s Beer Garden to meet P&M, but because it was a sunny, warm (70-degrees by late afternoon!) Friday, and because there were thousands of prospective grad students in town, Bills’ line wrapped around the block and we couldn’t get in. When P&M arrived, we decided instead on Grizzly Peak (a bar/restaurant). We hung out for about an hour before Peter had to head out for a department reception (an event also related to wooing new students to the Mech E department.

Lisa had to run off to another gathering, so Maya and I got to have an evening together. We hung out at Literati for a long time looking at books, then had dinner at the Pacific Rim .. probably Peter and Maya’s favorite A2 restaurant:

Peter dropped by after his event and helped us eat this….

… Pacific Rim’s famous hot chocolate cake with cherries and vanilla ice cream.

And that’s a wrap on another great day.

If it’s Thursday in Ann Arbor — day four of my visit — it must be a good day for a river walk, time in a cafe and dinner with my peeps.. on this, another sunny, cold day.

Today’s version of the perfect day: another warm and wonderful breakfast at Sarah’s, this time with a crop of prospective grad students here to evaluate if Ann Arbor is the place they want to spend the next 6-7 years of their academic careers. These kids were German studies and comparative lit students, whose prospective departments put them up at the Burnt Toast (lucky them, much more charming than a hotel). They were impressive, passionate kids. I (of course) thought about Peter who lost out on the wooing aspect of grad school selection due to Covid. He’d been scheduled to fly in during the annual March university-wide grad school evaluation process and go through exactly what these students were going through, but for the Covid breakout of 2020. Instead, he accepted U of M, sight unseen. He’d gotten to visit U of Colorado (Boulder) and loved that experience, before everything shut down that year. There were more besides, but U of M checked all the boxes. Glad it did!

I wrote about all that here: https://lifeofwry.com/2020/03/20/umich/ It’s about as accurate and prescient a post as could be written!

After breakfast, I set out on what I thought would be the same river walk as yesterday, but I got a bit lost (I know, hard to do when following a river). I couldn’t find the spot where we’d crossed the river, so retraced my steps and crossed in a different location. It was about the same distance, as it turned out, as I missed the crossover spot by mere feet (just around a corner). Today’s walk was equally beautiful..

As you can see, the sun is melting the ice. It was a lot less solid than just yesterday. So sunny, a guy was running in shorts. It was definitely not that warm.

I headed over to (again!) the Lowertown Bar & Cafe.. this time for coffee and reading. Starting Leah’s book again (Maya’s mama)…

I got all bogged down in “an” vs “a” historian. The cover, as you can see, uses “a,” while the text within the book uses “an.” I’d just argued (online) the day before with Marty, in a photo I’d posted on FB about my staying in “an” historic hotel in Grinnell, about the proper article (he favors “a”), so this was most amusing to me! (And distracting.. as I didn’t get very far in the book.)

Headed back to the BT and then off to meet Lisa and Claire in Loch Alpine. We logged into the weekly Indivisible zoom at 3:00… always incredibly rich in current political info, brilliant in strategy, and totally inspiring. Completely admire and respect founders Leah and Ezra; they are a staple in my activism these days.

Claire then had a meeting, so Lisa and I took Scout for a (3.7 miles) walk. Yet another part of the Huron and more riverside parks…

Good ol’ Scouty.

We returned and got started on dinner (they did, I just sat and watched).

Then the kiddos came over.. more talking..

More hanging out with Scouty…

More wonderful times with these two..

Returned home, not too, too late.. hoped to run into Sarah and Gus.. but no… so headed up to bed.

More Ann Arbor comfort time.. a leisurely get up, another lovely breakfast with and by Sarah, and then Lisa and Claire picked me up and we headed down to the Huron River. As a defining town feature, the Huron River is pretty nice. There are countless parks along its shores, a just tons of trails that follow it. This day we parked in front of Casey’s Tavern on Depot and joined the river for about a 3-4 mile walk.

It was cold (like in the low to mid 30s at about 11:00).

Still smiling, though!

Some nice wintry, icy shots of the Huron… (that near surface is solid)..

I love all the browns and grays of a midwestern winter day:

This was cool.. the city of Ann Arbor makes available Narcan (naloxone), which can be accessed easily and used free of charge if you are experiencing an opioid drug overdose.

After an hour or so of brisk (both temps and pace) walking, we had a great lunch at Casey’s Tavern. First time for me. Love finding new places. Enjoyed a reuben sandwich, fries and a dark beer. Yum.

After they dropped me back at the Burnt Toast, I headed out again in search of a new cafe. Tried, but couldn’t find a new one with good wifi and enough seating (where I could hang out for a couple of hours), so ended up at the Sweetwaters at Washington and Ashley. Just fine.

Headed back to the BT and turned right around to pick up Maya at work (Quinn-Evans on Main Street), then Peter at work, and off we went to Lowertown Bar and Cafe again. Beers, cocktails, and I had a spiked hot chocolate. Not my photo, but it’s the table we sat at, so I grabbed it off the website:

They were supposed to then go to a string quartet concert at the Hill Auditorium and I was going to drink with Sarah (LOL), but they decided to blow off the concert and spend the evening with me. Lucky mom! We decided on the Earle for something quieter than Mani the night before. Old style restaurant with a piano accompanist.. we were probably there well over two hours. Such a nice time.

My objective in spending time in Ann Arbor is to see Peter and Maya.. with a huge caveat. They are working full time and have all kinds of activities and commitments, so get together opportunities happen when they happen. This is 100% a-ok with me; I am not there to be entertained. I use the non-Peter/Maya time to take walks, go to cafes, write, read, catch up, do puzzes, see Lisa and Claire, and in between all that, hang out at the Burnt Toast and talk with Sarah. When Jim’s with me, we try to do other slightly more formal things like explore Detroit or other neighboring towns, explore U of M.. whatever we can find.

This morning I hung around the BT for the morning, then wandered to town and spent a couple early afternoon hours at Zingerman’s, browsed a couple shops, including State and Liberty (where we got Peter a Christmas gift card for a suit) and the Himalayan Bazaar (where I got an idea for a graduation gift).

Around 4:45, I headed out to meet Peter and Maya — post work — at the relatively new Lowertown Cafe (near Northside and Broadway Auto). On my way down there, B.A. called to say the car was ready (nice!) and I made it down there before they closed (or near enough). Drove across the street, parked, and met those fantastic kids for beers. Peter even treated (nice!). Lowertown’s a pretty nice spot! We even drank outside.

After that we had a great, if noisy, dinner at Mani Osteria, and after that spent some time at the B&B talking about our country’s march toward authoritarianism. The kids wanted a Gus fix, but he and Sarah were nowhere to be found.

In spite of the sunshine and the fact the temps are rising (Lisa said the days are 30 degrees warmer this week than last!), Ann Arbor’s still decked out in holiday regalia (as was Grinnell). Must be too cold to get up on cranes to take everything down, yet. This is what a downtown city street looks like in the winter…

This is what I’d consider a perfect (or at least perfectly acceptable) way to spend an Ann Arbor day.