Voting Time

This is a bits and pieces post as it's been one of those kinds of weeks. The weather has been pretty warm and very humid. I got out on the bike to explore some running routes for the group run. We're doing a weekly Sat run for this ladies group we've hooked up with. I mapped the route with my GPS and posted it on the invite. It was great to ride around and check out the scenery. So Saturday was our first run - we had 6 ladies turn up which was a great outcome. We enjoyed brekky afterwards and they all seemed to enjoy it and more importantly, keen to come again. So, I've got next week's run invitation posted and hopefully we'll see more ladies running. The exercise and social culture is not big here but hopefully we will influence some change. The ladies were lovely, funny, friendly and we enjoyed asking them lots of questions about all-things-US.

The key highlight for us this week was seeing Cricket take his 1st swim. At home we took him to the lake but he was not keen to get his feet wet. And here, he would tippy toe across the creek. Gradually we got him more and more into the water and finally, he took the leap into the deep and reached for the stick. HE SWAM !! It was not pretty, but he splashed and thumped loudly and brought the stick back. Not only were we cheering, he was pretty pleased with himself too. It was a great day at the creek.

I took a drive to the local Costco to check it out. There are quite a few of them here and they are quite huge, bigger than home. The sell NZ lamb which looks yummy and they had a lot of stuff that I will go back and start to stock up on. 

We went to another bbq to celebrate a combined birthday. The network of work friends is quite close and it's nice to feel welcomed in this small Aussie community. 

We've been following the election news at home and received our postal voting packs. The new Senate voting rules make it interesting now to vote above the line. For the first time we had to google some of the parties to see what they stood for. The Sex Party proved an interesting read - gotta love democracy.

 

Now while the US debate their next president and Australia prepares for their next PM, the real issue here in the neighbourhood is none other than 'sidewalks' - to have or not have. There are YES and NO signs on everyone's front yards and it's even funny to see neighbours next to each other with different signs. I read the info and the YES people want sidewalks for safety (stop people from walking on the road) and the NO people think it will destroy their trees, yards, plants etc and devalue their land. There have been town hall meetings and I have to say, I'm definitely for the sidewalks cause it's bloody dangerous walking on the roads.


A final word....took a pic of this van - love the business name for this frisky plumber. And check out the most frequented driving manoeuvre in DC = double park. But their hazard lights are on so it's all good, so they think?  It's really bloody annoying. They just double park ANYWHERE - to get a coffee, to get take away, to get a passenger and it's stops traffic, causes lane blockages. They do this on any road, any time, any place. Driving in DC is a real obstacle course and if we leave here without a car ding, I will be surprised.

 

Aussie BBQ

It was nice to be home for the weekend after travelling the past few weeks. We went to an Aussie BBQ at the Jones' - good friends from home. It was such a wonderful afternoon of good people, great food, top cricket and super weather. I haven't played cricket in donkey's years and just those few runs between the wickets had me sore the next day. There was a mix of Aussies and US and even Canadian people and the food was just as diverse. The real highlights were cheese and vegemite scrolls, lamingtons, pavlova, Tim Tam Cheesecake, my sossy rolls and some fabulous legs of lamb. 

The Canuck made some Canadian moose milk. Well, that was just heaven. Only had a small drink but certainly could get to like that moose quite a lot.

There was some fun and games with Aussie slang and one of the ladies enjoyed our sayings of 'got his arse hanging out' and 'gee you're certainly earning your money today'. She nearly choked when she saw me have some fun with the girls when I got the tennis ball to bowl and gave it a good Dennis Lillie rub on my shorts. We all laughed but she had NO idea what the hell I was doing !!   Here's some pics of the food - we were sooooo full that night.

 

Bob and I went to the baseball again this week to watch the Chicago Cubs play our beloved Nats (Nationals). Wow, what a bloody awesome game. The cubbies are the top team at the moment so it was always going to be good as Nats are up there also. There are 9 innings and it was 3-all at the end of the ninth. So that means extra time!! The game continues until one team scores a run. It was a 4pm game so we enjoyed the action until early evening. It went to 12 innings and WE WON 5-4. There was all sorts of drama, action, strategy and tension. We were sitting in the middle of cubbie fans so that was a great time. This is the first game I've been to that the Nats have won and it was a sweet victory for sure. The train home was packed as always after the game and there was an old guy who said he's been going the games for 76 years and this was the best he's seen. We felt pretty special indeed. 

I managed to get a pic with Abe (Lincoln) one of the racing Presidents. 

I've just bought our tix today for the LA Dodgers in July and San Francisco Giants in August. Both top teams so again, great games expected. We're also going to the 4th July game and Bob has challenged us to learn the Stars and Stripes so we can sing the anthem. So far, not great but ok, a lot of mumbling but I still have 2 weeks.

The weather has been quite warm and yes, it's humid. It gets to 90-100% humidity here so we are trying to prepare for the sweat season. Macey and Cricket are loving their daily walks and swims - Cricket is slowly getting deeper into the water but it will take more practice to get him swimming for that stick. We bought a long chair for the front entrance area and Cricket decided it was his. So, on went a blanket and that's his little bed when he's not on our bed.  Bit of a squeeze with all 3 of us but it was worth a family pic.

Planning some riding adventures this week and we are trying to get some weekly running groups together with a local ladies running group. They like our ideas so we'll keep trying and hopefully get a social group of ladies running.

Detroit Video

Here's the little video of our Detroit adventures. Tap along to the Motown first hit.

Detroit, a final look

Our last day in Detroit. We visited the Shinola factory = a US company building quality watches, leather goods and bikes. Yes, a strange mix of products but they are creating jobs which is key to Detroit's growth. The bikes kept me occupied for a while and I resisted the offer for a test ride - I said I wouldn't come back ;)  They now have several shops around the US and the bikes are selling in Europe. They have a shop here in DC so I think I'll look more into the bikes as I'm keen to get a commuter bike to ride here. I bought a nice belt and Deb bought a lovely watch. She's a 'watch' girl and we both felt we were contributing to the Detroit economy - that was our excuse anyway.

 It took Deb bloody ages to choose a watch. They had a small cafe at the front so they shouted us a coffee so Deb could have some thinking time. The coffee was nice too so this whole Shinola experience was wonderful. We'll be eating baked beans for a month but it was worth it.

 


With a few hours left in Detroit, we went to the bike rental shop and hired some cruiser bikes to burn around some nice areas. In particular, we rode the Dequindre Cut - hard to say in a hurry without being offensive. Deb kept saying 'delinquent'. This used to be a railway line but now converted into a bike path. The path is lined with concrete blocks from the railway line and there is lots of graffiti on the walls. They are getting artists in to do professional artwork and it makes for an interesting ride. Look carefully at the racing cars - there's a cyclist in there !!

We took a late arvo flight home and we were both exhausted from a long weekend. We totally enjoyed Detroit and had some great memories of this trip. 

Motown and THE Henry Ford

We started the day to the sad news of the Orlando shooting at a nightclub. We were only in Orlando two weeks ago. This is another tragedy to push for tighter gun control - I can hear Trump now saying guns are fine and Hillary being anti-gun. What a dreadful tragedy. With that said, our day was lovely despite the constant news of the shooting.

We don't have a fridge in our room (more to follow on this), so we can't keep milk to eat cereal. So we went downstairs but the restaurant had no buffet brekky, only an expensive breakfast menu. So we wandered across the road to another hotel (name withheld to protect the innocent). We went to the brekky area which had a simple buffet style - I asked the waitress if we could sit down and that we were not from this hotel. I said I could pay cash obviously. She seemed like this was not supposed to happen but she looked at me with the most sympathetic lovely smile as if I was eating in her own home, and she said it's no problem, you can eat here, we'll just pretend you stayin' here. So we had a continental brekky which was good. When finished I asked the lady how much do I owe her and she said 'whatever you like'...so I offered her $25 and she was totally happy. I thanked her and gave her a little shoulder hug - she was so lovely.

We then visited the Motown Museum. OMG - this was fabulous. I love music and I really love the music of that era. Photos were not allowed but we took the 1 hour tour and it covered all the memorabilia and history inside. The museum is the actual house where Berry Gordy started the company. He initially called it Tamla but changed it to Motown after 'Motor Town' Detroit. Gordy bought about 5 houses next door as the company expanded. What I really enjoyed was that the house was authentic - the actual rooms, furniture, music items - even the candy and cigarette machine. It was nice to stand in the very studio room that many stars cut their record songs. Some of the great sounds of Motown include Diana Ross, Smoky Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, The Jacksons, The Four Tops and The Supremes. I totally enjoyed the experience.

We spent the afternoon at The Henry Ford museum. This is NOT only a Ford car museum. It is a massive museum founded by Henry Ford with artefacts of American history, the industrial revolution and innovation including Presidents cars, civil rights artefacts, civil war history, aviation things and American innovation.

 

• JFK's presidential car - the car he was riding the day he was assassinated...very eerie.
• One of 200 copies of the US Constitution that were issued back when it was signed.
• The bus that Rosa Parks rode when she refused to give up her seat to a white man. I sat on the seat she did. The bus was found sitting on a farm used as storage. The chairs were mostly removed but Ford bid very competitively for the bus (for $492,000) and restored it. The pre-restoration pics on the internet are surprising to see given we saw the restored bus today.
• Roosevelt's, Reagan and Eisenhower's Presidential cars
• Many models of luxury, sport, classic and racing cars and trains.
• Lincoln's chair that he was sitting on in the theatre when he was assassinated.

 

The Ford Museum includes a tour of the Ford Factory but it was closed today - bugger. It also includes Greenfield Village which is an outdoor living section of the The Henry Ford complex. Nearly one hundred historical buildings were moved to the property from their original locations and arranged in a "village" setting. The museum's intent is to show how Americans lived and worked since the founding of the country. The Village includes buildings from the 17th century to the present, many of which are staffed by costumed interpreters who conduct period tasks like farming, sewing and cooking. 

Note that these buildings are again original and moved to this site.

Some of the classic things we saw were:

• Wright Brothers bicycle shop and workshop where they built the pieces of the Wright Flyer.
• Thomas Edison's laboratory and workshop
• Model T Ford Workshop

There is a steam loco train that gives rides through the village, Model T cars drive people on short rides and horse/cart and little trucks carry people around. There were older shops, villages, craftshops, stores and farms. It was huge and you need much more than half a day. I was so excited about getting a ride on a Model T. Our driver was friendly and had actually lived in Australia for a few years. I said that he sounded and reminded me of Jack Nicholson (the actor) - he was very flattered. I was worried he was going to yell back at me 'YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH !!". He was excellent and showed me how the gears/pedals worked - very interesting.

 

Now back to the milk situation in our room....we have a mini-bar in the room but the door is locked with a key. I asked the reception for the key so I could keep milk in the fridge. They said that fridge doesn't keep stuff very cold but they would bring a fridge to my room - To My Room? Sure enough, 10 minutes later, a girl wheels a trolley into the room with this little bar fridge. And all this for a bottle of milk. I guess that's good service.


We have a late flight home tomorrow so have a few places we still want to see before we fly out. We're both pretty tired from two big days of walking around but it's been fabulous to see Detroit. Below are a few more pics from the Museum = Wright Bros cycle shop and plane building workshop and, the museum car area.

 

Detroit, Michigan

 

Detroit, in the state of Michigan was our next footprint in the quest to touch foot in all 50 states of the USA. Michigan is on the border with Canada surrounded by the great lakes. You can see Canada (Windsor) across the river and people from both sides cross each day for work or even lunch !  So, we went to Detroit because a friend from work had been and said it was great. This is in contrast to other Americans who gave us the tilted head and squinted fringe look (aka WTF) when we said we were going to Detroit. But our friend said it was safe, interesting and well worth a look.

Detroit as some of you may know, is famously known as Motor City - home of the Ford motor car and also other car manufacturers GMC and Chrysler. 

But Detroit filed for bankruptcy in 2013 and it's only now starting to develop, grow and get back on its feet. So why did it go bankrupt? Well, it kinda goes back a long was from what I can understand, starting back in the 50s and 60s.

We took a walking tour called the Rise, Fall and Renewal of Detroit to help learn the history but together with google, we've now got a good understanding. The city of Detroit has gone through a major economic and demographic decline in recent decades. The population has fallen from a high of 1.8 million in 1950 to 700,000 in 2013. The city's automobile industry has suffered from global competition and has moved much of the remaining production out of Detroit. Local crime rates are amongst the highest in the US and vast areas of the city are in a state of severe urban decay. In 2013, Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history, which it successfully exited on December 10, 2014. 

So, back to why the decline happened. In July, 1967, black residents of Detroit rioted. The immediate cause of the riot was a police raid on an after-hours drinking club in a black neighborhood. The police found far more people than expected, yet still attempted to arrest all 82 people on the premises. The deeper cause was the history of police harassment and brutality. Eventually, units of the National Guard and US Army were required to restore order. The weeklong riots resulted in enormous losses = 43 lives and about $45 million in property. 

After the riots, thousands of small businesses closed permanently or relocated to safer neighbourhoods, and the affected district lay in ruins for decades. While the 1967 riots are seen as a turning point in the city's fortunes, Detroit's decline began in the 1950s, during which the city lost almost a tenth of its population. Powerful historical forces buffeted Detroit's single-industry (car manufacturing) economy, and Detroit's federally supported comeback strategies did little to help. 

It seems that the city population significantly declined over decades and therefore less taxes were taken, public/govt agencies didn't reduce so costs went up and the jobs/people kept moving away due to car manufacturing moving interstate or overseas cause it was cheaper. Clearly a fairly big recipe for disaster and the city just became a ghostown and economic time bomb. Thus the outcome resulted in the bankruptcy and the government weighed in to help out the Big 3 car companies. 

Talking to the coffee shop chick who's a credit specialist by daytime (the people you meet right!), she said that things are improving a lot but she sees lots of people getting into debt stress too late before asking for help. Real estate has been as cheap as chips - seriously, two key people (and Trump's not one of them) in Detroit have just bought up real estate big and will make a huge profit in years to come, if not now. But, they have invested in a dead city and well done to them for bringing it back. There is much to do still with many city buildings empty (for years) and construction and rebuilding is active throughout the city. We learnt that GMC has its headquarters here in Detroit and other technology based companies (such as Google....poaching auto engineers maybe??) are moving into Detroit so it is growing again. While there are still many empty buildings around, there seems to be a push for people to find 'opportunities' in this emptiness. They put posters in windows to promote events or even remind people as per the trash bin below.

 

Some downtown pics below and of course, the home of the Detroit Tigers Baseball Team (who the Nats flogged I might add). The fist is a monument for Joe Louis. It represents the power of his punch both inside and outside the ring. Because of his efforts to fight laws enforcing racial segregation the fist was symbolically aimed toward racial injustice. The statue is referred to as a "battering ram". Joe Louis held the world heavyweight championship from 1937 to 1949, and is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.

Coney Island Hot Dog. This is a classic must-have when in Detroit. We had lunch at the American Coney Island diner and sampled this legendary hot dickety dog. It's a hot dog with mustard, onion and chilli beef on top. It was nice, tasty but, can't see what the huge rave is about. I'd have a ssssy roll any day over this doggie. But the chilli cheese chips on the side were the bomb. My god, the calories were getting on my waist today. We got served by a dinky Detroit'ian and he was a dude to say the least. Gave us the real royal service and it was great. Big tip to him $$.

 Detroit is deep with African American civil rights history and played a major role.. In 1963 Martin Luther King gave a major speech here that foreshadowed his 'I Have A Dream' speech two months later. He was accompanied by singer Aretha Franklin (I'm a big fan by the way).  The Underground Railroad was an 1800s network of assisting escaped slaves on their path from plantations in the American south to freedom in Canada. Detroit was one of the last “stops” on the Railroad, before escaped slaves could find their freedom in Canada. 

These pictures are taken on the Riverside walk - the river is Detroit River which looks across to Canada. It's a bit like Aulbuy-Wodonga in NSW/Vic but two different countries.

There are at least seven known paths that led slaves from various points in Michigan to the Canadian shore and it is estimated that 200 Underground Railroad stops existed throughout Michigan between the 1820s and 1865. The last runs on the Underground Railroad ended in 1865 with the end of the Civil War and the 13th Amendment’s abolishment of slavery.

A pretty big first day as always. Tomorrow we hope to see the Motown museum and the Henry Ford Museum. Very excited.

Oh and before I go, I took a few pics below for a friend of mine - you know who you are !!!