Continuing the weekend recap...

SATURDAY First day of TRASHionals, the national championship tournament of TRASH (the pop culture and related stuff quiz company that I write/"work" for). A relatively uneventful day, which is usually a good thing to say during such an event. Perhaps a little too much time standing around waiting for things to happen that should have already, but no big whoop.

I did get to wear my new Latvia hockey jersey, which would look better (a) if I wore a maroon T shirt underneath rather than white, and (b) I dropped a few pounds (then again, every shirt I own would look better that way, perhaps that's a hint?). It's a fairly crappy jersey (mesh replica, which wasn't obvious from the web site), but I got what I paid for.

Should you find yourself in Ann Arbor, I would highly recomment Pinball Pete's arcade (many current and classic video games, pinabll, air hockey) and the Maize n Blue Deli and Eatery across the street.

SUNDAY Tournament ended with last year's runner up taking the title (with a slight reformulated team). Part of me wishes I could play in this thing, but it would mean leaving TRASH for a year, which would stink. I'd also have to take Greg with me, so we could play as a full Gerbils team.

Tournament ended on time, which is a novelty for such things, and we were on the road at a good hour after lunch at Arby's and a stop at Detroit Metro to drop off the Dartmouth team. We had the exact opposite experience around the Ambassador Bridge than on Friday. The Canadian border guard barely even looked up when he asked where we were from, and hearing that we were going to Boston he just told us to go ahead. No questions about our purpose for going to Canada, if we were smuggling cheap cigarettes into the country, nothing. And then the bridge was relatively easy to cross, without the driving rain and large trucks.

The only real memorable part of the trans-provincial drive this time was getting to sample the wares at Tim Horton's, the Dunkin Donuts of Canada. I had a chocolate glazed and a sour cream doughnut (the sour cream being like a richer, glazed plain doughnut), and was very happy with both. I would rank things Horton's, Dunkin, and then Krispy Kreme (which I like, but I've never quite understood as far as the rabid fandom that seems to come from most aficianados of the place).

Getting back into the US was also uneventful, guy asked where we were going, why we were in Canada, and took a peek in the side door of the van. Then it was steady driving until Boston, marred only by a lot of rain and a jackass of a woman working the counter at some Roy Rogers on the Thruway, who listened to us talk about what we wanted, but didn't tell us what their limited menu was until we ordered (I will say that I was a little out of it, and still tried to order something she said wasn't available).

Got home around 4 a.m., plenty of time to rest for...

MONDAY Got back up around 8 something to get ready for the Sox-Yanks game at the traditional Patriots Day start time of 11:05. I was oddly alert, Sarah less so but neither of us were anywhere near the level of tired that came after the trip to UNC.

Got to the park a little later than hoped (quarter of 11) after realizing that if we tried to take the T from Woodland, we may have been stuck for a while as the marathon goes right by the station. We drove in, faced little traffic, and were able to park on the street by the school formerly known as SFA.

Suffice it to say, it took us longer to get from the gate A entrance on Yawkey Way to the other side of the turnstiles than it did to clear the US-Canadian border FOUR TIMES. We spend a good 20 minutes in a throng waiting to get past the gate, thanks to (from what I could see) some extra security precautions, less for terror than for drunken idiocy, I would think given that we wre playing the Yankees.

Sox won, El Guapo made it closer than we'd have liked, but a win's a win. Sarah and I then had to traverse the marathon to cross Beacon Street (thankfully still mostly top runners coming through, and not the throngs that start to show after 3 p.m.). Got lunch and headed back to Babson, only to get caught in a detour traffic jam coming off of the Pike. We wound up getting home the long way, taking Route 30 through Newton and Weston before hitting a road that led back to the main street in Wellesley (by this point it was something like 4:30, and if you were just hitting the 13 mile marker outside of Chico's at that point, you were better off hailing a cab).

Got home, slept, did some late grocery shopping, and that's that. This coming weekend we're going to a tournament at Dartmouth, a drive which, in light of the last two weeks, will seem like popping over to the Natick Mall.