FRIDAY We were scheduled to leave around 5 a.m., but Cooch over-slept, and we probably didn't get on the road until sometime between 6:30 and 7:30.

The Mass Pike was the Mass Pike. Nothing really of note there, other than we were listening to Howard Stern, and got to hear how one of the people on the show bet $5000 to take the field against Tiger Woods in The Masters. Oops.

With all the focus on New York City, you tend not to think about the vast expanse of land that makes up the bulk of the state. Having driven it, I can now understand why you tend not to think of it. Between Albany and Buffalo there's not much to see by way of settlements. It's a lot of land, lots of animals, and an odor of dung that only varies in its intensity. The rest stops were nice, most notably the one that won some sort of award in 1994 for its outstanding use of wood (perusing the New York Thruway web site, I'm thinking it's either this one or this one. I tend to think it was Ontario, given that we'd have been in that area around lunch.

Crossing over to Canada was eventful only in that (a) I'd originally put us on the wrong road, the first of many time I'd do that during the trip, and (b) we were very low on gas, only finding some when we drove over by Niagara University thinking there must be gas there. The border check was short, didn't even have to show IDs. The guard asked if we had them, we said yes, and she just waved us through.

Driving through Ontario was a lot like driving through New York, only much, much flatter. Ate at a Mr. Sub, one of the many Canadian fast food/chain eateries that put whatever we've got here to shame. You can't get green olives as a topping at Subway, can you?

We passed a number of largish cities without ever seeing the buildings. You drive pretty much right through Hamilton, but you don't see a single bit of London, Waterloo, Brantford, or the other cities between Niagara and Windsor.

The highways are like the roads in Maine- a couple of lanes bordered by ditches that pretty much spell nasty accident if you wind up in them. Which may explain the plethora of signs along the highways detailing all the dangers to driving while intoxicated, without wearing a seat belt, going over 100 kph, and so on. The signs also trumpeted big fines for being a scofflaw (all in excess of C$100, which is still a fair bit of money in real US money), which would have made me more worried about the speed we were going if I'd ever seen a police car on the roads. New York was under lockdown by comparison.

We got to Windsor in a heavy rain, which made crossing the Ambassador Bridge interesting. The bridge, like many of the roadways associated in some form with Detroit, was apparently last repaved during the Eisenhower administration.

We got to the US checkpoint, and the incredibly pleasant woman (hmm, can't find the HTML code for sarcasm) asked for all of our IDs. We handed them over, and at one point she jerks her head up and asks if any of us had a camera. One of the people on the trip did and said so, at which point she asked why we were taking pictures. Apparently, she was mistaking the lightning, WHICH HAD BEEN GOING ON FOR ALMOST HALF AN HOUR, for a camera flash. She did this twice; apparently, our mention of the lightning didn't go through the first time.

So, after a little jerking around we were back on US soil, and had a relatively uneventful drive to the Microtel Ann Arbor (if you don't count the boulder size chunks of blacktop that were lurking on I-94, or my getting us going the wrong way again). Sarah and I passed on the trip to Casino Windsor, opting for dinner and sleep.