Notes on a weekend passed, which I will entitle "Of Course, I Saw the Losses in Person."

Thursday - Met the wife after work and got on the road. You can tell there was World Series madness in the air as there was an actual skywriter attempting to further thin the ozone layer with a "GO SOX" message. Only problem was that on the first pass, he drew the 'G' backwards.

We got roughly to Syracuse before stopping for the night, listening to Game 2 on the ESPN Radio affiliate out of Chicago. I've pulled in WFAN and WBAL here, though not with the sort of clarity that we were getting Thursday. We thank you, WMVP-AM, for your strong signal.

That being said, listening to Joe Morgan on the radio magnifies his inadequacy about a hundredfold. At least with TV there are the pictures and other distractions.

Friday - back on the road, and thankfully the WHTI passport rules haven't quite taken hold for driving into Canada yet, as I put mine through the wash when we got back from England. It's still perfectly legible, but I don't think I'd want to have it be the only thing between me and spending time in a Customs and Border Protection holding area.

It's also notable that we got through Ontario without the jack-booted thugs issuing us another speeding ticket.

Got into Livonia, Michigan at about mid-afternoon, at which point the wife had to do some work catch-up, scotching plans for dinner. We instead ate at the Red Robin across the street, as we'd never eaten at one and the chain was involved in a Top Chef challenge this season. I don't think the winning burger is on the menu, or they've changed it so significantly that it's unidentifiable. In any case, the food was fine but it's a loser on the value for cost principle.

Then it was off to the first of two BU-Michigan hockey games, complicated by getting lost, which I manage regularly when visting Ann Arbor. We parked downtown, leaving us a pretty significant walk to the rink. We did get to the game on time, and saw the team play better than they did against UNH, but still lose 4-2. The team still can't find the net with any regularity, and are now showing a tendency to allow odd man rushes. I hope that, by now, they realize that John Curry has graduated and will not be around to bail out sloppy defensive play.

We got a ride back to the car after the game (with thanks to Mike, who also gave us a nifty driving tour of Michigan's athletic facilities and a suggestion for parking on Saturday, important given that the hockey game was close after the Michigan-Minnesota football game).

No World Series game, so we pretty much packed it in when we got back to the hotel, though I stayed up for a while watching The Godfather.

Saturday - we slept in a bit, but eventually got over to The Henry Ford, the unusually-named historical attraction outside of Detroit whose showpiece is Greenfield Village. We didn't tour that given the rain, so we opted for the tour of Ford's Rouge assembly plant. Pretty interesting, though I'd have preferred more history about the plant. The most we got was on the "Battle of the Overpass" between union organizers and Ford security. We got to watch some assembly of F-150s, which was mostly people twiddling with hand tools. Though we did get to see robots put in windshields, which is less exciting than welding but still pretty neat to see.

Then it was back to the hotel and walk through the attached mall, which was too nice for us to buy more than a book and some ice cream. We napped, watched some football, got dinner, and headed back down to Yost.

And promptly got lost again. Turns out Ann Arbor has a Fifth Street and a Fifth Avenue, and we had directions for the wrong one. We eventually worked back to the road we'd missed the night before from our original directions, and got within three blocks of the rink, once again making it just in time for face-off.

We'd have been better off chucking the whole thing and seeing a movie, as Michigan scored in the first minute and never looked back, winning 6-2. I am not optimistic about the season, which is kind of sad given the healthy number of seniors on the team. Expect a quote from Jack about the team's lack of heart by the end of the year, earlier if they don't beat Cornell at Madison Square Garden over Thanksgiving weekend.

Sunday came early, as we were making the drive home in one shot. Nothing too amazing to report here, as we got through Ontario again without attracting enforcement from The Man. I did nearly get us impounded at the border when I misconstrued the CBP officer's question about where we came from as being general about the weekend, not specific about that morning. The glare he shot me was punishment enough.

We only caught the second half of the Pats game on the radio, as we couldn't pull it in until we were back in state. We ran across five different stations for Bills-Jets, which seems like at least four too many. I do wish I'd seen the Pats game, given the near-video game quality of the score. It's almost too bad we have to play the Colts next week, as if we had a more pliant opponent (let's say Atlanta), we'd likely put up 100.

Got home in time for the final game in the Series, though a poorly-placed nap led to some confusion when I saw the score was 4-3. There was a minimum of celebrating given the hour, so I was able to go to bed happy about the win and Mike Lowell's MVP nod (I chose not to consider free agency implications until today), and before A Rod decided all the attention on people who aren't him just wasn't acceptable. I look forward to seeing the last decade of his career unfold from San Francisco, where the fans are used to highly paid, prickly superstars on a megalomaniacal quest to break the home run record, even if it means very limited playoff appearances.