This past weekend, Dena and I were in Mackinaw City, Michigan at the International Ironworkers Annual Festival with her family. Why were we there, you ask? To see Elly, an 81 year-old resident of Crystal Falls participate in the knot tying, rod tying, rivet toss, spud toss and climing events as the oldest competitor. He was one of the original iron workers on the Mackinac Bridge. There were even iron workers from Toronto and Windsor there (necessitating the word ‘International’ in the festival’s title), which surprised me.
The weekend was nice. The driving could’ve been better. No more than 20 kilometres after leaving Kitchener, traffic on west-bound 401 ground to a halt due to one of those “here’s an arrow so get over into the other lane” signs that was left on for no apparent reason other than to frustrate and delay. I-75 in Michigan, aka: “thump thump”, is perpetually being re-surfaced, although its condition never actually improves, so delays are always inevitable. And although Americans are quick to point out that Canadians drive like “c u next tuesdays”, barely a handful of them displayed any knowledge of the concept that faster-moving traffic is for the left-most lanes and slower traffic is for the right-most lanes. Tuesday? Hell, we’re lucky it was Sunday 😉
