Just another day on the rebound road...

Patrick and I have been on the road for nearly three weeks and I have yet to finish my entries about our NY/NJ adventures from before we left. This is a problem with me and my writing lately (and by "lately" I mean the last 5 or 6 years that I have attempted to re-start a daily journal) - when I get really behind, I find it hard to start up again because I feel like I have missed so much and it's almost a lost cause. I want to be able to record everything, every day, every place we go, everything we do. It's impossible - especially when I am a full month behind, blog-wise.

So I am sitting here in Dexter, Michigan, realizing I have put this off for far too long - and since yesterday was a perfect example of the kind of incredibly strange day I expect to have on the road, I knew I needed to sit down and write about it.

This is what I have skipped blogging, and what I hope to catch up on eventually: wandering around Manhattan, deciding suddenly that we needed to leave (and fast), figuring out precisely how to leave so fast, spending a week in upstate New York from the Hudson Valley to Niagara Falls, a few days in Pittsburgh, a few days in Ohio's Cuyahoga Valley National Park (which I definitely do have to write about; it was a mixed bag, but overall pretty cool), two days or so in Columbus, Ohio, and now Michigan.

So read about yesterday below the jump - which includes (but is not limited to) giant ears of corn, a house-sized fiberglass loaf of bread, Manchester, Michigan's world-famous chicken broil, and a bunch of Christians in a flooded basement.

Dig, if you will, the picture: Thursday, July 15, 2010.

Patrick and I woke up in Columbus, Ohio, where we spent two nights with my friend Amanda. Amanda leaves for work around 7:45 am, so I set an alarm for 7 am so we could see her and say goodbye before she left (she was awesome enough to post us in the basement, out of the way of morning activity - and also totally untouched by natural light, so when I got a text message from her at 9 am, I wondered who would text me in the middle of the night). Naturally, I finally woke up at about 8:15 am. Failure.

Pat and I knew we had a lot to do that day, though, so we got ourselves in gear and headed out. We have been using Roadside America to find weird things to see along our route - we are completely avoiding interstate highways, opting instead for state or US highways (and sometimes even county roads, which are the most fun), so we have plenty of opportunity to see strange things. Some of them have proven to be difficult to find (instructions can be spotty) or completely non-existent (yeah, the (F)ART sculpture? We found the sculpture, but the buildings in the background don't look like that. WTF?), but for the most part the website is really detailed and well put-together, and a great help for planning a weird-stuff road trip.

So our first mission for the morning of July 15 was to find the field of 6-foot-tall concrete ears of corn in Dublin, Ohio. It took a little finagling (this is where the "spotty directions" thing can be weird - it's on Rings Road, but there are two Rings Roads in Dublin. Nurrr) but eventually we finally got there. The previous day Amanda had told us some random facts she'd learned about the corn as a kid (she grew up in Dublin) - that the city had paid $2 million for it, and that each of the 160 ears of corn are different (which, then, required the construction of 160 different concrete molds - which suddenly makes $2 million sound like the artist got ripped off). The installation is supposed to represent how the community used to be agriculture-based, but it really makes you then wonder why the city didn't just make a community garden or PLANT ACTUAL CORN instead of spending $2 million on giant concrete alien corn. But I digress.

The installation is a little creepy. Not gonna lie. I wish we could have gone at night. It would have been even spookier.

After the corn, we went to check out three dancing bunnies on a hill, also in Dublin (what's up with this random sprawly Columbus suburb having weird sculptures at every turn?). Amanda had told us about it, and I was kind of ambivalent about checking it out, but Patrick insisted. It's in a housing development area called Ballantrae, and at the base of the hill is a large fountain where water sporadically shoots up out of the ground - there were tons of parents and kids there at about 10 am. It was pretty awesome - basically it was a little water park that was free and perfect for cooling off on a day like yesterday, which was so hot it should have been criminal.

The bunnies were actually really cool, and I ended up being glad we checked them out. They were about 15 feet tall, and while they were hollow and not made of solid metal, the surfaces were pressed with tons of scrap metal and tossed-out hardware items like bike chains, coins, pliers, old work gloves and more. Patrick was so enthralled by the bunnies that he actually frolicked. I have pictures to prove it.

Satisfied with our strange finds in Dublin, we headed up to Urbana to see the world's largest loaf of bread. Now, mind you, Patrick had gone to Roadside America and had found all these weird attractions, and I had only bothered to read about a select few - so I didn't know all the facts. I thought this was an actual loaf of bread, baked and edible. So I was understandably grossed out and wondered how long it had been sitting in a parking lot in Urbana, Ohio.

So when we were driving down a side street and Patrick said, "There it is! It looks.... moldy," I was very concerned. WTF is this moldy loaf of bread doing in a parking lot? So we turned around and drove up to it, when I finally realized it was NOT an actual loaf of bread. It was a giant fiberglass loaf of bread that was made to advertise the Colonial Bread company - but it has seen better days, and now sits pretty much abandoned outside what I guess is a warehouse for the American Pan Company. It's a little bigger than one of those big Jesus buses and is hollow inside - it would make a totally sweet playhouse (Patrick and I said that when his daughter gets in trouble, we could yell: "Go to your bread!") or something if someone wanted to rehabilitate it. I really liked it.

Also in Urbana is the world's largest loaf of bread number two, which was a total letdown compared to number one. It's all spiffed up and set atop the entrance doors for the offices of the American Pan Company. We didn't even get out of the car or take a picture. "I hate that one," I said as we drove by it. The old one had personality. The new one is just lame. Has no soul.

From Urbana we continued on to Bellefontaine (which, contrary to non-Ohioan belief, is actually pronounced "Bell-fountain"), which is a treasure trove of weird stuff. There, marked on my Rand McNally atlas, is located the oldest concrete road in America. It was made in 1891 and the original concrete is still in use! (Some sites say it's closed to traffic, but they lie - cars still drive on it). They just don't pave 'em like they used to.

Also in Bellefontaine is the "World's Shortest Street," McKinley Street, which is 15 feet long and runs in front of a single (vacant) building. It basically makes the horizontal line of an A of streets that all come together near a railroad track. I have also read that the world's shortest street is actually in Scotland (less than half the length of McKinley street), so somebody should tell the street sign makers in Bellefontaine that they only have America's shortest street.

Last up in Bellefontaine was the highest point in Ohio. At a staggering 1,549 feet above sea level, anyone who can make the exhausting drive up to the upper parking lot of the Ohio Hi-Point Career Center is truly a mountaineering genius. You can even sign a visitor log and write your own name on a certificate declaring that you summited the highest peak in Ohio. Take in the breathtaking views of the land just east of Bellefontaine, which roll out gently below you to about 300 feet below your current elevation. Sights include some trees, a street, a lot of grass, and more buildings for the career center. Truly awe-inspiring.

On our way from Bellefontaine to Lima, we stopped at a McDonalds in Russells Point, Ohio, where we accidentally discovered another weird-as-hell thing. I stepped outside the McDonalds to go to the car to get something and I saw.... Boats? Paddle boats and motor boats? Yes, right outside the McDonalds was a dock - McDonalds' private dock! - that was specifically for McDonalds customers arriving via boat. I asked the kid at the register WTF the deal was, and apparently there's a big lake near Russells Point and boaters like to come, get a Big Mac, and then go back to their recreation. Who knew.

From Russells Point, we continued on to Lima, which is home to the Allen County Museum. We were very pleasantly surprised here. We were expecting some kind of rinky-dink little museum (its claims to fame, as listed on Roadside America, are a few cases of "things swallowed" as assembled by a local doctor; a replica of John Dillinger's jail cell; possibly the world's largest collection of taxidermied albino animals; and "Noah's Ark," a strange diorama-like exhibit that you need a curator to help you view, so we skipped it), but it was actually a pretty large museum full of cool stuff like 19th-century artifacts from the county, old cars, miniature replicas of the town's historic homes, a large mineral collection, a huge button collection (cooler than it sounds), and a room dedicated to a massive miniature (oxymoron) replica of Mount Vernon, which has dollhouse-sized locks on the doors that actually lock with tiny keys.

We spent a good 2+ hours at the Allen County Museum. When we left, we didn't have anything else to see before we got into a friend's house in Dexter, Michigan for the night, so we just hit the road.

Keep in mind that, during this whole day, it is really and truly hot. Extremely hot. I hate it when it's hot. Well, no, let me rephrase that - I can deal with hot. I can deal with Santa Fe summers, for example. What I can no longer do are these ridiculous humid days that I apparently lived for 20 summers with but never realized just how disgusting they are. So it's 96, it feels like 110, and Charlotte is sitting in her little Focus wagon, just praying the AC doesn't bite the dust like the car radio did in LeRoy, NY on July 4.

Okay. So we cross the border into Michigan and start winding our way to Dexter. Since we're on backroads, we go through all the little towns, and as we pass through Manchester, Michigan, we see signs advertising the town's annual World Famous Chicken Broil. While driving through countless small towns, we had passed tons of signs advertising Fish Fry Fridays when it was Tuesday, or yesterday's Farmers Market that we managed to miss - so when I saw a sign saying that this Chicken Broil was TODAY, I nearly had a heart attack.

I made it my mission to get to the chicken broil if it killed me. I circled around Manchester, looking for signs of chicken. I saw a sign for chicken broil overflow parking, but the lot was empty - and Pat informed me (via research on his smartphone) that the event was from 4-8 pm. It was 7:30 pm. He suggested I give up. I said no way in hell! I saw kids walking down the street with to-go boxes and knew I was getting close! And then I saw it - tons of picnic tables, crowds still lingering despite the drizzle, and LINES OF PEOPLE WAITING FOR CHICKEN!!! I found the chicken broil!!!

We were hungry anyway and were planning on cooking some food once we got in for the night, so we decided to treat ourselves to two $9 take-away chicken dinners. We mentioned to the people selling tickets that we were on a road trip and had seen the signs for the chicken broil, and they cracked up and told us that we should go to the main booth (some dude was announcing stuff over a loudspeaker) and tell them and they would announce it. I am an attention whore so I knew I had to do it.

We got our dinners (a huge deal which included half a chicken, a healthy serving of cole slaw, potato chips, a roll, three radishes and a bottle of water) and went over to the booth, where, sure enough, the guy with the microphone announced that Charlotte and Patrick were traveling from Santa Fe, New Mexico and they "saw the signs for the Chicken Broil and knew they had to come!" He then "interviewed" me over the microphone about what I thought of it and whether I would be back next year. It was super hilarious. We went into the shed for a little while and chatted with the people in there, and while I was tempted to get a Manchester Chicken Broil tee shirt, I had to suppress the urge after the unexpected $18 dinner expenditure. But I wanted one. Real bad. Maybe next year, Chicken Broil.

Upon later investigation, we found out that the Chicken Broil is a huge deal - this is its 57th consecutive year, and in four hours 550 volunteers serve up 12,000 meals. The town of Manchester has about 2,000 people in it. No kidding! I also found out later that the "famous" cole slaw recipe is a huge secret - of the main families in town, each family knows of one ingredient. They do not tell anyone else the ingredient, and typically only one member of the family knows the ingredient. When it's the elder's turn to retire, they pass the ingredient on to the next member of the family - literally, some people put it in their will. No joke. If someone goes to their grave with one of the cole slaw ingredients, the slaw will never be the same. Let's hope such a tragedy never happens!

After getting our chicken, we had to get to Dexter so we could eat it. My friends in Dexter are old family friends - they used to live across the street from us in New Jersey, and they moved to Michigan in 1999. I visited once in 2004 and had the time of my life, so here I am again. Marcia, the matriarch, is away, so her house is empty - and two of her daughters, Erin and Virginia, still live here, so they will be our tour guides. (Daughter number three, Georgia, is in Denver.) Erin told me how to get into her mom's house and said she'd meet us after work.

We arrived at Marcia's house at about 8 pm to see two cars already there. I was like... hmm. A man came out, and I asked, "Is this Marcia's house?" He said yes. He then told me that they are her friends from church - while she's away, members of the church are watering her plants, and they had a little water mishap (the hose got left on, it rained, etc.) and the basement was a little flooded. Someone else was inside vacuuming.

We went in and, after downing our chicken (which was awesome, by the way - kudos, Manchester), got to work helping vacuum up as much water as we could. All told, we eventually had three dehumidifiers, two shop-vacs, a Bissell vacuum and two box fans running in the basement to try and get the whole deal dried out. Not to mention the six Christians who came to help clean it up (seriously, way to go, church). At about 9:30 pm, Erin showed up after she got off work, and the house finally cleared out somewhere around 10:30 pm. It was a three-ring circus. While we had all the machines running, we kept blowing fuses - so often that one of the churchgoers' kids was stationed at the fuse box, waiting for the lights to go out so he could flip the switch again. When everyone finally left, they said they'd come back "sometime" to get their stuff, and cleared out.

Once they cleared out, we were all too wound up to go to bed, so Erin came upstairs and she, Patrick and I hung out on the living room floor, talking about stuff that I don't even remember now. Erin and I spent some of the most important years of our childhood together, getting into trouble and making things and recording ridiculous videos and the like, and though we haven't seen each other or talked much for six years now, it's effortless to slide right back into things. Friends like that are pretty much priceless.

I think Pat and I finally turned in around 12:30 am. From giant ears of corn to things swallowed to a basement full of water, it was just another day on the Rebound Road.