June 11
Aric woke up at the same time that I did. He said that he didn't sleep as well in the back of Winston as he did at home. It certainly wasn't as comfy as a normal bed; even with the blankets and stuff he'd put down it was still pretty hard.
We didn't have sex, 'cause he said that there were too many people around and some of them might get mad, but he promised me when we got further north that wouldn't be a problem. Right now we were too close to all the tourists.
It was funny to watch him get dressed, 'cause he couldn't stand up, so he had to pull on his underwear and pants while he was sitting down, and he could put on his shoes but not tie them. I was glad I didn't have to worry about that.
He had to get out first and open the tailgate for me, and then we went to the little bathroom building that they had, and he asked if I wanted to get on the road right away, or play on the beach a little bit.
I said that since we were up, we might as well start driving, unless he wanted to have breakfast first. He said that we could get it on the road, so we got in the cab and he started up Winston, and we stopped at a Tim Horton's and got breakfast and coffee and then stopped at a gas station so that Winston could have gas, and then we went back on the Lakeshore Drive, which was now called Scenic Drive.
We had to go around a lake and there was a short section of road that was almost on the beach. Aric said that when we got to the Upper Peninsula, there was a lot of road like that, and I told him that the train in California had been right along the beach, too. It looked like when it was stormy, waves could come right up over the road, and there was a lot of sand that was covering the sides of the road.
The road turned a little bit after that and we had to go through Whitehall and Montague before we could get back to the lake. There were a lot of lakes and channels and harbors and there weren't a lot of bridges across them until you got inland. I didn't mind, though; it was fun to look at the harbors and all the boats in them. There were lots of sailboats, although most of them only had one mast, and other boats that didn't have masts at all. Aric said that the bigger ones had an engine like Winston, and the smaller ones had an engine that hung off the back called an outboard motor. I'd seen those kinds of boats when I was in South Haven, and some of them were pretty noisy. I think I would rather be on a sailboat.
We had to backtrack a couple of times, 'cause the roads Aric found that went to the water didn't intersect with any roads that went north, and the one that he did find ended. It had little houses on either side that he said were cottages, and he said that people went to them for vacations, but usually didn't live there all year long.
We stopped at another park called Silver Lake, and that one had a big sand dune that was covered in all sorts of cars and trucks that were racing up to the top of the sand dune. They all had big flags on them so that they could be seen, and I said that he ought to get a flag and we could go drive on the dune, too, but Aric said that Winston wasn't built for that kind of thing. He said that it took special tires and four-wheel-drive and besides you had to have a bunch of permits.
It was a lot of fun to watch, though. There were open cars that were called dune buggies, and there were also cars that were just a frame of pipes which he said were called sand rails.
I flew around a little bit, but I stayed a little bit away because sometimes they were going so fast that they jumped when they got to the top of a dune, and it looked like if they went much faster they could fly for a while, and I didn't want to get hit by a flying car.
When I'd landed, though, Aric said he didn't think that could happen. He said that cars couldn't fly that far, but I thought it was still better to be cautious about it.
It took a while before we found a road that went along the lakeshore again. He thought that probably all the sand dunes was why there weren't any—he said that this part of the state was mostly sand dunes on the west side, and he said that somewhere up here there was a big artificial lake that was a pumped-storage facility, which was where extra electricity was used to pump water into a lake and then when there wasn't enough electricity, it was drained out which turned turbines that made electricity.
He told me that that had been built because it took a really long time to turn Pallisades Nuclear Power Plant on and off, but he thought that the same idea could be used for wind turbines, which were windmills that made electricity. He said that he thought that Michigan could get a lot of money that way, but he said that the current governor wasn't interested in clean energy or clean water.
When we got to Ludington, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant he'd heard about called PM Steamers. He said it was named that because the Pere Marquette Railroad used to own a fleet of ships that took trains across Lake Michigan all the way to Wisconsin, but they didn't do that any more. He said that there was one of them still in Elberta, and we could see it when we got there. And he said that there was still one in Ludington that took cars across Lake Michigan, and I thought that would be really fun to ride on. He said that he'd never done it, but maybe we could on the trip back.
The restaurant had lots of pictures of the ships and trains, and I would have liked to get a closer look at some of them but it would have been rude to fly over people's tables as they were eating, so I had to look at a distance.
I didn't like our waitress; she had kind of a scowl and took her time giving us food. When we were done eating, Aric said that he was tempted not to tip her, but if he did she'd probably still have bad feelings, so he left her a ten dollar bill under his glass, which was half as much as the dinner had cost.
We had to zigzag a lot after we left Ludington, and he wound up on a couple more roads that just ended near the lake without connecting to anything. He said that they needed better signs, 'cause he went past a lot that said 'No Outlet' and 'Dead End,' but they didn't all say that. And he found one road that was dirt and had an open gate at the end and we started going down that and after a while where there weren't any houses or signs or anything else he said that he thought it might be a fire trail, and he couldn't decide if he should keep on going or back out, until we got to a hill that he didn't think Winston could get up without getting stuck, then he did have to back all the way to the road, because there wasn't any room to turn around.
After we got through Manistee, he found Lakeshore Road again, and we kept following that up the coast, and then it went back inland to get around another harbor and he found M-22, which he said was also a very scenic route, and he said that we'd follow that for a while.
It was nearly dinnertime when we got to Frankfort and Elberta, which Aric said was near the park where we were going to camp tonight. He went around the harbor but couldn't find the ship, which he said was really odd because he remembered that it had been there. I said maybe they were using it again, and he said that was unlikely. It was more likely that it had sunk, but he said that he didn't think the harbor was deep enough for it to have disappeared all the way.
He stopped in a parking lot and said that maybe it was somewhere close and he just didn't remember exactly where it was, but after he checked his pocket telephone a bit he found out that it was in Manistee now, which meant that we'd passed it without seeing it.
We found a restaurant that was called L'Chayiam, and Aric said that name sounded really familiar to him but he couldn't remember why. They had lots of different sandwiches, and an open kitchen where you could see them making the bagels, which was really neat. I was a little wary, because I'd tried bagels before but they weren't very good, but Aric told me that there was a big difference between these and the ones that the dining hall had, and he was right.
Plus the people there were all nice. An older couple came over and introduced themselves and were really curious about me because they said that they'd seen pictures before but never seen an actual pony, and they wound up sitting with us, and we talked through dinner, and then they insisted on paying for it, too, which was really nice of them.
When we were done eating, we drove out to the beach and walked all the way out to the lighthouse at the end of the jetty, and I flew over the harbor a little, but not too far, since I wasn't wearing any of my flight gear.
I managed to attract a bit of an audience of people who were already on the jetty, and so I did a couple of wing-rolls and a loop just for fun, then got a bit of altitude and swooped down along next to the jetty, just above the water, before going up and over and back the other way, and I heard a couple of people clapping for me when I landed.
On our way back, we passed a few kids who wanted to pet me, and one little boy who asked if I knew Iron Man, 'cause I flew like him, and I said that I didn't, and so the boy told me how awesome Iron Man was. He said that his friend Billy from school said that Wolverine was better but Wolverine couldn't fly so obviously Iron Man was better.
We drove to the Platte River campground, and there were a bunch of Arveys parked in some of the loops, but Aric found one where there were hardly any people, and he said it was because these spots didn't have any electricity. So he backed into one that didn't have any neighbors on either side, and then he gathered together a bunch of wood for a campfire, and set it up but he said it wasn't time to start it yet, because we ought to go down to the beach and watch the sunset.
We had to walk along the beach for a while, because we were in a bay and the shore was looking north, but I didn't mind. It felt good to stretch my legs after being in Winston most of the day.
The sunset was just as beautiful as it had been last night, and when it was over we kissed and then made our way back to the campsite. It was pretty dark when we got back, and Aric started the fire and then got out some beer and we sat next to each other watching the flames and drinking beer.
He said that tomorrow night, we'd be far enough north that instead of having a fire, we'd go and look at all the stars. I could tell even through the gaps in the trees that there were a lot more of them than I could see in Kalamazoo, and I would have flown up to get a better look but it was nice sitting by the fire with his arm around me.
We shared memories of being in the wilderness at night while the fire burned down and when it eventually started to really die out, Aric poured a bunch of water on it to make sure it was really out and then he used a small folding shovel to stir around the ashes.
Aric used a lantern to pick up the empty beer bottles and put them on the picnic table so that we wouldn't accidentally step on one in the night and break it, then we got in the back of Winston and I said that we didn't have any nosy neighbors tonight and he said that was true, and took off his clothes.
7466336
I don't even read this story and was just going through the comments. That's how happy I am to find another Roman Plays fan. They're so underrated...
I especially want that Coriolanus adaptation. I love how relevant Shakespearean politics are, even today.
(I had a Freudian slip during class once and called Brutus and Sicinius "B and S," and loved it so much I kept using it. By the end of that course, I'd gotten everyone to do that.)
If Winston's a-rockin, don't come a-knockin'.
Well, what do you know, I'm actually discovering Michigan. At each name dropped I look up on google to see some picture and the eventual wikipedia page. I migth try to use the street viewer at some point. If it is functionnal in Michigan, I know Germany outlawed it so I don't assume anything anymore.
I grew up in the boonies. When we said "dirt road" we meant "the stuff you find under the grass in your lawn" Here in Phoenix they mean "tar and sand, macadam, gravel, or anything other than standard blacktop or concrete".
Got lost once because they said "take the dirt road" & I drove right past it because I didn't know they called tar and chip a dirt road
Road trips are fun.
7478642 I wish someone would explain to me how to reference a comment on a different chapter as you have here. Seriously, I need to know how to do this.
EDIT: I was briefly confused when Wikipedia told me the Platte river was in Nebraska, but then I remembered 'disambiguation'. So thank Pony for that.
7478764 Just go on the story "main" page, the comments will be all there under the summary, all chapter mixed together.
(You should be there by defaut if you cliked on the notice for this answer)
Note that answering a comment into a different chapter won't send a notification to the comment's author. You'd better keep answering in the "old" chapters.
7478764
Near the top, there should be an arrow button for replies.
7478806
7478872
Yeah, here's the thing, Quillamore referenced a post from another chapter within the comments for this chapter. I would be interested in how this is done.
Benzie represent! Heh, grew up there
7478894
Then I'm not quite sure how I did that. I just saw it on the main page and replied to it.
This is outrageous I do not accept this he didn't try hard enough
Looking at the night sky out away from any towns, is an educational experience... I still hold one trip up into the mountains of a northwestern US state as a special moment, while I was involved in a simulated-emergency-communications exercise. I sat there in a clearing in the forest near the edge of the tree-line, between shifts, looking up at the cloudless night sky, and there it was--the milky way galaxy.
My God! It's full of stars... <Thank you Lord, for this gift)
7477632 Yeah I'll grant you the counter slave, but the lady at the door doesn't have an excuse.
7478894
7478909
Any comment you make on the main story page (as opposed to one made on a specific chapter) is automatically appended to the latest chapter (at the time of posting).
That is, if a story has 16 chapters and you make a comment from the main story page, that comment will appear in the comments section for chapter 16 as if you had commented specifically on chapter 16.
As the main story page displays all comments from newest to oldest, regardless of the chapter that was commented on, that might be how it happened.
Its a good thing theyre sticking to the less minor roads, or it could take them years just to get round one of those lakes.
I blame fractals.
memory's
camping it was at lest 30 years for me and that was at Chincoteague VA I can remember it vary clearly as it was at the pony swim and before the
misty of Chincoteague museum was closed.
I do not know for sure if it ever reopened I know they sold every thing in the store and in stock as my x and me bought them out and spent 3 weeks hulling it all back to PA.
lol I think we still have a few things around from the deal.
getawaymavens.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Misty-Stormy-Museum-of-Chincoteague-VA.jpg
after seeing misty and stormy mounted I can say it was a harebell job I remember it looked as if that used a 2x4 for the back it was just super wrong to look at.
and the this photo looks as if it was never fixed.
7478909
7479247
Oh, I didn't know it did that. That makes sense now, thanks.
7479108 "Why thank you, but actually I'm not doing that, I've out sourced the earth's nigth to Luna."
(Dunno why this popped in my head, must be the Applejack emoticon thanking god instead of the princess)
I need to take a road trip to these parts of MI now...I've been to the Silver Lake Sand Dunes and I had a great time there so I have a rough idea where to start.
So how badly are Silver's handlers freaking out that after school ended she up and evaporated off the map?
For some reason, this chapter title reminded me of the old Oregon Trail game, so I made this:
cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/70889396.jpg
These place names sound like someone ran out of ideas and decided to just use random misspellings of places like Frankfurt, Germany or Alberta, Canada.
7477585
Nope, it was a golf equipment showroom and store. And don't you start, you whippersnapper. I could bend your ear about the days when the Wall fell. Gas was under a dollar per gallon! We had war drills when we all had to line the hallways, duck and cover! Get off my lawn!
To life, to life, l'chayim?
7477998
i hope you were on schleichfahrt
7478475
microwaves are not this expensive, and there are these protable single and double field induction field stoves
I think ponies know what they are, since Muffins built one for the derby.
7477327
Humans have laid down so much concrete that we have entered the geologic record.
7480538 even before concrete, we managed to pile up town, there is a couple of interesting stories here and there about ancient ruin burried under more recent building.
I do remember one spot in Carcassonne where you could see a wall from the medieval period being build on the top of an earlier medieval wall build on the top of a roman wall...
I can understand why a theatre buff like him would be familiar.
It was the first high school theatre production I preformed in, and my main role was as one of 4 soldiers in the bar. Gotta love the classics.
7480832 I just remembered the briefly-popular term "Information Superhighway," and gave it a tiny twist. I'd considered going with "Inflammation Sewerpipeway," but ...there's such a thing as stretching a joke too far.
<And it's FUN!)
7480884 Yeah, I mean ponies are so much more sensitive to smell that there's probably an entire branch of words that cannot be translated. You also have to wonder how they'd be with new objects. Do you attempt to translate, or keep the word? It would certainly make for interesting conversations just throw a random neigh or what-have-you into a sentence.
Yeeaaahhhh... English would almost certainly invent new words or go for literal translations. I have to wonder about the french and german translations. Most speakers of those languages I know use a lot of english mixed in... Even the native speakers.
7480933 That's because english is the mainstream language. Things often get named in english first and becomes colloquialism before the name is decided in whatever language you are speaking.
And even when linguist do come with clever name (like in french, courriel or egoportrait), the english name became ingrated into the common language.
Plus some weird stuff like "it sounds cooler" and such.
7481004 Montreal... The only city in Canada where the road signs are just a suggestion.
I used to joke about that with my ex. She told me I was making it up. Then on the 2 block walk from the train station to the hotel we saw a guy get out of his car and almost break a guy's window because he didn't gun it through a yellow light.
7481075
Army taught me one tying method for quick release. The tying portion takes a while to accomplish but untying the bootlace takes only 1 second. Wish I still remember how, been quite a while aincw I had to lace up my army boots.
7481036
Not a biologist so I couldn't answer you with certainty as to the why. The thing is, all complex species alive today are the product of millions of years of evolution. We have a number of vestigial organic structures that serve no purpose now but were useful at some point in our evolutionary tree. During development in the womb, some features will get expressed and be later reabsorbed as if they were never there. That is because not all genes are expressed at the same time, and some will get turned on or off permanently during different stages of development.
Just look at how human embryos have a tail during the early stages of development. It seems terribly inefficient to invest into temporary structures like that, but that's the recipe recorded in our DNA and biology does not know how to be efficient. The recipe that gets passed on is whatever we had to start with plus maybe some random mutation(s).
7478642
That's a rather odd thing to do.
Still, the comments are educational. And possibly as long as the story itself.
7478653
The original Winston had 12 leaves in the rear springs, so it was a challenge to rock.
7478666
It is. Really handy when you're trying to figure out if it's possible to see the City of Milwaukee from the drawbridge in Manistee, for example (you can't).
7478711
Silly people. Dirt is, well, dirt. Anything else, and it's paved.
And of course, sometimes it's not even as good as a dirt road, it's a two-track. Heh, my grandma's driveway was an improved two-track: there were two strips of crushed quartz, with a grass strip down the center.
7478756
And the funnest ones are when you go wherever sounds interesting. That's how I wound up in Possum Trot, KY once.
7478764
I just learned about it, and how there are two parks right next to each other. I've only been to the more northern Sleeping Bear Dunes park.
7478894
Besides the default 'it appears on the last published chapter if you don't pick an earlier one', you can also click on a particular comment, and link that URL. ...
7480123
... And you can also reply to it in a different place, I think (and this should give you a rather odd set of notifications). If this works (and you'll know if it does), I just hit the 'reply' to the specific comment, and then copied the >>xxxxxxxx out of the comment box.
7480987
Definitely in Ponyville; I think they have actual street names in the larger cities (eg. "Saddle Row" in Manehattan).
7479119
Sure she does. She's a heartless bitch.
7478897
And another Michigander appears! Awesome!
7478949
7479074
Okay, it's doable, but tying shoes on your back or while seated in the back of a pickup with a topper on is rather awkward. I usually tied them on the tailgate or with a foot up on a tire because it was easier.
7479108
That's one of the best things about northern Michigan. It's fairly light-pollution free, and you can see about a zillion stars.
Of course, the last time I was up there, it was overcast all week.
7479344
"The fractal tour of the Michigan coastline: It'll last a lifetime!"
7479372
I'm kind of creeped out by the stuffed ponies.
After I left Bronycon, I drove to Assateague to see the ponies. I didn't get to spend as much time there as I'd planned (it was further away than I thought), but I did see some, and I also discovered sand crabs, which is a detail that made its way into this story.
7479470
Now that would be an interesting free trade agreement to negotiate.
7481083 Meh. Not that bad. seriously, the rest of Quebec is worse...
But yeah, Idaho stop rule supreme and the speed limits are suggestion unless you are an old person.
7481114
Well, gravel is not quite dirt and clearly not paved. Cobblestones are closer to paved, but depending of the quality, it can be closer to dirt too...
As I've mentioned before, I grew up in the boonies in the days before Zip Code. Our only address was our name & ,RD 2 Pulaski. Our family name is fairly unusual & was frequently misspelled. The post office always delivered because the mailman knew everyone & he just knew "oh, they mean him"
7479513
Of all the places referenced so far, Silver Lake is the one place I haven't been. Had a few opportunities, but never went.
7479634
If they can track Silver Glow's phone, she hasn't evaporated off the map yet. That would first happen somewhere around Northport.
Although they can also follow social media to get an idea what she's up to
...she probably should have told them what she was doing.
7479727
That's awesome!
7479842
And they haven't even gotten to Zilwaukee yet. Or Mackinaw City and the Mackinac Bridge.
7479948
Nuke drills? Been there, done that. And when I was a junior in college, gas was 83 cents a gallon, and I ran my truck on mid-grade because it liked it better and it was so cheap, why wouldn't I splurge on the 87 cent per gallon stuff?
Remember the Fisher-Price record player?
7480331
Yup, that's the one.
7480364
I don't know what that is.
No, they aren't. And she could probably get one if she wanted. . . .
. . . but she's got a waffle maker. Why does she even need a science oven?
7480421
. . . . I haven't seen that episode yet. I'm running a bit behind.
7480538
Whatever they're paving the roads in Michigan with won't be in the geologic record, except maybe for the lost hubcaps that our potholed roads cause.
7480650
Man, back in the day they were all about recycling building stones. How many cities deep is Jericho? Isn't it like twelve or something?
7480886
Oof, what was my first play? South Pacific maybe, or else West Side Story (got an award for best bit part in that one). Never had a role in Fiddler on the Roof, although if the opportunity presented itself, I'd audition.
7480933
According to my dad, that's a problem in Hebrew, since they try hard to keep the language the same so that the ancient texts are readable, which of course means that they frequently have to add words to keep up with modern times.
My brother married a second-generation Indian woman, and one of the things I found fascinating at one of the wedding dinners was how her family would switch languages mid-sentence. It was such a wonderful thing to hear, even though I didn't understand half of it. I have to think that's probably not uncommon in bilingual people.
7481210 Byblos in Lebannon is also on the crazy side of things. Every civilisation and their grandmother went there.
You've got stuff from before potery and writting and then some few other first civilisations (Five layer according to wikipedia). And then, Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Greek, Romans, Byzantine, Ottomans, Crusader and then it became a bit more quiet.
sand crabs hum lol lol be glade it was not sand fleas they are just plan nasty on a good day.