Mr. Karen and I spent 23 hours of our weekend on a quick trip to Grand Rapids, a jaunt he arranged so we could see Kansas at Fifth Third Ballpark on Saturday night, as they do not appear to be coming to metro Detroit this year. We arrived at our hotel around the time the first of three opening acts probably took the stage and walked over to the ballpark a little while later. I was delighted that the first concession stand we came across not only had Dippin’ Dots but offered them in a tiny batting helmet—I had never eaten from a tiny batting helmet before. (Now that I have, I’m pondering creating the tiny batting helmet diet—instead of calories/exchanges/points, just count tiny batting helmets worth of food; if it doesn’t fit in the helmet, no eating it. I’m still working out the details.) With the exception of a few VIP tables near the stage (which was out by second base), it was general admission, but there was no problem finding seats, perhaps because the weather was cool and threatening rain. And it did rain on and off and then mostly just on, but we’d come prepared with coats and ponchos and were able to cover up and stay warm and mostly dry even though we stayed in the stands instead of taking cover in the concourse as many people did (not that I didn’t go up on the concourse at all—for a small venue, the variety of food selections was excellent, and I grazed my way through the second two opening acts). Kansas took the stage somewhere around 9 p.m. and did a somewhat shorter set than usual—not sure if that was contractual thing or a curfew thing or a let’s not get electrocuted by these wet wires thing.

We slept in on Sunday and then headed back home via a slightly circuitous route which would allow me to resume my Big Boys of Michigan documentation project. The first Boy we stopped at was inside, and I don’t usually snap inside Boys, but I made an exception in this case, and I’m glad I did, because the next four locations we stopped at were no longer in business (which will come as news to GoogleMaps). Sad. All those Boys, gone. I guess I’d better step up my efforts before more disappear. There are still some in metro Detroit I haven’t snapped; those will be easy to get (and a good opportunity to grow leaves in the Fusion—all the highway to and from Grand Rapids did not do wonders for my average mpg, though it’s still better than what we would have gotten in the Focus plus we got to use the navigation system for the first time, so that was fun).