July 7, 2009 Ferry across Lake Michigan

The Spa; Mike Fitzgerald; and Who the hell is Bob Evans?

I slept like a baby in Kylar’s bed, and the fan drowned out the sound of Griff snoring on a mattress on the floor. Bob slept on the couch and Bill took Ashley’s room. The kids had a sleep over in their parents’ room. When I got up, MP had made waffles, feeding Eric, the children and us, and then got the kids ready for their day camp and herself ready for work. I don’t know how she does it, but her kids are very well behaved and that certainly eases her burden. I would have been freaking out, with all she had to do, plus get to work on time and work a full day. She never raised her voice when she told the kids they would leave in 3 minutes, and TJ reached for a cereal bowl and filled it with cereal and poured milk on it. Not a word from MP. He ate his cereal and when he was done, MP asked him to get his snack and other stuff for camp. They gave us hugs good bye and departed. Amazing. Just amazing. My blood pressure would have been about 200 over 110. And if there was ever a spa in our future on this trip, this was it. I told Eric we loved it there because we could feel all the love around us. He went into gales of laughter.
We followed the directions to the ferry terminal, and almost got busted for speeding about 1 mile from the terminal on Interstate 794. I came over a rise on the bridge doing about 60 having just passed a truck and trying to get far enough ahead of it so that the other 3 could fit in behind me. Damn. There’s a police cruiser parked along the side of the road, I was sure we had it. It even started its engine when Billy got to it, and then pulled out, put on its lights and siren and tore by Billy headed for me. I slowed and he went whizzing by me to attend to some unknown catastrophe... or not. When we boarded the ferry, the guy next to us helped Griff and me tie our bikes down with the tiedowns. His name is Mike Fitzgerald and he had been in the military and had used similar tie-downs there. As it turned out, he and I sat beside each other on the back deck of the ferry, getting fried by the sun, and told me his military background. In 1982, he had gone to work at Nellis AFB in Nevada to work on the F-117, the Stealth fighter-bomber, in its infancy. He worked on engines, and he spent 4 months on the computer before a plane ever got to Nellis. Due to the Top Secret status of the project, no one who worked there could tell their family what they did or where they went each week. He would leave Vegas early Monday morning, drive north several hours to Nellis, and then work until Thursday night or Friday morning when he would return to his family in Vegas. The Air Force had estimated that those working on this project would have a 75% divorce rate, but it never was higher than 50%, the national average. He worked as an engine technician and mechanic, and in fact, was the “check” mechanic who would check out others who were working on the engines. He also got to fly the plane in the simulator when those performing the exam would give him all types of problems to solve. He gave an example: due to the secrecy of the project, all flights were done at night to keep the plane invisible to the Russian satellites orbiting above. So, in the simulator, it was very dark and the cockpit screen had TV screens that would show exactly what you would see if you were in the real plane. So on this particular test, he had already had quite a test when it became quiet and all the gauges looked fine. He kept staring at them to see what was wrong, but nothing appeared. Then, the voice of the test administrator said, “Look up.” There in the screen was the wall of the hangar across the taxiway and he was about to hit it. He jammed on the brakes and just stopped the plane in time. Then he was told to turn left and taxi out to the runway - he said he couldn’t because the wing would hit the hangar, and they said to go ahead anyway, they would override that. After taxiing to the runway, he took off and they then gave him a complete power failure. Luckily, he knew where everything was, even in complete darkness and found the switch for the auxiliary power and turned it on. By the time he was done, the sweat was pouring off him. Mike is now retired from the military and works as Manager, Productions Operations for Kelly Aviation Center, a Lockheed Martin affiliate in San Antonio - I know. I have his card. We sat together most of the 2 1/2 hour trip and he was headed to Traverse City on his Harley when we last saw him. He was also a big help untieing our tiedowns when it was time to disembark. His story about the Stealth program interests me because I had stayed in a private home in Oshkosh for the air show 10-15 years ago, and had met another individual who worked in the same program and he told a similar story about the personal side of that assignment. As Mike said, they had nothing else to do but work. They had a kitchen,dining room and recreation room all in the same building - KDR building, they called it, with its pool table, air hockey game, large screen TV with a satellite dish that you had to turn manually to get other stations. He worked there 6 years and is proud of the work they did, and the fact that they all kept it secret for so long.
And who the hell is Bob Evans, and who does he think he is? After leaving Muskegon about 4:30, we drove 220 miles to Port Huron where we stopped at a Comfort Inn for the night. There may be no “free lunch,” but at Comfort Inn there is a free all-you-can- eat breakfast - very important to this crew. We walked across the street to “Bob Evans Restaurant” billed as a “family restaurant.” Bob walked in and said he bet they didn’t serve beer. He asked. The manager said “No,” they did not serve alcoholic beverages. Since we had walked over, we couldn’t just hop on our bikes and go elsewhere, and besides, there was a liquor store about 100 yards away. So we asked Sara, a 19 year old nursing student who was our waitress, to run out and get us a 6-pack. She said she couldn’t do that - she was too young to buy it. So we told her that every family had a few drunks and that they shouldn’t be calling themselves a “family” restaurant if they excluded the drunks in the family from eating there. And we asked her who the hell Bob Evans was and where did he get off saying that they wouldn’t serve even beer. She gave us back the menu to read the last page which told his purported story of how he started this restaurant chain of “family-style” restaurants, and how we were welcome to visit him at the Homestead in Rio Grande, Ohio. This is just a complete farce. Everyone knows that the Rio Grande is in Texas. Just another scam - Mr. Evans, meet Mr. Madoff. And the guy is DEAD so some invitation that is. They ought to get some beer and their patronage would increase (there were only two other people eating in this restaurant when we were there) and the Saras of their staff (who make only $2.65 an hour as a salary) would get much bigger tips. Bob filled out the comment card telling the Manager in so many words that they should serve beer or else it was the last time he would be eating there. The manager said that she could give us root beer, and she could even spice it up and put ice cream in it. Say what?
We ate our homestyle cooking and went back to the Comfort Inn grumbling about the place. And these restaurants are in 38 of the 50 states (according to Sara)? What is wrong with this country? This is anti-American and is subverting Obama’s efforts to jump start the economy.
Maybe you can tell, we’re a little punch drunk. All the sun and the restful previous 24 hours made us that way. We’ll be back to our regular schedule tomorrow.
Good night. Love, Nat, Dad, DB, Matt Senton, “Gunny”

PS Bob’s nickname is “Skids” for the rubber he laid and the resultant blue smoke from his rear tire when he was watching a herd of bulfalo galloping through a field and failed to notice that I had slowed to almost a stop due to cars in front of me, and he turned his head back just in time to see that he was about to slam into me at 45 mph, and jammed on the brakes barely avoiding me and causing quite a racket. This happened in Wyoming, I think.