A couple days this past week have been full of both new experiences and me (for once) not backing out when people suggest things that stretch the edges of my comfort zone. I wish I had some photos to go along with this entry, but I seem to have spent all my photo-taking time on adventuring instead. Whoops!
On Monday, I texted Zack that I was bored, and he invited me to come up to his parents' house in Fenton to do some fishing. There was rain coming, so we spent the first half hour or so fishing for bluegills off his dock, since they were pretty easy to snag. After catching a couple and feeling dumb asking Zack to take them off my hook for me, I fought my live-fish-touching squeamishness and took one off myself. It was not that bad!
Soon after, we retreated to his house and I had a nice lunch with the Beauvais family after discussing the TV show Tracker Man, in which a man experienced in tracking gets to hunt the Most Dangerous Game. It sounded possibly illegal. After a while, the conversation turned to shooting and the fact that Zack hadn't gone shooting yet this year. So he asked me if I wanted to go with him. Now. In keeping with the trend that day, I said yes. A couple hours later, after picking up some clay pigeons, Zack's dad, and their family friend whom they describe as "a lumberjack," we were at the local shooting range and I was awkwardly holding a surprisingly heavy shotgun and hesitantly saying "pull."
Surprise, surprise--I was not a great shot. But Zack did just as badly as me and he's had much more experience. When shooting at a stationary target, though, I did much better. My souvenirs from the day were a spent shell casing and a vibrantly-colored bruise from where I probably held the gun wrong a couple of times. Main lesson learned: racking a shotgun is really fun.
The middle part of the week was spent more quietly, redesigning this site. Yesterday, though, while eating breakfast with (who else?) Zack, I remembered that our friend Natalie had wanted us to come to the Curwood Festival in her hometown of Owosso at the beginning of June. Soon enough, we were taking backroads and strange routes through Whitmore Lake on our way to the sleepy, heavily inbred town of Owosso.
The Curwood Festival is an annual celebration of Owosso's most famous son, novelist James Oliver Curwood. We visited Curwood's (disappointingly small) castle, admired the historic houses, ate at a restaurant targeted towards old people, got local Owosso ice cream, rode carnival rides such as "Gravity Time," "Drop-Down," and "Crushy" (not actual names), and watched a competition where dogs long-jumped into a pool. After that full day, we bid farewell to Natalie, I dropped Zack off in Fenton, and I continued home to Ann Arbor.
Although I was kind of exhausted, I remembered that Salon Vox is open until midnight on Thursdays and that I really needed a haircut, so I popped over there. Very satisfied with the day overall. There will probably be at least another week of boring days now. This week's been a good experience, though. It's helpful to remember that good things can come from saying yes.
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