Hello-

I'm never really sure what to say in this introductory section. How's everyone doing? How's mama n' them?

My aim for this post was to come up with pictures of things Detroit, but, as you'll see it turned into whatever struck me as blog worthy.

Hope you enjoy. -Tyler



Above and below are pictures of the old train station in Detroit. It's one of the more visible examples of the city's decline.

On a lighter note: When I first saw it, I was like, that place kind of looks like the Tower of Terror at Disney World. That would be neat... Am I right or am I right? No, I am not right. The ToT, as I will cal it, is pink and looks nothing like the train station in Detroit. Google image search told me so: Check it out:

http://www.guide2wdw.com/images/1Digital%20Pictures/MGM%20-%20Tower%20of%20Terror%20Outside%202.jpg

This place is so dreary I waited for an overcast rainy day to take its picture and capture its full dreariosity. I'm probably not being fair, architectually, it's a beautiful builiding. I just can't help but wonder if there are any free falling elevators inside. Maybe that twilight zone video thing is playing somewhere inside? What's that? You've never ridden the ToT or been to Disney World? Oh, sorry. Moving on...

Above: An outside shot of the church where I work (Central UMC) from the park across the street.

Below: Two interior shots of the church sanctuary. It's real purdy.

This is a shot I took from the sixth floor patio of Central. It's pretty crazy how close the church is to Comerica Park, home of the Tigers. You can also see a little bit of Ford Field (where the Lions play) behind Comerica.

As some of you, ok probably most all of you do not know, the Detroit Shock recently won the WNBA title. In honor of Shock victory a jersey was placed on the statue of the "Spirit of Detroit" downtown. Every time a bell rings, no, I'm so wierd, every time a local pro team wins a championship the team's jersey is hoisted over the statue. We'll see if the Tigers are next.

I don't care what anybody says, I look good in an apron. Just thought you should know.

A nice picture of our house. As I've mentioned before, it's a duplex and my roomate and I live on the second floor. You should know, while I was outside taking this picture I spotted the kids on our block, the Spanish speaking ones, and I thought about taking their picture for the blog. I decided not to because it probably wouldn't have been like, oh, theirs our friendly new neighbor, let's go take our picture with him. It would have been more like, let's run inside and tell Mommy about the sexual predator with the flashy camera.

Bad decision averted. Good picture of the house.

Just in case you were confussed, we live on the west side of town.

Really, there are two things I've always wanted to do, well, really just since I took this picture. One, take a picture of myself on a shrink chair, and two, incorporate the word verclemfnt into the blog. Don't I look verclemfnt?

Not pictured in the blog: the biggest tire in the world. That's right. Detroit is home to the world's largest tire. Unfortunately, I was not prepared to photograph the tire as I passed it on the interstate last week. However, you can take comfort in the fact that I am an Abnormally Large Tire Tiretician. It's a real profession, you can look it up. This one is hands down the biggest I've ever seen.

Also google image searchable: http://detroit.about.com/library/graphics/nighttire.jpg

Hello there- I hope everyone is well.

This past weekend I visited some good friends from BSC who
recently moved to DC. I found a really good deal on some plane tickets and decided to take the plunge. Why not?

Here are a few pics from my visit. Enjoy.

I can't believe I got to meet the President and...uh...this obviously important aid. I think the Pres, he said it was okay if we called him that, was talking about the massive amounts strategery involved in fighting the war on crab people. That's right, crab people from South Park are the new terrorists. Crab people are in, al quaeda is out.

Ok, for serious I really did go to DC.

Holby, so hot right now in his Bid Day shirt that you can't really read because the picture turned out blurry. That was a long sentence to type while doing the Zoolander impersonation in my head. Holby rocked his Bid Day shirt on Saturday in honor of, well, Bid Day.

DC has a really cool Eastern market, kind of a Saturday/Sunday farmer's market thing. I go to our Eastern market in Detroit too. It's wierd that I do adulty stuff like this on a regular basis, but cool.

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John Paul ponders the inner workings of an escelator. Actually, it doesn't look like he's doing much pondering, but if he was he'd probably be thinking something like, "I can't believe this stupid thing isn't working. I could fix this no problem, I mean, they didn't give me Phi Betta Kappa for nothing, right? Yea, Webb could definitely not fix this."

I thought the Metro station was picture worthy.

Haven't you ever been to DC and been like, gosh we have got to see the Free Mason's headquarters. Well if you're like me, the answer is probably no. However, we passed by their headquarter's on the way to church Sunday morning.

It also so happens that last year I was recruited by our next door neighbor in my dorm to join a local Masons chapter. Chase Stevenson, if you're out there, this one's for you buddy.

A scary picture Webb took of himself.

Home of Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics. Potentially the most redundant book ever written ever, period. Get it, I said ever twice. ...sorry. Cool house though. His place is only a block or so from my peepses place. By my peepses for those of you who don't habla slang, I mean "my friends."

Webb threw up the "DC" hands a lot during my visit. He alwasy looked so serious when he did that. I thought I should look cool too. Ok I'm just going to say it, I am freakin ripped, not to mentioned evenly tanned.

Seeing as we were in the nation's capital I was feeling particularly patriotic. A salute seemed to be in order. Dang that is a tight salute.

Ain't we cute. The end.

I think I might call this little piece "Thought for Food". Here's a taste of what's going on inside my brain. Enjoy, and sorry.

Circle Dancing

I went to a wedding this past weekend. My co-worker here at the church was getting hitched and I kind of got a sympathy, new kid on the block invite, which was nice. After the wedding reception I was thinking, you know what I've noticed about wedding reception dancing? I'll tell you. There seems to be a lot of holding hands circle dancing going on at these events. You know who's at center stage of these things? Kids. I don't know about you but standing in a circle holding the hand of the person on each side of you while trying to dance in place can be kind of awkward and uncomfortable. That's where the kids com into play. They take over. Usually the kid comes to the middle of the circle. When he/she starts to do his/her thing, all attention is on the kid. You can look as stupid as you want standing there at the will of the woman beside you whose decided to flail your arm around like she just don't care because nobody's paying you any attention. Everything the kid does turns to gold. Even if said kid is not really into the whole spotlight thing. Everyone ewws and goos over the kid(s) and you're free to flail about until the song ends. Incredible.

Another note. If the hand holding circle dancing becomes too much to handle, and it will, here's what you do. It makes you look kind of good really. In order to disengage from hand holding, start clapping to the beat of the music. All will follow suit. Slowly back away from Aunt Beatris and Grandma Rose. They're so wrapped up in how cute the flower girl looks doing her thing, they'll never notice your escape to the bar. Mission accomplished.



Those kids and their Spanish

You know what's crazy? Little kids who speak Spanish, like, as a first language. Everyday I walk from my car to our house and there are Hispanic kids outside their homes playing and doing whatever little kids do out on the sidewalks. Nevermind that Spanish is their first language, they're good, they're very good. I think I took as many years of Spanish in school as these kids are alive. Five years of Spanish class and these kindygardner's are blowing me out of the water. It just freaks me out. There's something a little creepy about little kids wo can speak a language you can only partially understand. They're yelling back and forth to each other about, a bicycle maybe? I think to myself, how does my hair look? Are they making fun of my hair? I don't know. Yea, I see you over there on your tricycle Carlito, probably talking to Julio about the not yet opened juicy juice you're going to put underneath my front tire. Two can tango amigo. I know how you roll Carlito. Don't you look at me like that. I know where you sleep and your mother and I are...well, we're acquaintences damn it. We've exchanged hellos.

How do these kids know so many big words? I start to walk a little bit faster, finally, safe inside the house, far from their taunts and playful laughter. Ok, I know they probably didn't even see me and if they did, they were like who's the white guy, or, "gringo" as some might say. So, next time you walk by a heard of Hispanic children and they're speaking to each other in that cryptic language some might call "Spanish", you see how you feel, then get back to me.

In your face Energy

Have you ever looked at an energy drink can? It's like they're tying to out energy the competition. You got our friend Red Bull on the far right. Red Bull's pretty non-discript, kind of came in on the front side of the energy drink revolution and he's just kind of sittin back chillin in his blue and silver can, lookin slick, but not in your face. Then you got these other energy drinks and they're screaming, hey look at me I'm a freakin energy drink. I'm so loud and energizing! Drink me and you can jump off a cliff and land on your feet. No problem. Why do energy drinks yell at us with their vibrant colors and crazy fonts?

There's a billboard pretty near the interstate exit for our house advertising a new energy drink called Freak. There's this kind of scary looking black and grey, green eyed monster on the can and he single handedly out energy drinks all the competition. The add says "evil energy" at the bottom. Drink me if you dare and if you survive you can flip out on some lesser non-Freak drinking soul. Moral of the story, energy drinks are scary.

Thanks for reading. Hope everyone's well and I apologize for all this wierdness -Tyler

Some pictures thus far.

Above: My roomate Amy in our kitchen. Rarrr, that Amy knows how to wear an apron.

We made some delicious guacamole. Eat your heart out John Paul. You too Ethan.

Our living room. We get nice light through the windows in the evening.

...and I thought there might not be enough money for beer. Silly Tyler.

John and Judy: The folks who invited Amy and I up to their place in "the thumb".

I sure can take a nice landscape picture. Eat your heart out...uhhh...famous landscape photographer?.

GGGGOOOOAAAAALLLLL!!! Actually this had nothing to do with soccer. I was a popular mosquito attraction.
I got to drive this tractor when we were "up North". I think I'm saying something like, "What's wrong with this freaking tractor? I am a professional tractor driver and drive tractors all the time. There must be something really wrong with this particular tractor because I've driven in like 100 tractor races". I couldn't figure out the clutch.

Some pretty spectacular awkward dancing I captured on film at Detroit's Jazz Fest on Labor Day weekend.

Me and the big wierd fountain downtown. In picture: Me and my best, this sure is a big wierd fountain pose.

The skyline from Belle Islle. The bridge to Canada is on the left.

So what's up with the hand? Folks from Michigan like to use their hand as a map of the state. Take another look at a US map and you will see that Michgan vaguely resembles a human hand. Say I ask somebody from Michigan where such and such town is in Michigan. Without fail they'll throw their hand up, right hand mind you, palm out. Then they'll start pointing to the right hand with the left hand. In this case we'll use a golf golve, thank you google image search.

As you know, I'm in Detroit, which is roughly in the south eastern hand regoin of the state. This past weekend I had the opportunity to visit the state's beautiful thumb region. Seriously, people would ask me what I was doing for Labor Day weekend, and I was like, oh I'm going up North to the thumb. Duh. Everybody's doin it. Thumb or bust. People in Michigan really do call the thumb-esque part of the state "the thumb".

Lot's of folks around Detroit go "up North" as they say, for vacation. The North (of Michigan)consists of lots of woods, lakes, isolated areas, you get the drift. Good for huntin, fishin, "gettin right with God", "finding yourself", that kind of thing.

Two of our regular vounteers for NOAH invited Amy (my roomate) and I "up North" to their place in "the thumb". John and Judy's place is slightly below the thumb nail in our hand diagram to the left. Well, now above.

John and Judy are retired and probably in their early 60s. They come down to Central every Monday and Thursday to help us serve bag lunch. John and Judy both are extremely patient and work really well with people. They've also had Amy and I over to their house in Detroit for dinner. They really are exceptionally generous folks.

Anyway, the trip itself is not really worth telling about in this space. I really just wanted to better acquaint everyone to the Michigan hand. However, I did get to drive a tractor for the first time, so that was sweet. I jest about Northern Michigan being a place to "get right with God", but it really was a peaceful getaway for a few days.

Hope all is well with everyone. -Tyler