Long Weekend

Dan here,

I'm going to tell you all of my journey home and back again (a hobbit's tale?).

Anyway when I left Friday morning everything seemed to go alright. I wasn't tired even though Hilary and I stayed up far to late the night before. However, as I got to the bridge in Ogdensburg (15min from here btw) I noticed something strange. The bridge was completely grated. There was no pavement whatsoever. Needless to say I was quite frightened. I'm glad I never have to cross that thing again.

Later in the day I came to Toronto. 2.5 million people live there. Crazy huh? Well for me the coolest thing was seeing all the cars. At one point there was 8 lanes of traffic on either side of the highway, for those of you with bad math skills *me too* that is 16 lanes of traffic in total. I've never seen that many cars before. It was fun.

When I got to Port Huron the border was fairly backed up, I spent about 45min waiting to get back into Michigan. Then when I finally got to Josh's house I ran out of gas about a block from his house. Right at the corner of Maple and Fenton road. I was disappointed but also pleased that it only took one tank to get from Lisbon all the way there. Anyway after I got to his house, he slept for the first four hours I was there. It was alright though because I talked with Lindsay and played with Logan a bit. Logan is the most adorable little boy in the whole world.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. Josh and I talked and watched CSI. That was neat. I've never seen it before.

On Saturday I got up and headed over to the church. The ride up was fun. Very stimulating conversation. I know my views tend to be different from more conservative Christians, but to be honest when it comes right down to it, I believe we both want the same thing; We want people to love Jesus and we want to love them like He loves them. We just go about this in two different ways.

The wedding itself was very difficult for me. I wanted to support my dad but so much of it was almost like a slap in the face to my mother. When the Pastor announced them as the "New" Mr. and Mrs. Robert Holtz my heart just broke. I know the Pastor didn't mean to say that like my mother was irrelevant or anything but it still hurt me. Also I'd never seen my dad kiss my mother like he kissed Karin that day. I couldn't even look at them when everyone was banging the table to get them to kiss.
On the plus side the cake was delicious, but being serious my dad did seem really happy to see us all there and I'm glad we came because he only had one other person from his family there. Rob and Dawn didn't even come which surprised me.

Later that night I went and saw Harry Potter with KC and his friend. I liked the movie a lot even though there were some obvious problems with it diverging from the book. But the cool thing about the night was the ride home from the theater. KC and I had a great talk and I really feel like he's starting to grow up. Some of the things he said to me really impressed me and I think he's heading in the right direction. I think that will only continue as he does the XD program at Bethany. I pray for him fairly regularly and I think God is working on him.

Sunday after church Josh and I visited my mom. I try to get out there every time I come back home. After that I headed back to Lisbon.

On the way back I encountered a lot of interesting things. First I hit Toronto at rush hour. Have you ever seen 16 lanes of traffic at a standstill. It was not fun. Also later I saw a lady drinking a Heineken while driving, and the reason I know that it was a Heineken was because I could read the label. Some people are so irresponsible. Also I may have met the dumbest gas station attendant in the history of time.

I got off the highway for the exit that said bridge to USA at Ogdensburg. I must have turned the wrong direction though because I remembered the bridge being right after the overpass. So I pulled into a gas station to ask for directions. The man at the counter tells me he has never heard of Ogdensburg and that he thinks the only bridge is at Prescott (which was about 5 miles back the other direction on the highway) or at Cornwall (which was about 30 miles up the highway). Well I know the bridge is here because the exit said so and I crossed at Ogdensburg on Friday. So I leave this extremely unhelpful man and head back toward the highway to find my mistake.

Well as soon as I get up onto the overpass I can see the bridge and then proceeded to cross back into NY. Now tell me how you work at a gas station that is not even 2000ft from viewing distance of the bridge and not know it exists? I wasted 15mins of my life talking to that man.

But to make a long story short (hehe) I made it home with only a few emotional scars, and I know God can and will heal those.