The Turner Family

This past weekend, I had the good fortune (and good sense) to go to Traverse City for the ceremony to induct Cynthia into the Traverse City Bowling Hall of Fame... Of course, before you can be awarded...you have to bowl. I got to see Cyn and Glen in action with one of their regular (and favorite) groups on Friday night. Glen, his cousins Frank (Sonny) and Al with Connie and of course, Cynthia. The inductee! Everyone wanted their picture with the hall of famer! Two very handsome photos of Cyn and Glen... Cyn and fellow 2011 inductee More family photos.... Devyn, Jamie, Dennis and Cyn me and cyn (family resemblance?) the evening had a fantastic Elvis tribute singer during dinner (and a ventriloquist !! after dinner) wow. Yooperman joined us for breakfast the next day.. Thanks, Cyn for a great reason to come up to your city! It was wonderful to see how loved and respected you are by the whole bowling community...I am not at all surprised!

We took our mid-afternoon meal today at Johnson's Boucaniere in Lafayette. (We have a tendancy to eat two meals a day when we are on the road, one early, and one mid-afternoon or later.) Johnson's is a small walk-in place in an older home, situated in a nice old neighborhood. There are no tables inside, but the porch on the north side of the house has tables that could seat at least 30. That's where we feasted. They offer mostly cajun and smoked foods. They had several specials  today, including a pulled pork sandwich (Kay) and smoked pork ribs with corn bread (Bil). Everyday they prepare boudin, a cajun sausage (Bil). Boudin is a sausage made from pork, rice, onions and spices. I have had it twice before, and it's growing on me. The skin has always seemed to be like very thin leather, but steaming hot - it is inedible. The filling is ground very fine, and after cooking is like a very thick paste - actually as I write this, I ...

This past weekend, we took our Sunday evening meal at Black's Barbecue, in Lockhart, Texas. Many people view Lockhart, east of San Antonio, as the epicenter of great smoked meats in Texas. Lockhart, a town of only 12,000, is home to three restaurants that consistently rank in the top 20 in Texas, and there are at least 6 more great places within a 40 mile radius of Lockhart. The three in Lockhart are Smitty's, Kreuz's and Black's. Black's Barbecue opened in 1932 and has been operated by the Black family since that date. It's an old building, inside and out, and is decorated with many photos of local sports teams and visiting dignitaries. There was a signed photo of Lyndon Johnson with some members of the Black family near our booth. Johnson grew up about 60 miles west of Lockhart. In this barbecue house, diners pass down a short cafeteria line, choosing their side dishes, then into the meat room. All meat is cut to the order of the diner. We order...

That little girl Devyn turned 16 on Wednesday. Back when she was about 10, she developed quite a taste for lobster and ever since, we have celebrated her birthday with a family dinner at the Red Lobster. So there we went again. Dennis got her the bouquet: 15 pink roses (her favorite color) and the 16th, a yellow rose in the center of the bouquet to represent the first Man in her life, her maternal grandfather who passed away when she was very young. She was quite emotional, of course. Another family tradition at Devyn's birthday. She gets her own can of "shootin' cream" to eat as she chooses. So here she is chugging some.

I told the team we should retire this year because we had already won the City Women's Championship in 2010, but they wanted to do it again. Our outfits this year are the most outrageous ever. We all got different colored shirts and decided we would match our hair and make-up to the shirt colors. And, we have inspired others: this year, the tournament saw new teams called the "Mini Me's", the "Tweeners" and the "Teenie Weenies" (maximum height 5'1"). We almost won again, but were edged out by 16 pins for first place.

Boca Chica is a very small village about 15 miles straight east of Brownsville, about 2 miles from the Gulf, and a mile north of the Rio Grand. It was founded about 100 years ago by a hustler who advertised it heavily in Poland. He sold parcels to about 2000 investors. Thirty two houses were built. There are now 6 permanent residents. Water is trucked in from Brownsville. It's a very desolate area - the soil is so salty and sandy that virtually nothing grows. One photo shows the gas station/ bait shop at the entrance to the village. Folks surf fish in the gulf. Kay is standing by a group of floats that mark the entrance to the village. In the photo of Bil, the land over his shoulder is a wide salt flats, with low dunes about 2 miles behind him. Those dunes are at the Gulf. Apparently, depending on the storms and tides, sometimes the land along the shore becomes a barrier island, and the salt flats become full of sea water. We can only wonder what the weather ...

Don't laugh ! Snow on South Padre Island, even a trace of snow, doesn't happen once in 10 years. So this was a big deal. The little triangle of snow on our balcony was about 1" deep. We had a bad cold snap last Wednesday through Friday, the same days you in Michigan got a big dose of snow. We were actually at the bottom end of the same front that brought you the snow. The temp got down to about 27/28 two nights in a row. Thursday night it spit snow and freezing rain. The bridge that connects the island is 3 miles long and was a sheet of ice. The State put sand on the bridge, but they ultimately closed the bridge entirely about midnight. They re-opened it the next day at noon. The municipal systems down here seem sort of fragile, and our power went down both nights, and the water pressure reduced dramatically on Thursday night. Nearly all the maintenance people who work on the island live on the mainland, so they could not get to work and make things right. E...

It was a late developing storm in Grand Ledge, but aren't they always, though? Predicted storms never seem to be as big, or arrive as timely as anticipated, either. I went outside to secure a garage window and bring a shovel inside Tuesday night around 11 P.M., there was probably 2 inches already, but it was tough to be certain with all the blowing. Winds were 31 mph, 4 below the blizzard threshold, and school was already cancelled. Woke to drifts, and blowing cold. Played and worked and came home with Sophia to Tiffani and Seamus having already dug fortifications, so I tried to film the snowball attacks with the phone. Pardon the change in orientation, I mistakenly figured the phone would follow along. School is cancelled again for Thursday. Abandoned vehicles litter northbound Lake Shore Drive, Chicago on Wednesday, February 2  morning. This is what the snowstorm blanketing much of the country looked like. The storm, which was covering ...

I thought I'd post some pictures from South Padre Island, so you can get a flavor of our environment. We are on the 1st floor of the building, just right of center. There are two floors below us, but they are the parking garage - the big blank wall shown here. Kay shown standing on our balcony. It's a 2 bdrm, 2 bath. The living room/kitchen area is quite small, but it's adequate for us. We see parasail surfers whenever the winds are up - which is almost always. The parasail shown is the view from our balcony. There are a couple of drilling platforms straight out from our building, perhaps 3 or 4 miles out. There are usually a couple of ships anchored out that far, waiting for a slot in the Brownsville harbor. The urban picture is taken from the top (11th) floor of our buiding, looking north. The farthest buildings are less than a mile away, and mark the end of the developed part of the island. The island goes on for perhaps 50 miles, but is a wilderness. You can ...

I'm going to try to post to the blog even though we only have dial-up as an Internet connection. We stopped at a couple of noted barbecue places on the way south. The first was the Rendezvous in downtown Memphis. We had attempted a stop there last year, but they were closed on New Year's Eve - hard for us to fathom. There are other things that are unique about the Rendezvous. The published address is 52 S. 2nd St, but you won't find it there. That's a ten story downtown building, but the entrance doesn't look as if it has been used in years - and it hasn't. The sign on the door says to go the alley in back of that building. Sure enough, as you round the corner into the alley the sweet smell of smoking meat fills the air around you. The Rendezvous is in the basement of the building - the only entrance is from the alley, and it's been that way since 1948. The other unusual thing about this smokehouse, is that they cook all their meats over charcoal. So the smo...

Our New Year's trip to the UP was extended by a day, when high winds Saturday on the Mackinac Bridge flipped a snowmobile trailer and closed both southbound lanes of traffic. They couldn't remove the trailer because it would just tip over again, so they chained it to the guardrail, where it sat the next day. This is what it looked like when we finally did get across Sunday morning.

Don't know if it's officially a "blizzard", but the weather that's been tearing across the upper midwest has hit Traverse City. Went to the garage and snapped this photo looking down our driveway. You can see a few flakes flying around and probably about a foot of new snow.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, wherever and with whomever you gather. We're actually cooking this year, hosting our friends the Remleys, a couple of their daughters, Glen's cousins and children. It's been many years since we cooked a big dinner like that - really looking forward to food and fellowship. Hugs to all of you!!! Cyn and Glen

This tale begins on October 24th, with a group of unsuspecting pumpkins innocently posing for a group photo. Soon, chaos and mayhem descends on these poor defenseless gourds. Vegetables being disemboweled ! Pumpkin cannibalism ! Inter-racial cannibalism ! Note the glee on the face of the young human. Disgusting ! Post-slaughter celebration - coupled with a three weeks late birthday party for Josh. One week later - on the actual Halloween, Sophia and Seamus. Seamus was sure his Spartan needed face painting, so he applied his own. It's not clear what it signifies.

Devyn was practicing her flute and discovered the family pet chihuahua liked to sing along. So, she decided to record him singing. Enjoy the video.

Tiffani and my one word DALMAC summary: awesome! The weather was occasionally brutal , poor enough for some of the rest of the time, and delightful on the final day. But the sheer fact of riding 325 miles over 4 days with (dwindling) like-minded people was really inspiring. Then, a day off for Labor Day , and WHAM! Back to school and my new job. The timeline of our DALMAC: Day 1 Thursday's route took us from the  MSU Pavilion to Vestaburg, which we managed by 1 or so P.M. But, of course there was a complication: in all of the lists and preparations , I had decided to chill our four water bottles in the refrigerator, and you can sense where this narrative is going: we discovered they were left at home when we were en route with Dad and the kids to our departure spot. And Dad, of course, shoved the slight panic aside by volunteering to drop us off, then retrieve our bottles, and meet us somewhere north later that morning. We hooked up with an ex-student and -athlete of m...

Three of my co-workers and I went to the Mackinac Bridge to do some business with the folks there. After we concluded our business, we were asked if we wanted to go to the top of the bridge. This is a view from the south tower looking north to St. Ignace from on TOP, 552 feet above the water. This is inside the tower close to the top. The elevator can't go all the way, so you have to climb through several of these "portals" to get closer to the center of the tower. The wires are for some lights. The lights are not in the entire tower, just were you walk to get to the hatch that leads out on top. The portal to the top. There are about six of these sections you have to climb through to get from the elevator door level to the top. You have to climb with your arms above your head while you go through the portals so you don't get stuck. From l to r: Mark Gove, Tom Feldpaucsh, myself and Duane Becker Enjoying the view and chatting with the gentleman from the Bridge ...