As regular readers will remember, I was doing a review of the jets employed to haul my sorry butt up to Michigan, and what will certainly be The Last Party at Mary’s Place, at her magnificent home on Grand Traverse Bay. The kids are selling the place off- they both have places of their own and it is time to move on from the bayside villa north of Northport.

It is a fabulous place, and very nearly the end of the line for Michigan’s little finger. The population is selective- you have to want to be there to be there, in Sutton’s Bay, or Leeland or little Northport almost all the way to the Lighthouse that shines for the freighters out on the Big Lake.

It is a very cool place, and were it not for the recollection of what happens when the gales of November come early, and the start of five months of winter, I would be packing my bags to decamp. Suffice it to say that the week ahead of the Labor Day holiday, with the kids back in school down below, there was not much in the way of crowds, and the time was the more precious.

Maybe my favorite time is after Labor Day, when the last lingering bit if Indian Summer hangs on, but you can feel a little chill in the breeze off the water.

If I could swing the mortgage on two places, I would definitely make Up North one of them. In the summer, anyway.

Anyway, we did Music in the Park the night I flew in- a flawless connection from Reagan National to O’Hare in Chicago, which set me up for the most horrendous attempt at airline travel coming back.

The featured act was a band called “Zen Stew,” and was fronted by a guitarist who played with Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. It was a small-town blast, after which we retired to Mary’s House to drink and look at the lights over toward Charlevoix and the radio towers blinking on the hill at Elk Rapids. It was hard to stay oriented, the bay a deeper ink than the hills on the other side. Maybe the drinks didn’t help. Or maybe they did and I just didn’t care.

(Mary’s ashes await).

Next day was the preparation for Mary’s memorial, and people gathered from near and far. We made an unprecedented three separate trips to Tom’s Market in Northport for supplies. It was an excellent celebration of a long life well lived, and the sprinkling of her ashes on the waters gave a sense of closure to the thirty-odd souls who attended.

After the crowd was gone, four of us-friends for 55 summers- sat at the table and swapped tales of the days where we were young and dinosaurs still roamed the Northland. It was a rollicking time, and my pals told me I used the word “emotional,” about eight or ten times. And it was.

The Sunday that followed was filled with the now impending sale of the house, and the matter of what to do with the contents while various obligations had us in distant places. I am going to assume that will work out, one way or another, and it is instructive to recall what it is like to try to empty a house that people have spent a lifetime filling up. We even sold the car the next day- after some earnest horse-trading with a nice local mechanic and his wife, wrapped around lunch with Elizabeth at The Garage in what passes for the two blocks of downtown.

(Elizabeth tends bar at The Garage, which actually is one, as she waits to escape south for the winter. She has the face of The Northland).

I can’t tell you how- screw it- emotional- it was whizzing along world famous M-22, past the lush orchards bringing in the fresh cherries. Just awesome, and I wondered if this were really the last tango on the Leelanau Peninsula, or if this special places will continue to be a vital part of my world.

We will see. Anyway, trying to come back was a horror show. The flight had been booked for late in the afternoon- that is the way it works at a regional airport- and it was not until I was through security- is it just me, or is the TSA at Traverse City fixated on tubes of toothpaste?- when I realized it was unnaturally crowded in the terminal, with its four gates.

I suddenly remembered why I don’t fly up there very often. Sure enough, a monster thunderstorm had set up shop directly over the field at O’Hare, and things were stacked and backed all over the mid-west trying to get in and out. My flight was only delayed about an hour, but the connecting flight to Reagan National had been outright cancelled, and I lost a first class seat to jump to another flight, which was already full enough that the only place remaining was a middle seat in the back of the jet shared with some rowdy Chinese students. The Boeing 757-200 was a nice jet, and I appreciated having Seattle flight controls rather than those of an Airbus if we were going to have turbulence. But the seats were tiny and drink service wasn’t happening like it does up front, and besides, the aircraft had a flat tire, which probably needed to be addressed prior to attempting to make it go airborne. So, three hours delay in the terminal and then an hour and fifteen minutes waiting on the jet, playing that game with the elbows on the armrest between me and the large student to my left.

Whoever he was, once they finally cleared us to push back from the gate, our United Captain was determined to get Flight 2000 to Dulles as fast as humanly possible. Which was the other thing- IAD was not the airport I had intended to fly to, but you take what you can get, right? The air traffic controllers let him advance the throttles to zorch speed and cut the flight-time by about a third. It was awesome, and they gave him a straight-in approach. There is nothing that scoots like a Boeing.

We were on the ground around 0300, there was the death march from gate C5 to the train, which was running at graveyard intervals, given the hour, and even with a ready cab, I did not get home until the light was starting to come up. Which was all fine- I didn’t have anything until the MRI on my brain at 0900- and I took a shower and tried not to fall apart and miss the appointment.

So, I could bore you with what that experience is like- short version is that the magnet hums and groans at you for about a half-hour with your head locked into a chamber in the middle of a gigantic magnet, or the follow-on the next day with the Ear-Nose-Throat guy who cheerfully informed me that whatever symptoms I have are not anything minor that he deals with. So, on to the neurologist, but it is several weeks until the first available appointment, and who knows, I might be in Michigan again before that. There is a reason for that, a joyful family one that will be disclosed in due time but may have something to do with children.

But not this week. I have had enough travel for a while. We almost missed Moscow Mule night at The Front Page on Wednesday. It was a close call.

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com