2025 International Auto Show Adventure

Hey everyone, it's that time of year again, the Detroit international auto show is back again, and this year I went with my parents after getting some discount tickets. We were there for the first day that it was open to the public, and boy was it fun. This year they had off-road driving demos from Stellantis and Ford, and there was a speedway thing with 3 of the car brands (Volkswagon, BMW, and I think Ford). This was possible since the vehicles demonstrated were electric and electric vehicles don't have combustion emissions to put into the enclosed area. I'll get to the details of those when I get to them. Electric vehicles were kind of the big thing at this show since this is what all the industry is pushing for. I'm not super interested just because our grid isn't ready, I don't have charging in my garage and getting wired is not something I want to go through, and public charging isn't very common, but good for you if it's your thing.

The absolute first thing we saw was a drifter van, a van with a kitchen, shower, bed, and storage, perfect for those weirdos on youtube that live out of their van. We saw it because it was on the way to the Stellantis display.

First real exhibit we went to was Stellantis. I liked sitting in the Jeep Wagoneers and Fiat 500s. Some of the jeeps were hard to get into, which was fun. There was this one car with LED trim with an option to change the light colors, which was really cool.

It was also the 20th anniversary of stow and go, and there was this game to see if you could fit everything in the stow and go van, and I was part of the game. We did it with 12 seconds to spare and so we won trucker hats with the brand on it, and I wore it on top of my fedora. Now for the big thing, the Jeep off road experience. We went up and down an uneven hill, up and down steps, up and down a  45 degree incline hill, through a narrow passage with us riding the edge of the wheel, on a 30 degree tilt leaning over, and sopping on a peak. We were able to ride in the pink jeep, which made my mom happy. Since it sits so high up my dad had a little trouble getting in and out, but it was really fun. When we were going down the steep incline I was being held in completely by the seat belt which was a pretty crazy feeling, like something out of an amusement park ride. I took a first person video from the front seat, and then afterwards I took some video of the obstacles so I could overlay them. Check it out here.

Also, while we were waiting in line, there was this cut-out hanging out in the trees to startle people. Kind of funny. I also got a soft pretzel around this time, with a pitiful amount of cheese sauce for dipping. I don't know if the vendor was running out or was just being stingy, but oh well.

Right by the stellantis exhibit was a switching gears show, where they play the first episode and have some give aways or something like that. I had already seen the episode at home so it wasn't a big deal, but it was pretty cool that a TV show had a presence at a car show.

By this time dad was getting tired, it was maybe an hour and a half into our time there but he expires kind of quickly now. All he really had to do was sit in the back seats of some cars, but that wouldn't have been the most sustainable thing. Mom and I looked around at some different exhibits looking for a place to sit, and we found the DTE electric car display. There was a trivia scavenger hunt that once all answers were found would get you an opportunity to play plinko to win a slinky, ice scraper, tire gage, tire stress ball, or a tote bag. Where the prizes were set-up the ice scraper was the hard one to get, but I ended up winning it. Cool I guess, even though I would have liked the pressure gauge more. Still pretty cool.

We were pretty close to the Ford exhibit, so we looked around at some of the fords. They also had an off-road demonstration for their off-road vehicles, and we would have done that as well but the line was super long (like at least an hour), and while I wouldn't have minded it would have been too much for my parents for what would have largely been the same experience we got from jeep (only real difference was this bridge thing, video below). We mostly just looked around at different trucks and watched a little swag giveaway. One of the cool things was the Detroit Lions football helmet car and a pickup truck with some Lions decals.

This is about when dad sat down at the DTE display with the nice seats. Mom and I got him a soft pretzel and bottle of water, and I got dipping dots. Dad got a fair amount of cheese, so much that it was spilling over. Mom and I went around to some of the other displays. I was able to sit in a BMW, and right close to it was some prop cars from movies and TV shows. The big ones for us were the Jurassic Park jeep, station wagon from National Lampoon's Vacation (complete with Aunt Edna on the roof, a leash out the back from Edna's dog, and a Wally World bumper sticker), and Magnum P.I.'s Ferrari. My mom's family used to go on a lot of family road trips and when National Lampoon's Vacation came out they saw it multiple times since it reminded them of all their family trips.

The next thing we did was we went to the luxury car display. These were the Ferraris and Lamborghinis, and other super luxury brands. Mom and I aren't like super into these, but it is pretty cool looking at cars that are worth more than our house. Here are some of the pictures I took.

And then there was this James Bond car.

Outside the luxury car display was a place where you could get an alcoholic drink and some porches (at least I think it was porche). There was one that had this cool paint job that I took pictures of.

Since we didn't get enough time at stellantis, we went back and sat in a couple more vehicles. I got my picture with the utility van, which is always fun for me. I just think utility vans are neat. I also got in this pick-up truck and the rear view mirror wasn't actually a mirror, but was a screen that showed the feed of a rear view camera. Really cool. I called my mom over to look at it and she thought it was cool too.

I think our next thing was a combination of Volkswagon and GM. Not a whole lot of interest in VW, but they did have a van that was a little reminiscent of the VW bus. At GM we got a picture of the new Silverado for my mom's friend and I looked around and found another van life van.

Now I don't remember when this happened exactly, but at some point we went to this display that was the Detroit grand prix, and michigan science center. The science center was full of activities for kids; build a dinosaur skeleton, build a foam car thing, play mario kart for switch, build duplo cars, play with hotwheels and tracks, and some other things I'm forgetting. I know as a kid I would have really loved that "build a car" thing. The Grand Prix was pretty cool, they had racecars and a victory podium for taking pictures. They also had a real F1 racecar for kids 12 and under to climb into. I wanted to do that since once I was able to sit in a real stockcar racecar, but oh well, I did get a fun picture on the winner's podium.

This was also right by the car speed demonstration. I didn't do it because the lines were kind of long and it was getting late for date, but it was still pretty cool and I got some videos of cars going fast.

[insert picture]

Time for the last event of the day. Dad was really tired and ready to go home at about 4PM, but there was still the show car display (cars owned by enthusiasts in a local club that look cool). Mom and dad just stat down at the cafe while I went to the display in hall E. Lots of cool cars, check them out here.

And then there was this monstrosity of a license plate.

I promised them I would be very fast, and I think I spent maybe 10 minutes at most. After that we went back to my parents and then went out to dinner at Chilies using the gift card mskate and I got them for Christmas. All in all it was a really fun day time, even if there wasn't nearly as much swag as there was in previous years. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Gymnastics Exhibitions, Christmas Concerts, and Light Displays

Hey everyone, Christmas is coming quickly and there's a lot going on, including this weekend. I'll start with a little thing that started the weekend out. I have some vacation days I have to use up so I took Friday off and mskate and I spent the day with my almost grandparents (tanman's grandparents who we're still close with), the accordion friends. Since they're into music we watched the new John Williams documentary with them on disney plus and they really liked it. I also set up a call blocker on their phones since they get a lot of spam calls. After the movie we went to PF Chang's. It was a good meal. Great little day.

Now for the main-er events. The University of Michigan gymnastics is starting up again and we went to the first exhibition match just between the UofM team. If you've been paying attention, we never JUST go to the meet, we also go to Blimpy Burger. This time it wasn't just Blimpy Burger though, we also met up with my old highschool friend mbinski. He met up with us at Blimpy Burger and it was great fun catching up. He's doing HAM radio and vintage computer collecting, which was fun just talking about experiences with broadcast standards. At Blimpy Burger I got a double with grilled onions and banana peppers, and raw onions, lettuce, and pickles. and finally on a pumpernickel bun (I like pumpernickel and they advertise having it, but they never seem to have it). I also had fried broccoli because they have good fried broccoli and I like to justify it by saying "it's a vegetable so it's some kind of healthy" (I know not really, but I think it does have some fiber and vitamins). Mskate did some shopping while mbinski and I talked about our interests. After Blimpy we went to a coffee place and visited some more. After about an hour we had to get to the gymnastics meet, so we said our goodbyes and went on our way.

Time for gymnastics. Since Fred Richard and Paul Juda competed in the 2024 Olympics and the gymnasts sometimes sign things after the meets, mskate brought her 2024 Olympics shirt for them to sign. As I said, this was just an exhibition match within the UofM team, one was team blue and the other was team maize (the school colors). They split the Olympians between the teams to make it "fair." They also didn't do all 6 events, just floor routine, pommel horse, vault, and parallel bars. They also didn't have everyone compete, just split the teams. The first even was floor routine, and we were sitting in the front row and got some close up pictures. They also now do a new balance technique when doing floor, one of them is a splits like thing where you grab your foot and raise it up to your head, the other is standing on one foot and doing like an airplane pose. Because I took karate for many years and am very good at balance, I said "I bet I could do that," and yes, I can (maybe not with great form, but I can do it for about as long as they did).

After the floor routine it was pommel horse. It was fun because we got to see Fred compete. The somewhat annoying thing was that there was always someone standing in the way of us having a clear view. You could tell this was a little more relaxed of a match because there was a lot more falling. There was some with the floor routine, but we saw the most with pommel (they dismounted prematurely and some just fell on their butts). There were some chants when the freshmen did well (everyone chanted "he's a fresh-man" clap, clap, clap clap clap X3), and that happened maybe 3 or 4 times. I did get some pictures.

Between events they tossed free T-shirts. We won one another time and it was mskate's size, and this time the one we got ended up being my size. We didn't get one from the first give away, but after the second event we got one from "Chicken Nugget." I don't know if he remembered us from last year or not, but it wouldn't surprise me if we got it because "oh those 2" (because I do have a somewhat memorable/unique look). The next event was vault, and thankfully no one fell this time (or if they did it wasn't that big like the other events). After the vault they did the parallel bars, and that was pretty good but again there were some falls. What was really fun though is they had a lot of team comradery, team maize had a cape from last year that they made a flag out of (taped it to a dowel) they'd wave after victory, and they had an oversized novelty UofM hat that would be worn by the guy that did well. Team blue didn't have too much of that kind of thing, but they did cheer. Funny thing was because they were the same school and same team, they would cheer for either side whenever they did well.

After the meet they did a little ceremony to award victory, and there was a little trophy that the winning captains (or someone) signed. Afterwards the team did come out and sign autographs, and we got Fred and Paul to sign the shirt. We hope to get 2 more Olympians to sign that might show up at other events, but even if we don't it's still great. At some point we need to frame and display all the autographs that mskate gets at different sports things, because she has quite the collection and they're kind of just sitting in different places. Rest of the day was calm, just getting ready for the Sunday.

Now for Sunday. We started out by getting coffee and donuts ready for after mass (because we are one of the groups that does that semi-ministry, after the 9AM mass our church has coffee and donuts for fellowship and socialization). Nothing super spectacular, but our maintenance guy did end up setting up a lot of things "because he was bored." Since we were early and had a lot of things for the giving tree (a thing many churches do where parishioners buy things for children in need so they can have a good Christmas). We had a pokemon kid, lego kid, batteries kid, pajamas kid, and then some odds and ends that we picked up from closing rite aids (diapers, pull ups, pacifiers, bath tub cups, and some other toddler things). Mskate wasn't exactly happy when I filled carts and baskets with baby things at the going out of business sales since our condo was kind of full, but I knew it was going to end up at a good place.

Later in the afternoon my parents came down for the Christmas concert at our church. Before the concert we went out to an Italian restaurant that gets decorated nicely for Christmas, and is quite good as well. Dad and I each had ravioli, mskate had salmon, and mom had pasta alfredo. After lunch we went to the Christmas concert. It was like 1 hour before the show started, and it was already really pretty full. The concert was really great, lots of great Christmas music with some Trans Siberian Orchestra rock music. Really fun time. After the concert we went to the county lights. I've done this multiple other times, it's something mskate and I have done basically every year since we got married. It's typically the same thing every year, but they had some new light displays, things were in slightly different locations, and this year my dad was there. I didn't take any pictures since I've done that a lot already.

It was fun packed weekend, with lots of things. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

The Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2024 Blog

Hey everyone, my how time flies, it's already Thanksgiving. I got an email from dogechain saying they were going to shut down completely and I had to back up my wallet or else I'll lose about $100 worth of doge I got back in college. I set-up my old college laptop, installed dogecoin core, and loaded my wallet information into it to import there. This required updating the blockchain, and it's been going for about a week now and isn't even 70% done. Whatever, time for the holiday. This year was kind of different due to my grandpa passing and aunt going to her brother's out of state instead of staying home, and my grandma no longer living independent and having even more mobility problems than normal, but even then a lot of things stayed the same. Wednesday was a normal work day, and then we went to the in-laws for the evening so we would be ready for the fun of the weekend. Pretty basic day, just spent a lot of the evening going through online black friday ads and watching some tv. Got a pretty good list ready. Something that caught my attention was Target selling an XBOX 360 for $75. I called IRA to see it since it was so weird, and he got excited since his 360 red ringed and he wanted a new one. OK add Xbox 360 to the list.

Thursday Thanksgiving day. I bought a news paper to get the black friday ads because I like to have the physical paper, but I think this will be the last time I do this because it didn't have any of the big players like walmart, target, meijer (I'm mid-west), BJs, gamestop, or others and that was kind of the same as last year. Oh well. About 1PM we went to my parents house for the party. Because of nursing home preferences and rules, we had dinner and celebrating a little early. Normally dinner is around 4PM and accordion sing along is around 6PM, but this year we shifted everything forward by about 1.5 hours. The moving is where things got kind of complicated. My grandma had broken her hip earlier this year and it just made it harder to move, and the dementia makes it all the harder to have her move herself properly (don't grab the walker handle, grab the arm rest, I said don't grab the walker handle, OK I guess we're using the walker but don't fight too much when we have to lift your arms). God bless her but it does complicate things by a lot. Dinner was great, ham and green beans for me, everyone else enjoyed that and turkey and stuffing and such. Great meal. Getting grandma back to her chair for the sing along was hard too, but this time we remembered that we had a wheel chair from my grandpa after he passed.

The sing along was fun like always, over the river, apple peaches pumpkin pie, and some other fun songs. After the sing along it was time for desert. Time for some comical problems. The accordion friend likes to bake and always makes a cake and a pie, and she forgot the pie at home; there was some confusion or something and the pie was left on the table in the garage. Whoops, oh well. There was some more visiting and after a while it was time for everyone to leave. Getting my grandma back in the car was a major production. We got her into the wheel chair and just walked her to the back door where it's easier to move, and then we just picked her up in the chair and carried her down the steps, just like what we'd do with my uncle who was always in a wheel chair. Brought back a lot of memories for us. Once we got her in the car we brought up my parent's Christmas decorations and assembled the tree. After that it was a calm early night at the in-laws because IRA and I had black friday shopping to do early in the morning.

OK, now it's the heavy time, early morning shopping. IRA woke me up at 4:30 so we could get to stores when they opened. Basically everything opened at 6AM except for gamestop opening at 5AM, so first stop on our loop was gamestop. We went to one that was somewhat close that had a target really close (same shopping district) at about 5:15, but when we got there they didn't have any of the games I was looking for, and directed us to go to a store that was further away on the rout but not exactly close. Change of plans, went to that store and found 2/3 of the games I was looking for (Hogwarts Legacy and Tomb Raider Anniversary). Score. Afterwards we went to the target that was fairly close and only had to wait in the cold for about 15 minutes. Because there was some big Taylor Swift promotion they had to have an employee come out and give us directions on what the limits are. Wild thing is the employee was someone I went to highschool with, He was one of vikingpolak's friends and I didn't really recognize him (and he didn't remember my first name, just my last), but it was pretty funny. I had no need for the Taylor Swift stuff, but the CD was under $20 and she's really popular right now, so I picked up a copy to try to resell later. I also picked up Kirby Forgotten Land, a pop socket for mom in law, and a bullseye squishmellow for mskate. We couldn't find the squishmellow and so we asked the highschool friend where it was, so that was pretty cool. As for the XBOX, when I asked the employee in electronics he said "we haven't sold xbox 360 in years, we're stopping XBOX ONE even, you'll have to go to a retro store for that." I then said "the ad lied to me, it said you had XBOX 360s for $75." It wasn't a console, it was a megablocks building set. Why the confusion? It shipped in a box that was a replica of the xbox 360 box, looks extremely close to an xbox 360 in a low resolution scan, and comes with a replica copy of halo 3. The employee said "yeah if we had them I'd get one just for nostalgia." Oh well. After Target we went to Walmart, I was looking for the basically half off gaming laptop since I need a new laptop (my current laptop is about 8 years old and is starting to fail, and I want a computer that can actually play all the games I get for free with prime), a cheap dresser unit, and a wire rack. All of them were online deals, dang, that was a waste.

We decided to give one more gamestop a try since I still was looking for roller coaster tycoon adventures delux, and so IRA looked up where the next closest gamestop was. He gave me the directions and when I got close I'm like "wait a minute, I know which gamestop we're going to, it's the gamestop right by where my grandma used to live, we'd go here back when it was funcoland." They had Roller Coaster Tycoon for PS4. I was hoping for switch, but PS4 works for me since I have a PS4. Since we were in a neighborhood I knew, we went to the dollar general that used to be the family video we'd rent movies from on Friday nights. I got us dawn soap, command hooks, pedialyte (mskate needs it for her electrolyte deficiency), and garbage bags. Since it was now like 9AM and were close to where the accordion friend lives, we called to see if they were up and able to give us the pie (they wanted us to have it to share with everyone). They were and we got the pie. After that we went to my grandma's condo just to look around since my mom had the house completely redone (new paint, no carpet, no furniture), and go to the bathroom. It was pretty surreal; it was familiar but completely foreign. Walked the house probably 1 last time. There was one more place, we went to the shopping center about a mile down the road from my grandma's house to go to 5 below to see if we could do the squishmellow $20 bag. They were completely out, it was just something for the first 100 people, but that's OK because we still have a big bag of stuffed animals from other big sales. That was OK though because there was a new retro store in the shopping center and they had some black friday deals. For me it was the buy 2 get 1 free on games, so I picked up 6 PS2 games and IRA got some movies on buy 2 get 2 free. On the way back we stopped at BJs where I got a new TV for the bedroom (our TV was the TV I bought for my dorm room years ago, and it's not very good) and some gift cards on discount (I think it was subway, disney, and uber). Once we got back I unloaded the car and took a nap.

Later in the day mskate wanted to do some shopping with us, and so we went out again in the afternoon. We went to bath and bodyworks, CVS, bjs, and the retro store again (because IRA decided he wanted to get an $80 used xbox 360 from them). At CVS we got a peanuts cookie tin for my dad since he likes Charlie Brown and Snoopy. BJs was just a couple more gift cards and filling gas. When we went to the mall with bath and bodyworks we found a store that was just gochapon. I looked for a machine with figures I would be interested in, but didn't find anything too interesting. IRA decided to though and got a digimon figure. At bath and bodyworks we got soaps and lotions for the moms on buy 3 get 3, and then got hand sanitizers for the workers at grandma's assisted living center. This is when we discovered that IRA didn't have his debit card, meaning he lost it. That was pretty bad, but we retraced our steps and went to the retro store where he last used it. That's where it was, and apparently he wasn't the first to do it. He got his xbox and some more movies, so crisis averted. Rest of the day was pretty low key.

Saturday was a simple day. We went to my grandma's assisted living to get her apartment all decorated and just visit. We already had a little tree set up, but it didn't have a lot of ornaments and we bought some garland to hang on the wall and put some ornaments on it. I'm glad I bought the command hooks because we needed them for the garland. We got it all set up while she was still at lunch, and once it was decorated we brought her to her apartment and just visited. We didn't have a lot to do with her, so I put on the wedding video I made for my cousin (the one we saw in Hawaii earlier this year). She doesn't know him, he's on my dad's side and she's my mom's mom, but she really likes little kids and half the video is just my 2 year old niece-cousin being cute, so it was a great little thing and she especially liked watching the part where we went to Disney Aulani for the character breakfast. After that we just walked her around her floor until it was time for their activity. It was a good little visit. The rest of the day was pretty calm, just unpacking the stuff and trying to find places for it. Later in the evening we went to a drive in theater to watch The Polar Express and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We saw Red One and Elf the week prior, and figured out how to keep warm without turning the car on better than we did that time. It was a good fun time.

Well that was Thanksgiving weekend. Glad I can finally get this out at a reasonable time this year. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.