It's been a busy labor day weekend so far. Since my sister was in town, my family went to Michigan for 2 days. We went to visit Mackinac Island, a small island accessible only by ferry, and where automobiles are illegal. There are only 2 major modes of transportation: horse or bike.
We got to the island pretty early...it was odd to see horse drawn carts wheeling supplies to the various stores, restaurants, and hotels...no cars anywhere to be seen. And where you have many horses running around, inevitably there are piles of crap in the middle of the street wherever you look. And then there are ppl with bicycles pulling metal containers, riding around looking for the crap to scoop up with a shovel and dump it into the container.
We started off our visit with a horse carriage tour of the island...we were all stunned for a sec when the horses began pulling the carriage and we heard farting noises....yes, horses fart too.
After lunch by the docks, we decided to join the hundreds of others riding bicycles around. My father, Jane, and Gyju each got a bike while I rode a tandem with my mom since she's not good at riding. It was pretty cool to ride your bike around and not having to worry about cars and stuff....although I guess running into a 1700 pound horse could be scary. Anyways, there was a bike path circling the whole island, so we decided to ride it. About 30-45 min of riding, we were starting to feel winded...we stopped along the shore to take a break...tried to show Gyju how to skip stones on the water without much success. Then I looked at the map t0 see how much farther we had to go....we had come 4 miles which was only half...
By the end of the bike path, we were pretty much ready to quit...but it was a lot of fun.
Oh yeah, funny note along the bike trip... at our stop, we had some drinks and watermelon that my mom brought. While we were sitting at the picnic table, all of a sudden Gyju looked at me with a puzzled face...she said, "I think a fly just went in," pointing to her nose. I thought whatever and I told her to blow her nose. Well, didn't expect to see a small fly glued to the napkin by snott. Jane and I got a good laugh from that!

Oh I forgot to mention that Mackinac island is 7 hours from Chicago one way. That's 14 hours we spent in a small jetta....I dunno if I'll ever go back there. It's worth going at least once, and that's about it.

Have you guys seen that Korean movie that's playing in certain theaters in the U.S., Tae Guk Gi? I was impressed by it! So violent, so sad... The only drawback I saw were some special effects issues, but otherwise, I found it not only entertaining, but it gave me a glimpse of what it must have been like to live during the Korean War...it made me sad and angry to see how ppl were manipulated from both sides... If you can handle war violence, I would highly recommend it...don't want to hype it up too much though.