It’s been just over a week since we returned from CA, and I finally have time to take a breath and add more details about our trip to California. As I mentioned previously, we feel it went very well.

Preamble

Skip this if you just want to know about Dr. Goldberg

It ended up being a long week for many reasons. Not bad, just LONG.

First, we’ve had a small leak in the bathroom for the last 5 years (seriously). A few days before we left I finally had a plumber come out to fix it, only to find out it was not the plumbing, but the tiles on the splash wall of the bathroom were falling off and has been running behind the tiles all this time. Not so good. So not the quick fix I was hoping for, but the bathtub needs to be re-tiled, which involves removing the shower walls and being without a shower for at least a few days.

I was able to quickly find a trusted home repair service to take the job on, and they even came in with a reasonable bid. But then the more we talked it through, I realized that our crappy bathroom floor also needed to be replaced, and it just made sense to do it all at the same time. Fine – now it’s WAY more money than what a simple leak would cost to fix, but at least it’s being done while we’re gone (in both CA and MI), and will minimize the time we have to go without a shower and toilet.

The only problem ended up being that they had to start on the bathroom the day before we left for CA if it was all going to be done by the time we returned.  So, a day before we were supposed to leave for CA we had to get a hotel room near the airport so that we had a working toilet and shower. It ended up being a very nice night/morning and it was fun to stay with Max in a hotel room. He didn’t know what to make of it, but he seemed to enjoy it. Seeing things that area old experiences to you through the eyes of a child that’s doing it for the first time is always so fascinating and enjoyable. It’s one of the most enjoyable parts of having kids.

The next morning (Tuesday August 2nd) we went to the airport for our direct flight to CA. It was very interesting watching Max. You could tell he was just taking it all in. We took a train from the long term economy parking lot, waited in a long security line, and then still had 2 hours to wait for our flight at the gate. During that entire time he was very good. Amazing actually.

When we got on the plane he sat between both me and Brenda and was clearly very nervous. First by the noise of the plane, and then by the movement as we taxied to the runway. We each had a hand on his legs and he stayed calm as we took off, and enjoyed a snack and short nap during the flight. For it being such a long day for all of us, he really did great and was in a good mood up until we got to the hotel and had to wake him up in the back seat of the rental car.

The next day (Wednesday the 3rd of August) was the big day. We took a short side-trip to Santa Monica Beech and then headed to our appointment with plenty of time to spare.

Meeting Dr. Goldberg

We were both nervous and excited about meeting Dr. Goldberg. We had already read his book and felt that we knew a lot about him, but we just didn’t want to expect too much from our first meeting.

Dr. Goldberg runs a regular pediatric practice out of his LA office, but on certain days sees only parents of autistic children, like us. Most come to him because they too have read his book and are curious. Many are from the LA area, but people travel from around the world to meet with him.

Our time with Dr. Goldberg consisted of a very relaxed, informal meeting in the lobby of his practice. This seemed a bit odd at first, but the benefits were clear pretty fast. Max had plenty of room to run around and play, and there was a separate room attached that had plenty of toys to keep him busy. While the 3 of us talked, Max played and occasionally ran up to us to get attention for one thing or another. Brenda and I took turns keeping him out of trouble and dealing with his OCD with light switches.

It was clear right away that Dr. Goldberg had personally reviewed the entire pile of information we had sent him in advance. He had made notes of things he wanted to discuss with us and had mostly wanted to clarify or expand on some of the information we had provided. This spoke volumes to me personally. I have switched doctors several times over the years, and the vast majority of the time my records were never reviewed before my first meeting. It’s always obvious by the questions they ask. One doctor didn’t even know I was Diabetic until I mentioned it to him. RED FLAG! I didn’t have him for very long before I switched again.

Over the course of 90 minutes we talked at length about how Dr. Goldberg has spent years refining his treatment protocol, and how Max may fit into his course of treatment. At almost every turn, Max fit into what Dr. Goldberg calls NIDS (Neuro Immune Distress Syndrome). This condition is based largely around the idea that after a child was born, their immune system was compromised. The causes can be anything or everything from environmental to viral. For a normal healthy child with a well developed immune system, many of these things would not be a big deal. But for a child that has a compromised immune system, it stresses out the body. At some point, the child is actually considered “sick” because the body can no longer carry the stress. When this happens, many of the symptoms that I child presents with are very similar to Autism. In part this is because in recent years something that is otherwise unexplained and has some symptoms similar to Autism, it’s just all lumped together. And as we know first hand, once your child is labeled as autistic, pretty much anything that goes wrong after that is just attributed to your child having autism, and little interest is taken in it. But if Dr. Goldberg is right, a great number of children that are labeled as autistic are not suffering from a congenital neurological problem, but are actually sick. Sick in a way that can be treated. But nobody in the medical community seems to be interested in hearing that.

The other important thing to note is that there is no definitive test to diagnosis your child as autistic. It’s very subjective and based on one or more people’s opinion after spending a hour or so with your child. When Max was diagnosed, there were about 6 people in the room with us that evaluated Max at the time, and they had to have a private meeting for 20 minutes after evaluating Max to decide as a group what to tell us about him. The point is, it’s not black and white in most cases.

So after answering all of the questions, Dr. Goldberg was confident that Max fit his definition for NIDS, so we are now following his treatment protocol, which we started on Monday the 8th.

There are two major components of the protocol. First, the diet is very restricted. He can have meat, most vegetables and a few fruits (no tropical fruits). The major things to avoid are gluten, dairy, sugar and grains. Color dies are a big one as well. In fact, we have to actually remove the blue diet that’s on his medicine before he takes it because many children have negative reactions to food coloring (it’s considered an allergen). All of this may sound like a pain in the butt, but the fact is we’ve been doing 95% of this for a year now (all thanks to Brenda and all the research she’s done on nutrition). So we only had a few small adjustments to make.

The second part is the medicine. Working on the theory that he has a virus in his system, he is now taking valtrex. While this on the surface seems like a radical treatment, it’s easy to find many examples of families talking about how their child was greatly improved by this part of the treatment alone. However, in many cases the child gets worse initially before they get better. I mean this in the sense that they become even more irritable than before, and we have already seen this with Max. He’s much more hot and cold with his moods, and when he’s having a melt down it’s more intense and lasts longer. But on the flip side of that, he has been showing more eye contact this last week and has been more verbal. He’s talking more, and saying new words almost daily right now. Se we are seeing some real positives.

One amazing thing about our visit with the doctor is that we were allowed to both video tape and record audio of our visit, with no restrictions at all. I wasn’t even allowed to have a camera in the delivery room when the kids were born because of hospital policy! If I had to guess as to why he’s so relaxed about this, it’s that Dr. Goldberg wants to get his message out to people. He’s interested in helping as many people as possible, and the only way to do that is to make the larger medical community and parents aware. It’s only through parents putting pressure on the medical community that things will ever change. I have since had our entire meeting transcribed into a text document so that we can review information that was discussed just by doing a word search on the document.

You may be wondering how we can be seeing a doctor and doing such a radical treatment when we’re over 1,000 miles away. There are several ways that it’s possible.

First, Brenda sends weekly reports as requested by the office. They provided a form with specific questions about all aspects of how he’s doing. After they receive the report, the doctor reviews it and the nurse calls Brenda back with any new instructions or changes for the upcoming week.

Second, every 4 weeks we will have a conference call with the doctor, just as if we were there in person and discuss all of the particulars. We also have the option of doing a video call over Skype, which we plan to do.

The next course of treatment after the Valtrex will be decided later after we see how he responds to this part of the process. It can take up to 3 weeks to see significant changes, so we have some time yet.

After our 90 minute meeting with the doctor we were taken into one of the exam rooms where they withdrew about 23 gallons of blood from Max for a variety of tests (ok, maybe only 8 gallons but it seemed like a lot for such a small kid – but he was fine).

After screaming through the entire thing, Max was pretty tired and exhausted. Think about what a pain that would be for a 3 year old. First you have to play by yourself for 90 minuets while your parents more or less ignore you, and then you’re rewarded by being held down and having your body drained of all of it’s blood.

We ended the day by getting max to bed and letting him relax. I think he really enjoyed having a big bed all to himself. He liked when we would tuck him in under the covers every night.

Time to Head Home

We all had a good night of sleep and headed out the next morning with plenty of time to get to the airport. We had about 3 extra hours (by design), so decided to head down to the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a little sight seeing and lunch. We had a great time and we were both reminded how nice it was to just have a single child to focus on and shower with attention, instead of feeling so split with our attention.

After taking in the sights and having lunch at Mel’s Diner (which was awesome) we started our leisurely trip back to the rental car place by the airport. And that’s where the low point of the trip took place.

Sorry About Your Car

I’ll get into the details in a future post (it has gotten very interesting in the last several days) but i had a accident with the rental car. Nobody was hurt and I’m very thankful for that. Especially since I caused the accident. The rental car got the worst of it but was for the most part drivable. We were only a mile and a half way from the drop off location when it happened (another good thing because the freeway would have been out of the question).

So we ended our trip to LA with a big BANG. Like I said, more on that later. This post is already way longer than I expected.

NO SHOWER FOR YOU!

While we were waiting for our flight I called to check in and see what the stays of our shower was. Things were moving along great, however due to a few small problems that had to be fixed along the way, it was not going to be ready when we got home. So, as much as we didn’t want to spend even more money on hotels, we decided to get one close to the house for one more night. We checked in at 2am on Friday, and were up and on the road heading to MI for the weekend by 10am the next morning.

We had a great (albeit very short) visit to MI and collected our other two children from their week long visit with Grandma and Grandpa Tomchak. They both did great in our absence and it was nice to know they had such good bonding time with their cousins as well.

On Sunday afternoon we returned to our semi-remodeled bathroom, and it was A-W-E-S-O-M-E. What we had was so bad for so long that it was hard not to really appreciate the new one. I say semi-remodeled because we didn’t do anything with the crappy walls, crappy bathroom door, or crappy fixtures. We just didn’t have the money, and after all this was a LEAK that had to be fixed. We were already way over budget.

We were so thankful to have Avalon Home Services take this job on. Not only did they make great suggestions and do things to save us money along the way, but they went above and beyond by fixing a few things in the bathroom and not charging us, bringing in the mail every day, and even taking out the trash on trash day. Seriously, they were awesome. So a big thanks to Cathy and Steve for all of their hard work while we were gone. They worked hard to make sure everything was done by the time we got home on Sunday and after the week we had it was not under appreciated! If you’re in the Chicagoland area I can not recommend them highly enough.

What’s Next?

In 2-3 more weeks we will have decided, along with Dr. Goldberg, what our next step with Max is. We are still cautiously optimistic and know that we’re doing the best we can to help Max. The funny thing is, I got the feeling during this trip that Max knew that as well. I really felt like I bonded with him on this trip and got choked up a few times while playing with him on the bed. While he’s very tough when he’s “in a mood”, he’s just so sweet, loving and funny when he’s well. We just love him so much.

More in coming weeks. Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to get it all down before too much time passed.

]]> http://tomchak.com/blog/2011/08/17/the-goldberg-visit/feed/ 0 http://tomchak.com/blog/2011/08/01/max-meet-dr-goldberg/ http://tomchak.com/blog/2011/08/01/max-meet-dr-goldberg/#comments Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:12:01 +0000 Thomas Tomchak http://tomchak.com/blog/?p=3663

Since Max and Andrew entered early intervention just after their first birthday,  Brenda has always looked for any and all solutions that might help the boys. As time moved forward the focus would change, and of course now the focus is on his diagnoses of being on the spectrum of Autism.

Brenda has read more books than I could have imaged, and frankly I don’t know how or where she finds the time. Some are better than others, and some of the better ones she’s asked me to read, which I have done. More recently, she read a book by Dr. Goldberg titled “The Myth of Autism”. It was the reading of this book that changed the course or our lives this week.

The underlying theme of Dr. Goldberg’s book is that while many more children are diagnosed with Autism these days than 20 years ago, a high percentage of them do not fit the original definition of what Autism is. That in fact, many of these children actually suffer from sickness that in many cases can be cured through his treatment protocol.

Through very careful screening, only children that meet certain criteria are accepted to see him in his LA office. You need to submit complete medical records and a recorded history of events, as well as some specialized blood tests. If you child seems like a good candidate, you’re accepted to make an appointment with the Doctor. We were lucky enough to be accepted and took the first appointment we could get (which was 3 or 4 months later). That time is finally here, and Max sees the good doctor on Wednesday of this week.

While we are not expecting any miracles here, we are cautiously optimistic. We have always believed that while Max did seem to fit some of the definition of Autism,  at times he does not. There are some very specific things that he does (like make good eye contact and initiate play with his siblings) that fly in the face of being Autistic. So while we don’t see this as a cure-all, we feel that from the research that Brenda has done, and from reading the book (we have both read it now) we would be foolish to at least not try this and see where it goes. Max is still very young and we want to use all of his time to our advantage to make him better.

So today Andrew and Sydney are being delivered to their Dearborn Michigan family so they can spend some quality time with the people there that don’t get much time with them, and tomorrow we head off to Los Angeles CA with Max for his very first plane ride. Funny, I didn’t take my first ride until I was 22 years old, and he’s not even 4 years old yet.

If you’re interested in knowing more about Dr. Goldberg and his book, follow the link below. For a very touching look at some parents that have seen their children recovered, watch the video below. It’s this video that first got my attention.

NIDS Website and more about Dr. Goldberg

I’ll be working all day Saturday and Sunday, and flying home Monday morning.

On the way back from the shoot, our gracious Lions hosts/travel guides gave us a tour of the local beaches as well as the downtown area of the city.

Below are a few of the photos, the rest are on Flickr.

I slept here and there on the flight, but probably not more than 7 hours. Of that I’m sure it was not really quality sleep. My butt was so numb I had to keep getting up to walk.

But all in all it was a good trip and I’m glad to be here. I’ll be here 13 nights before I head back home.

This time next week I’ll be on a plane heading to Sydney Australia. I’ll be home on July 3rd just in time for the holiday.

It goes without saying that I’ll be posting some updates during my travels. You can also find my travel itinerary on the blog.

On this trip I’ll be doing the usual editing for Lions Clubs International, but I’ll also be taking some behind the scenes production stills that may be used on the Lions website or newsletter.

Except for it being a 20+ hour trip, I’m looking forward to going. I’m not so sure Brenda is as excited though.

One for the plane, one for the RedCarpet Club. I’m out the door at 6am sharp tomorrow.

It’s going to be rough to leave this cold Chicago winter, but next week I am booked on a job in Anaheim CA. I have a 7-Day gig at the Anaheim Convention Center for the NAMM show. This is a good start to the new year and is hopefully a good sign of things to come.

I’ll be posting updates during the trip and hope to have time to take some photos of the event itself. You can find my travel details on this site by clicking here.

This video pretty much sums up what the week was like, for those who got out of their hotel room. It was the final video that played tonight just before the band started playing. 

We head to the airport at 10am tomorrow, and I should be home no later then 7pm if all goes as scheduled. This is my last trip for the year, and that’s just fine with me. It’s been a great year for travel jobs but a little break for the rest of the year sounds good.

It’s not all that interesting, but this is the only photo I’ve had time to take since I got here since I have not been able to leave my room. Like most of these travel jobs, it’s been long days. 

Today is the last day of editing, and I have one more video to get done before the trip is over. The last video needs to be done and out the door by 7pm tonight, but there is still shooting going on today that needs to be included. So it will be one of those down to the wire situations. 

Tomorrow I get to sleep in (a little) and then we have a 1pm flight to head back home. I’m wishing I had added one extra day to just hang out on the beach here before I left!

Click on the photo to see a larger version – it is a stitch of 16 different photos that I took from left to right looking off of the balcony. 

All checked in and setup in the room. Being in warm weather like this just has a way of relaxing you.  Now time for some sleep after a long hectic day.

A window seat in a exit row, with the seat next to me empty. What’s not to like!

I’m back from Indiana, and off early tomorrow for Cancun Mexico. Given how cold it’s become in recent days, the timing couldn’t be better!

Nothing much to report. I’m here Thursday and Friday and have 5-6 videos to do before leaving late on Friday. I expect to be home around midnight tomorrow. 

The room that was reserve for the edit suite is probably the nicest room yet. It’s a 2-room conference room complete with 2 flat screen TV’s, huge conference room table and private bathroom. I took the liberty of completely changing the conference room to fit my needs.

US Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) speaks during a campaign stop at the Merrillville Fire Department Station #2 in Merrillville, Indiana, May 5, 2008.

I have two more work related trips for the year. 

Starting Wednesday I’ll be in beautiful Merrillville Indiana doing an conference for IGA. Although it’s only about 50 miles from home, I’ll be there Wednesday through late Friday or early Saturday morning. 

The beautiful Fiesta Americana Grand Coral Beach.

Early Sunday I leave for Cancun Mexico (by far the better of the two trips) and come back from that on Friday the 14th. The job in Cancun is for FICP and there are several videos for that job that will be shot and edited on-site. We’re staying at the Fiesta Americana Grand Coral Beach which looks to be a very nice hotel. 

So this year is a record for travel jobs, in both quantity and quality of locations. From as close as Indiana and as far as Bangkok Thailand, and ending up the year in Cancun Mexico… it’s hard to complain. 

As you might expect, I’ll be doing posts from my travel locations.

Once again, Brian the snooty world traveler, was able to get “back of the bus Tom” into a nice lounge. My personal opinion is it’s not as good as the one in Chicago, but who am I to complain. Free food and drinks, and free wireless internet. 

Our flight leaves in about an hour and there’s not reason to think it will be delayed at this time. 

Apparently not too many people know this spacious lounge is here. There were more staff members then travelers. This is just ONE section that I didn’t realize was there until we were ready to leave. 

Today will probably be another long edit day, but it is the last day here so no matter what we’re done after today. I’ve been gone on trips longer then this, but for some reason this one just seems a lot longer. I’m pretty home sick and looking forward to returning to Chicago tomorrow. 

You can find the most recent photos added to SmugMug. The guy second from the left seriously thinks you need to check them out. Don’t make him mad. 

Does Jim actually do it?  You’ll have to find out for yourself.  

I actually was not part of this little excursion, but Brian went along and recorded it with his little digital camera. The quality is a bit low, but it’s still good enough to make your stomach turn. 

Blizzard.

How do you write “Take me to the Apple Store” in Chinese? Well, I can’t tell you how but I can show you. The card was prepared by the front desk of the hotel so that I could just give it to the cab driver and he would know where to take me. None of the cab drivers here have spoken even the most basic english, so this was very helpful.

Then, I found this helpful iPhone app that lets you do the same thing with your iPhone. It’s called “Beijing Taxi Guide” This is the exact same message, but create by the iPhone. Pretty cool!

Once there, I picked up the few things I needed for the job and headed back. It was about a 15 minute cab ride form the hotel, so I was able to get a nice view of some other neighborhoods. Where we are staying is clearly the more expensive part of town. 

This photo was created from 20 different photos, moving from left to right as I was shooting. They were then stitched together in Photoshop CS3. You can see the full size version on Flickr. 

This is the view from the edit suite where I’m working. The edit suite is just a dedicated hotel room.

Today is the first seriously busy day of the job. The show has officially started and the tapes are starting to come in fast. Our job is to take about 6-8 hours of a recorded conference and boil it down to a 10 minute “best of” highlights video. As soon as it’s done it gets uploaded to a web server so that people who could not attend the conference are able to see at least some of what they missed. 

Since there was a chance of dealing with clients more today (which has not actually happened) I decided to dress up. Dressing up involved wearing exactly the same thing as the last 2 days (jeans and a t-shirt) and adding a jacket to the mix. So kind of a fake dress up. 

Going up.

Coming down.

Today was an all day event to get to and from the Great Wall. It is about 50 miles outside the city, but it was a 2 hour cab ride each way (in part because our cab driver kept getting lost) and we spent about 3 hours walking the Great Wall, taking photos and having lunch. 

More photos can be found on Flickr.

Walking the great wall right now.

http://tinyurl.com/5ayrsa http://twitpic.com/bs9u

This is our hotel, although the photo was taken several hours after we arrived (it was about 4pm when we actually checked in. 

The hotel is very nice, the rooms are nice and the bathroom is awesome! All marble floor and counter, as well as a standalone marble shower.

Landed in Beijing China.

http://tinyurl.com/6j673o

http://tinyurl.com/5d9lzv

We made it through checkin and security very fast (total time was probably 20 minutes). My cases were not opened by security and ravaged like they normally are, so that was nice. That’s the part that normally stresses me out is watching them unpack my cases and man-handle everything. 

Because I’m traveling with Brian (a snooty global multi-country traveler) he was able to get me into the fancy “Red Carpet Club” that’s kind of like a high end, exclusive coffee shop where everything is free. The seats are very comfortable and cushy, and every seat has it’s own power outlet for using your computer. Oh, and there’s free wireless internet too. 

So, not a bad start to the trip! Our flight is scheduled to depart at 12:30 and even though there is a lot of rain still it’s on time without any delays. 

Being the nerd that I am, I have my 20 pocket vest on, which includes a digital camera, 2 ipods, iphone, extra battery for iphone, magazines, amazon kindle, and headphones – all charged and loaded with many selections. So should be more then set to kill the time. 

Photo courtesy of Lucy in London. You can see more of her work on flickr.

At this time next week I’ll be in the air on my way to Beijing China for an 8 day trip. The flight is 18 hours (not so good) but it is a direct flight, so at least that’s on our side. 

This week I’ll be in high gear to prepare for the trip. I have not really thought much about it until now, knowing I had blocked out time this week to take care of everything. It’s not just preparing for the trip itself, but also making sure the edit system is in tip-top shape. As with every trip I do, the system will be setup and taken through a test run at the office to make sure everything is running well, as well as to make sure I have all of the various adaptors, cables and other small pieces needed. 

Unlike most trips, I’m also limited on what I can take, and how many bags. Between the edit system and my personal suitcase, I can only bring 3 cases. So I have slim down and only take what I need without leaving anything important behind. 

It’s hard to imagine I can go over 40 years of my life not visiting Asia, and then go twice in the same year. Although it’s been in the works for at least a week, I have officially been given my flight information so I am indeed going to Beijing China for a job. I leave September 14th and return on the 23rd.

This trip will be to work on a job for ATKearney. I’m still waiting for the details of the job but from what I know there is the need to turn things around very fast and get them posted to the web.  

We’ll be showing up just after the Olympics end, so unfortunately there’s no chance of going to any events while there. But I’ll be sure to visit The Great Wall at the very least!

More details to follow in the coming weeks. 

The last video that we edited turned out OK, and we made our deadline with plenty of time to spare. The last 30 seconds are so is always a rush to cut, and you have to make sure you leave just enough room for the last shots, but not too much space that you have hoes to cover in the video. This is my 3rd year doing this job and it’s one that I really enjoy.

Overhead shot of the show from the catwalk. 

The last day is always the stressful day. I have 2 days to edit most of this 4 minute video, but the last 30 seconds of the video is shot only minutes before the video plays. At the very end, once the very last events are shot by the photographer, I have about 12 minutes to get the footage, import it, edit the shots in, create a beta master and get it back to the control room behind stage. 

To add to the tension, last year we missed the deadline because of a problem with the edit computer in the very last minutes. So they ended up playing a safety tape that I had made hours earlier (so the last several hours of work didn’t even count). To this day, that is still the lowest point in my career. Letting people down on a job is not something I’m used to or comfortable with.

So I’m in that holding window now where I’m done except for the shots of things that have not started yet. The final deadline for delivery is around 11:45 pm tonight. I’m feeling confident that it will go better then last year. 

Same time of year, same people, same basement with no phone reception, and same exact room as the last 2 years. It feels like I never left. 

The big difference this year is that I didn’t bring the big tower system that I normally have. Why you ask? Because laptops are now so powerful that the laptop I’m using this year is faster then the full size tower I had the last 2 years. It’s also about 100 lbs lighter and easier to pack. 

The other big difference is that we’re shooting tapeless. Everything is being recorded on P2 cards and dumped to a hard drive, that I just import from. I still have to create beta masters though. 

Setup, complete with client table, monitor and speaker. 

Another travel job, this time in the fine city of Minneapolis Minnesota. I’ll be there until Monday. The amount of equipment I take on this job requires the rental of a truck, so I’m really going to enjoy it while I have it. 

We made much better time coming home then we did going to MI. Traveling at night seems to be the key, and I think we’ll be doing a lot more of it. They normally go to bed around 7pm, which is a great time to travel. No traffic, and no delays through the many constructions zones on I-94 right now.

Here are a few photos, and  you can find more on Flickr. I should have some video posted later this week.

Since we were unable to make the trip last weekend for the family reunion, we made a last minute decision to visit the family this weekend instead. We’re here until Sunday night when we’ll drive back starting at 8pm in hopes of making better time then we did coming into Detroit. Due to traffic and non-stop construction, it took us 8 hours to make it here. That’s the longest it has taken, with the only exception being a snow storm trip that took 12.

On the up side, we got some great mileage. We averaged over 50 miles per gallon over 300 miles, a new personal best! Normally it’s in the low to mid 40′s. So it took less then a half tank of gas to get here with a 12 gallon tank. Not to bad!

Photos later, as well as some video of Madison.

Photo by Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton

I’m happy to be back at home. The trip was pretty uneventful and smooth so I can’t complain. More in a few days.