Kart 2 Kart

We get up and meet downstairs for breakfast and kart racing on Monday.  Mark has found a restaurant called The Pantry that we go 2 miles down the road to.  They actually have room for all of us

because it’s a Monday, but just barely and the food is amazing.  We know why the place is still mainly full even at 10am in the morning.  We fuel up on bacon waffles, corned beef hash, huge pancakes and farmer’s breakfasts that are huge and amazing.  Now that we’re too fat to get in the karts, we head to Kart 2 Kart to lie about Oscar’s age.  He is the right height to drive the junior karts, but you’re supposed to be 7, not 6 and a half….oh well.  It’s right in Sterling Heights and we all get registered and suited up to drive the karts.  Oscar’s so nervous that he keeps going potty before the race and feeling like he needs to

 right up until we’re racing.  I just follow him around the track for the entire “race” where only Dave and John are actually racing.  The rest of us are just trying to get around without wrecking and making sure that Oscar stays safe and doesn’t get scared.  Of course, I’m the one that t bones him when he brushes the wall and gets turned around and I can’t stop in time.  But he takes it well and keeps racing, but doesn’t want to do it again where Viktoria can’t wait to do it again, but doesn’t want to race in the adult karts that she could race if she wanted.  John, Dave, and V do a second junior kart race and she improves her lap time by 8 seconds or so.  It was a lot of fun until

 Oscar decides to get angry that I won’t agree to him going to Grand Rapids next weekend to race again.  So, we get to fight in the car that he better adjust his attitude before we get to Van Gogh and he pouts, makes angry faces at me in the rear view mirror.  We’re heading to downtown to get to the event center and have lunch down there since Van Gogh isn’t until 3pm.  But, things are all screwy with the roads.  I-75 is closed by police, there are fire trucks and ambulances at the event center, the Riverwalk is closed down with motorcycle police everywhere and I ask John if the president is in

town because this seems like a motorcade…..and Biden’s not, but Harris is.  So, the VP is giving a talk and having a meeting with Governor Whitmer in the event center that our show is in.  We can at least see Canada from the edge, get to find out that

there are no restaurants open anywhere or near the TCF center and find out that the one food truck there is pretty good.  So, we get food truck food and eat in the event center as it starts to rain.  Rachel finds her way to us for the show, but won’t provide

us with a lecture on what we’re about to see so we could pretend we’re on study abroad….but that’s okay.   The show does a good job of setting up the relationship between Vincent and Theo since we get most of his quotes and words from his letters

to his brother.  And the beginning of the exhibit is these quotes with frames hanging in between, moving into a waterfall room that Oscar takes many videos of before going in to the big room with all of the moving projections of his work.  Oscar

and I find a place on the floor and just sit at one end to try and take in the whole show which extends around a large ballroom space.  Our whole 9 person group just finds places to perch and watch the beautiful projections

swirl and change around you on the walls and floor.  There is music (Vincent by McLean makes sense, America by Simon and Garfunkel sounds good, but why) while quotes and sketches to paintings move throughout the room. With the exception of

Oscar thinking that he won’t be able to make it through the whole cycle without needing to go to the bathroom.  The bathroom anxiety with this kid is about to really do me in.  I’m contemplating a new version of Dante’s Inferno where every

       circle of hell is another part of parenthood that sucks when we finally hit the place where we started and he, Viktoria and I head out of the exhibit and to the bathrooms.  For anyone else going with a small child’s bladder, you can go out to the bathroom and return to the exhibit.  There is a gift shop that the kids are able to avoid, but the adults can’t and we have our swag and art fix an hour after going in.  The security guard confirms that we can’t go out to the Riverwalk because of the vice president’s presence, also, we can’t meet the VP either, so we head to the Crown Plaza for drinks.