Unfortunately, we once again find ourselves stuck in a time warp. When we look at the calendar, we realize that Labor Day is fast approaching. Yet, we seem to be operating under the misconception that it is still early July due in large part to the fact that we spent the almost five weeks from July 15 to August 17 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We feel the summer has sailed by and we, unfortunately, have not kept pace.

But, family events necessitated our being in Grand Rapids and we must say that we were very glad that our younger sister had seen fit to purchase a condo there where we were able to camp out.

And although she has since moved half of her things from Texas, for most of the time that we were there, it had a definite ``make do’’ feel about it. However, we hasten to point out that the condo did sport air conditioning. So we suspect, based on what we were hearing from people on the ground here in Cooperstown, that we were much more comfortable temperature and humidly wise than we would have been here at home.

And while our time in Grand Rapids was definitely not the Cooperstown summer experience, it was not without its interesting moments. While the neighborhood in which our sister’s condo is located is relatively quiet, venturing beyond the confines of that neighborhood had us frequently thinking we were putting life and limb in extreme danger.

To say that the drivers in Michigan are fond of speed would be perhaps an understatement. In fact we were absolutely astonished at the number of vehicles which, in our opinion, ran red lights. It almost seemed that the red light meant ``gun it and get through the intersection’’ instead of ``its time to stop.’’

We think our worst such experience was when we dutifully stopped for a red light at the intersection of Breton and 44th Street only to have someone whiz by us going probably sixty miles an hour right through the red light. And while the vehicles on 44th Street, which at that point had the green light, had started into the intersection, every one of them screeched to a stop, thus avoiding what could have been, from our perspective, a horrific accident.

Of course, that was the same day that we came upon two separate accidents which appeared to at the very least do a great deal of property damage. For neither accident had the police and emergency vehicles had arrived so both times we counted ourselves fortunate that we had not been a bit earlier in our travels.

Therefore, in the article ``Why speed limits are being raised on U.S. 131, I-196 in Grand Rapids’’ by John Tunison which appeared in the ``Grand Rapids Press,’’ we were not surprised to read ``When transportation officials clocked U.S. 131 traffic speeds through the inner city two years ago, they found only 4 percent of drivers obeyed the 55 mph speed limit. Everyone else was cruising along at an average of 70 mph.’’

However, we were surprised to read that ``...as of Tuesday, the Michigan Department of Transportation bumped up the U.S. 131 speed limit to 70 mph, between Ann to 28th streets — a move intended to improve safety.’’

Evidently, the great State of Michigan ``...uses a formula, calling for hikes if 85 percent of drivers are going faster than the posted speed limit.’’’

We did not find that particularly comforting, especially since it was noted that ``The 50 mph advisory limit in the S-curve will remain the same.’’

We are inclined to wish them good luck with that. We consider ourselves fortunate that we will during our visits to Michigan not have to drive on U.S. 131 through the downtown area which includes the famous for accidents Scurve.

And we must say that we hope the concept of setting a speed limit for any road based on what the drivers choose to drive is peculiar to the State of Michigan and will not be in vogue around here anytime soon even if the Michigan ``Police don’t expect any problems with raising the limits.’’

We also discovered while in Grand Rapids that running red lights and speeding were not the only hazards one faced on the roads. The condo in which we were staying was in the midst of what must be one of the larger urban deer populations in the country. It was actually worse than the village deer population here in Cooperstown.

In fact, one evening, as we were taking off to go visit our father at his residence, we discovered a fairly large and fairly dead deer on the lawn of the condo.

As far as we could tell, the deer had run into a passing car, putting a fairly substantial dent in the driver side door. Fortunately the Grand Rapids deer removal unit picked up the deer fairly early the next morning, after it had spent the night not far from our bedroom window.

We do hasten to point out that driving issues were not the only things we encountered while in Michigan.

In fact, we quite enjoyed the ongoing discussion in the paper about the desire on the part of some residents of Grand Rapids to be allowed to raise chickens in their backyards. For what we were able to glean from the various articles, doing so would be in step with the current ``urban food movement.’’

Of course, given the heat and humidity we experienced while in Grand Rapids, we could not help but wonder if ``urbanö chickens would be less odorous than ``rural’’ chickens. Somehow we tend to doubt it.

And we were also quite taken by another article from the ``Grand Rapid Press’’ entitled ``Let fiction be your Michigan vacation guide’’ by Kim Schneider which appeared in the August 1 edition of the paper. It had never occurred to us that, according to the article ``...A novel still can transport you when the place is so vividly recognizable in your surroundings of the moment.’’ And, it seems that the author is not the only person who ``... finds a book set in or around my travel destination a travel packing must. Matt Norcross, owner of McLean and Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey [Michigan] says the same is true for many of his customers.’’ According to Mr. Norcross, ``It allows people to connect to the area in a way they may not be able to just walking around...I think everybody wants to have the feeling of being a local when they go to these places.’’

As we read this article, we began to realize that this particular concept of reading a piece of fiction that deals with one’s planned destination might well have great impact for visitors to our fair village. Might we suggest that those people planning to visit our area pick up a copy of James Fenimore Cooper’s ``The Pioneers’’ to read while vacationing here? After all, if it works in Michigan, why not in New York?

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