Detroit / Chicago - Car Country!

Wow... I haven't blogged in forever. I thought I would have interesting things to talk about every week or so, but I don't. I guess that means my day to day life is kinda boring. I should get a new job, something with excitement, like a stunt man! At least my current job keeps me out of the hospital I guess. So it'll have to do.

One of the "perks" of my job is that sometimes they send me someplace to do something. I'm being pretty vague here because it's not always clear why I go places and what I'm supposed to do there. Seeing as they've sent me out twice since I started working here and neither times was it very clear what I was supposed to accomplish during the trip, I think it's a trend. I happen to like that trend of vague indications because it means I can never really fail. I mean the conversation would be something like this... "You didn't do what we sent you there to do!" "I did exactly what you sent me there to do!" "Really? What did we send you there to do?" and then the communication break down happens and everyone is happy.

Anyways, this time the flew me to Detroit to meet up with Ford. I can't really go into the details as to what we were doing as it's kinda secret. Don't bother asking on the blog because I won't reply... not that I don't read the comments because eventually I will. But I'm never really inclined to reply to them because I'm lazy like that.

The adventure starts way too early in the morning, something like 5am. I get up and go to the airport via taxi. The cab driver is the same guy that drove Rachel (my neighbor) to the airport a few months ago. He thought he drove me... the guy didn't remember me, he just remembered the building.

I get to the airport and I line up to check in. The trend in airports these days is to replace as many people as possible with computers and to charge you for everything they possibly can. So I walk up to the check in computer, it lets me PAY for my check in bag -$20 for a freaken checkin- and then it lets me pick my seat. I have choice of 3 seats, two of them are middle seats and one is the aisle seat. The only aisle seat available is in the last row by the toilets, but hey, it's better than a middle seat.

I go through security without any issues and find Peggy sitting at the gate waiting for the plane. So I tell her that I didn't have many seat choices and she tells me the same. So it turns out that she checked in 30mins earlier than me and got a completely different seat selection. Her only aisle seat was right next to mine... so we're sitting across the aisle from each other now. So the computer limits what seats you get to see or something. That's screwed up because it means that you'll have a crappy selection even if you decide to check in early. Freaken airlines, they suck.

The flight was crowded and whatnot. We finally got to the hotel, the Dearborn inn. The rooms were tiny, the place looked like a mansion. Turns out it was built by Henry Ford II. So it was probably a mansion transformed into a hotel. It was pretty nice though. We ask the desk guy where we can eat. He says we can go to downtown Dearborn and find some food there, but it's really far to walk. The bellhop offers us a ride since it's one of the services the hotel offers. Cool, let's go.

So downtown turns out to be 1.5 miles away from the hotel, and all the restaurants that the desk guy said were way too far to walk are pretty close to the ones he said "You could walk but it's far". Apparently his walking distance limit is 1.5 miles and 1.8 miles is way too far. Nobody walks in Detroit though, it's car country!

In any case, we walked. It was nice and cool out, a little humid, reminded me of home. We ate at Buddy's Pizza, they said they had soy cheese on the menu, but when I ordered it they didn't have any on hand. They did pile on the toppings to compensate. On the way back home a cop was totally scoping us out. He drove by twice and really really slow. He was probably thinking to himself "Oh! Pedestrians! Those two are up to no good for sure." Like I said, nobody walks in Detroit. He didn't stop us or pull us over, though he looked like he was going to at one point. The rest of the night was uneventful.

We wake up early the next morning to get to Ford by 8am. It's only a 10 minute walk. When we told the Ford people that we walked downtown they were pretty shocked. What's up with these people, they have legs but they avoid using them. The Ford building even has escalators, they look like they were built during the first world war, but they're still escalators. Even the ford people were astonished that we walked.

Well, it took forever to get the car ready and lunch rolled around while we were still in Detroit. So we ate sushi (Kevin totally did not like it, he barely ate) and then we left for Chicago. On the way down Kevin mentioned that we were meeting up with someone else down there. Little did we know that he would also be joining us, thus cramming 5 people in the car. Ugh.

So I won't bore you with details of the trip, because to be honest, it was boring. We worked long hours in the car, all 5 of us crammed in there. The ford people were the only ones allowed to drive the car, so they hogged the front seats the whole trip. They never even offered up the front seat after we started complaining about how crammed the car was. Most nights we got back to the hotel, went to supper and then slept. I roamed around downtown Chicago for a bit and found a few cool shops like the Lego store and a brain teaser store. So instead of details I'll give you highlights!

First I must complain about the traffic. Cyclist and pedestrians are suicidal. They run out in front of you or swerve all over the street without care. IDIOTS! Then the cars, they love their horn. If you don't hear a car honking at least once a minute, you're probably not in Chicago. And then buses. Buses live by the adage go big or go home. They think that they own the road because they can crush anything on the road. One bus was turning left from the right hand lane and cut right in front of us, Kevin had to slam on the breaks to avoid crashing into it. Let me tell you 5 people crammed in a car that is going from 40 to 0 in less than 2 seconds is NOT comfortable.

Anyways, through the crazy traffic we went to the zoo, because it was nice and open and FREE! We were only there to use the restrooms though... oh well. I did get to see lions, jaguars and a panther because the cat exhibit was right next to the bathrooms. Speaking of cats and bathrooms, there was a giant lion loaf on one of the rocks. Holy crap indeed, those lions don't mess around when they're dropping the bomb. It was huge!

There's a thing in Chicago referred to as "the bean". It's a big stainless steel sculpture that's super reflective. The cool part about it is that it's shaped kinda like a bean or a red blood cell. The shape makes all sorts of crazy reflections, and if you go under it there's a reflective funnel going into the middle of the bean and it makes things go a little crazy. I swear you could get motion sick just standing in there.

The city reminded me a bit of Manhattan because of all the tall buildings. It's nowhere near as big as that but still pretty impressive. We drove around a lot in the city but one day we went into the suburbs. I don't know who picked the suburb we went to but it must have been the rich burb. They had garages the size of houses and houses the size of hotels. Even their shops were huge. They had a giant Costco I swear you would need a golf cart to get around it all. They even had a games workshop in one of the malls with a 12 foot space marine figure standing out front! Crazy land I tell you.

Back in downtown Chicago we spotted a castle. Well a fake castle, but whatever. It turned out to be a tourist information center. How cool is that, total tourist trap "Hey a castle!" but it's meant for tourist cus it's the information center! Genius! Anyways, it was closed, but it didn't look much like a castle inside sadly. And to add to the feel that you were near a castle they had old school horse wagon rides, with real horses. And real horse poop. Horse poop smells.

Apart from the fancy restaurants (Andrea always liked to go to fancy places) and the evenings spent roaming the streets the trip was all business. That kinda sucked. The ride back to Detroit was welcomed by all. Back at the hotel in Detroit Peggy and I took a nap and a swim, the outdoor pool was great. Then we went off to find some food, more sushi, this all American diet was killing us.

The next day we started late, wasted time at the ford building and then headed to the airport. The flight back was even more crowded than the flight there. The second leg of my flight was overbooked by 12 people! I had an aisle seat again, so that was ok. I got to San Jose a bit early but I had to wait forever at the baggage claim. That's right, my bag never showed. I talked to the baggage claim girl, she called Phoenix. My bag was in Phoenix, it never made it on the plane, so now it's melting away in 110 degree weather.

Funny story about my bag though. Seeing as "it never made it on the plane". Well, I boarded a plane in Detroit, landed in Phoenix and then they told us: "If you're staying with us until San Jose, feel free to leave your carry-on on board as we'll be using the same plane." So I got off, grabbed some food and got back on the plane. Meanwhile some baggage handler underneath the plane took my bag out of the cargo hold and just tossed it somewhere?? I don't get it. Shouldn't they have just left my bag on the plane? Airlines suck ass.

The moral of this story is: If your project manager says "Hey Jonathan, would you like to go to Chicago? We really need someone to go." He's not offering you a paid vacation, it's probably gonna be boring. It wasn't boring all the time (otherwise I wouldn't blog about it) but it involved a whole lot of sitting around and waiting for something to happen.