I hate Detroit

Last weekend I went for a short flight with WereGirl and PilotBoy. We flew to a nearby airport, had dinner and flew back. The flight itself was pleasant and uneventful as was dinner. Generally a good time was had by all.

Where things got a little interesting was my trip back to Windsor from PilotBoy's house, which is in a nicer suburb of Detroit. WereGirl was staying over, but since I had to work the next day, I was borrowing her car and driving back. The trip to Windsor from PilotBoy's place normally takes about half an hour and is not a huge deal, plus, it was the middle of the night, so traffic should be light to non-existent. I don't know the area very well, but generally am fine once I get on a highway. So, I made sure that I got detailed instructions that far, and trusted that everything would be pretty simple from there. Nothing that involves WereGirl's car is ever that easy.

Anyone who has heard me talk about the roads in and around Detroit has heard me compare them unfavourably to the streets of a country that has recently gone through an extremely destructive civil war. Basically, they suck. The city of Detroit, however, seems to have realized this and has basically undertaken to fix them all at once. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that they are hosting the Superbowl this year.

Whatever the reason, the end result is that every single highway going into and out of Detroit has some sort of lane closure or some kind of detour happening at all times. So, driving in the Detroit Metro area is currently an exercise in frustration, at best. The likelihood of lanes or exits being closed seems to be directly related to how much I'd like to use them. Detours are long, convoluted and seem to go through neighbourhoods that I'd usually prefer to avoid.

So, I had found the highway and was nicely on my way home in WereGirl's car, whose controls are a little unfamiliar to me, and is arguably a little cursed. (Presumably due to a lot of close exposure to WereGirl.) The first little problem was that a bright red SECURITY warning light lit up on the dash. My guess was that this was because I was using a copy of WereGirl's key. (WereGirl had given it to me after a previous incident in which she had managed to be locked out of her car for about a week after losing her only key.) This was my first time driving with that key and I wondered if there was something about it that the car had decided that it didn't like. Maybe it would eventually shut down the engine. No, that was ridiculous and would be remarkably unsafe. Maybe next time I shut down the engine it would refuse to start until WereGirl's key was put in. I decided that that was pretty likely. But that was okay. I had plenty of gas and had no reason to turn the car off before getting to WereGirl's house.

During this time I'd started passing a few signs saying something about lanes being closed. I didn't recognize the roads being referenced, but hoped that that section of the highway would be after the exit to the bridge. Quite the optimist am I. Shortly thereafter a line of pylons gradually forced me out of the express lanes and into the collectors. Okay, that was fine. Traffic was relatively light and this shouldn't affect me all that much. Then the pylons forced me off the highway I was on, and onto another one.. One which I'd failed to take note of the name of. Things still weren't that bad, though. There were detour signs, and I was still on a highway. I stayed on this new highway for a while, taking some comfort in the friendly detour signs the reassured me that I was going in the right direction. This was a little inconvenient, but things seemed to be well under control.

That is, until I saw a sign that seemed to indicate that I should take the next exit. I can only surmise at this point that the sign meant I should have taken that exit, because there was nary a detour sign directing me where to go where I got off the highway. There was a sign directing me to the University of Detroit Mercy, which I was passingly familiar with, having visited it a couple times during my first year of school. Sadly, after two signs directing me along the way, I must have missed one that wanted me to turn.

So, I was lost. Lost somewhere in or around Detroit. And I couldn't stop to ask for directions, since I wasn't about to get out of the car and leave it running and I didn't think it would restart if I turned it off.

My method of getting myself un-lost, something I have to do startlingly frequently, usually involves basically driving by zen until I see something familiar. The trouble with doing this in Detroit is that there is a rather copious lack of landmarks I recognize.

I wandered. It started to rain, creating a fog that obscured any potential landmarks more than a block or two away. I flicked on WereGirl's wipers and realized that the blades had likely last been replaces sometime in the Palaeolithic era. I wandered some more, squinting through the windshield. I found what looked like a broken water main in a dip under a bridge and wondered briefly if I was going to be testing WereGirl's car for any amphibious ability it may or may not have. Wandering through Detroit is a little frightening. There are a lot of homes and businesses that have been boarded up, and the citizens, especially those on the streets this late at night, don't exactly radiate friendliness. I had visions of the police eventually finding my bullet riddled body and wondering just what I was doing in some bad area of town.

Eventually I saw a sign pointing me towards the bridge to Canada. I think I actually said "Yes!" out loud and may have actually pumped my fist in the air a time or two. Mind you I never did find the bridge, but it did get me pointed in the right direction.

Somehow I stumbled upon the tunnel a gratefully made my way back to Canada. Where I immediately made a wrong turn and ended up driving away from WereGirl's house for a block or two...

When I did get to her house, I experimentally shut her car off and restarted it, just to see if it would work. Of course it did and the little red SECURITY light even switched off.

I was still muttering about that, the city of Detroit in general and the Michigan Department of Transportation people in particular, when I got in my own car and drove home.