I had never been to Michigan. And, to be quite frank, I still can't say that I feel as though I was really ever in Michigan. I was in a plane, an airport, a rental car, a hotel, a corporate office, and back again. But other than an expressway and catching a glimpse of the 8 Mile off-ramp, I couldn't tell you what Detroit looked like. Auburn Hills looked a lot like Bellaire, a city inside a bigger city, with nicer medians and more expensive gasoline.
You can tell I wasn't quite in "exciting new place" mode when I get back from a two day trip with all of five pictures. I can take five pictures of my cat on the couch in a given minute.
So here's the "Didn't Feel Like a Trip Trip Report"
Step 1: After clearing DIA security on the bridge (bypassing the center terminal insanity), I catch the completely empty elevator down to the tram for the correct concourse and purchase an Atlantic Monthly. I never fly without an Atlantic. I read them cover to cover, don't skip anything, and wonder why I am not a subscriber.
United, window seat, at the back of the plane on a four-across. Somewhere over the middle of America...
So we land, catch the shuttle to the off-site rental place, and spend the next hour in line. Not a long line, mind you. But a line with only two people checking folks in and one of those two completely hogged by a woman in a modified, americanized sari clutching her Marlboros and glancing over her shoulder at the glut of humanity behind her, sweating in the box of a rental stand. It seems she had wrecked her previous rental. "It's not bad. Really, just small dents," she says to the rental clerk as though she has had plenty of experience. She's in line to get another car "for a day or so" as though she's not sure when or where she'll be driving, but also to turn in the wrecked one, which, as you can imagine, generates all kinds of paperwork during the rush hour of people landing to pick up their vehicles for the evening.
Sweat is now percolating down my spine, as Michigan is not terribly hot, but considerably more humid than Colorado and it is 3:00 in the afternoon under a cloudless sky in a small room quite packed with people who would really like nothing more than to get out of there. That negativity gives off heat of its own.
Once she finally leaves, after clerk number 2 has processed a number of people in front of me, I replace Marlboro Wrecking woman in front of the clerk who has been in constant range of the death stares from the line of people. She looks both haggard and bemused as I tell her I am going to be the fastest customer she's ever had. But I wasn't kidding. The compulsion to get into a car and blast the AC on high is a great motivater. I answer every question she has without her asking, "Yes, no, insurance only on the car. And then the line from Seinfeld pops into my head, "yeah, you better give me the insurance cause I am going to beat the hell out of that car." Instead of her reading the screens of acceptance, I run through them with "yes, I'll pay the traffic tickets, no, I won't smoke.." and we are out of there in under 5 minutes once we finally get to the desk. Outside, while we opted for "cheapest" so, it seems, did everyone else and they are currently out of cars on the Mega-Cheap aisle. Free bump up it is, to a Toyota Corolla with a USB port for my ipod for the hour drive across Detroit . It's silver, but I'll deal.
The drive is all expressway, and we're in Auburn Hills and looking for 1461 North Opdyke Road under an hour, or less time than we stood in line to get the car. But then, it took another twenty minutes to locate the hotel, turning around three times on the busy road and finally about to throw in the towel and pull into the McDonalds that appears to have been built right where 1461 should be, when we realize it is behind the McDonalds, with trees blocking what little signage there is.
Checking in, we head upstairs and I slide my room key into 322, the light turns green, and as the door swings open I simultaneously see a pile of clothes on the floor by the bathroom and a male voice saying, "excuse me?" from the bathroom. I step back, let the door shut, and walk next door to Rob's room to stow my luggage and go back downstairs to find out what the problem is. The girl meets me at the elevator with new rooms keys and a horribly embarrassed look on her face. To say I kept the bolt on the door every second I was in my unoccupied 332 room is an understatement. As I was entering the new room hoping not to see anyone else inside, sheepish girl was having to deliver herself to Mr. 322 for a dressing down (pun intended). At least we didn't have this happen.
I had remembered that Hampton Inns do not know how to stock their coffee corner and grabbed a handful of half and half out of the dining area to make do. The sad little packet on the left is what is in the room. The happy little white canisters on the right are actually dairy. Between that and the completely uninsulated ice buckets they provide, by morning there was a river of condensation all over the desk. Had I left papers out from working the night before, I'd have been quite irritated.
Speaking of... I decided to work on my laptop from the bed and realized the only place to plug in was the outlet positioned behind the bed which, apparently, the cleaning staff don't bother to... ever... clean. I'm not one of those white glove treatment people. I have plenty of dust around the house. But this was pretty gross and clearly a place many people need to access. Blech.
So after freshening up and avoiding looking around the room much more, we headed over to East Side Mario's where Kris, our trainer, had assembled a social hour for people coming in the night before. Did I think to take pictures of actual people? No. You get dirty wall plugs.
After munching for an hour and chatting with a number of other trainees and putting a few faces with names of people we talk to on the phone almost daily, it was back to the room to do what bit of work I could after a full day of travelling.
And that's when I heard it. The camera video doesn't do it justice. Slightly like a locomotive in the distance, it luckily disappeared when the fan came on. So the fan got turned on to constant.
We headed over to corporate, found the off-site lot for people who were not driving Audis and therefore could not park near the building for more than 3 hours. Once we got through security and upstairs, the training room was getting very full. Soon after grabbing a bite of danish, we were moving rooms. I ended up sitting with the same guys from the night before: Gene, Troy, Chris, and Peter, which turned out to be great fun. We thought we were sitting in the back of the room only to discover the overhead projector was facing our way and we were, in fact, in the front pew most of the day. The exception came with the head of Warranty who visited with an engine in tow and a lot of really useful information.
Each table had a playing card on it. We were the Deuces (two of Diamonds) and, as the only chick at the table, I volunteered to be the scribe for the regular rounds of team quizzes throughout the day. By the end, we came out two points ahead of the next best team and each went home with an A8 branded travel glass. Not cup. Glass. In cylindrical metal. My first thought was, "My bag is so getting searched through security."
After a full day of walking around, meeting all the different people and departments, our last stop of the day was upstairs with the folks we briefly met the night before, the warranty specialists we talk to on the phone all the time. Since my situation is a little different from most of the attendees who only work for a single dealership, I'd talked to just about everybody from the East, South, and Western regions (the North doesn't exist in Audi Warranty.) We said our goodbyes and started back for the airport at 4:30 for a flight out at 7:30.
The less than an hour drive from Tuesday turned into two hours going the other direction during rush hour so by the time we dropped the rental off, got the receipt, got on the shuttle, back to the airport, checked in for boarding passes, and into the security line, we were watching the clock. Of course, the amount of panic you allow yourself to experience in the security slow down is directly proportional to the odds of your flight being delayed. So we didn't get off the ground until 8:30.
My boarding pass had me on a Frontier middle seat in a six across, but in row 2. The advantage of a window seat really comes only during a daylight flight or if you are unable to keep from leaning while dozing . Add that to the benefit of being at the front of the plane when you want nothing more than to get home, and this was a good combination. Plus I got lucky and sat between a woman who was a director for a national MS foundation and a consultant who owned a ranch out in Larkspur. Both were the perfect amount of pleasant chatting for a few minutes at the start and completely silent the rest of the way.
They comped the in-flight television due to the delay, but I still had the last of my Atlantic to enjoy and then dived into a story I'd forgotten I'd purchased on the Kindle which kept my attention until we landed. We had about 25 passengers, all sitting in the back of the plane, who were going to have milliseconds to make their connections in Denver. I've never seen an entire plane sit still when the fasten seat belt sign was turned off to let all the connecting flight folks scramble off the plane first, but that's exactly what happened. It was pretty cool to see.
I collapsed into bed a little before midnight without having done a single thing for work and spent the rest of the week doing 14 hours each day to climb back out last night at 10:00 p.m.. And in the grand scheme of training requirements, that's actually a success.
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