Motor City

OK, so here I am in Detroit. Well, actually Romulus, Michigan. This is where the airport and all of the airport-related businesses are. I have been temporarily detailed to the Detroit-Wayne County airport station to help on the dock.

The dock at 5:00 PM is utter chaos. Somehow I can't imagine running it by myself for long but I think that is what these folks have in mind. The regular supervisor is preparing to go on vacation next week and that would leave me in charge. They don't have anyone else, so I am looking forward to this like another colonoscopy. They are insane, and a little desperate.

I have not actually been into Detroit and don't plan to go. It isn't really a travel destination. Sometime I would love to go upstate and see the lakes. I would like to go over the big bridge to the upper peninsula. But Detroit itself doesn't hold much. The population dropped here from 1.5 million 30 years ago to about 650,000 at the last estimate. The city is greatly uninhabited, compared to what it was and the tax base is correspondingly eroded. Like in Kansas City the folks who paid the taxes and earned the money moved to the suburbs, or off to California, so I can visit all the big-city blight and decay that I want at home.

But this remains a vital population center with the attendant airport, McDonalds, interstate highways, cell phone stores and other perks of urban life, so indirectly, here I am. More insanity.

Getting here isn't a breeze. There are only a few nonstop flights and they are packed. I connected thru Memphis on the way here, getting in with just enough time to walk the fifty miles from gate B41 to B12. I arrived in time to see not one but three very large women boarded into the first row of economy. They were dressed to kill, every one of them, but apparently unable to hoof it down the jetway. They were rolled in aboard wheelchairs, one right after the other, holding up boarding for all 9,000 economy passengers. Utter insanity.

I was in the window seat, with the fat guy in the middle seat crowding me and the fat lady in the aisle seat to his left. Either he or the fat lady had gas, which is a bad deal for several reasons:
1. other people may think it was me, not them;
2. you can't get up and walk away easily; and
3. the windows don't open.

Now going home, I get to experience delightful American Eagle's regional jets which have a stunning 50% on time rate. They are claustrophobic, smelly and route me through O'Hare the traditional worm hole of airline travel in the United States. Whole airplane loads of people disappear there. Yet even more insanity.

The alternative to all this is for me to tell the company to forget it, and cut my severance check.
I really don't want to travel like this but neither do I want to give up employment before I have to in the Obama economy. If I could start my retirement job (parking cars for Avis) then I would be gone in a New York minute, but I can't, so I won't.

Worst part of all this is that I forgot my work shoes and wrist watch, and I can't see from day to day how our tomatoes are progressing. But one good thing: It isn't hot and humid like in KC. These people think it's hot but I have seen and been in hot and this ain't it. Maybe Avis is hiring here. I could do that for a while, at least until November. Sound a little insane? It's catching.