detroit: a love story.

HOME SWEET HOME

....

I went to Seattle in February. For a friend, for a job interview, or because I like rain and coffee and I think I look good in plaid. There were a lot of factors involved for this impromptu trip, sure.

But I thought I planned everything out, to a T. I mean, I didn’t think anything could go wrong. By nature, I’m crazy and paranoid like Natalie Portman’s character in Black Swan, so I had to make sure every detail was painfully measured out. “THIS WILL BE PERFECT” etc, I invite you to imagine your own meltdown scenarios.

I, for all my neurotic habits, could not control the weather. I could not control the fact that a gigantic snowstorm- SnowaPacylpseAmGeddon 2011 (soon to be made into a video game)- was ripping through the United States when I was headed BACK from Seattle.

“Oh, I’ll be okay,” I stupidly told my parents when I called them from the Detroit airport, the first time around. “See you!”

Little did I realize that getting out of Detroit, in the middle of a blizzard, to the little town across the lake I unfortunately call home would be... well, impossible. Little did I know I’d be spending the next 48 hours in an airport. Western distress!

At first, the airline is nice enough to give me a spiel about how I can use this-and-this voucher to get a discount at a hotel.

But I am groggy and I have just travelled across the country. When the smiling customer services person hands me the receipt, I can only squint to see the price tag on this new-and-reduced! hotel room.

"WHAT," my mind screams. No meal voucher this time- it's just me and the overpriced hotel room somewhere in the vicinity of the Detroit metro airport. I drop said receipt into a nearby trashcan. Now, the "fun" is to begin.

STEP 1: TAKE WHAT THE AIRLINE GIVES YOU

I have seen Survivorman, Cast Away and Swiss Family Robinson. In some weird 21st century way, I grouped myself amongst said "outcasts" from society who were "going it rough." Except my terrain was, um, an airport in the middle of the suburbs. After all, what I had to live on was a feeble amount of money, my laundry, some books, a computer and a chocolate bar I had bought for my dad back in Seattle. Airports are infamously expensive for just about everything, especially food (and alcohol but that comes later). So long, chocolate bar.

"I am not giving into this overpriced corporate machine," I yell at my friend via Skype. (this is definitely the 21st century) "They give me a free hotel room or I sleep the night here! No backing down!"

"I hope you have a blanket."

In retrospect, I wish I had dished out the money for the rest of said hotel room. Hotels offer a lot that airports do not: free breakfast, free coffee, free wifi (what is this Boingo crap and who outside of airports uses it!), access to shower....a bed, for starters. A real bed. Not one you fashion out of laundry under a chair.

"DO YOU NEED A BLANKET?" one of the airport employees came by. I nodded, eager to take whatever I could get for free. I was not imagining a fluffy Grandmother's-feather-bed comforter and what I got was like a fabric paper towel. Keep your expectations LOW, also. This is useful in a lot of situations.

I learned, via CNN and the magic of the internet, that I was definitely not the only American stranded at an airport that February night. Solidarity! Out-of-luck airline customers power!

STEP 2: Bring food with you (and maybe handiwipes, too).

I will never forget the dazed morning-after I found myself wobbling around at a Wendy’s, scoping out breakfasts. Whatever looked edible then.

“That will be 11 dollars,” the cashier told me. I grimaced, feeling the vicarious pain of my wallet as I handed her my debit card.

“What is that crap all over it?” She wrinkled her nose at me. I shrugged. Deal with my dirt, bitch.

So unless you have some bottomless fortune you can retrieve overpriced food from, I recommend packing a lunch before you go to theairport when a delay or cancellation seems, oh, just about imminent.

As for the handiwipes, I said it before and I’ll say it again: airports do not have showers. Use your imagination. Mother Nature paid me a visit while I was stranded at the Detroit Airport. I will cut this part short- the awkward run-in with the janitor at midnight while I was dressed like some hobo Inuit and bouncing off the tiled walls does not need to be waxed on.

STEP 3: Do not go to the bar!

The second day I was stranded, the airline must have really counted me as a lost cause. Not even an offer of a hotel this time!

“Your flight’s in the morning,” the woman said to me, ripping off my new receipt. Then, she paused. “Is someone’s ringtone the Sex and the City theme?”

I gave up, sat under the monitor constantly playing CNN and sulked.

That night, I decided to go to the airport bar. Or one of the many, many places in the airport that happened to serve alcohol. It was typical- drowning sorrows in what I thought would be cheap alcohol. I mean my god Coors Lite, that's not the tonic of champions right there.

One thing about these situations is the motley crews they tend to throw together. In my case, it was me, an older man en route to a business function in Indiana and a soldier headed back to Erie, my destination. We all sat together, slumped over our drinks like characters in a Billy Joel song.

"I'm going to pick up my wife, she's too sick to drive back to our home in Virginia. She was up visiting her parents," he grumbled. "I'm supposed to be on the night flight back to Erie but I doubt it."

"Erie! They get more snow than Buffalo!" barked the older man, who I was beating in our version of Jeopardy ("why don't you just go on the damn show!") To say a place gets more snow than Buffalo, that rust belt mecca, well. There you go.

After about an hour or two or three, I got my bill from the bartender. To say I spent about fifty dollars on what amounted to three and a half beers is a bit embarrassing, but I did. To think of the cash I would have saved if I opted for a Diet Coke and more sleep instead.

The second night was hellish. I could barely sleep and didn't have the energy to attempt the art of "shower in a sink." Instead, I rolled into a ball and listen to the janitors wax the floor and gossip in their native languages. I had my computer, but I already splurged on buying internet (something you apparently do at most airports) and talking to every person I had met in my life on facebook.

"Brittany! I haven't talked to you in months!" one girl surprisingly wrote me.

"Yup! It's 1 AM and I'm an airport!" I responded.

"I'd scream if I were you." No one hears your screams in space, dear!

STEP 4: Wait. It's all you can do.

So I waited and bought too much caffeine and made myself look like a horrible, color blind nun. People would talk to me around 5 AM and I could not form sentences.

"So, where you from girl?"

"Banerjemerme zaerene."

"Oh sweet. Is that by Tajikistan? I'm digging the hijab." And then I would just stare. It didn't help matters to have a slight hangover. Another reason to avoid alcohol in such scenarios.

This applies in a lot of delays. Don't think it's just for the airport. Whether you're going by train or bus, as my friend Erica informed me of her similar dilemma at another point in time.

"I met a lot of interesting characters," she explained. A drunk Hispanic man, a frail belligerent woman, and a homeless man who preferred to view himself as a romantic "vagabond."

"Do not forget your MP3 player," she advises. And other Greyhound-specific tips: "pack lots and lots of snacks because you will inevitably grow hungry at the most inopportune times, and use the bathrooms in restaurants near your stops because the one on the bus is narsty and may very well be full of pot smoke. Unless you dig that sort of thing."

With the airport, though, you can just wait. The big thing for me was I didn't want to go back through security. Hell no. They had already invaded my privacy, body cavities and dignity once, did they need to do it again? Hence, what I get for being stubborn.

Eventually I made it back to Erie. My father found me, exhausted pacing by the terminal. I went home, ate a good meal and slept and dreamt of janitors hovering over my body with sticks.

Lesson learned from this, and one you should pick up from me because airline delays/cancellation are becoming more and more frequent (a lot of times it's cheaper and safer for them, as a pilot I sat next to on the way home informed me) is you can never plan for everything. You can take the neccessary precautions, but expect pitfalls along the way.

Such is life, I suppose.