Flint. What to say. Flint is essentially comprised of three things: strip clubs, boarded up houses and boarded up strip clubs. With no offense intended towards the inhabitants of this once flourishing city, we can safely say that this is the worst city we’ve seen and would certainly toss its name into the conversation for worst city ever. We arrived as the sun set and soon discovered that being on the streets of this city was probably not the best idea. We stopped in at a convenience store that was seemingly the only place open in a 10-mile radius and asked where a good bar was. Thankfully, we were directed to a place that did not seem to be as bombed out as the rest of the city and we sipped some beers and watched a football game.
We made friends with our servers, gave them plenty of grief about their city (one of whom was from a suburb and was adamant that she was NOT from Flint) and ended up staying late. We bounced ideas off of them about where to stay, but didn’t make much progress. In reality we were hoping they would offer up a hunk of backyard, but the offer was not forthcoming and (surprisingly) Will wasn’t shameless enough to ask outright for some mooching (Todd was disappointed).
Ultimately, a typical course of action taken: driving around aimlessly looking for a reasonably safe place to sleep. Needless to say, such places are few and far between in a city with a 120% unemployment rate, so we headed out of town. After a few hours of driving through farmlands and unsuccessfully looking for a covert campsite, we broke the sacred law of Will… a hotel room was purchased. We’re not proud, but allow us to assure you it was necessary. We hadn’t showered in Toronto either so we were passed due. On a brighter note, Todd negotiated the room’s rate down to $50 from $90. A little Will had brushed off on him. At 5 a.m. rest was finally ours to be had… or so it seemed. As Todd enjoyed a bed for the first time in a few days, Will came to the realization that he had, once again, lost his wallet. No, this isn’t a typo; no this isn’t from a previous entry. Will had lost his wallet AGAIN. So, as Todd slept, Will drove around the farmlands outside of Flint, trying to retrace his footsteps and looked for his wallet. Todd was awoken by Will who returned to the room at about 9 a.m. having not succeeded in finding his wallet, and not getting any sleep. After an inquisition from Todd as to how in god’s name he had managed this feat yet again, we cleaned up and hit the road towards Detroit.
Billy, Todd’s cousin who we had gone to the White Sox game with, had managed to steal away for a few days and meet up with us in Detroit. An avid Notre Dame fan (no accounting for taste), Billy was joining us for the Tigers game in Detroit and the Notre Dame v. Michigan game in Ann Arbor. We know that it was extremely difficult for him to leave behind his job and family for a few days, but he did his crying before he left and put on a well-rehearsed façade of enjoying himself with us. We picked him up and headed to downtown Motown to get some lunch and kill some time before the baseball game. We weren’t adequately prepared for what we saw.
Upon arriving in what was once the industrial center of the country we immediately realized how bad things were. Abandoned buildings, boarded up windows, and a shockingly small number of people out and about. Even in the heart of the city, we could not believe how few people were out. The three of us, demonstrative of our overwhelming compassion, made several remarks about this and about our mutual intentions to move here. Good god, it really was a pitiful site. We drove around looking for a place to eat. Will asked a guy with luggage (clearly not a local) for a recommendation for some “authentic Detroit cuisine” and when he replied: “Hard Rock Café,” we could hardly hold back our laughter. We asked another guy, dressed as a pimp and his recommendation was a local casino around the corner with “great corn beef.” We opted not to eat in the building surrounded by barbed wire. Finally we came across a true local. When we asked about food, mentioning that we were visiting from out of town, the man’s response was: “What the hell are you doing in Detroit?!” We laughed, conceding that it was a just question, and explained our road trip. The man said that he “used to be from here” (whatever that means) and directed us towards a local eatery. Todd asked where a good place to kill some time was (noting that the area from which we had came was clearly not) and the man directed us towards a particular area. “Away from that, its just a bombed out warzone,” he said. He was right.
We once again relished in our Detroit interactions and headed to a bar. Around some beers, we shared laughs with Billy, updated him on our trip and geared up for a solid weekend of sports. Will even managed to get free playoff tickets to a WNBA game (they were being given away). We briefly pondered ending our trip then and there and devoting ourselves completely to following the WNBA playoffs. However, we resisted the temptation and remained devoted to the task at hand. After a beer we headed out to get some lunch. We strolled down to Greek town (recommended by the locals that were not living out of shopping carts) and to our surprise it was a rather cool area. We enjoyed some gyros, a beer and a waitress who was watching soap operas (and also gave Billy a free beer… he rubbed it in) and then headed back to make sure our car had not been towed/stolen. Granted, he/she that needs to steal the prizm probably needs it more than we do, but we are nonetheless devoted to our secret lover/automobile. All was well and we decided to hit another bar before the game. Along the way we met “Shorty” who was runnin’ a “business” in the area. We all assumed it involved a certain flammable rock, but as it turned out he was a sort of parking lot czar. Will tried to thank him for his insistence that he’d “look after” our car with the pre-mentioned WNBA tickets, but he assured us that they were in no short supply.
After bidding adieu to shorty, we headed down to a bar across from the ballpark. We had a beer and as the game approached, Will headed out to do some work. (Note: prior to leaving he decided to attempt to auction off our table at the bar, as it was rather packed. Ultimately it was unsuccessful, but indicative of the character of our beloved provider of tickets.)
Will acquired tickets (naturally) and Billy and Todd met up with him. Upon entering, we soon realized that the desolate city of Detroit makes up for its lack of prosperity with vigorously enforced ticket verification. After telling Billy so frequently about our abilities to acquire seats outside our price range, we hit a wall at the Tigers game. The ushers kicked us out of our seats three different times (the third time the usher mentioned that it was at least “the third time” we had been caught… Todd stated that it might have been the fourth and proceeded to walk by him in disgust). Billy, being of a more rational mind, noted that our disgust at this treatment was somewhat ridiculous being that we were sneaking into seats that weren’t ours and hadn’t paid for entry to begin with. He was right in principle, and yet so wrong in reality… we play by a different set of rules. Additionally, this is Detroit; they should be glad that anyone dared to enter their crumbling empire of a city and not act as though this is Yankee Stadium… disgraceful. But, again, I digress. Ultimately we settled on seats behind home plate and took in the game.
After a Detroit loss to the Blue Jays, we briefly took in the postgame fireworks and headed to our couchsurfing host (yes, we had convinced Billy, without effort, to be a part of the courchsurfing saga). We arrived at our host’s, chatted briefly and hit the hay. As the morning arose we cleaned up, listened to our host complain about her city and headed on our way to Ann Arbor for the Notre Dame v. Michigan football game.
We arrived in Ann Arbor, fought through the ridiculous traffic and found some parking. We tailgated for about an hour, chatted with our neighbors (who were from Chicago and when asking Billy where in the city he was from, they insisted he explain it by mentioning “which parish”… South Side Irish Catholicism at its finest). We got some beers in us, Billy took a few quiet minutes to pray for his Irish and we made our way towards The Big House. Just before leaving, Will bought some tickets for the two of us (Billy having already bought one for himself online, not fully understanding the nature of Business Will) for $30 a piece. Being that the tickets’ face value was $65 we figured that this was our best bet at one of the biggest college football games of the year, which was completely sold out. Todd was willing to settle for this, Will was not…
As we strolled to the stadium amidst the epic mass of yellow shirts (the game’s theme was “Maize Out:” Michigan’s colors being blue and maize yellow) Will continued to look for tickets. Billy was in awe and Todd was simply used to it. To everyone’s surprise, one of Will’s requests for “two” was answered. An elderly Wolverines fan said he had a couple for sale. Will began telling him about our story and about 30 seconds into the explanation a big grin came onto the man’s face and he handed the tickets over to Will. “Just take them,” he said. Beautiful, beautiful words. These tickets, dear readers, were no ordinary tickets, however. No, no, they were on the 50 yard line. Oh yes. Will had acquired tickets that could have reasonably been scalped for $100 a pop for nothing. But what about the other tickets? Not to worry; Will promptly sold those for face value. So yes, if you’re doing the Math, the two of us walked into the Big House for the biggest game of the season with two free tickets on the 50 and $70 in pocket. Legendary.
We walked onto the grounds of the largest stadium in the country and were in complete awe. As there was no possibility for the three of us to sneak into three seats open together, we had to split up. Billy was fine with this as he was already in the zone, hoping for an Irish victory. Our seats were incredible. 63 rows back from the field, dead center on the 50. Wow. As it turned out, the couple sitting next to us had previously sold our tickets to the guy who gave them to us for free. “How’d you get these tickets?” the man asked. “Some guy gave ‘em to us,” we replied. “Huh, these are my seats and I sold those tickets to him at face value… wonder why he gave ‘em away?” he said. “Yeah, well, never look a gift horse in the mouth,” we replied. “Good enough for me!” our neighbor said. Our luck is border-line disgusting.
The game was absolutely incredible. We both agreed that this was one of the most incredible sporting events that either of has had attended. The crowd was a capacity 110,257 large and every single one of them (including us) was screaming the entire time. Unbelievable. As the teams rolled out onto the field the stadium shook. The two giant marching bands blared their respective fight songs and the stadium (which housed enough people to comprise 1/10th of the state of Montana’s population) pulsated; it was utterly incredible. The game was amazing. A total shoot out which came down to the wire. As Will told our new friend in the stands “It was worth every penny we spent.” Michigan marched down the field and scored a go-ahead touchdown with 11 ticks left on the clock. It was total pandemonium.
We departed the stadium amidst the still screaming fans, met up with Billy (who was, needless to say, none to pleased with the game’s outcome) and made our way to the car in a state of complete awe at what we had just witnessed. There is nothing like the passion you see at these big time college football games (even if both teams haven’t been good for 100 years, to quote our LSU devotee friend).
We hit the road back to Chicago, opting to get a little start on the long leg of travel we had before us. We had only three driving days to get from the Windy City to San Diego so a little less distance on top of that would help. We drove through the night and arrived at Billy’s at about 1 a.m. We immediately crashed.
Todd was awoken by Billy’s son Burke who told him all about his recent trip to Bozeman. Upon hearing that he had gone to the Pickle Barrel (a local eatery of note in Bozeman), Todd was filled with pride and a little jealousy. We had some coffee, briefly chatted with Billy, his wife Maggie and Burke, but eventually had to heed the call of the road. Bidding Billy adieu (and naturally mentioning that he had a job to get back too… he wasn’t too impressed with our humor) we began the long hall towards Oklahoma City. Yes, Todd was about to willingly re-enter this city… he’s not a quick learner.
We drove ALL day through the heartland, saw lots of cornfields and finally arrived in OKC after dark. Our friend Jake (whose wedding we recently attended) awaited us and we stayed up with him telling him about our trials and tribulations over some beers and cigars. Life was good. We got some much needed sleep and once again hit the road early in the morning. Our next destination was Flagstaff, AZ so we had another 12 hour day of driving ahead of us; good god.
The drive was quite interesting. The bulk of Oklahoma, Northern Texas and New Mexico was nothing to write home about. However, once we neared the boarder of Arizona the land became very beautiful. We finally arrived at our destination and were greeted by our host, Kris Hawkinson, a friend from Bozeman High and the University of Montana. The three of us strolled briefly around downtown Flagstaff, which seemed very cool and got a few drinks at a local watering hole. We told her about our trip and she told us about what she’d been up to and had a good time. We headed back and again gratefully took some rest.
The next day we were off to San Diego and headed out after getting some great Mexican food for breakfast. We once again drove for several hours through some extremely scenic country and finally arrived in Southern California. En route Will had discovered that his Uncle Guy was in San Diego for a business conference and was gracious enough to invite us to stay with him. We had no idea what was in store for us. More to come…
Todd & Will
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