It’s a warm morning in Portage, Indiana, and I’m back on the road heading east towards Detroit.  Just after eleven a.m. (so nice to sleep in today after nearly 1,000 miles of driving yesterday) and the scenery is billboards, powerlines, and a few scattered trees that don’t improve the landscape.  The speed limit is 55, but people are driving like they are trying to escape ravenous, brain-eating zombies.

There’s a sign for Valparaiso, a town I visited back on my trip to these parts in July of ’92.  Darcie (who I had met in Cancun on Spring Break) went to college there and she showed me around the campus, and we had pizza and went to the sand dunes where you could see the Chicago skyline in the distance.  Exit 26B, which I just passed, must have been the one we took.  Doesn’t seem like eleven years ago. 

Detroit is 240 miles away, and in the meantime, I must battle road work, deranged drivers, and dreary scenery.

I pass the Welcome to Michigan sign (the 12th state I’ve traversed on this trip), and with that greeting a 70-mph speed limit.  Why wasn’t it 70 in Indiana?  It’s actually worse when it’s lower and you don’t enforce it, because the law abiders (or ticket weary travelers like myself) get run down by the crazies topping a hundred.  There’s an adult superstore coming up as well as a wine resort, and not too far away is the Waffle House (there’s a joke there somewhere that I don’t have now). 

This road rivals the 90 in Minnesota for the bumpiest.  Apparently they’re trying to patch it up because of the warnings posted: “Kill a Highway Worker 15 years, $7,000”.  I don’t see any workers, but I see a lot of motorists who seem intent on killing somebody.  Every five years they should make you sign something declaring you won’t drive like an asshole.

I’m now in Kellogg, Cereal City U.S.A, with the Kalamazoo River providing some much needed blue to this bleak scenery.  The clock strikes (there’s no striking, to tell the truth, it’s not that dramatic) 1 p.m. with farmland on both sides of the road and it (literally) smells like shit. The traffic has thinned a little since the Lansing/94 split as I look at the haystacks and a bevy of roadkill.

At 2 p.m. I reach the Ann Arbor city limits and the road is slick in this mist.  I’m on the 23 heading to Flint (home of Michael Moore), and I witness the grossest, most disgusting, gut churning roadkill I’ve ever seen in my life. I will not even attempt to describe it, I only want to banish that image forever from my cranium.

Next is east on M59 and little farms with a banner for “Sparks in The Park, Always the Sunday Before July 4th”, and I pass a place called the Gun Barn.  When I enter White Lake, my destination for the day, I’m greeted by another fresh road kill I want to unsee (what is happening in this place?!?), and I glance at the directions I scribbled down at Wall Mart.  Is that my penmanship or a 12-year-old child’s?  Tough to decipher, and I’m pretty sure it says I take a left on Croutty, and there should be a cemetery on my right.  Bill’s information and my chicken scratch is correct, and as I get closer I see my great friend in the driveway.

Has it really been five years since we’ve seen each other? 

On my way out to L.A. to move there in 1998 I met him in San Antonio where he was living then.  We had a fun night hanging on the River Walk, and I recall a great Mexican dinner, lots of drinks, and a hot and humid evening. Possibly I saw Bill in Lynn, MA at some point over the last half decade, but sadly, I don’t think so, While it’s a cliché, where does the damn time go?

I’m so happy this is a short day of driving.  I can’t wait to park this piece of shit car and to get out and explore places on foot.  Tonight we’re supposed to go into downtown Detroit to the casinos, and then tomorrow will be the Tiger’s game. While I love the road, I need this detour.

Monday, June 30th, 2003

Bill lives in the basement of this nice house on the lake here, and I could have stayed on his couch.  But since he’s got cats and Tim (his friend who owns the house) and his wife have two dogs, I chose to snooze in my car in my sleeping bag in the back of the wagon.  With the windows down, my legs completely stretched out, and the smell of the water and the trees and the soft breeze, I probably had my best night’s rest of this trip.  I was worried about mosquitos, but somehow they stayed away. 

Today Bill’s going to be picking up a friend of his and then we’re going to go visit the campus at Michigan State (Ann Arbor) and head on into Detroit for a Tiger’s game. I think he said her name is Amy. 

Okay, I need to get into Bill’s apartment asap to use the bathroom.  I’ll also take a shower and he said he would be cooking breakfast (my friend was always a great cook so I’m sure it will be tasty!).  Looking forward to a fun day exploring a place I’ve never seen. 

. . . Later on that evening

Back in my car after using the bathroom in Bill’s apartment and I’m fairly drunk.  The Tigers beat Toronto, and the park was a knockout.  You have all the old buildings making up the skyline as a background over the outfield, and even though it’s only a few years old, Comerica Park has the feel of an old-timey place. I loved it.

I’m so glad that the trend has turned in this direction with new ballparks. Goodbye to the shitty, bland-as-shit mass-produced ones from the 60s and 70s like in Minnesota, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. I will celebrate when all those places get imploded and new ones like Detroit and Baltimore rise in their place.     

Before the game we had beers at a cool local restaurant/bar called the Elwood Grill.  Then a few beers at the game (okay, maybe four . . . or was it six?), and it was a hotdog for dinner.  Seeing a professional baseball game at a new stadium when it’s 75 degrees in the twilight of summer, truly magical.  I didn’t care who won or lost and just enjoyed the shit out of the night.

That’s what it’s all about, just enjoying the moment.  A beer, a dog, and baseball played in a cathedral-esque park.  It’s rare when you have that lucidity to stop and recognize how lucky you are to be someplace.  Travel does that.

Before the game we had lunch in Ann Arbor on campus.  Cool college town with old brick buildings and there was that historic archway we walked under.  We ate at a place called Potbellies, enjoying tasty sandwiches. 

The night before, on the day I arrived, we drove into downtown Detroit to a place called Greektown where there’s a casino.  We ate an authentic Greek restaurant that was delicious (can’t remember the name), and then visited the Greektown Casino and to MGM.  I didn’t have sufficient funds to risk gambling, so it was all just window shopping.

I never knew there was big time casino gambling in Detroit.  I guess it’s probably to attract more people downtown, and Downtown Detroit needs all the help it can get. It’s unfortunate, you got these beautiful old brick buildings, turn of the century ones, and some art deco masterpieces, but many looked deserted. 

There’s a weird, post-apocalyptic feel to the place.  When we came off the freeway, we took the wrong exit and had to go down a few streets and circle back to the stadium.  Clearly there had been fires, and many buildings were boarded up. It looks like it was bombed.

But there’s so much potential to the city.  Whether it’s automobiles or other types of manufacturing, urban deterioration has happened in a lot of American cities when their main industry goes away. It’s sad, but this is the 21st Century reality.  That being said, you hope, like many other places, they adapt, find something else.

Detroit hasn’t quite yet, but I’m sending lots of positive ions they will.  The downtown architecture is really cool, but it needs restoration. The Chrysler Building (I’m pretty sure that’s what it was), is one of the nicest there, a tall, old, art deco gem, and it was closed and boarded up.  It would be like seeing the old Hancock Building in Boston shuttered with graffiti on it, smashed windows.  That’s unthinkable. 

Maybe five years from now, what’s that . . . 2008?, Detroit will return to being a great city.  I enjoyed my time here.  I’m rooting for it to succeed.

I also loved having a day and a half of staying in one area and parking my vehicle.  But strange to think this trip is almost finished.  This is the penultimate day, and tomorrow I have a long road ahead. But sadly I’ll be back at my parents’ place in Lynn, Massachusetts by nightfall.  I could break up the day and stay at a hotel somewhere along the road, but I’ve been hemorrhaging money on this journey and I really can’t afford it. 

I plan to drive through Canada, stop at Niagara Falls, and drop back into the U.S.  I’ll keep on going to the house where I grew up on Wyman Street.  Probably thirteen or fourteen-hours total with the stops . . . holy schinkeys!  I’ll need lots of coffee.

But for now, let’s hope the mosquitoes stay away like they did last night with this nice breeze over the lake.  My last night on the road. I had been looking forward to this trip for so long, and come tomorrow evening it will be part of my past.