FUN IN DETROIT

Just got back from a couple days on business in Detroit. Technically I was in Southfield, one of the suburban communities that everybody fled to when downtown Detroit went to shit. For the most part it was uneventful but I need to share a story from Sunday night.

We arrived late, roughly midnight and about 3 hours later then planned thanks to one of my co-workers forgetting her passport and having to return home. We had reservations at your typical business travel hotel. One of those places that is very nice and clean but no restaurant, no room service, no pool, etc. Purely caters to business travellers.

The thing was despite having a GPS and printouts from Google Maps, we couldn't find the place to save our life. Based on both the GPS and the maps we were in the right place but no hotel. Lots of other hotels all around but not ours. We ended up stopping at a gas station for directions. The guy inside was an idiot, telling us to drive up to 12 mile and blah blah. I knew we were close to the hotel, and I knew 12 mile was way too far. We were about to give up when a guy pulled in to buy gas.

I walked over and as I approached yelled out. Hey, do you know how to get to blah blah blah.... This was no ordinary guy. Brand new 2009 Jaguar with 20" spinner rims, decked head to toe in Sean John gear and baked out of his mind. He could barely keep his eyes open. Instead of blowing me off he was like "oh yea... yea... that is right by my place... follow me...."

So you are probably thinking that following a guy we just met, who was likely driving a car purchased with drug money, down a street where we had no idea where we were going was probably a bad idea. We thought so as well, but he seemed genuine. I can't place it. Just a feeling. He drove us right to the lobby entrance of a beautiful hotel, waved, and sped off. Problem was, it wasn't our hotel. It has a similar name, but it still was not ours.

We eventually found our hotel. The map had it on the wrong side of the freeway. We had driven within 100 meters of it twice during the 45 minutes we drove around in circles. It was around a tight corner and you couldn't see the sign from the street or the highway. We all sent emails to our corporate travel dept. and asked that they never book anybody in this hotel again.