Detroit Rock City

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(Enna blogs the hilarious over at Kosher Pork Chops. She is a fellow Midwesterner, a bride to be and one of my favorite people that I´ve never met)

Since Sarah is on the road travelling, I figured I would keep with the travelling theme and write a story about a trip I once took to Detroit.

Now, I want to stop and preface that Detroit is a wonderful old city, and if you live there, I do not mean to offend you. This is just my experience with the city. It can be best summed up this way: You know how when you're younger you eat something, say a type of candy, until you throw up, and then henceforth you cannot stand the smell of that candy? Detroit is that candy for me.

My friend Leah's cousin was getting married in Detroit, and both Leah and my older brother were in the wedding party. I not the kind of girl who just lets a road trip opportunity to pass her by, so I demanded that I be allowed to go with. My mother, thinking there is no possible way we could all get in trouble on a trip that would only last about 48 hours, allowed me to go. We lived on the south side of Chicago at the time, it was only going to be a five hour drive to Detroit at most. We loaded up on junk food, and set out at 5 a.m. for Detroit.

We get to Detroit at just before 10 a.m., and checked into our hotel. We stayed at a budget hotel which will remain nameless for obvious reasons that are about to become apparent. My brother and Leah had to go to the rehearsal luncheon, so I had the hotel room to myself. I decide to do my favorite activity in the whole world: I took a nap. Now, I went to sleep perfectly healthy. What I woke up with was the worst case of the flu I have ever experienced in my whole life. My brother and Leah came back to the hotel to hear me vomiting harder than they had ever heard anyone in their lives. And at the time - they were freshmen in college, so that's saying something.

Leah was very sympathetic, my brother, however, thought that I had somehow gotten drunk in the hotel room while they were not there. And therefore, was reluctant to call my parents. Leah put me back into bed, at which point she discovered that the bed I was sleeping in was covered in dried pee and God knows what else. She promptly demanded that we be moved to a clean new hotel room. The hotel complied, but by that point, it was way too late for me. I was seriously ill.

I went back to sleep in our new hotel room, after Leah literally went all CSI in the room to make 100% certain that it actually WAS clean. My fever was spiking to the point that Leah busted out the phone book to see where the nearest available hospital was. She managed to get my fever down to the point that they felt safe to leave me in the hotel room alone while they went to the wedding. They said they would be stopping by a pharmacy to get me more medication on the way home.

The funny thing about hotels is they like to say they have HBO or Showtime. They advertise that fact on their billboards next to the freeways. The funny thing about THIS hotel was Showtime was ALL they had. It was the only channel on the TV. The only thing Showtime was showing, for two straight days, was Fight Club. I would randomly wake up and see a different part of the movie every time. I was so sick, that when I woke up and started seeing the beginning of the movie AGAIN, I thought I was so sick I was going back in time. It was at this point I decide to call my mother.

My mother told me to alternate hot and cold compressed on my face to clear up my sinuses, and it worked. I felt like a genius! I walked around the hotel room feeling smarter than I ever had in my entire life. She also told to me STOP drinking the water that came out of the hotel tap. Little known fact: Montezuma's Revenge isn't just in Mexico. Any time Americans go to ANY part of the world, even parts in the own country, they shouldn't drink the water. We are used to very different water. You wouldn't think there was a big difference between Detroit's water and Chicago's, but my mother was erring on the side of caution.

Leah and my brother get back to the hotel room, without any medication. They tried to find a 24-hour pharmacy. They apparently drove into the not-so-nice parts of Detroit trying to find one, and were almost carjacked. They decided to scrap the plan, and go back to the hotel, thinking that I could make it until the next morning when we drove back to Chicago. Leah and my brother walked into the room to see me pressing my face up to the TV screaming "I'm smarter than YOU Ed Norton! I can BREATHE!" And decided that perhaps we should leave earlier than originally planned.

We got on the road. My brother realized that we should stop and get me something to eat, something safe on my stomach. So, we pull into the nearest Krispy Kreme to get me a doughnut. While at Krispy Kreme, I feel the need to throw up YET AGAIN.

So, off to the bathroom I went. In the process of emptying my stomach for the fifty-billionth time, my glasses manage to fall off my face and into the toilet. Leah comes into the washroom, looks down, sees why I am crying, and asks me how much my glasses cost. I replied $127. She quickly flushes the toilet, saying that in no way is reaching in the toilet and fishing through vomit is worth $127.

We get on the road, and it takes us a little over eight hours to get home, due to me demanding that we pull over frequently. Now, you're probably thinking this was a terrible trip and what a horrible experience I had to go through. But there's one more victim in this story:
Leah's father.

See, it was his credit card that was used to pay for the hotel room. It was also his credit card that was used to pay for the six hours of long distance phone calls I made to my mother. Needless to say, Leah was reluctant to take me on any more road trips after that.