Oh Canada and Motown Madness - Brewers vs Tigers in Detroit

As a kid you used to look forward to the last day of school/first day of summer, Christmas morning and your birthday. As a big kid, I still look forward to those days but the one day that ranks right up there is the day when the Milwaukee Brewers release their schedule for the next season. Because on that day I start brainstorming ideas of where I travel on the road to see my Brewers play. I can always count on going up to Minneapolis some weekend, but every year a destination pops up that allows me to travel some place that I've never been before. In 2009, Aaron, Melissa and I had planned a trip to Detroit to see the Brewers play the Tigers in an interleague matchup. Not only would it be my first time to Motor City, but it would also be my first time to Canada. Windsor, Canada is right across the river from Detroit, and it is one of Aaron's favorite cities to visit. On Friday June 19 I had no idea what kind of Canadian Craziness and Motown Madness I was getting into.

We got a bit of a late start Friday morning, which already put us in jeopardy of arriving late to the 7pm Eastern time game start. It's already a 6 hour drive, plus you loose an hour thanks to the time change. But all hope was lost when we got to Chicago, which should have been expected. Between the ridiculous traffic at all hours, the asshole people, and the futility of it's sports teams, Chicago is pretty hopeless already. I-94 East was at a standstill (in retrospect we should have avoided it altogether in the first place) so we reprogrammed the GPS to take us on side streets, only to find that they were all flooded! So as we cursed out loud and asked God to smite Chicago from the Earth, we flew the puddles with reckless abandon and had a blast, despite the fact that we in the worst city in the entire World.

We lost a lot of time due to traffic and flooding, but we were still scheduled to get there right at game time. All that changed when we got into a minor fender bender. This old lady in the oncoming traffic lane had trouble stopping and hit us head on.

This is the old lady. She was really a sweet heart, and luckily no one was injured. She bounced off a couple of cars before hitting us, which meant little to no damage to our car. It was like she was coming to a stop, and tried to hit the brakes but hit the gas instead. We had to make sure everyone was ok (there was also a UPS truck and another woman's car involved) and as we talked with her and waited for the police to arrive, we looked at the time and realized there was no way we would make it to Detroit in time for the game tonight. We talked with her, and it was kind of sad to hear her story. She was like 88, but mentally with it. Her son didn't want her to drive, but she insisted on doing it because she was going batty hanging out in the assisted living center. She said all her friends were dead, and she hated the home she lived in. The only time that she felt like she wasn't trapped was when she'd take the car out and escape her situation. After this accident, she said she knew her son would take away her license and her car, and she was really upset about it. I felt really bad for her, but thought it was the right idea. This time nobody was hurt and only minor car damage was done, but next time it could be a lot worse. After talking with the police and completing the accident report, we continued on our way. And more than other times before, this time I was extremely happy to be leaving Chicago.

As you can see here, there is no traffic on I-94 East. Apparently it was flooded and they were turning everyone around and rerouting them onto I-94 West. And there was no mention of this on the radio, which really pissed me off because we didn't see it coming.