Dear Blog Part 2

Dear Blog,
I really didn't sleep too badly at all, despite my negative attitude and the incumbent flaws of the Holiday Inn Express on the shoulder of I94 at Jake Brake Lane. 5:30 came around right when I expected it to and, as per usual, I was already stirring in anticipation of the morning. My shower was hot, there was a free USA Today under my door and I was up and out in plenty of time.
Of course, it wasn't all perfect. Whatever that brown meat was that I put on my English muffin was not sausage. I understand sausage in and of itself is a pretty liberal term, not meant to denote any specific ingredients or processes, but calling this stuff sausage was taking it all too far.
It is easy to see from looking at me that I don't often skip a meal. I am nearly as indiscriminate as a shark. One day, when the coroner is performing a post mortem on my beautiful body, he may find a license plate, a tin can, or $1.36 in coins I ate on a dare as a kid. Ok, a college kid.
When you eat like I do, (sort of more of a constant high-velocity vacuum process rather than actual eating as humans define it), some chaff is bound to find its way in. This is why I don't chew and just keep my throat open.
This so-called sausage tasted like nothing I have ever had before and never want to have again. Counter to history's teachings, the young lady attending to the breakfast bar area was not festooned with tattoos and piercings and did not smell like she rolled in her car's ashtray to minimize the smell of the methamphetamine she smoked on the way to work. She was an attractive, if not a little bookish looking college coed. I assumed from her demeanor she was working through school. We made pleasant chit chat as I tried to hide my sausage with the USA Today so she wouldn't be offended. For all I know, it was her mother's secret recipe.
Yes, I did just say "hide my sausage". Grow up, I meant it literally.
The first meeting by Willow Run Airport was a whirling dervish. See, I am putting a package together, (along with every other building service contractor in the western hemisphere), for a large, multinational conglomerate that services many industries from real-estate to automotive tier 1 design and manufacture. I don't want to say who it is, but it rhymes with Cohnson Jontrols. I have now seen 9 of their sites in the last week and have 14 or so more to go between this week and the next. The Willow Run site is their corporate hanger. For their planes. Their jet planes. Their big, shiny, beautiful, sleek, powerful, jet planes - Parked on an epoxy floor so white and reflective it was like a whole upside down universe existed beneath your feet. I had a hard time concentrating, as those of you who know me, know I love airplanes.
The rest of the sites weren't so exciting. Except for the Highland Park facility. Highland Park is the city in which the great Henry Ford built his moving assembly line. For decades, the facility pumped out Model T after Model T making the Ford family rich, thereby sealing the doom of the Detroit Lions for many, many, many, agonizing seasons to come.
Nothing good has happened in Highland Park since. Much ink is spilt about places like Highland Park. Literally most of the houses are burnt out and in a state of collapse. Most of the people who live there do so out of stubbornness and habit or drug induced confusion. It's a scary place; the embodiment of blight and a failed social system that relies on promises no one can keep made to people unwilling or unable to comport themselves as productive members of society. You do not stop in Highland Park. You do not leave the main drag of Highland Park. If you do, that hard to define feeling you are having is more than likely blood rolling down your side as you lay in the street watching a kindergartener drive away in your car. It's kind of like the carnival.

Once ensconced in the facility, there is an eerie sense of calm provided, no doubt by the towers replete with armed guns and the razor wire. It's like a reverse prison where the people inside are trying desperately to remove themselves from society. It was the end of the first shift when we were there and it seemed like even though they were free to go, people just sort of lingered and chatted. Ostensibly, this is because they are a tight-knit group, but in real life, it's because they are afraid to leave. One guy in a rusted hulk of a Chevy van left all this behind and quickly drove out of the gates, which seemed to break up the gathered mass and cause them to race to their cars.

I thought this odd until I remembered the movie "The Road Warrior" where Mad Max's plan to escape from the petrol refinery was to send out a decoy to lure the bad guys away. I slowly began to understand what was happening. The other gazelles had identified the weakest of the herd and they were going to exploit that advantage to the utmost.

And now I am back at friends Dave's and Greg's house, leaving behind the terror of the city. I suppose I had better get some spreadsheets done to avoid sleepless nights next week. Or maybe I should take a nap, or better yet, have an early drink to calm my frazzled nerves. Either way, I am glad to be in familiar territory and look forward to going home tomorrow where the only noises that keep me awake are my loved ones snoring, which at the end of the day just serves to remind me that we are all home, safe, together. And that ain't so bad.