Loaded up the car on Friday afternoon and set sail on a three-day road trip extravaganza destined for Michigan. Piled in two Chicago-based friends and another splitting time between Minneapolis and Boston for a weekend of baseball, buddies, banter and beers.

Sounds like a pretty good time right?

Well, it was a pretty good time, but not a bit how we imagined it.

We rolled into Ann Arbor, Michigan at about 10:30 Eastern on Friday night after fighting the weekend rush-hour traffic out of the City and through Indiana. We checked into our $50 Red Roof Inn, which should be renamed, "Well, at least it's got a Roof Inn," and procured a 5-mile cab ride to the U of Michigan bar district for a night on the town.

After arriving to the Dinkytown on Drugs and wading through the streets flooded with drunken students, we bypassed roughly 10 bars with out-the-door lines and settled on the Little Brown Jug -- in which we'd still have to wait in line, albeit for only 5 minutes.

Also, let it be known that the bar is named after a century-old American College Football rivalry between U. Michigan and the real U of M, my alma-mater The University of Minnesota. Exciting stuff! The best part --- I rolled through the bar for three hours donning a wonderful maroon and gold Minnesota Golden Gopher baseball cap and heard not one word from a Michigan fan... and we were essentially on campus. Yeah --- you can sure fill a 100,000-seat football stadium with rich people from the greater Ann Arbor area, but it's tough to find a little school spirit on campus. That validates my U of M decision a bit, I guess.

I walked up to the bar to order the inaugural round of beers, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was charged a total of $12. Now, originally coming from a small town in Western Minnesota, I would have thrown up in my mouth had I have been charged 12 whole dollars for four drinks -- "That's appaling,!" I would have thought.

But not now. Not in these days of extorsion and heavy inflation in the heart of Chicago. Instead, it came out more like "Hey, what a great goddamn deal! Keep 'em coming, Jack!"

A few beers later and a 'where-the-hell-did-you-come-from' bar time, and we were eating a $1 slice of pizza and cabbing back to the, "Well, at least it has a Roof Inn," to hit the sack for the planned 9 a.m. departure to Detroit, which from now on I shall refer to only as Detroilet (incidentally and appropriately named by my friend Luke.)

Upon awakening at 8 a.m., I pulled the shades hoping to see a beautiful and sunny day...

...

...

SNOW... WHAT??? SNOW? It's almost May! This isn't Northern Minnesota! SNOW? How in the hell are we going to watch a major league baseball game in the Snow?

Onward, we figured. It will soon let up, and we will be watching baseball regardless. No worries. We pressed on, and picked up another friend at the Detroit-area airport at about 10 a.m. and hit the expressway to the city. Still snowing... Dammit.

Upon exiting on the ramp that was to lead us to the city, we were all a little underprepared for what we were about to see. As my friend BSWAN noted later in an email: "I hope we bomb the shit out of the country that nuked Detroit - why wasn’t that on the news?"

Good question.

Now, we all knew Detroit to be the forgotten city of the Midwest. A city with three major sports teams and home (nearly home, I guess) to the original "Big Three" of the Auto Industry. We also knew of the racial tensions surrounding the 1967 Riots, and the supposed "Tough Guy" reputation the city owns.

But, we weren't prepared for HOW BAD it really was.

Each building we passed on the way to the Hilton downtown was in shambles. Beautiful brick homes, hollow from neglect. Bricks falling and broken out. No windows --- only some boarded by plywood, most others open to the elements. This wasn't just a bad part of town. It IS town. This IS Detroit. A Ghost Town. Pot holes, if you can call them that, bigger than a bus. In fact, to drive in Detroit, you've got to keep under 10 m.p.h. not to bottom out your car. You've got to move into the oncoming lane of traffic to navigate through half tar/half gravel streets. It's awful.

A terrible, terrible city.

Oh, and it's still snowing, by the way.

Finally, upon surviving the gauntlet of the disorganized and uncared-for city streets and hollowed-out, eerily vacant buildings, we pulled in to the Hotel. Nice place, strangely, and only three blocks from the state-of-the-art Comerica Park (home to the baseball Tigers) and Ford Field (home to the Motor City Kitties of professional football).

Around 11 a.m., we settle in a bit and watch a tad of the NFL draft -- hoping that the snow subsides and the game we drove 300 miles to see is still on.

12:30 p.m. Still snowing. Shit.

Call the stadium and get no answers. Call the ticket office --- still no answers.

What the hell, we figure.

We bundle up in long-underwear pants, thermal shirts, gloves, hats and fleece and head over to the field. It didn't look good when the only real ruckus was from the 45 Lion-jersey clad folks hobbling into Ford Field for the NFL draft party (could there be a more sad, depraved place than a Lions Draft Party? I'm not sure I'm prepared to answer that).

Still snowing. Now sideways. No game. Not a soul at the stadium. No ticket booths open. No signs alerting patrons of a delay or postponement. It's like the Tigers front office didn't think anyone would care... and from the looks of it, no one did. Except us.

Deflated, we headed over to the only decent-looking establishment within walking distance, the Hockey Town Cafe. This place shouldn't be called a Cafe. It's more of a hockey museum with freezer-burn-quality food and $4 beers. Bad food. Bad experience. Not recommended.

We managed to whittle away the remainder of Saturday (from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.) wandering vacant streets and into run-down watering holes in search of solace in a bottle. I guess we all had a little extra discretionary cash to spend with no game tickets or game refreshments to thin our wallets. Talked to some locals, drank some futuristic Michelob Light beers, engaged in some tobacco consumption and -- mostly -- complained.

Determined to cross the border after a few pops, we
regrouped at the hotel for some $2 hamburgers and prepared to head across the dreaded international border to CANADA. The 10-minute tunnel trip to Windsor was an interesting one, and upon emerging from under the Detroit River, it reminded me of crossing the borders from Juarez, Mexico to El Paso, Texas -- except this time, we couldn't have been more happy LEAVING the US, as opposed to re-entering.

And, by the way -- and don't let me forget --- it was still snowing.

Got gouged on prices at the bars using American cash and had a few Molson Canadians and a LaBatt's Blue.

After drowning our sorrows in the bottom of a bottle for an entire day, we had a wonderful four-hour drive staring us in the eye -- through the magical mystery of snow and freezing rain of barren, Hell-ridden Michigan.

You'd probably have to pay me to come back.

Three days. Two hotels. One snowstorm. Zero baseball. What a waste. At least I got to spend it with four free-wheeling friends who don't put a price on a good time. Thank God for that.

Good riddance, Detroit, we hardly knew ye.