The Port Huron Statement...Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing...Old Chub...

Another day on the road. Just as I was about to turn onto the entry for 80West at about 8:45 AM, I hit random play on the iPod and up came "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" by Stevie Wonder.  That is one of those songs that you hear later in Life at some point and it just bowls you over, how fucking awesome it is, and you had never realized it till then.  This happened to me some years ago now, but I still feel it today.  Fitting also that it began my journey to Detroit, since Stevie was from there putting out his records on the Tamla Motown Label!

Saw the divide between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi watersheds, or rather, saw the sign indicating it.  Saw a lot of terrifyingly flat land through Ohio.  Everything about everything there was about agriculture, and I wondered how much of it was Devil-dealt by Monsanto.  When I drove past Toledo on the Highway, I hit the Westernmost point I've ever been to in this Country.  Got on 280 North, then 75, and that's when the sights started to change and the road began to remind me of "The Metal Muncher" back home. (I once was on Jury Duty in New Haven and heard a State Trooper say how he and his cohorts at the barracks call that section of I95 between New Haven and Stamford "The Metal Muncher" because of all the accidents.) Not being a smart phone user, and unable to look at my iPad as I got into the heavy Detroit traffic, I overshot my exit for Warren, Michigan, where I am now, by a long way....

I had gotten off an exit to get my bearings, and couldn't.  I didn't know where the Hell I was.  Everything out here is Gigantic.  Kept looking East to see if I could see a Great Lake, but they were obscured by giant auto plants apparently.  I asked a guy in a parking lot-suppose I should have found out exactly where I was, because he told me continue North, and there would be signs for Warren, but what he really meant, maybe without knowing it, was that I should've gone South, and that there would 'nt be signs!  So I went North a good half hour, thinking that this area was so huge I'd find it eventually.  At last I stopped at a rest area and got straightened out by some locals with a smart phone, headed back South to find I696, where I needed to be-the exit for Port Huron.

Arriving late, but not last, of our twenty van force, to the hotel, within a minute of entering the lobby there was a beer in my hand.  Checked in, threw my bags in my room and off I went with a couple of my co-workers. There is an Irish pub called Malone's across Van Dyke.  I had two pints of  Old Chub Scotch Ale that did me right, and I can normally handle much more. Good, strong beer after the long haul was life-affirming.

Somehow I woke up early.  Today we go to work . Yet another Winter storm should arrive today, if you can believe it, on March 12th, so today will assuredly be an adventure-what I signed up for...