Detroit 2001

Nick and Jeremy's Excrement Adventure

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Poo

Why I Now Collect Stamps

AHH, THE MIRACLE OF THE INTERNET. Jeremy Wilson and myself, Nick Angel made a deal with Clay Harrell via e-mail to buy 5 pinball machines that he had imported from Europe. It seemed like a pretty good deal at the time and he was only a few hours away. Just a quick drive to Michigan and back and we'll have some new games! The following is my travelogue of our simple uneventful trip.

Click on any image to engorge!

We hit the road! It's about 8am on Saturday March 24 2001 when we leave Toronto and we're hoping to be back around 6pm. It's a 4 hour drive to Clay's house which is just outside Ann Arbor, MI. The weather is bad, seems to get worse the closer we got to the USA (tm)

Jeremy eerily tenses up. I think he sensed that this would be a horrible, horrible ordeal. Even though he brought his van to Goodyear for service the day before and all should be well, he knows that something is wrong. Look how tightly he grips the wheel.

An empty van ready to be filled to the brim with pinball machines! Very exciting and the anticipation was killing us!

Weather is getting worse. The wiper blades stop working suddenly as we get pelted with snow and slush. We should have turned around right there in Drumbo, Ontario.

Blue sky! We'll keep going!

The Ambassador bridge, your gateway to the USA (tm).

Crossing the bridge. Clay's house is only 1//2 hour over the border! We're stoked!

Remember what I said about turning around when we had the wiper problem? Well this was our second warning that we should have abandoned the journey.

Hmmm... I could have sworn there was oil in this engine a minute ago...

Well, here's some oil, van! Enjoy!

Boy this van sure is thirsty. What could it be doing with all that oil? What time is it anyway?

Almost there! Just another pit stop!

This is Clay's garage. Those are our pins on the right, ready to go!

Why rush back? Let's see if Clay will let us ogle his fantastic collection in his basement!

Oooo...

Ahhh..., notice the RRR prototype stuff on this Scared Stiff pinball.

EMs! Get yours today!

Here's Clay! He likes to show off and talk about how great he is. (that's a joke, son.)

Ready to load up!

We had to take the head off one game to fit all five pinballs in the van.

Thanks for the help and the free stuff, Clay! Later!

Not sure what this is a picture of? Look at the OIL pressure gauge on the upper left... which leads us to....

...this picture. Unfortunately, the batteries in the camera went dead at the van, but I'll explain how we got to this scene. THE VAN DIED (surprise!) and we were stuck on Hwy I-96 just 4 minutes from the border in Dearborn. This is where the nightmare begins. With a dying cel phone battery it took about TWO HOURS to get a tow truck to show. Two hours and it was COLD, man. We were not dressed for it. Finally, the tow truck showed and hauled the van onto a flatbed.
We wanted him to take us to the nearest U-Haul so we could rent a truck and a vehicle mover to take the van back to Toronto. Jeremy did not want to leave his van in the USA(tm) and he knew that it would be a big repair job. So he wanted to dump the van onto Goodyear's lap and let them deal with it. The tow company offered to tow us directly to Toronto for $600 USD, which was too much. The driver reluctantly took us to two dinky U-Haul places (that were about to close, by the way. It was about 7pm at this point!). They were both quite useless and had NOTHING to rent. The first word out of any of those clerks mouths was always "NO".

So, we decided to hit a motel and try again in the morning. The tow company tried to convince us that all the U-Hauls would be closed on Sunday (to get us to hire them for a $600 haul back to T.O.). Don't people do a lot of moving on the weekends?

SO, there we were, driving around town looking for a place to stay. We could find NO recognizable motels! Super8? Quality Inn?, Best Western? Hello? All we found were places with names like strip joints. We tried the Alexander, the Locomotion, The Wolfgang and a few others. They all had vacancies but no "overnights". wink wink. Great part of town. We finally found The Dorchester which had a big parking lot in the back to park the van. The driver dumped us off there, we got a room and settled in to watch Cool Hand Luke on FREE HBO. What a way to spend a Saturday night!

Luke says, "Please let them get back to Canada safely!"

"Fifty eggs? No one can eat fifty eggs!"

"I just ate fifty eggs. Where's the toilet?"

Here it is. I think that Luke really did use this toilet because it contained an unspeakable congealed corn-fed mass that seemed to reinvent itself every time we tried to flush. It took all my willpower to resist taking a picture of it. Believe me when I say that it's better in your imagination. Needless to say, we held it ALL in...

Good Morning! Welcome to Sunday and a cranky Jeremy getting nowhere talking to U-Haul offices. They were all open of course. Just useless. Jeremy finally talks to a clerk that says "Yeah, I've got a truck here and a vehicle dolly. No need to reserve, just come on over!" Hooray! Call a Taxi!

(Cue JAWS theme music)

Ahh, checkout. That will be $200 for all the local phone calls. Do we have to leave already? These two girls we discovered were the maids. I pity them with all my heart.

Nick and the van. I felt we would attract less attention if we blended in with the locals.

"Driver, take us to a clean toilet. QUICK!"

Here we are at the U-Haul! That funky clerk on the left is the one that Jeremy talked to on the phone. He didn't mention the 45 minute lineup. By the time we got to him he denied all knowledge of talking to us and of course had nothing to rent us. Total idiotic useless morons. Time? We gots lotsa time! Let's hang out here all day!
What do we do now? Let's call some other U-Hauls and see what they have! We borrowed funky's phone and called a bunch of stores and even talked to the U-Haul head office to see if they could locate a vehicle for us. No luck. Jeremy finally talks to a lady at a U-Haul that's about 20 miles away. She says that she's got everything, no need to reserve, just come on over! Hmmm... well, why not?

I wish I had a few more pictures at this point because some weird things happened. We went outside to see if we could hail a cab (which were plentiful an hour ago) with no luck. It was still really cold and We did manage to attract the attention of a police cruiser who pulled us over and thought we were looking for drugs or perhaps were were hustling! They made us take our hands out of our pockets ("But it's COLD, officer!") and detained us for a while. We told them our story and they did not really believe us, but got a good chuckle out of it. They would not drive us to the other U-Haul, however...

So, we went back to the first U-Haul and called a cab. Somewhere in this mess we wandered around town on foot looking for cel phone batteries and chargers (without luck, of course). The taxi arrived and we got in. I wanted to snap a few pics in there but then changed my mind when I got a look inside the car. There was a bullet hole in the meter (which was off). There was no taxi license or photo in the back. The driver was a BIG scary dude who wanted $60 up front to take us there. We talked him down to $40. He kept talking about getting arrested and oral sex and how much he hates cops. We were a little nervous. But, it was a long cab ride and he started to grow on us and soon we were all laughing and talking trash and comparing incarceration experiences. Jeremy, of course, had to fake it.

So we made it to this U-Haul which turned out to be a Super U-haul Mecca Central Location. There were literally ACRES of trucks and vehicles of all kinds just waiting to be rented. Why the f*ck didn't anyone suggest we go to this one in the first place? Tow truck guy? U-Haul clerk? U-Haul HEAD F*CKING OFFICE GUY? If someone had directed us to this place on Saturday we would have been home for SNL !
Sorry about that. Anyway, this picture is of the truck we rented.

And this is the vehicle mover. Hmm... seems a little small...

Of course, we had to wait for a couple of hours while they figured out how to rent us this stuff. I guess it's something new for them.

Here I am, waiting. Notice the humor has left me. I'll never laugh again.

On the road again. Notice Jeremy's calm and relaxed composure. Let's go get the van!

What's this a picture of? It's a store called "BIG LOTS" which I thought was funny. If you're a manager of a BIG LOTS franchise, I apologize.

Back at the Dorchester and our first attempt at getting the van on the vehicle dolly. The engine had enough juice to get within 18 INCHES of where it was supposed to sit! Then it would go no more. Arrgh!

Hey look, a van!

Here you can see how close we got.

Well, we still had the business card of that towing company. They came over right away!

Ok, so all we have to do is winch the van onto the dolly. Simple, right?

His professional opinion? THIS VAN WILL NOT FIT ON THIS DOLLY

The view from inside the tow truck.

Hmmm... Aren't the wheels supposed to be ON THE DOLLY?

This pictures shows the finished product. The van is on the dolly as securely as we could get it. Notice how is looks like it could pop off any any moment.

Here's a close-up. Notice that the tires are oozing off the dolly on the SIDES as well and the rear!

Thanks for all the help, dude! Say hi to your dentist for us!

On the road AGAIN. This is a picture of the same spot we broke down at the day before. Just before this we had the brainstorm to MOVE THE PINBALLS OUT OF THE VAN AND INTO THE U-HAUL TRUCK. Duhhh... Shouldn't we have done that before?

This picture illustrates how easily I am amused.

I wish we could read the sign on this burned up building . It was a company that manufactured fire protection equipment.

Hey, it was a nice day a minute ago! This was just after we crossed the border. We were very concerned about getting our stories straight abut explaining why were in the USA(tm), what's the U-Haul for and Hey! Where'd you get the van? But, in a strange twist of our bad luck streak, they waved us through with basically no questions!

Just when we thought we were home free on Hwy 401 we get stuck in a FOUR HOUR traffic Jam! Apparently a tractor trailer had flipped over and burst into flames. Of course it was on the Westbound lanes and we were going East! Four hours of waiting for people to gawk and rubberneck. Sadly, by the time we got to see it the fire was out. No gawking for us! People told me the next day that it was on the news!
Well that's it! We made it the rest of the way home without incident. We made it home at exactly midnight on Sunday. We dropped all 5 pinballs at my place and Jeremy parked the U-haul with the Dolly and van still attached on Goodyear's front lawn. Jeremy is right now negotiating with them to pay all the expenses because of their screw up.

But that's another story...

As a footnote to all this, Both Jeremy and I contracted some evil flu/cold from this trip that was really nasty and lasted a good THREE WEEKS! Blech! But at least we have pinballs...!

Home
1 of 1

	We hit the road! It's about 8am on Saturday March 24 2001 when we leave Toronto and we're hoping to be back around 6pm. It's a 4 hour drive to Clay's house which is just outside Ann Arbor, MI. The weather is bad, seems to get worse the closer we got to the USA (tm)
	Jeremy eerily tenses up. I think he sensed that this would be a horrible, horrible ordeal. Even though he brought his van to Goodyear for service the day before and all should be well, he knows that something is wrong. Look how tightly he grips the wheel.
	An empty van ready to be filled to the brim with pinball machines! Very exciting and the anticipation was killing us!
	Weather is getting worse. The wiper blades stop working suddenly as we get pelted with snow and slush. We should have turned around right there in Drumbo, Ontario.
	Blue sky! We'll keep going!
	The Ambassador bridge, your gateway to the USA (tm).
	Crossing the bridge. Clay's house is only 1//2 hour over the border! We're stoked!
	Remember what I said about turning around when we had the wiper problem? Well this was our second warning that we should have abandoned the journey.
	Hmmm... I could have sworn there was oil in this engine a minute ago...
	Well, here's some oil, van! Enjoy!
	Boy this van sure is thirsty. What could it be doing with all that oil? What time is it anyway?
	Almost there! Just another pit stop!
	This is Clay's garage. Those are our pins on the right, ready to go!
	Why rush back? Let's see if Clay will let us ogle his fantastic collection in his basement!
	Oooo...
	Ahhh..., notice the RRR prototype stuff on this Scared Stiff pinball.
	EMs! Get yours today!
	Here's Clay! He likes to show off and talk about how great he is. (that's a joke, son.)
	Ready to load up!
	We had to take the head off one game to fit all five pinballs in the van.
	Thanks for the help and the free stuff, Clay! Later!
	Not sure what this is a picture of? Look at the OIL pressure gauge on the upper left... which leads us to....
	...this picture. Unfortunately, the batteries in the camera went dead at the van, but I'll explain how we got to this scene. THE VAN DIED (surprise!) and we were stuck on Hwy I-96 just 4 minutes from the border in Dearborn. This is where the nightmare begins. With a dying cel phone battery it took about TWO HOURS to get a tow truck to show. Two hours and it was COLD, man. We were not dressed for it. Finally, the tow truck showed and hauled the van onto a flatbed. We wanted him to take us to the nearest U-Haul so we could rent a truck and a vehicle mover to take the van back to Toronto. Jeremy did not want to leave his van in the USA(tm) and he knew that it would be a big repair job. So he wanted to dump the van onto Goodyear's lap and let them deal with it. The tow company offered to tow us directly to Toronto for $600 USD, which was too much. The driver reluctantly took us to two dinky U-Haul places (that were about to close, by the way. It was about 7pm at this point!). They were both quite useless and had NOTHING to rent. The first word out of any of those clerks mouths was always "NO". So, we decided to hit a motel and try again in the morning. The tow company tried to convince us that all the U-Hauls would be closed on Sunday (to get us to hire them for a $600 haul back to T.O.). Don't people do a lot of moving on the weekends? SO, there we were, driving around town looking for a place to stay. We could find NO recognizable motels! Super8? Quality Inn?, Best Western? Hello? All we found were places with names like strip joints. We tried the Alexander, the Locomotion, The Wolfgang and a few others. They all had vacancies but no "overnights". wink wink. Great part of town. We finally found The Dorchester which had a big parking lot in the back to park the van. The driver dumped us off there, we got a room and settled in to watch Cool Hand Luke on FREE HBO. What a way to spend a Saturday night!
	Luke says, "Please let them get back to Canada safely!"
	"Fifty eggs? No one can eat fifty eggs!"
	"I just ate fifty eggs. Where's the toilet?"
	Here it is. I think that Luke really did use this toilet because it contained an unspeakable congealed corn-fed mass that seemed to reinvent itself every time we tried to flush. It took all my willpower to resist taking a picture of it. Believe me when I say that it's better in your imagination. Needless to say, we held it ALL in...
	Good Morning! Welcome to Sunday and a cranky Jeremy getting nowhere talking to U-Haul offices. They were all open of course. Just useless. Jeremy finally talks to a clerk that says "Yeah, I've got a truck here and a vehicle dolly. No need to reserve, just come on over!" Hooray! Call a Taxi!
	(Cue JAWS theme music)
	Ahh, checkout. That will be $200 for all the local phone calls. Do we have to leave already? These two girls we discovered were the maids. I pity them with all my heart.
	Nick and the van. I felt we would attract less attention if we blended in with the locals.
	"Driver, take us to a clean toilet. QUICK!"
	Here we are at the U-Haul! That funky clerk on the left is the one that Jeremy talked to on the phone. He didn't mention the 45 minute lineup. By the time we got to him he denied all knowledge of talking to us and of course had nothing to rent us. Total idiotic useless morons. Time? We gots lotsa time! Let's hang out here all day! What do we do now? Let's call some other U-Hauls and see what they have! We borrowed funky's phone and called a bunch of stores and even talked to the U-Haul head office to see if they could locate a vehicle for us. No luck. Jeremy finally talks to a lady at a U-Haul that's about 20 miles away. She says that she's got everything, no need to reserve, just come on over! Hmmm... well, why not? I wish I had a few more pictures at this point because some weird things happened. We went outside to see if we could hail a cab (which were plentiful an hour ago) with no luck. It was still really cold and We did manage to attract the attention of a police cruiser who pulled us over and thought we were looking for drugs or perhaps were were hustling! They made us take our hands out of our pockets ("But it's COLD, officer!") and detained us for a while. We told them our story and they did not really believe us, but got a good chuckle out of it. They would not drive us to the other U-Haul, however... So, we went back to the first U-Haul and called a cab. Somewhere in this mess we wandered around town on foot looking for cel phone batteries and chargers (without luck, of course). The taxi arrived and we got in. I wanted to snap a few pics in there but then changed my mind when I got a look inside the car. There was a bullet hole in the meter (which was off). There was no taxi license or photo in the back. The driver was a BIG scary dude who wanted $60 up front to take us there. We talked him down to $40. He kept talking about getting arrested and oral sex and how much he hates cops. We were a little nervous. But, it was a long cab ride and he started to grow on us and soon we were all laughing and talking trash and comparing incarceration experiences. Jeremy, of course, had to fake it.
	So we made it to this U-Haul which turned out to be a Super U-haul Mecca Central Location. There were literally ACRES of trucks and vehicles of all kinds just waiting to be rented. Why the fck didn't anyone suggest we go to this one in the first place? Tow truck guy? U-Haul clerk? U-Haul HEAD FCKING OFFICE GUY? If someone had directed us to this place on Saturday we would have been home for SNL ! Sorry about that. Anyway, this picture is of the truck we rented.
	And this is the vehicle mover. Hmm... seems a little small...
	Of course, we had to wait for a couple of hours while they figured out how to rent us this stuff. I guess it's something new for them.
	Here I am, waiting. Notice the humor has left me. I'll never laugh again.
	On the road again. Notice Jeremy's calm and relaxed composure. Let's go get the van!
	What's this a picture of? It's a store called "BIG LOTS" which I thought was funny. If you're a manager of a BIG LOTS franchise, I apologize.
	Back at the Dorchester and our first attempt at getting the van on the vehicle dolly. The engine had enough juice to get within 18 INCHES of where it was supposed to sit! Then it would go no more. Arrgh!
	Hey look, a van!
	Here you can see how close we got.
	Well, we still had the business card of that towing company. They came over right away!
	Ok, so all we have to do is winch the van onto the dolly. Simple, right?
	His professional opinion? THIS VAN WILL NOT FIT ON THIS DOLLY
	The view from inside the tow truck.
	Hmmm... Aren't the wheels supposed to be ON THE DOLLY?
	This pictures shows the finished product. The van is on the dolly as securely as we could get it. Notice how is looks like it could pop off any any moment.
	Here's a close-up. Notice that the tires are oozing off the dolly on the SIDES as well and the rear!
	Thanks for all the help, dude! Say hi to your dentist for us!
	On the road AGAIN. This is a picture of the same spot we broke down at the day before. Just before this we had the brainstorm to MOVE THE PINBALLS OUT OF THE VAN AND INTO THE U-HAUL TRUCK. Duhhh... Shouldn't we have done that before?
	This picture illustrates how easily I am amused.
	I wish we could read the sign on this burned up building . It was a company that manufactured fire protection equipment.
	Hey, it was a nice day a minute ago! This was just after we crossed the border. We were very concerned about getting our stories straight abut explaining why were in the USA(tm), what's the U-Haul for and Hey! Where'd you get the van? But, in a strange twist of our bad luck streak, they waved us through with basically no questions!
	Just when we thought we were home free on Hwy 401 we get stuck in a FOUR HOUR traffic Jam! Apparently a tractor trailer had flipped over and burst into flames. Of course it was on the Westbound lanes and we were going East! Four hours of waiting for people to gawk and rubberneck. Sadly, by the time we got to see it the fire was out. No gawking for us! People told me the next day that it was on the news! Well that's it! We made it the rest of the way home without incident. We made it home at exactly midnight on Sunday. We dropped all 5 pinballs at my place and Jeremy parked the U-haul with the Dolly and van still attached on Goodyear's front lawn. Jeremy is right now negotiating with them to pay all the expenses because of their screw up. But that's another story...