Larry: 36 Hours from Long Island to the 2006 NAIAS

Tom and I planned our trip to the 2006 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit weeks in advance. We made certain to get our airline tickets, show tickets, parking passes, hotel room and rental car. We accounted for everything we could possibly think of... except the weather.

This write-up explains how what should have been a few hour trip from Long Island to Detroit turned into an adventure I won't soon forget.

I get up every day at 5:45am to make sure to get to work by 7:30am. I live very near the Ocean on Long Island so in the winter it is very common to have fog in the morning. It generally lifts within a few hours and we go about our day. Fog around here generally offers less than 100 feet of visibility and as I travel north the fog isn't as dense or as low so you can see more. Friday was no different.

I had a flight out of Long Island MacArthur Airport for 1pm. The Airport is only about 20 minutes from my office so I decided to leave at 11am and grab lunch on the way. I get outside and notice the fog hasn't lifted but instead has gotten much lower and thicker. I didn't give it a moments thought as to affecting my flight because I thought they could fly via instrumentation if need be.

I already had my boarding pass, went through security without any issue and made my way to the gate. I get there and being as early as I was couldn't understand why so many people were at the gate. Walked over to the departure board and noticed quite a few planes were listed as Delayed; they were all supposed to have taken off before 11am, some from as early as 8:30am and it was already 11:30!

Talked to a few people and found out there were no flights going in or out of the airport or many other cities because of the fog. They had to have a 1,600 foot ceiling at the airport for safety before a plane could take off or land. I figured I must still be good since my flight was scheduled for 1pm giving me 90 minutes for the fog to lift and even if they delayed it I had a 2.5 hour cushion; my layover in Chicago.

At 12pm the cancellations began. All of the flights to Florida were cancelled from 8am to 2pm. Then they cancelled the Philly flights, even turned a plane around from Philadelphia! My flight was delayed from 1pm to 2:30pm. I thought I was still good; thinking they would give the weather a chance to lift. At 1pm my flight was cancelled.

Now keep in mind that I am supposed to meet Tom in Detroit to grab the rental car which was in my name and head to the hotel. I also had both the Auto Show tickets and the parking permit. Tom was traveling to Chicago then Detroit so we were in communication via cell phone between his flights. When my flight was cancelled he was in the air enroute to Chicago but he was aware of the weather issues for me.

As soon as they cancelled my flight I went right to a ticket agent to get put onto another flight; still with hope I could get out of there and to Detroit Friday night. I am put onto the 6:35pm flight, which would put me in Detroit at 11:05pm. I figure I am set... this is 4 hours from now, the fog has to lift.

I decide to just hang out at the airport and get some sleep... nope didn't get any sleep. There were people around me in panic mode as one flight after another is being cancelled. Now at 3pm every flight up to 5:30 has been cancelled. Then their flights were all cancelled and I am really getting nervous about making it to Detroit at all.

Then the announcement comes and my flight is cancelled. Then they shut the airport... DAMN! How am I going to meet Tom in Detroit and get to the NAIAS? Even if I could get on a flight at another airport I had to drive through rush hour traffic to get there and we heard that LaGuardia was having delays and cancellations as was JHK and Newark. I leave the airport and call my Sister to get me some flight info, call Northwest and find out nothing is available plus half of their flights were cancelled or heavily delayed.

Tom lands in Detroit and since I had given him the rental info he could get the car, just no place to park it when he went to the show. He would also have to buy another show ticket. I am now thinking about possibly driving to Detroit and getting there Saturday morning.

I get home driving through pea soup fog around 6pm. I knew I couldn't leave before 8 or 9pm and I knew I needed to take a nap even before thinking about driving. My house to Detroit is 650 miles. I checked weather.com to see what the weather looked like and Cleveland showed they were getting snow with 1-3 inches of accumulation. Ok, that seemed doable. Take a 90 minute nap, talk to Tom and let him know I was driving there.

Now that I have my Sirius Starmate Replay installed I get a great chance to really see what's on there. What a great thing to have on a long drive...I highly recommend getting one. :)

I get off Long Island fairly fast, even with all of the fog. Get across the George Washington Bridge just fine, no traffic, people moving just fine. Then as I get closer to the Delaware Water Gap; which is the NJ/PA border traffic begins to backup. I'm thinking I don't need this now... I have a long drive ahead of me and I am barely 3 hours into the drive. Traffic! 3+ miles crawling at 20mph for no reason. No accidents, no construction... nothing except the toll plaza!

Get into PA, the wind kicks up as does the rain. Across the entire state the wind and rain continued to get worse and worse 4+ hour drive across this state. Fuel light comes on when I am 30+ miles from the Ohio border. I know I can go at least 40 miles like this but being late I was not about to play fuel games. After 10 miles there is a fuel stop, 3 stations and they are all closed! It is 4am and no gas here. Head up the road again and another 10 miles. This time 1 station, closed... no gas again! Now I am getting nervous, I don't want to run out of gas, if the next station is closed I will just stop there and sleep 2 hours until they open at 6. This place was open and had gas. Along with me at least 5 or 6 other cars pulled in for gas.

The weather is even worse in OH. Then I get to the Cleveland area and it begins to snow pretty hard. Something I failed to mention before is how strong the wind is and it is head on! So my fuel mileage is HORRIBLE! Especially the section through Cleveland. The Interstate is covered in at least 1" of snow across all 3 lanes. Everyone is in a panic driving with flashers, crawling along around 30-35mph. I couldn't continue at this pace so I had to get around these people. Visibility was just as bad at 30 as it was at 50 and the traction was just fine so I stepped it up to 50 when it was safe to do so. I could see the other vehicles I was catching and slowed down to pass them; I also slowed as the wind kicked up. This snow went on for a good hour like this... not fun.

Around 6am I decided that I had enough and needed to get some shuteye. I pulled into a rest stop and caught about 30-45 minutes of sleep. Get back on the road and continue my trip to Detroit. My directions and GPS called for me to head north from I80 to I280 to I75 and into Detroit and the hotel. I get off at I280 and then see signs about the road being closed and need to take a detour! NO!!! Follow the detour signs and this obviously is longer than how I wanted to get there.

I pulled into the hotel and get to the hotel room about 12 hours after I left Long Island. About 90 minutes later Tom and I head to breakfast and Cobo Hall to walk through the Auto Show. Don't get back to the hotel to catch another hour nap until 5pm.

In about 36 hours time I got a grand total of 3 hours 15 minutes sleep... boy am I exhausted! Getting up at 9am to leave Detroit around 10 for my 650 mile return drive.

My drive home was much less hectic and was shorter too. I left Sunday morning at 9:40 and got home that night by 7:30pm. 10 hours in nice weather was better than 12 hours in bad weather. 1,300+ miles in 22 hours over a 48 hour period was an experience I won’t soon forget. Throw in the Detroit Auto Show and it made for one helluva fun weekend.

Lots of fun, learned quite a bit and took several hundred photos to share with everyone here.

By Larry J. (spdrcr5)