Domestic Plant Trek: Days 1-2 Driving to Detroit

Hey all,

If you do not know, all LGOs are required to attend the Domestic Plant Trek, a two week trip in between the fall and spring semester. We fly (and drive) around the country visiting various partner company manufacturing facilities and headquarters. I'll try to keep my blog updated with what happens during plant trek so that I can keep a record and let you all know what is happening.

Day 1 (January 5th)! The original plan was to fly from BOS-BWI (Baltimore)-DTW (Detroit) to visit GM. We were set to leave 1pm, so I got to the airport a little early at 10am. While in the bus heading to the airport David lets me know what our flight from BWI to DTW has been cancelled so we should stay home until more contingency plans are made. I was already there so I stayed and helped out our fearless Scott figure out how to re-route our Southwest Airlines tickets to either Detroit, Denver, or Portland. Detroit would be nice, but we were planning on heading to Denver (our connection to Portland) or straight to Portland (where our next stop was Nike!). The earliest we could get out to PDX (Portland) was Wednesday morning, so that was unacceptable.

With my head hung low, I returned home thinking that we were going to miss GM AND Nike.. Little did I know that later in the afternoon our domestic plant trek committee decided to rent mini-vans and have us all DRIVE to Detroit! That sounds like a desperate plan, but desperate times call for desperate measures! So about 40 of us met at BOS to rent mini-vans. I rode along with Xiaodi, Raf, Ellen, and Willow in the Van Guard! We drove all night from 5pm to about 9am this morning. During the way we encountered some treacherous weather (thanks Raf and Ellen for driving through most of it!), but we eventually made it safe to Detroit. 

Raf and Willow were considering heading to the second GM plant in the afternoon, but the rest of us were too tired to head out. After breakfast I slept for 3 hours and feel immeasurably better. Most of us have missed GM's plant tours, but we do get to have dinner with some GM executives tonight. 

UPDATE (7 January 2014): We actually did not make the dinner at the Heritage Center with GM executives, but we did have dinner with ourselves in the hotel! 

Driving to Detroit!

More driving to Detroit

Another picture of our drive

Breakfast at the GM center after we arrived into Detroit

Picture taken from the food court at the GM Renaissance Center. This was our celebratory breakfast meal. 

Thanks to Ellen for taking these shots during the drive. 

Eating at Andiamo's in the GM Renaissance Center (GM HQ and where our hotel was)