Hi all, as was posted in MTTc in December so some of you know, me and a friend went drinking in Belfast on December 13th and woke up on a flight to New York with a subsequent flight to Detroit booked, below is part one of the trip report as written by my friend Gareth. To give you some idea of what happened here are my facebook statuses from that day.
Jono SamsBar Crute
Today I attempted a simple upgrade to my PC. Results were that not only did I break my PC I also have inexplicably broken my 30" monitor, I am now going to the pub to cry, see you all on the other side
Jono SamsBar Crute
Update: get halfway to pub, realise I don't have my ID, go home, discover I've lost passport, give up on day
Jono SamsBar Crute
Went to Lavery's for a few pints and games of pool on Tuesday night, woke up Wednesday morning on a flight to New York and I'm now in Detroit! Best hangover ever!
And now to part 1! x posted from my blog
We’ll be releasing more and more when we can, any input is great as we’re still writing up the really juicy parts of the trip and we really want this to be something both we can be proud of and that inspires others to take an opportunity and go do something crazy
GAWA9: any1 from detroit itc?
Katie: no detroit
Katie: do u need help with SS or something jono?
GAWA9: nah
GAWA9: went to pub last night
GAWA9: now im in detroit lol
Katie: wait
Katie: wat
GAWA9: yh geniuinely
GAWA9: 24 floors up in a detroit hotel
Katie: wait
Katie: like u went to a bar
Katie: got drunk
jig: (wave)
Katie: and ended up in the USA?
GAWA9: played some pool had some pints and now im here lol
GAWA9: yeh
GAWA9: woke up on the flight to new york
GAWA9: then changed there and came here
Katie: wat LOL
GAWA9: anyway if anyone could message me pub suggestions here sometime that would be amazing
GAWA9: but gonna head out and see whats happenin here for now
Katie: omg
Katie: woooowwwwwwww
GAWA9: !
GAWA9: (h)
Katie: i mean
Katie: this has to be level of some sort
Katie: like maybe you arent actually in Detroit
Katie: maybe they are just telling you that
GAWA9: well theres no buildings this high in ireland
GAWA9:
Katie: LOL
Katie: OMGGGGG
Katie: sick brag about bringing your passport to pub
Katie:
jig:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSp2KGMQEk8
GAWA9: best part was i lost my passport
GAWA9: wasnt gonna go pub cuz of that
GAWA9: then tim said yeh its dead here theyre bein relaxed
GAWA9: so i went anyway
GAWA9: got drunk
GAWA9: came home and taxi’d to my mums house to find it
Katie: wait so wheres Tim
GAWA9: hes still at home
Katie: so who did you come with
GAWA9: here with my other mate
Katie: lol
Katie: and you dont remember like the airport?
Katie: and security?
GAWA9: yeh i vaguely do
Katie: or paying for your ticket?
Katie: LOL
GAWA9: i phoned my mum at like 9am
GAWA9: to tell her where i was goin
Katie: i mean you have no lugage
GAWA9: and i was in departures
GAWA9: no clothes sigh
Katie: and you dont remember talking to her?
GAWA9: will buy some tomo np
Katie: omg
Katie: this is like sick epic chat right now
jig: LOL
jig: this story sounds hilarious
Katie: im posting a few of these quotes in mttc
Katie: ok with you jono?
GAWA9: actually would be a huge favour to me if you could post them and also say i need tips on what to do round detroit/michigan
GAWA9: dont knwo the first thing about it
GAWA9: just booked one night in a hotel after few pints in the city here
GAWA9: anyway im gonna head out and make some friends with this accent of mine
jig: there all nice rich people, detroit is one of the few thriving citys of america
jig: thats such a cool story tho if not leveling
Katie: im totally posting this LOL
Katie: its tooo funny not to
GAWA9:
GAWA9: right im off to the bars
jig: if i ever get superballer just get wasted and go to airport and wakeup in like russia or something
dthorne04: is this real life
This Skype chat from the hotel was the first contact with people from our daily lives that was made after we got to Detroit. The reaction of complete disbelief and awe was one that would be repeated many times as more people heard the story. I guess getting drunk in a pub in Belfast and booking flights to Detroit leaving in 3 hours time isn’t something normal people do very often. This is the story of the events leading up to the journey, and what happened when we got to the USA with 10 days until our return flight. We call it;
A Policeman, a Pimp, and a Weirdo called Jeff
It was a sweat right from the start as we didn’t know where Jono’s passport was. We’d been out to the pub, gotten back to the apartment and drunkenly started chatting to people on Skype and ChatRoulette on the laptop. In the heat of the moment when Jono’s friend from Michigan unexpectedly went offline, we opened SkyScanner and Jono decides that if it’s cheaper to fly to Detroit and back than it is to fix his broken desktop that he uses for working, then we’ll go. We put the details into SkyScanner and it shows us a route that’s about half the price of a new desktop. We look at eachother each wondering if the other was seriously considering doing this. Neither flinches, in fact we were almost playing a weird game of “flight chicken” to see if the other would back down first and say they didn’t want to go. We were both too drunk and too foolish for that so it was decided, we had to go. This is where the sweat begins. The flight to NYC leaves in 6 hours from Dublin and Jono’s passport is missing. We search his whole apartment to no avail, so we call a taxi and go to his mum’s house.
The taxi driver turns out to be an absolute hero called Tony. He loves the idea and continues to egg us on. We’re still drunk at this point, desperately hoping Jono’s passport is in his mum’s house so we can get the flights booked. It took about 5 minutes to wake up his mum (it was 5am) and when she finially did let him in it took him an age to return the door again. When he did he was holding his passport in his hand and he practically sprinted back to the taxi. A quick stop at my house to pick up my passport and some clothes and then back to Jono’s to get the flights booked! Tony gives us his card before we go in. He knows we’re going to need a taxi to Dublin (about 100 miles from Belfast – there are buses and trains, but none of them would get us there in time to check -in).
We arrive in Dublin about an hour and a half later. Flights are booked and ESTA forms have been completed (Thanks to Doke for helping with those). We approach the boarding pass collection desk, still drunk as Tony the taxi driver let us drink a few tins of Heineken in his car, great lad. The guy there has no record of our booking on his computer, it’s problem. We explain to him that we booked the flights less than 90 minutes ago and that’s probably what’s causing difficulties. He looks at us as if we’d lost our minds and for the first time on the trip we started to consider that maybe we actually had.
When we finially make it through that (the guy went away and came back a few minutes later having found our booking in his system) and airport security, we had to rush to the USA Immigration section and get through that in time to make our flight. The guy I spoke to seemed bemused but remained serious at all times.
He asked me where I was going.
“Detroit,” I told him.
“And where are you staying in Detroit, sir?”
“The Mariott hotel.” I said, confidently. We hadn’t booked anything, but had anticipated that we might be asked this question so we had a consistent answer ready.
“The Mariott? Do you have the address?”
Uh oh. No idea. “Errr no.. we’re just going to find it when we get there.. get in a taxi…”
He didn’t like that answer. “Do you know how many Mariotts there are in Detoit..?” He interrupted.
I didn’t answer his rhetorical question. He seemed angry now. He went on to ask me how much money I had.
“Err, no cash.. I was just planning to use my debit card when I arrived..”
He didn’t like that answer either. I think he’s starting to figure out that we’re not like the hundreds of other people he interviews every day and that we hadn’t planned this at all.
“And what do you do for a living?”
I’d been dreading this question, but Jono assured me it would be fine since online poker isn’t available in America so we’d have to come back if we wanted to continue our jobs.
He seemed satisfied in the end and eventually let me though, about 5 minutes after I’d seen Jono stroll through, he must have had a much less inquizitive interviewer. I think they just want to test you to see if you’re nervous or suspicious in any way, and we were able to easily give honest (if idiotic) answers to all their questions so they had to let us go. Bar one stop after that where we were “randomly” selected for further searching, (Sure was random. She looked at my passport, told me I’d been randomly selected. Looked at Jono’s – Oh, he’s been randomly selected as well. Right.) we were almost ready to board the flight to New York JFK. We had a few minutes to spare though, so obviously we went to a bar to get a couple more pints in. Jono paid for them at the till using his debit card, and actually left it on the desk before he walked over to the table with a pint in each hand. We vaguely hear them call his name over the tannoy and he has to go back to the security place to collect it. Suffice to say it would have been disastrous if we arrived in America to find we’d lost that. We make a few calls from the bar – Jono phones his mum to apologise for waking her and to explain what was going on, then calls our friend James. We ask him to Google the address of a Mariott in Detroit in case we get asked that again when we arrive, and also to search for the location of some Amish people anywhere near where we were going. He quickly provided both, saying the Mariott is on Renaissance Drive and the Amish live in Centreville. We thank him, finish our pints and head for the plane.
Two Plus Two
Looking forward to the next piece!
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