canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
The road home from Detroit Friday afternoon/evening felt long. And it was... though it could have been worse. Here's a rundown of the good & the bad:

  • I left the show just before 4pm, after raffling off the PlayStation 5. Another colleague left at the same time as we both had Friday evening flights to catch.

  • We called a car with Lyft. It took for-freakin'-ever to arrive. Like, "Driver arriving in 5 minutes"... then 10 minutes later, "Driver arriving in 6 minutes." At least we included the likelihood of crap like that happening in planning our schedules, so we still got to the airport with time to spare.

  • Security at the airport was slow. There were only 10 people in front of me in line. It was still slow. All across my trip this week I've observed that plenty of people in Detroit don't care about working fast. The job is the job, and nobody working there cares that there's a line or customers are getting frustrated because staff are lackadaisical and inefficient.

  • As I was deciding whether to grab some dinner at Detroit or try to do it between flights at Chicago I spied a Lufthansa lounge. Oddly there's no United Airlines lounge but there is one for Lufthansa. And on the signboard outside it noted that Star Alliance Gold members are welcome. I have *A Gold, from United— which doesn't allow me in its own lounges for having that status. But this partner airline I've flown, like 1/100th as much, does!

    Sandwich and a drink at the Lufthansa lounge, Detroit (Oct 2022)

  • The spread in the Lufthansa lounge wasn't stellar, but it was certainly better than nothing. I enjoyed two small sandwiches and two glasses of wine. It wouldn't be enough to fill me up for the evening but it was a great start.

  • The flight from DTW to ORD got delayed, for no discernable reason. We arrived 20 minutes late. Irrespective of that I did get about 45 minutes of sleep on the flight because I was so tired. But those 20 minutes lost sitting on the ground in Detroit meant that I had to run to catch my connection two concourses away at ORD.

    ....Aaaand it's delayed (United version)

  • I didn't have time to grab more food at ORD. Or rather, I thought I didn't have time to buy food. United was showing the connecting flight departing on time. It actually left 20 minutes late. The reason for the delay? The people loading food were running late! 🤣

  • United has a new buy-on-board food option since the last time I flew them: a cheeseburger! For $10 it's kind of crummy compared to food choices on the ground (and outside of an airport, arena, or convention hall) but compared to other eats available at 38,000' altitude it was pretty reasonable. It's at least better than the free food still served in coach on international flights.

  • I got no sleep on the 4-hour-plus flight from ORD-SFO but I did watch a Liam Neeson action movie, Memory. As this is the 2020s I watched it via aircraft wifi on my own phone, instead of on a seat-back screen or— remember this from TwenCen?— a shared projection screen at the front of the cabin.

  • Despite leaving 20 minutes late we landed a few minutes early at SFO. No, the pilots didn't "make up the time in the air" like they often say. Pilots actually have almost zero ability to fly faster. The simple reason we arrived ahead of schedule is that the schedules are planned assuming that 20-30 minutes of delays (way more on certain routes!) will occur.

  • At SFO I called a Lyft ride as soon as I entered the terminal. This Lyft driver actually arrived on schedule. He waited for me at the pickup point before I could get there myself. It was great having someone waiting to provide me service for once this week, instead of me always waiting around for workers to get to me.

  • With the flight arriving on time and the car ready when I wanted it, I got home— as in, walking through my door— just before 11:15pm. I was worried it would take until almost midnight. I was happy again for something working right.

  • I showered, unpacked my suitcase, and got to bed, all before midnight. Hooray!


canyonwalker: wiseguy (Default)
On the way in to downtown Detroit yesterday we drove local streets the whole way from Dearborn. Compared to driving around Detroit on the freeways (which is about all I've ever done before) it provided an interesting, closer up view of the cityscape.

The first thing that struck me is that Detroit is architecturally similar to Chicago. Commercial buildings and houses have similar design. The second thing that struck me is, compared Chicago, it's 2/3 abandoned. Lots of stores, and not a few houses, are empty, boarded up, even burnt out years ago and not repaired.

Census Bureau statistics bear out the reality seen on the ground. Detroit's population peaked at 1.8 million in 1950. The 2020 census reported just over 600,000. Literally 2/3 of the population are no longer here.
canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
Last night was a late night with travel. I'd say it was a "shit show"... but only to the extent that it's usually a shit show when I fly across the country with a connection, especially if that connection is in Chicago. There was weather again in Chicago. Yes, that's all it takes to cause a shit show— weather. Recall the last time I did this a month ago, our flight diverted to Indianapolis and wrecked the first day of our anniversary celebration trip. And yesterday I was on the same flight. 😨

Well, we arrived only 10-15 minutes late in Chicago. My connecting flight was 45 minutes late. Then there was a long wait for a shuttle at the airport. Putting it all together, I didn't get settled in my room until almost 12:30am. I didn't get to bed until 1:30 and still tossed and turned until 2am. And I had to get up this morning by 7am for a full day of work. Show hours are 10:30-8:30. 😣

Still, there's good news/bad news. The good news is I didn't have it as bad as some did. Our tech lead, Kurt, saw his flight canceled yesterday. He's only coming from the east coast and had a nonstop flight, but the earliest the airline could rebook him was for tonight. The bad news? He's our tech lead. We may have to manage the whole first day of this technical show without his expertise.

Update: the good news about Kurt's flight being canceled is that he was online (from his home office) Wednesday morning and helped work through a bunch of technical problems in the demo so that I had it working for the show by Wednesday afternoon. See my notes from Day 1 at the show (next blog).



canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
I'm headed off today on a business trip. I haven't had many of those this year. Come to think of it I've only had four... and the last one I had became less a business trip than an escape-the-hurricane trip. 😰 The good news that I'm traveling again— and with no hurricane anywhere near the forecast. The bad news that I'm going to Detroit.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on Detroit. I've actually traveled there countless times in the past for work... though virtually all of those trips were to the northern and northwestern suburbs, where I called on clients in the auto industry. This trip I'm going to be downtown, for a trade show in the main convention center. Downtown Detroit is a different beast from Warren or Southfield. I'll see first-hand if it looks like the war zone everyone says it is.


canyonwalker: Cheers! (wine tasting)
Over the past 2 years I've bought a few boxes of Motor City Pizza Co. frozen pizza from Costco. As frozen pizzas go, they're pretty good. As pizza goes, though, they're enh. When I wrote about trying their meat combo pizza a few weeks ago one friend, [personal profile] stinaleigh, suggested I try their cheesy bread. So I did.

Frozen Detroit style cheesy bread from Costco (Jan 2022)

My plan wasn't simply to try the cheesy bread; I intended to make it into a more Detroit-style pizza than their other varieties.

One hallmark of Detroit style is that there's no sauce under the cheese. Sauce is added on after baking, in "racing stripes" across the top. This characteristic might be debatable, but to me it's one of the few things that make Detroit style pizza a unique style— otherwise it's "Oh, look, Pizza Hut pan pizza!"— so I'm going with it.

Detroit syle cheesy bread PLUS my own toppings MINUS half I already ate 😅 (Jan 2022)

With this trial I went with a simple topping choice: pepperoni. It's my favorite topping anyway. And rather than put sauce on top I heated it in a dish and used it as a dip. The reason for that was practical: don't make a mess on the serving plate.

How did it turn out? For frozen store-bought pizza it was amazing. For all pizza it was... actually pretty decent!

Three things helped:

1) Better sauce. As I noted before, one of the weaknesses of this brand is their marinara sauce is awful. It's too acidic. Just using a decent bottled sauce from the supermarket (my fave is Prego) was an enormous improvement.

2) Better toppings. I don't think I mentioned it before, but the brand's toppings are crud, too. The pepperoni and other meats just taste... cheap. Like high school cafeteria cheap. 😨🤢 Just using Hormel pepperoni bought at the grocery store was a marked improvement.

3) Don't over-bake. My usual inclination is to bake a pizza until it's more golden colored than in the picture above. Especially with frozen pizza the edges are generally brown by the time the frozen cheese in the middle is fully melted together. With this brand's thick crust, though, I found the crust was getting too dried out. So I tried reducing the baking time a few minutes. This was frankly easier with no toppings on at the start. That heavy layer of meats on the combo pie may look delicious it but it  causes the cheese underneath to melt slower. I added my not-frozen pepperoni only halfway through the bake. Everything came out perfect. The crust actually had a light, airy texture!

I'll definitely do this again. In fact, I think this is now my go-to frozen pizza.


canyonwalker: Cheers! (wine tasting)
As I've gotten back to cooking meals at home for the most part over the past month I've found that I rarely have the energy to make anything fancy. Oh, I do enjoy classing up simple meals like boxed mac & cheese to make them way better than merely heating up what's in the box. Sometimes, though, I do cook a meal straight out of the box. I've done that a few times this month with frozen pizza.

"Frozen pizza?!?!" you might gasp. "Aren't you, like, a pizza snob?" Well, no, I'm not a snob. I do enjoy good pizza; but I know I can't always get it. I'll take the best I can get. And there are a few brands of frozen pizza I've found worth buying. None of them, BTW, are the usual supermarket fare of Tombstone, Red Baron, et. al.

Frozen Detroit-style pizza from Costco (Jan 2022)

One frozen pizza I've bought a few times now is this Detroit-style deep dish, from Costco. Coscto's the only place I've seen it. I grabbed it the first time because I was like, "Ooh! Detroit style pizza, that's different."

Detroit Style Pizza

Detroit style pizza starts with a light but airy crust cooked in a metal pan. Lore has it that the pans were metal tool trays factory workers took home with them. The frozen pies didn't come with a metal tray but rather heavy card stock.

Detroit style pizza is typically made with the cheese on the crust, then the toppings, and finally sauce poured in "racing stripes" atop the cheese and other toppings. I say typically because I've seen some Detroit pizzas made with the sauce under the cheese, New York style. This one's made that way.

I was a little disappointed that the pie came out of the box with its toppings all stacked up to one side. That made me wonder if it had thawed slightly and refrozen as it passed through the supply chain. The picture above shows the pie after I'd shaken it to spread the toppings out a bit better.

Once I opened the plastic wrap I arranged the toppings neatly atop the pie before baking. How did it turn out?

Frozen Detroit-style pizza from Costco, Cooked (Jan 2022)

Well, it looks good for a frozen pizza. Food appearance is important to me because I taste with my eyes before my tongue.

Taste-wise it's... okay. The crust doesn't quite hit that "light and airy" consistency. That's enormously hard to do with a frozen product so I don't fault them there. The toppings were generous. The sauce was... too acidic? This pizza frankly could've been a lot better with a better tasting sauce.

Would I buy it again? Well... I've bought it a few times already, though the last time before this week was over a year ago. It's fine for when I don't feel like driving out to a good local pizzeria to pick up a fresh pie. Mostly I decided to try this brand again because the meat-combo variety (pepperoni, sausage, bacon) was one I hadn't seen before. I'll finish the second pie that came in the box; then it's back to local takeout.

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