The Great Lakes State

"You have every sensation of being hurled through space. The machine is throbbing under you with its cylinders beating a drummer's tattoo and the air tears past you in a gale. I tell you gentlemen: no man can drive faster and live!"

-Barney Oldfield (Describing the feeling of going 60 mph)

Not going to Flickr the pictures b/c I'm on an open WAP and they don't let you login via SSL (stoopid!). Started out the day with a short jaunt to Dearborn, MI for a little auto-centric action. Checked out the Automotive Hall of Fame while I waited for my tour to start. Not terribly exciting, but some cool history there.

Then it was off to the main attraction. The Ford Rouge Factory Tour. Now this was pretty f'in cool. Got a mostly fluff little intro, then got to see the actual factory floor where they build the F-150 pickup. As we were about to enter the factory floor, however, I did the "pocket touch" and realized my wallet was gone! Called in the reinforcements, who called around to the buses and checked the various theaters. The site manager was extremely helpful. The wallet was eventually recovered (sans >$200 in cash), which was somewhat of a relief; at least I still had my credit cards and all that. To the asshole who has my money: enjoy it, fucker.

So that put a bit (big) damper on the factory tour, but it was still pretty neat. After the bodies are painted, they travel through a track that's 3 miles long for final assembly. Each station has 60 seconds to perform their work before the vehicles move on to the next. Unfortunately, I picked one of the only weeks all year that the factory wasn't in operation, but you could still see the bodies in various states of completion. Highly recommended, if you pick a day when it's in operation. Unfortunately they won't let you photograph any of the cool stuff, so no omgpix.