Ann Arbor - Day 1, April 24, 2010

I'm headed to visit my cousin Ada in Ann Arbor today.  She's an MBA candidate at the Ross School of Business.  I had planned on visiting her at some point, but when I saw a decent price to Detroit pop up on FareCompare, I immediately contacted Ada to see if she would be free this weekend.  She said yes, and I pulled the trigger on the ticket.  I even got to use my 5% discount coupon that I received for flying so-many-miles in Q4, 2009.

United replaced their e-500 upgrade program with "Unlimited Domestic Upgrades" (UDU), so this was the first trip that I got to see UDU in action.  When I looked at my itinerary online, it showed "Upgrade:  Pending", meaning that the UDU system was working, and it had automatically applied my flights for upgrade.  As a 1K member, UDU upgrades are confirmed starting from 100 hours before departure, so I had to wait until 4 days before to see if I cleared.  Thankfully, all of my flights cleared, though I wasn't looking forward to the first class cabin on two of my four flights, as they were on CRJ-700's, which are small jets.  If you look at SeatGuru, the first class cabin is configured as 1-2, meaning 1 seat on one side of the aisle, and 2 seats on the other side.  There were 2 rows of first class, so a total of 6 seats.  I was able to secure 2A on my flight to Detroit, and 1A back.  I didn't want to have to sit next to someone if I didn't have to.

6am flights out of Sacramento are brutal, as it takes 40 minutes to get to the airport from my house (driving very fast) and I have to wake up especially early and I am not a morning person.  What's worse is that United is in Terminal B, and they closed the Daily B parking lot for renovations, so I would have to park in Terminal A meaning (1) take the Inter-terminal bus to Terminal B, or (2) walk to Terminal B, meaning wake up even earlier.  I did consider parking in the Economy Lot since the bus goes to both terminals and is 40% cheaper than the Terminal A garage, but now that I drive a Lexus, I can't get myself to park it outside for a long period of time collecting dust from the nearby fields.  So snobbish. ;)

The walk to Terminal B from the garage isn't terribly far, but I decide to wait for the Inter-terminal bus since I had time.  It didn't come for a while, and after the Economy bus had arrived and left did I think about hopping on it, as the next stop would've been Terminal B!  So hopefully other people will take note of this if they find themselves in a similar situation.

Finally the bus arrives and I get on for the 20 second trip to Terminal B.  (should've walked!)  I already printed out my boarding pass the day before, so I bypassed the long line of people checking in bags.  I didn't have a bag to check in anyway, but if I did have one, I'd be queued up at the 1K line, which only had 3 people in it at the time.  The long line was for non-elites.  Short queues are a benefit of being a frequent flyer.  Another benefit:  if you are a Premier or Premier Associate, you don't have to pay baggage fees for 2 bags, which saves you $55.  If you're a Premier Exec, 1K or GS, you don't have to pay baggage fees for 3 bags, and they can weigh up to 70 lbs each, as opposed to the regular 50 lbs.  That's pretty cool.

First flight was from Sacramento to Chicago, and breakfast was served, a choice of cold (fruit plate) or hot (cheese omelette).  I went for the hot breakfast.  It was all right, as you can't really mess up eggs, except the cheese they put inside it.  It was some herbed soft cheese mixture that I scraped off after a few bites, bleh.   The omelette was accompanied by turkey sausage, hash browns, a small cup of fruit, and a choice of either croissant or banana nut muffin.  (the baked goods were offered after I took the picture)   Later in the flight, the purser came around with a "snack basket" from which you could choose (1) a banana (though they were on the green side), (2) a bag of Sun Chips, (3) a package of Biscoff (caramelized sugar cookies), or (4) a Ghiradelli 60% dark chocolate square.  Guess what I chose?  Chocolate of course!  About 30 minutes later, the purser came by again with the basket and asked if I wanted anything else, gesturing to the chocolate, hehe.  I declined, as I had to watch my calorie intake since Ada planned a foodie itinerary.

We land in Chicago and fortunately my next flight wasn't too far away from the arrival gate.  This is the jet I've been dreading.  But I was actually comfortable in my 2A seat, as pictured here.  I had read that the overhead compartment storage was non-existent for the 1A and 2A seats and the compartments themselves were narrow and cannot fit a normal rollerboard bag.  The underseat storage for 2A was enough to hold my purse and my weekend bag, so I was happy, though this made me not look so forward to my 1A seat coming back, as I would have to fight for overhead space with the people in 1B and 1C.

After a short flight, I arrive in Detroit and got my rental car from Alamo.  I arrived too early in the day (~3:30pm), so I was the unlucky recipient of the last economy car in stock, a Hyundai Accent.  That thing hardly had any pick-up and I had to roll down the windows and lock the doors myself!  Power nothing!  Okay, my first car was power nothing, but it's been a long time since I had to lock the doors myself.  I think it has been 5 years since I had to roll up windows manually.  They also included an ice scraper/brusher in the car.  I didn't think Detroit would ice up at this time of year, but perhaps that is standard issue.

I get to Ann Arbor and took the wrong fork in the road but thank goodness for iPhone maps!  I made it to the Forest Avenue parking structure and met Ada at her building.  She has an apartment in this really old brick building, with an elevator that you have to slide a folding gate plus another thick door open and press a mechanical button to go to your desired floor.  The studio apartment itself was pretty spacious for one person or possibly a couple.  A small kitchen was in its own room plus a dining nook.  The main room contained her bed, computer desk, TV, bookshelves, and a small sofa bed.  To go to the bathroom, you have to walk through the walk-in closet to get to it.

We catch up on the latest happenings in our lives, and then the stomach needed food. :)  We walked to the business school and Ada showed me around the common area, looked at a classroom, checked out the gym.  The classrooms all have power outlets and network connections at each seat.  This is totally not what we had in school back then.  (well, we didn't carry around laptops and iPhones either)  We checked out other buildings on campus such as the law library.  It totally looks like a cathedral inside!  Then we walked across the campus to get to "downtown".  I visited the first Borders store.  I didn't know that the business started in Ann Arbor.  There were lots of other "college town" stores, such as used bookstores, ATM's, collegiate apparel shops, coffee shops and cheap eats.  We were supposed to hit the Cupcake Station after dinner, but we answered our stomachs' growling and made it the first stop.  It's okay to have dessert before dinner, right?

The Cupcake Station sells...cupcakes.  Imagine that!  Actually, Ada was after one thing there which was not a cupcake...a tub of their freshly made banana pudding.  She was lucky as there was only 1 tub left.  I wanted to be good and got a mini carrot cupcake.  Both the cupcake and the banana pudding were delish!  I don't think I've tasted a fresher, natural tasting banana pudding, and I'm not really a pudding person.  I ended up buying 6 more cupcakes (regular sized), pictured starting from the left in clockwise direction:  Boston Creme, Chocolate Petal, Honey Lavender, Michigan Bumpy, Oreo, Peanut Butter.

We then went over to Pacific Rim, an Asian fusion-style restaurant.  It's located in the "posh" part of downtown.  Everyone there seemed to be dressed up, and we're in our casual clothes and jeans, but at least the lighting was dim so not everyone would notice, hehe.  Ada ordered the seared tuna and I ordered the seared hamachi.  Both dishes were very yum!  The dishes were preceded by a house salad (greens tossed with a soy vinaigrette), and the server talked me into getting an "upgrade" which included other mixed greens plus arugula, mozzarella cheese, radishes, beets.  It was okay.  I really liked my entree though.  I love eating sashimi.  There was also a little "yarnball" of soba noodles.  It was nice to have a bit of carb to balance out the meal.  It was all washed down with a cup of ginger tea (free refills!).  It was very ginger-y, spicy, like a tastier version of the Chinese medicine that our moms would brew whenever we went home, haha.  Nonetheless, our tummies were satisfied, and walking back to Ada's apartment was a great way to end the night (and burn calories).  The weather forecast had called for rain, but it didn't start pouring until we were back at her apartment and ready for bed.  Great timing!

Tomorrow, Ada's planned a brunch at Zingerman's Deli.  My tummy is looking forward to that!