Drive to Detroit

So as I said, I had to drive to Detroit to attend some training seminars for work.  Aside from the crappy situation with the tollway in Illinois and northern Indiana things went pretty smooth.  I actually got pretty good mileage on the drive.  Had I not run into the traffic in Chicago and then again outside of Detroit, I would have made the trip in a little over five and a half hours.  The traffic jam outside of Detroit was because there was a dump truck broken down on the side of the road and there was a big tow truck there trying to hook up to it and get it out of the way, so the three lanes of traffic were funneled into two.  That wasn't too bad, only about a 20-30 minute delay. 

Also, driving in northern Indiana where I-94 goes north into Michigan, the ramp was closed.  Which would have been fine had there been some sort of notice saying that it was closed.  Instead about 1/4 mile before the ramp there were construction signs saying "Ramp Closed" and there were no detour signs.  So I ended up on 94 west back toward Chicago.  I ended up being able to get around the ramp and back on 94 about 5 miles past the construction, no thanks to the Indiana DOT though!

The big thing that ALMOST happened though was an 18-wheeler a couple of cars in front of me swerved almost off the road.  I saw it start drifting to the left, toward the cement dividing wall between the east and westbound lanes of 94 in Michigan.  It got about 3-4 feet from the wall before swerving back onto the road.  At least that was what it looked like from where I was.  I didn't think much about it at the time since I thought I was far enough behind it.  But now that I think about it more, it could have side swiped the wall and caused a major accident.  And even if it didn't, it swerved quite a bit and is probably lucky it didn't jack knife.  Either way would have been pretty bad as going at 70 mph, I don't know how much time I would have had to react.  Luckily I didn't have to worry about it.  I hope the drive back will be a little more uneventful.