Being stuck in Novi, Michigan

Actually, I am not even in Novi, but a few kilometers southeast of it in a hotel near the Interstate 96 in the middle of nowhere. Due to several reasons our crew hotel is far away from the city centre of Detroit when staying overnight in Michigan to fly in and out of Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport (DTW). The hotel is quite okay and there are some “restaurants” around (like Chily’s, Five Guys, McDonalds…) and with a Best Buy and several supermarkets around the corner it can be quite bearable, but when being stuck here it can be a bit lonely…

I got here two days ago on Lufthansa flight LH442, which was a good start to the new year – what could be easier than sitting in the cabin of an airliner watching movies, while being served food and drinks? We were supposed to fly an MD-11 down to Dallas yesterday, but soon after our arrival to Detroit the snow came! Since then our plans have changed a couple of times. Our original flight to Dallas has been cancelled and we are now supposed to fly on American Airlines down to Dallas/Ft. Worth tomorrow. Unfortunately it will be on the only flight operated by a Boeing 737-800, with all other flights being done by a MD-80 which I would have prefered. On the other hand I would be quite lucky to get to Dallas tomorrow at all, with the recent snow storm and freezing temperatures here. This is the view that I am getting right now, overlooking Taco Bell towards the I-96:

The snow has finally stopped falling, but now it is getting really cold! I just came back from a short walk outside, getting some groceries. My head nearly froze off and it is getting worse – temperatures are expected to drop down to around -27°C/-17°F tonight and with windspeeds of up to 30 knots/55 kph the windchill factor describing how cold it feels will be around -45°C/-50°F! I definitly don’t want to be outside tonight and I also can’t see how we are going to get on a flight to Dallas tomorrow. Nevertheless I try to be positive and I have been spending the last two days with uploading photos to AirTeamImages (you can see my photos here) and experimenting with a new website layout that will be better, cleaner, easier to use and even feature a better shop funtionality! But let’s see how things work out in the next few days and where I eventually end up…