When I checked out of my room at the Renaissance Center, I was running on two hours of sleep and forgot the charger for my ancient, powered-by-vacuum-tubes Samsung phone. Wait: One carmaker tried to help! Did it work? No!
You have no idea how painful it is to blog a modern trade show without your cell phone. You wander the floor, getting sidetracked by industry friends and PR people and cool-looking engines, and you tend to feel adrift. On one hand, it's awesome: No one can get ahold of you, breaking news is never that urgent, and conversations don't get interrupted. On the other hand, you have no idea what's going on, and if your head explodes from the sheer craziness of a Cadillac launch video, you can't let anyone know.
Naturally, I tried to fix the problem. I called a bunch of friends. I thought about buying a new phone, but I was too busy during the day and all the phone kiosks closed too early to go at night. Three electronics stores and one midnight run to Meijer later, I had diddly squat.
Five hours into the second day, I was walking across Cobo's floor when I saw this at the Smart stand:
I ran! I was excited! They even had a cord for Samsung! I had a solution — I'd just sit there and eat free Smart snacks and talk to people about tiny cars and be able to have a phone again and life would be great and I wouldn't get fired and . . . I noticed something . . . annnnnnnnnnnd my phone is too old for any of this junk, too.
Sonofabitch. I hate my phone. It's a Samsung SCH-U430, and I want it to burn in hell, but I can't afford to replace it just yet. Detroit, Michigan, America — help me. You're my only hope.