When people ask me about what Detroit is like, one thing I’m almost always for sure to say is, “If you plan on coming to Detroit, it’s best to come in the summer time!”  Yes, the warmer the better, in my opinion.  Though over the last several years, Detroit has made considerable strides into making the winter experience, here, more enjoyable… more cooler, if you will; the frigid grasp of Old Man Winter tends to inject it’s icy gloom across all Michiganders with what is commonly called, “the winter blues.”

In the past month of January, it has been reported that Michiganders have only seen the sun twice… twice!!  And if you are from the outside looking in, yes… it was as miserable as it sounds!  The month of January, was for the most part, cloudy, foggy, freezing, snowy, wet, slushy, and icy-  seemingly all at the same time!  We trudged our way through our daily lives to make it to work on time, sacrificing sleep and late night dive bar excursions to plan as proper adults.  We drudgingly looked forward to scraping snow and ice from our cars in the darkness of our mornings as our vehicles heated.  If we anticipated long commutes, then surely we wanted some sort of warming comfort during our voyage into our four-cornered cubicles. Though, we also would complete our shifts just to anticipate another post-five’o’clock darkness that awaited as we resigned from our offices to the parking structures from whence we arrived.  Again, like veterans prepared for combat, we embraced winter’s hostility by forging our way into the after-work commute.  With a sense of anxiousness to get to our (hopefully) warmer homes, we navigated through bottle-necked freeways, tire skidding cars and trucks, patches of black ice and a sea of red break lights for as far as the eye can see.  If you were a Detroiter who had to rely on public transportation, well…  my heart goes out to you. My best advice:  Double up on socks, layers, keep a scarf and gloves at all times and a nifty copy of the bus schedule close by.

However, some of the good from January, amazing events like the North American International Auto-Show (NAIAS), Winter Blast, plays at the Detroit Reparatory Theatre and fowling, were all places and events that I did get to enjoy.  As gloomy as the first month of 2017 has been, it’s actually peculiar to look back and say, well, I did do some pretty cool stuff.  I just wish it wasn’t so cool out.  Summer time in the D… where art thou?

Demond Childers is a Challenge Detroit Fellow and Facilities Specialist at Clark Hill, PLC.  Follow him and his adventures in Detroit on Instagram or Twitter @coldwideworld.