Category: Travel

In the end, it was a good trip. Per usual, I was nervous being the outsider on that first day (as I’ve already explained). Some of my first impressions were not as good as I had hoped, but in hindsight I can’t discount the fact that my somewhat aloof manner contributed.

The second day left me with much more favorable impressions. During the discussions I overcame my fear of speaking up, and spoke. Merely speaking is not really what distinguishes the two days for me. The difference was that I spoke with a greater degree of self confidence – with more self assurance. There were a few times my points were well received and there were others where they were not. What is important for me to remember is that this is how a discussion works. Adults talk about their thoughts and ideas. Sometimes folks agree and sometimes they don’t. Here’s the key: was everyone listening and did everyone give the ideas discussed their due consideration – based on the merits of the idea as they are presented? After day number two I am glad to say my answers to those questions are a resounding yes.

Here’s the other thing, I’m usually uncomfortable judging folks with so little shared context. I feel a little bad about how I felt on Monday evening, particularly after Tuesday went so well. I guess it’s true what people say; nobody’s perfect.

This entry has little use as entertainment or as catharsis, but I thought it important to post in light of Monday’s entries and my subsequent change of mind. Yes, even if precious few ever read either entry.

Dinner and a movie; sometimes that is all the difference between a day you were ready to forget and a day that doesn’t seem so bad after all. Next time you’re feeling the weight of woe just hop in your car, put on some good music, get something you like to eat, buy yourself a new little toy, and watch a good movie. (Just remember, when you’re out spending your money… don’t spend too much. We don’t want to make you feel better today at the expense of tomorrow.) When you’re done you may find that filling a few needs, both real and imagined, can get the ball rolling in the right direction. We all know that few minor glitches strung together can snowball into bad days, so why can’t the good stuff do the same?

Or would that be the opposite?

Do you you know what I mean?

Do I?

Don’t let me fool you. Vague sometimes sounds profound… and sometimes it’s just vague.

It is never easy to join a discussion as an outsider. Everyone in the group knows each other but you. You feel left out. You don’t get all of the inside jokes. You don’t understand the references to past experiences. No one leans in and whispers conspiratorially in your ear. Being shy, I don’t tend to go out of my way to place myself in these types of situations. Call it a defense mechanism.

Today I put myself into one and the results were mixed. It was exceedingly cool to check into a hotel upon my arrival. I could imagine myself an important person, being brought in from out of town to consult on an area of my expertise. Finding that my room came with free wireless internet connectivity absolutely blew my mind (I know things like this exist, but I had yet to run across it). Then I went to the meeting and was brought back to reality.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the people seemed plenty friendly. Others did not, and therein lies the problem. Have you ever run across people who automatically assume you are not worthy of their respect until you prove otherwise? That’s the best way I can describe some of the folks I met today. During the introductions I tried to be low key. I played down my accomplishments and merely introduced myself as a worker bee from the field. I don’t like trying to impress people, and seeing as how I’m not overly impressive, I think it’s a wise tactic. As a human being, regardless of where I work, what I earn, or what I may or may not have accomplished, I deserve at least an introductory level of courtesy. For example, as I walk in and say hi with what I hoped was a non-threatening smile, I believe I deserve more than a pause, an arched eyebrow and a smirk. As I see it, if you are going to go through the trouble of returning eye contact, a simple hello is the least you can do. Today I was really nervous, so I would have settled for any acknowledgment. A smile, a nod of the head, some kind of verbal acknowledgment… anything. Apparently this was too much for a couple of individuals – even after I achieved eye contact first and initiated the verbal introductions with a preemptive “hi.” The first half of the meeting only went down hill from here. I admit I was nervous, so I know I wasn’t terribly eloquent with some of my statements, but I would have liked to have gotten some benefit of the doubt as to my competency. After all, they asked me to be there – not the other way around. If you are going to go to the trouble and expense of bringing in someone from out of town, you might as well listen to what they have to say, eh?

The turning point came when I corrected someone on a matter of policy. Ooh, that sure did it. It was like someone flipped a switch and I was suddenly worthy.

Now that I’ve said all of that, I should say that this may represent a bit of an exaggeration of this afternoon’s events. Some of my more picky readers may point out that I’ve described few of this afternoon’s events. Ah, the joys of being vague! As I said before, most of the folks were quite friendly. I guess the trouble is it only takes a few bad apples to ruin the experience. I guess that’s true in many aspects of life.

My silent thanks go out to the good apples. As nervous as I was to be the outsider, it’s a good thing they were a majority of the group.

Here endeth the rant. It would have been a little shorter, but communication partners are in short supply when you are out of town on business. My silent and extremely small readership will just have to do for today. It really illustrates how much my family means to me, sitting here in a hotel room by myself. Does that make me overly needy?

Oh what do you know anyway?

So there I was, holding a sealed container in the front passenger seat of our car, as my wife drove the last leg of our journey home. Supporting the bottom of the thin plastic container with both hands, I could feel the warm contents gently sloshing about to the rhythm of the highway. Just moments before, my daughter had gotten sick in the car, the second time she had such a bout of illness on this trip. My wife was frustrated, but I was just peachy. Why? Let me take you back one week. We were driving to New Orleans to visit my sister. We had just left when my daughter started coughing. I asked my daughter if she was o.k. and she said she was. But then she started gagging. I lunged for the plastic container we brought along, in the even that such a contingency should occur, and handed it to my daughter. She coughed a gagged for a few seconds before declaring that she was feeling o.k. She held out the container for me in her outstretched hands, and then proceeded to throw up between the newly created void between her arms and into her lap.

Dear mother of all that is holy, what was she thinking?

This is how I came to be happy about holding a warm, sealed container of car sickness in my hands on the final leg of our drive home from New Orleans.

If you are ever in the market for property in New Orleans, beware of the term “waterfront.” I’ve taken two lovely rides through uptown New Orleans so far this week. Riding under a canopy of old growth trees, past the old restored homes was absolutely fabulous. Having taken essentially the same route twice I was looking for a little variety, so I went off towards the river this morning. I knew there was a whole lot of industry on the river, but I figured in the hour I had given myself for the ride out I would find something pleasing to the eye. I was wrong. The Mississippi river in New Orleans is all business and no pleasure. The water is ugly and the shore is worse. You notice how folks often refer to the “mighty Mississippi”, and not the “mesmerizing Mississippi” or the “majestic Mississippi”? That’s because it has all the charm of a mud slide. For the return trip I took a detour through uptown again. At least half of the ride was cool – even if it was a repeat.

I woke up earlier than expected on our first morning in New Orleans and immediately did something new, I spilled an entire bowl of cereal on my sister’s kitchen floor. I would like everyone to know that the WORST thing to do in this situation is try and burn away the cereal with an acetylene torch. Somewhere, not too far down that list, you’ll find “vacuuming the cereal with an upright vacuum cleaner. It turns out the beater bar on an upright vacuum will crush the flakes into tiny pieces and shoot them to the far reaches of the room.

It had all the makings of a great entry. Beth had been asking “are we there yet?” from New Port Richey to the Alabama/Mississippi border. Then she got out a movie and stopped. We made it through Mississippi and she didn’t ask. We made it into Louisiana and she didn’t ask. We made it across the Lake and she didn’t ask. I was ready to write all about Beth asking that question right up until we actually were “almost there.” It happened just as we were entering the New Orleans City limits.

“Are we there yet daddy?”

“Yes.”

Beth pauses for a few minutes to let that sink in.

“Thank you for saying yes daddy.”

I have always been fascinated with kayaking. I have no idea why. I have never been a particularly big fan of other rowing activities, and canoeing seems just plain wrong. But then there’s the kayak… sleek, low to the water, and sporty. A week ago I got to try out a kayak for the first time. I was in a two person kayak with my brother in law. We were down visiting with my sister and his family, and a group of them wanted to go kayaking, so I tagged along. It was everything I thought it would be and more. The “more” part is what prompted this entry.

The day after Christmas was an excellent day to be outside. It was just cool enough to not be hot. We were on the water as the sun was starting to show signs of retreat. As we were putting out the “guy” allowed as how the tide was “coming back in”. I didn’t think much about his statement until about forty minutes later. After a wonderful paddle through the inter-coastal waterway, we poked into a small inlet which promised to lead to a series nearly inaccessible lagoons, which served as a refuge for wildlife. This small inlet was densely surrounded by mangroves and other trees, such that it somewhat resembled a cave. The water was a tea like brown, slowing meandering back into the brush. It was no deeper than twelve to eighteen inches, but it seemed to be plenty to float our kayaks. Until suddenly it wasn’t. We were quite a ways back when we began to have trouble, the kind where you want to float but you aren’t. As the water got murkier, it got shallower, and about this time it was dark enough to make a cup of tea look like spring water. Probing for the depth, I sliced my paddle edgewise into the water, but the water was not even deep enough to cover the width of the blade. As my father pointed out later, the sensible thing would have been to do one of two things: 1) turn around and go back, or 2) get out and walk. Being two educated young men, we did neither. Our solution is somewhat hard to describe. Do you know how an alligator walks? It has been described as a series of push ups. The animal pushes itself off the ground first, then leverages itself forward. Well that’s what we did with our paddles from a seated position in our kayak. Picture me sitting down with my paddle driven straight down into the water, grasping the shaft close to my body in a pose that, out of context, could have looked much like some bizarre gentlemen’s club routine. Pushing down on the paddle and leaning into it served to lift myself partially out of my seat, allowing the kayak to float (very little) so we could make a little forward progress. It was extremely slow going, and every bit as tiring as it sounds. After a good twenty minutes, traveling at a rate of at least three feet per minute, we saw what we had come to see – a flock of birds peacefully wading in the shallow water of a secluded lagoon. It was extremely quiet and even more peaceful from our vantage point within our kayak atop a bar of sand and water. Kayaks are supposed to rock, but you know something is wrong when you can feel a specific pivot point.

This could have been tremendously frustrating and demoralizing, but it wasn’t. Instead, everyone was trying and failing to suppress hysterical laughter. When we finally went back the way we came (once again doing our impersonation of a gator) and returned home, everyone looked to me with remorse. The common theme was “if that was my first time kayaking, I wouldn’t go again” or “you really should try this again sometime”. The thing is, I had a great time. I laughed too much for it to be a bad time. I might not do the same exact thing again, under similar circumstances (I’d probably prefer to stay in the deep end, thank you very much), but the experience certainly wetted my appetite for more. It was an experience that broadened my horizons. What more can you ask for?

On the road to Sarasota, we struggle to learn the lesson of sharing with others. There is one DVD player with sound system in the car. The adults want to talk. The child wants to watch a movie. The person that fits somewhere in between wants to listen to iTunes. The child doesn’t like to watch movies with distractions. The ‘tweener doesn’t want to listen to any of the above. After a minor dispute, the child has learned to listen over the conversation. I’ve found my groove.