Fall Travels

Work has had me on the road a bit lately, so I'll update you on my latest travels.

Missouri
I put nearly 1200 miles on a rental car in less than 72 hours driving from Memphis, all around the Show-Me state, and back. Sheesh! I had a good little Nissan...made me remember the good ole days in Seattle when I bought my first car, a Sentra.

While en route to MO, I remembered that I'd forgotten to pack pajamas - made a quick stop at Walmart to pick some up. Upon entering the store, I knew I wasn't in Tennessee anymore based on the copious amounts of liquor available for purchase. Yeah, down here in TN we are just now getting to vote on having wine available in grocery stores...

Part of my duties for the weekend included taking a group of teens through a corn maze. Here's a view of the maze from the air. It was gigantic! We lost one member of the group and had to send a maze worker in to find her. In my defense, she took an unauthorized short cut through the stalks...

I also met and interacted with several native Missourians. In conversations with them, I learned that there is a divide between North and South Missouri on such important cultural rules as how to play a card game called Pitch.

Isn't it interesting that no matter where you are, there tends to always be divisions between groups? Eastern Washington state sometimes threatens to secede and become the 51st state. In Tennessee there are three distinct regions (East, Middle, West), and they all seem to have their stereotypes or prejudices about the other. Even in the small city where I grew up, as young people we formed all sorts of conclusions about each other based on which high school a person attended. And then you expand this out to the realm of international relations...well, it's no surprise that we have a hard time getting along globally, eh?

Wisconsin
Last weekend I was in Milwaukee for a work conference. Since there are no direct flights to anywhere from Memphis anymore, I flew through Minneapolis and got treated to some lovely MN foliage views from the plane.

Once in Milwaukee I hardly had a chance to leave the hotel as the conference schedule was pretty packed. I did get to venture out a bit one evening and enjoyed their public art, but only briefly as the temperatures were plummeting to the low 40s and I hadn't brought enough layers of clothing!

And the hotel itself was pretty nice, too! Here's a picture of the lobby.

I didn't have a chance to interact with many Wisconsinites on this trip as the conference attendees came from various parts of the US and a few foreign countries. Overall what I noticed was that the people did not seem very friendly. Then I had to ask myself why I perceived them this way. I think it's because I have acclimated to my culture in Memphis! I now expect people to carry on a pleasant conversation in which we both ask each other questions and pay attention to the answers, trying to make a connection and get to know what's important to the other person. Maybe this is just how conferences are, though - too many new people who you might never see again, so what's the point of really talking to them.

I've got more trips coming up soon to California and Michigan, so when I have a few spare brain cells I'll try to post another travel report :)