Hit the Road

Fasten your seatbelts, folks: we're going to Lufkin!

I love having a job where I get to travel. Wander the beautiful Piney Woods of East Texas! Admire the noble mosquito! Dine on the exotic mudbug! Meet friendly locals, some of whom have almost a full complement of teeth!

Actually, I've never been there, and I love roadtrips, so I really am looking forward to it. The week after next, one of the new hires and I are going on a training mission, deep into the swampland near the Louisiana border, to bring our amazing mainframe-based technology to the natives. It'll be great fun. No, I don't hear banjo music off in the distance - why do you ask?

Lufkin may not be a major metropolitan hub, but they do boast an official tourism site. Granted, the home page is dedicated to promoting an event that apparently took place five months ago; or maybe they're planning for next summer, I don't know. Note the "Things to Do" crawl on the left side of the screen. I guess there are six things to do in Lufkin. One of them is watching a video.

In Corpus, my job used to be to look at websites just like this and tell the clients how to give them some pop, some pizzazz, some zing - and, it goes without saying, a Call To Action. Then again, our most successful clients were destinations like Miami and Palm Springs and Hilton Head. We didn't do so well with, say, Waco. That client was never very happy with us. None of the consultants could think of any particular reason anyone might want to go there.

But there are advantages to a less-frequented destination, too. We'll be there the week after Thanksgiving. Think of all the crowd-free Christmas shopping we'll be able to get in! And in the cold season, you know, all the alligators have migrated south for the winter. They're drinking mojitos and eating their fill of perfectly-oiled sunbathers in Miami.

So it's a good thing we'll be safely in Lufkin!