The Unexpected Falls

Ah, summer, vacation, travel... Tahiti, Banff, Venice, Paris! And Wichita Falls!

Completely different subject, I wonder why no one's ever approached me to advertise on my blog?

Having been there a couple of times now, you know, I really like Wichita Falls a lot. It's - I guess the word I'm looking for is scrappy. They've now been in Stage 5 drought for a while, so eventually they just shrugged and started recycling all their water. Yes, all of it. I heard that one city official bought a bunch of coffee mugs shaped like toilets and slapped stickers with the city's logo on them. And you can now buy a T-shirt that says, "Wichita Falls: Our water is the S#!t."

My contact at the city sighed and shook her head, telling my boss and me about this. "Well, what can you say?" she said. "It is what it is."

It is that, and I admire the calm spirit and clear eyes with which the good folks of the Falls cast aside squeamishness and embrace the practical. In fact, practicality is one of the striking features of this town. This is the town that was named for a set of rapids and falls in the Wichita River, so when a flood washed them away, they just built some new ones. They're very pretty. Sometimes the city turns them off.

They build stuff there that you might not expect in a town that size. There is a paved hike-and-bike trail nearing completion, which will completely circle the city, over 20 miles long. There are mountain bike trails aplenty. Wichita Falls is, of course, the home of the Hotter 'n Hell Hundred, so there's a certain cycling mentality there. They get mad props for the logo alone.

But to me, maybe the most charming thing of all about Wichita Falls is that it isn't charming. It's not cute, it's not precious, it's not the kind of town where you go to buy fudge and knick-knacks (though, that said, you'd be pretty silly to miss out on The Pecan Shed - and there is an antiques district downtown, if you must).

To understand fully what I mean, go visit the Bar-L, or the P2 (I'm partial to the Bar-L because of its beautiful, smoky, unapologetically grungy retro-glamour), sit in your car under the awning, and have the carhop bring you a red draw. In your car. In a to-go cup, if you ask for it.

Not that you're likely to get drunk off them, because a red draw consists of light beer (Bud Light being the preferred variety) mixed liberally with tomato juice. The cognoscenti order them spicy, with creole and salt, so that in effect, you're drinking a Bloody Mary with limited sexual experience. Or the carhop will just bring you a bottle of beer. Whatever.

You can go to an actual dinner theater in Wichita Falls. Who has dinner theater anymore? If you're me, you get the backstage tour, which is incredibly cool because the Backdoor Theatre is housed in the old icehouse, and behind one stage you can see the pulley system for hoisting blocks of ice up from the loading dock. At the spectacular River Bend Nature Center, our guide let us pet snakes, lizards, turtles, and a tame prairie dog, and demonstrated how brown recluses will just back away slowly if you stick your finger in their cage and try to touch them (warning: do not try this at home). I'm itching to get into the Railroad Museum, which has lots of vintage railroad cars and is next door to the old depot, which now holds a farmers' market on weekends. But best of all the Railroad Museum holds the little hut that was the very first Texas Travel Information Center in Wichita Falls, circa 1936. Made me mist right up, it did.

You can tour a city founding father's home at the Kell House, or browse the galleries and sculpture garden at the Kemp Center for the Arts (the city's first public library building, and conveniently right across the street from the Bar-L). The Museum of North Texas History is huge and extensive, and takes up the former offices of a bank downtown, still decorated with the cheap paneling and shag carpet that defined the well-dressed 1970s workplace. And oh, my gosh, the Fire and Police Museum! They haven't got a building yet, just a couple of tin quonset huts, but they have a breathtaking collection of fire engines, fire chief cars, police cars, artifacts, and memorabilia, all carefully stored away with military precision and brought out to display on special occasions.

And, of course, there's the Littlest Skyscraper, the generally accepted story of whose origin seems fairly unlikely, but there it is.

Just outside of town, Lake Arrowhead State Park remains beautiful, though the lake is terribly low. A huge prairie dog colony shares space with picnic arbors and campgrounds, and the prairie dogs have probably eaten their share of french fries, exhibiting neither shyness, nor the girlish figures that wild dogs have. They are ridiculously cute.

So that's Wichita Falls: go there if you can, bring your mountain bike or your road bike or both, and you don't have to drink the water if it bothers you. Just stick to red draws and you'll be fine.

gone crazy. back later.

Anna, who is now almost 13 years old, visibly winced last time I used the term "cray cray." She probably has a point.

For the last several years, the advent of spring has meant two things in my little world: wildflowers, of which I get to be the Voice of the Official Report, unless I'm out of the office. In that case, it's Joe. Joe is not flowery by nature. Joe reads the script like a broken man. "It looks to be a wonderful year for wildflowers," he reads, miserably. "Vibrant displays carpet the slopes of the Central Texas Hill Country."

You can totally hear how badly he wants a riding lawnmower.

And of course the other harbinger of spring is my descent into madness as I put the finishing details on our annual travel conference. In a former life as a corporate meeting planner, I worked with mostly stationary targets: hotels and conference centers, caterers and audiovisual contractors, and attendees who tended to sit quietly in the same spot for 8 hours a day. But "tourism boot camp," as one of my regular attendees calls our conference, is a little different: 12-hour days on three buses, sweeping through a region with choreographed precision; discharging 100 participants for a sampler-platter taste of museums, restaurants, parks, restaurants, educational exhibits, and historic sites; splitting up and rotating to fit in the smaller-capacity attractions; meeting up at the next appointed time without missing a beat - usually staying 25 minutes, tops, at each stop.

Since everything is planned to the minute, the slightest delay or mishap can cause the whole carefully crafted schedule to come crashing down, which is why I get a little hostile if anyone requests a bathroom break.

However, since it's apparently still winter, I slipped away for a long weekend to visit my aunt Barbara, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and see a concert given by my sister Jessie from Brooklyn and her little violinist friend, and catch up with my cousin Gwen, who is very awesome. When she was 16 and I was 12, Gwen was the coolest human being on the face of the earth on account of having permed hair and driving an MG Midget. But it turns out she's still cool without those things. If you get a chance, ask her for some pointers on pool.

Plus I got the opportunity to explore Charleston by rental bicycle, which is a good idea if you're going to subsist on shrimp and grits and drink as much wine as my aunt and cousin do. (My aunt is widowed now, but was married to an Italian, and drinks accordingly.) It's bike-friendlier than I anticipated, though there aren't many dedicated bike lanes. There are a lot of cyclists, few helmets, and plenty of bike traffic on both sidewalks and streets.

And there's a separate pathway, with clear delineation for bikes and pedestrians, that runs across the high Arthur Ravenel Jr. bridge over the Cooper River, which is a shipping lane. It's almost the only climb Charleston offers as the land between the Cooper and the Ashley is completely flat. On the other side, Mount Pleasant offers a park, pier, and gift shop, where you can't buy your daughter a model ship even though she'd totally love it because it would get crushed in your backpack on the way home.

I think this year I'll put my attendees on 100 bikes and see how that works out. It'll be cray cray.

Bend. Big Bend.

Can you think of any reason you might not want to attend the Chihuahuan Desert Bike Fest?

Well, if you're you, there might not be a reason, because it's awesome. Riding a bike off-road is awesome. Big Bend is awesome. Here, by the way, is the moon setting over Terlingua at sunrise as we headed towards Big Bend Ranch State Park's Lajitas station, where most of the rides begin.

Just think what I could do with an iPhone 5!

The only problem with attending this event, of course, is that we suck. The boyfriend is slow, but soldiers on through moderate obstacles, whereas I tend to stop and dismount if I see anything likely to exhibit unpredictable behavior, such as a rock.

The people who sign up for the Bike Fest ride off cliffs as a matter of course. If I go to an event like this, I am participating as obstacle, not rider.

Nonetheless we put in several very fun miles along the easy routes (fire roads) and met some extremely friendly and tolerant people. Not to mention brightly dressed. One tremendous rider dropped off a steep descent and flew past me, walking my bike, and overtook my boyfriend, riding (but slowly and cautiously) a couple hundred feet ahead.

The rider was wearing a bright pink kit, the same shade as my jersey. For a split second, as he approached and passed, my boyfriend had a momentary impression that I had grown a pair. It only takes a moment - and one can only hope that, as the actual serious badass biker blasted past, he found encouragement in the heartfelt shout of "GREAT JOB, HONEY!" that he received.

Otherwise, better luck next year.

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Our Team

Are you a sports fan? Apparently nobody isn't these days.

My boyfriend insists on watching football. He cooks, so I put up with it. And, since I fell in love with Seattle when we went to visit Margie last month, I was pleased that the Seattle Seahawks won their game against whoever it was they were playing. "Hey, they won," I said at the end of the game. "Isn't that nice."

Fans don't get much more die-hard than that.

I wasn't in Seattle this past week, but might as well have been:

Tuesday night it was a business dinner followed by a panel discussion at an industry meeting in San Antonio on Wednesday, and from there my favorite photographer Kevin and I drove down to South Padre Island to conduct a site visit for our April conference.

This is what winter in South Padre looks like. It's almost never really cold, but the weekend and much of the week were damp, gray, and chilly. The Winter Texans are pissed. They didn't schlep a fifth wheel all the way down from Manitoba for this crap.

The weather was no problem for us; it was 12 degrees in Austin the morning we left, and frankly, walking along the beach is monotonous under the best of circumstances.

It was much colder in San Antonio on Tuesday night. Dining at a restaurant where the 6-ounce filet costs about what I spend on a weeks' groceries with my boss' boss' boss and a handful of high-ranking strangers (our panelists) made me feel like a kid permitted to sit at the grown-ups' table.

And unfortunately, the conversation neatly sidestepped any mention of topics about which I am knowledgeable - say, tourism, or opera, or (if you want to be naughty) salacious gossip about people who work in tourism or opera - and focused almost entirely on two areas where I can't say anything at all: 1, football, about which I understand nothing whatsoever; and 2, politics, about which I have opinions I won't air in mixed company. I think I was the odd man out on both fronts.

So aside from a few pleasantries with my boss' boss' boss (whom I really like a lot, and who had brought me along with her to help with planning the logistics for the panel session), I had nothing at all to say during dinner, and got the distinct feeling that my only function was to be needlessly expensive, kind of like government relief programs, but not at all like Mack Brown or whoever that other guy is they got in to replace him.

I wonder if I could find a tourism job in Seattle?

Haute Hell

High-end froofy hotels which charge $250 a night, $25/day for self parking, and $13 for a waffle with fruit compote, should really toss in the wi-fi for free.

Which they don't.

In which case, if one is forced to pay for it in order to check work email, for which one will be out of pocket because employees don't get reimbursed for incidentals while traveling, even if said incidentals are necessary for conducting one's duties, then one is forced to blog in order that the money is not a complete waste, without regard to whether or not one has anything to say.

Which one doesn't.

In which case, well, goodnight. The bed is quite comfy.

Once More Into the Breach

New Year's Eve is the best holiday.

You can, of course, polish off an entire bottle of champagne by yourself (it makes a good chaser for six glasses of boxed wine) and pass out on your bed fully clothed with a cat on your head any old night of the year. But on New Year's, you can still respect yourself in the morning.

Not that you should.

Okay, "Portlandia" is now getting a little out of control. Not only does Carrie Brownstein look uncannily like my sister Jessica, but in Season 3, Episode 3, they go to Seattle (which happens to be where my other sister Margie lives) to recruit new residents. One of the Seattleites they meet looks and acts just like Margie. I mean, has her haircut and everything.

Later in the episode she turns up and nonchalantly says she's decided to come live in Portland. They ask her, what will you do? Where will you live?

"I guess I'll just live with you guys," she says, nonchalantly.

If there's one word that describes Margie, "chalant" is not that word.

So now I'm waiting for the episode where the trying-desperately-not-to-be-middle-aged friend comes up from Austin in order to experience the bike culture. She'll have a flat-bar road bike she tries to pass off as hip by color-coordinating it as if it were a custom fixie. But it has 27 speeds and she still can't make it up hills without walking.

She's pretty damn chalant, I'm sorry to say. However, because the champagne hasn't quite worn off yet, she'll be played by the beautiful, brilliant, and still-living Madeline Kahn.

Happy New Year! Now for chrissakes get that damn cat off your head.

Football, Football, Football!

Doesn't anybody ever argue about the philosophical conflict posed by the concepts of predeterminism vs. free will anymore?

On Facebook, I mean.

The Dallas Cowboys are currently, or have until quite recently been, playing a football game. Their fate is uncertain as I type this, so for the moment, like Schroedinger's cat, they exist in a simultaneous state of victory and defeat. Until I open up Facebook and see what actually went down.

But that might not happen until morning.

Since there are some people, somewhere in the world, who care about the game enough actually to watch it, I realize it's a little self-centered to take this approach. Still, it's only fair. If they're going to clutter my newsfeed with stupid sports-related ephemera that no rational person could possibly be remotely interested in, I get to reduce them to hypothetical constructs. Fair's fair.

Meanwhile, here on Earth, I've been streaming "Portlandia" on Netflix.* This is becoming one of my favorite shows, though I've never been to Portland. I have a handful of important reasons for enjoying the show:

1. Carrie Brownstein bears a striking resemblance to my sister Jessie.
2. Bikes! Bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes.
3. We watched Dune the other night with the "No Olympics" episode of Portlandia as a chaser, which leaves you with an interesting mental image of Paul-Muad'Dib leading his people to enlightenment and world domination astride an exercise ball.
- 3a. And you could use that little plastic spike stopper in the exercise ball to make a crysknife. They don't seem to have mentioned crysknives in the movie.
4. Even though I've never been to Portland, I've been to both Seattle and Brooklyn. Seattle seems a bit more bike-friendly, but Brooklyn isn't set at a 45-degree angle.

There are some difficulties inherent in conducting a relationship with a member of the football cult. My boyfriend likes football quite a lot. He isn't fond of cats. God only knows what he sees in me.

Probably my philosophical leanings.

-----------------------------------------
*Did I mention that I'm an unusually deep thinker?

They Go All the Way Up

"Do you prefer your floor high, or low?" asked the front-desk clerk as I was checking in.

I was a little puzzled, because I had never really thought about it, but I guess I'm happy as long as it touches my feet. Are we talking 1970s-era conversation pit sunken living room here? Or those elevated white plastic paneled floors, like they had in mainframe workrooms of the same period, which served the dual purpose of keeping the circuitry cool and hiding the wires? I probably stared at her for too long, and she's had excellent hospitality training, because she smiled without a hint of condescension and added, "Do you prefer to be on a higher or lower floor?"

Ah. Yes. The eighth floor will be fine, thank you.

When you travel a lot, I'm given to understand, you sometimes have trouble sleeping, and that could explain the overall sluggishness of wits that could lead you to think a hotel clerk was offering you platform flooring. But this was my first trip in over a week. Moreover, I generally find that I sleep better in hotels, because hotels tend not to issue you flailing, kicking bedmates with sharp fingernails - at least, not respectable hotels.

This trip was to Arlington, to visit the location of our big annual conference held in April. It will be great; they always are. But I'm beginning to find that more and more of my focus is on the quality of the bed - sort of an unattainable object of desire during the conference itself. The Sheraton has rather magnificent ones. They are soft, and the bedding is fluffy, and the pillows are plentiful enough to make yourself a little nest out of... aaaaahhhh. But I won't see much of the bed during the actual conference, because the stern summons of work comes well before dawn, and the siren song of the hospitality suite drowns out the gentler call of fresh white linen.

I'm afraid that one year this will not be the case, and then I will know that I am old.

Arlington will be playing host to a little football game in a couple of weeks, I'm given to understand. That's not really any of my concern, but the locals seem to take a certain amount of interest in it. Perhaps their team is one of the participants. No? Oh well, maybe another time.

They do seem to know a thing or two about contraflow, though.

Did you know that the Ripley's/Palace of Wax in Grand Prairie was modeled after a royal palace built in the late 18th century for a dissolute fop later to be portrayed by Hugh Laurie? It's in Brighton, but is not quite as brightly colored as the building it inspired:


I'm looking forward to our visit at conference this year, because they've remodeled the lobby since I saw it last. They may have done some exciting things with the floors.

Helpful Holiday Tips

Don't give cutlery as a gift - holiday or otherwise, tradition says. To do so foreshadows (or actually brings on) a severance of the relationship.

But what if you're in a relationship you want to get out of? Is it appropriate to give someone you'd like to be an ex a set of steak knives for Christmas?

This is left as an exercise for the reader.

Gift-giving is a fascinating tradition in any case, fraught with symbolism both intentional and unintentional. What present is appropriate to give a family member, child, parent, sibling, spouse, lover, friend? When is it proper to give an item intended to complement (and therefore make suggestions towards the development of) the taste of someone you care about, and when is it overbearing?

In any case, edible underwear at an office party are generally a bad idea.

It's funny, now that I look back as an adult, how uncomplicated childhood Christmases all seemed to be. No one has any particular expectations from children other than not chewing with their mouths open and not awakening the whole extended family more than two hours before first light on Christmas morning. Gifts have meaning, but they don't have Meaning (until you hit adolescence, at which point God help everyone involved). Times were simpler. Also, it snowed.

Tomorrow after lunch, my boss and I are driving down to Corpus Christi for a site visit for our upcoming annual conference in April. I always love traveling, no matter where to, because it's very introspective, or philosophical, or something. I'm hoping to see a friend or two while I'm down there, but if not, it's no big deal; we'll be back soon. My boss was my secret Santa at our office Christmas party. She gave me a small travel bag stocked with miniature bottles of wine. What does this mean?!?

Maybe my helpful holiday tip for this year is that, if you're too overwhelmed to send out Christmas cards, everyone else will either not notice, or be so overwhelmed with their own holiday guilt that they assume there's a good reason they got cut from your list and will therefore accept unquestioningly your silence on this occasion. I for one would like to make it clear that an absence of Christmas cards on my part only signifies that I am disorganized and frazzled, and does not in any way reflect a lack on anyone else's part.

If I send you some knives, though, that's a whole different story.

So Many Pictures, No Camera Cord

Under most circumstances, getting escorted out of town by the cops is not the best way to start a day.

In my job, it's awesome!

Today is day 3 of our north Texas tour, and I'm taking advantage of a rare break to type up a quick post from my hotel room in Wichita Falls, where I have not yet, I'm pleased to announce, quite worn out my welcome. But then, we only got in an hour ago.

Any self-respecting hotel ought to be prepared to issue each guest a cat upon check-in. Who knows - this might not be too far off. Only ten years ago, even high-end hotels routinely furnished their rooms with mattresses made of repurposed drywall. The idea of putting comfortable beds in rooms intended for sleeping is rather a recent one.

Even moderate-class hotels now have plush mattresses, soft, plentiful pillows, attractive furnishings and drapes, and luxurious bathroom fittings. The little things really do add up. Wireless internet is fairly standard too, which means that, in my case anyway, the flat-panel TV never gets turned on. You get shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion. Maybe even mouthwash. Shoe polish, you get. Such extravagance!

So cats, that's where they really need to go next. And actual cream for your coffee. I still can't comprehend how that weird powdery stuff might be considered an adequate substitute.

I'm going to make myself Google-able here, I know it, but have to say that the highlight so far - for me - has been Chandor Gardens in Weatherford. With an intelligent, funny, offbeat horticulturist acting as guide, the setting was beyond beautiful, and the weather's been perfect. Our guide pointed out the bride's cottage located on the grounds. "There are a couple of advantages to this," he remarked. "One is that some guest who hasn't seen the bride since they were in sixth grade is going to want to catch up on everything that's happened over all those years - an hour before the wedding. So the guest will be looking all over the house for her, while she's holed up in the cottage drinking champagne."

He paused, then added, "Plus it's right next to the parking lot, so if she comes to her senses she can make a quick getaway."

Then again, getting a police escort out of Granbury might have been the highlight. That's hard to beat. Or getting to drink actual honest-to-goodness Crazy Water.

The whole trip so far has been wonderful, maybe not quite so much if you don't care for live music revue performed by slightly overenthusiastic Christians, which is not my thing, but everybody else loved it. And I've been happy as a good-sized pile of clams over everything else. I love my job, so much so in fact that I might almost go on Oprah and jump up and down on the couch about it, except that Oprah ranks slightly lower on the Things That Beth Likes scale than even the perkiest Christian musical revue, so forget I mentioned it.

It would be pretty cool if we got to attend a theatrical performance put on by a group of Flying Spaghetti Monster devotees for noble pastafarian causes. Have you been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

I have so many pictures, but I left my camera cord at home - you always have to forget something. Leave it to me to forget one of very few items your modern hotel won't provide.

Maybe tomorrow morning I'll get run out of town on a rail!

An Offer You Must Refuse

Weird thing about working in government #746: Your negotiation skills will be put to the test in ways you never could have imagined - unless, of course, you were batshit crazy to begin with, which given your choice of vocation is perhaps not completely out of the question.

Situation: I have a fam tour coming up next week for a group of our employees. All of the events, meals, and accommodations on the tour are sponsored, donated by the participating chambers of commerce, museums, restaurants, hotels, etc. All I have to do (aside from prepare the extensive and complicated legal paperwork allowing us to accept the donations, coordinate the myriad travel arrangements of all our attendees, research and prepare educational materials on all the attractions we'll be visiting, make binders, enforce guidelines, answer questions, and forcefully wrest from the tour coordinator as many of the details as I can get him to share with me in case, oh I don't know, some emergency arises, and he has to leave early on in the tour, and I end up in the middle of nowhere with a tour bus full of information center staff, armed with nothing more potent than a few of his notes scribbled on scrap paper, JUST LIKE WHAT HAPPENED LAST YEAR, thankyouverymuch) is show up and enjoy the ride.

And I can't wait! I'll be bringing my laptop. I will blog. It's super fun!

But the travel arrangements get a little complicated. One of our attendees hails from a city with no nearby airport, so she has to drive; but it's too far to travel in one day, so she'll arrive the day before the tour begins on Sunday. Well and good. I asked the tour coordinator if he could get us a room for her at "state rate"* Saturday night.

He responded to me a couple of days later. "No problem!" he said. "The Sunday night host hotel will be happy to provide her a comp room for Saturday night as well."

Ah, but you see, the donation approval we received was only for the dates of the tour, beginning Sunday. If they give us a freebie on Saturday, it's a gift, and that's unethical. So I have to decline. "I expect they'll think I'm completely off my rocker," I wrote back to him, "but can they just give her the room at $85?"

"No problem!" he said; but another week later, when he sent me the confirmation number for my attendee, he once more mentioned that the hotel had comped the room.

I hesitate to call them to straighten it out, because I think our conversation will go something like this:

***

HOTEL CLERK: Hello and thank you for calling the Hotel Espada! How may I help you?

ME: Hi, I'm calling on behalf of Mary Ingalls, regarding confirmation number 8675309.

HOTEL CLERK (checking his computer): Yes ma'am, I have a reservation here for Ms. Ingalls checking in on Saturday and checking out on Monday, two nights, and it's our pleasure to offer the room complimentary as part of your tour group!

ME: Thank you so much! Actually, the thing is, I'm calling because actually she'll need to pay for Saturday.

HOTEL CLERK (confused): No, ma'am, I have your group down for complimentary rooms.

ME: Yes, thank you, that's right, except only that one.

HOTEL CLERK (still more confused): So, only Ms. Ingalls is paying? Isn't she part of the tour? And you are...?

ME: I'm the planner. See, the tour doesn't begin till Sunday, and we have special permission from our governing board to accept the donation of the room-nights, so...

HOTEL CLERK: She needs to pay for both nights?

ME: No, you see, she only pays for the first night. The second night, she's part of the whole comped-room tour group deal.

HOTEL CLERK (a little snippy): It's actually more work for us to do it this way. Why don't we just comp her room for both nights?

ME: I know, but we can't because we don't have directorial approval for the first night. Look, I know it doesn't make sense, but can you please just go ahead and charge her for one night?

HOTEL CLERK (annoyed): All right, then, if you say so. (Checks computer) That'll be $149 plus tax -

ME: Oh wait, sorry, no. We can't pay more than $85.

HOTEL CLERK (slightly incredulous): The government rate is $149, ma'am.

ME: I know, but our travel budget has been cut and our agency's policy doesn't allow us to spend more than $85 on lodging.

HOTEL CLERK: If you're hard up, you know, I did offer the room for free just a few minutes ago.

ME: No, you see, we're not allowed to accept free stuff without directorial approval. She absolutely has to pay for Saturday. Just not more than $85.

HOTEL CLERK: Are you allowed to pay less than $85??

ME: Of course - I mean, that's just the cap; it's the most we can pay; if some place offers a room for less then we pay less.

HOTEL CLERK: Okay. How about $0?

ME: Nonono! Look - please can you just give her the room for one night for $85, please!

HOTEL CLERK: I really don't see why this is necessary.

ME: It's policy! Without directorial approval, we can't accept anything over $25 in value!

HOTEL CLERK: Oh, really? Have you subtracted $85 from $149 lately?

ME: That's different! That's not the same! We're negotiating!! I'm a tour planner!!!

HOTEL CLERK: You certainly could have fooled me.

***

The thing is, I figure, after fifteen or twenty years of working in the government sector, all of this might begin to make real sense.

And at that point, I really hope somebody goes transportational and shoots me.

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*Long story. Love your legislature!

New Frontiers

It's a really good thing the Ford Escapes in the state fleet have an auxiliary jack you can plug your iPod into. Otherwise I would have had to sing a capella.

I would also otherwise have had Barry Manilow stuck in my head for 723 miles. Or, say, 690 miles - because somewhere between Dripping Springs and Fredericksburg, I passed a sign for a ranch advertising "Showgoats." Some people are just sick.

This week's was my first solo outing for the state: my boss, who was supposed to accompany me, had something come up at the last minute. So I headed out to inspect the visitor center in Langtry all by myself. It's a long way, but a wonderful drive if you enjoy that sort of thing (what luck - I do!). I took the scenic route to Langtry: out 290 through Fredericksburg to I-10 to Junction, where I got lost. First of all, the exit sign for US 377 just says "North" - I guess on the grounds that nobody really wants to go south anyway. So I kept driving west, assuming that the southbound exit came later.

But it was soon apparent - luckily soon, because otherwise I'd have found myself in Sonora - that this was not the case, so I exited, turned around, backtracked, exited again in Junction, headed south on 377, and found a gas station, where I discovered that I don't know how to use the state card provided with the vehicle. (I've always gassed up at a District office.) Ten hilarious minutes during which I thought I'd be stranded forever in Kimble County, an amused convenience store clerk, and a few panicked phone calls later, I got it figured out, but this only enabled me to get lost some more. You have to make a right turn in Junction to stay on 377, otherwise you end up on Loop 481 which eventually deposits you, wailing curses, right back onto I-10 heading east. So be careful!

Eventually I found my highway. US 377 south of Junction looks like an FM (that's Farm-to-Market road, for you non-Texans) - a little two-lane affair with a yellow stripe down the middle and narrow shoulders. The speed limit is 75. Way too fast, way too fast for this road! I thought. An hour later I found myself doing ninety.

When you reach US 90, you turn left to go to Del Rio - and you're pretty much there, just on the west side of town - but you turn right to go to Langtry. Langtry is unincorporated. Although the 2000 census gave its population as 150, it's declined in recent years; and one of my coworkers in the visitor center guessed the current population is around 19.

"What do you do for entertainment way out here?" another coworker said she was asked by a visitor. She laughed. "Heck, when you're my age, a muumuu and an easy chair are all the entertainment you need!"

The US 90 drive from Del Rio to Langtry takes you across the Amistad Reservoir - blue and beautiful in a stark landscape of scrubby brownish-green - through Comstock (don't blink!), and a border control checkpoint (I wasn't the droids they were looking for, and was immediately waved along), through large, lumpy hills with a sparse growth of brush, and across Seminole Canyon and the Pecos River - the US 90 span across it is the tallest bridge in Texas, and the third highest in the United States.

Langtry is on the west side of the Pecos, as anyone familiar with Judge Roy Bean will be aware. The scenery is breathtaking and desolate, not readily captured with the least expensive digital camera money could buy, and the road was virtually empty except for the occasional 18-wheeler, border patrols, and vultures swooping down to pick at the pulped remains of a skunk on the pavement, identiable only by the smell - waiting until the last instant to wing out of the way of the speeding car, flapping away within inches of my windshield. If you don't set your cruise control, you glance down and realize you're doing 100.

Del Rio was not much of an adventure, since (1) I was incredibly tired by the time I got to my hotel room, and (2) going out on the (border) town alone might not be the best idea for a woman in my, um, position. So I picked up dinner, took it to my room, and slept until 5:30 - needing to be back in Langtry by 8am to finish the inspection, wrap up, and make it to Austin for Diane's retirement reception back at work. I drove like - like a state employee out of Langtry. And I made it in time, too.

I love my job. And I love, love, love my iPod!

Click here for photos.

West Texas: It's Pretty Big

Today I drove from Austin through Fredericksburg to Junction to Del Rio through Comstock to Langtry, worked for four hours, and then drove another hour back to Del Rio where I'm spending the night before following roughly the same schedule in reverse tomorrow. I got to see some things I don't often get to see, like 80mph speed limit signs, and a scorpion on the wall.

I'm too tired to blog about it. At some point I may post pictures. It's starkly beautiful out here, but the tap water tastes like ass.

Off the Road Again

The thing is, I'm not picky. At my last job, I was always thrilled at the prospect of field work. It's so fun to get out, drive for a while, and end up somewhere new and different - don't you think?

In my current position, a work trip entails hours of browsing museums, historic homes, beaches, parks, aquariums, art exhibits, and other attractions, not to mention meeting lots of fun new people. Isn't that wonderful? But it's all icing as far as I'm concerned. I adored traveling for work even when it just meant going to Yoakum to examine pavement.

Last night I came home from a whirlwind two-day trip to Corpus Christi, my old stomping grounds, to begin the process of planning our big 2010 conference. Naturally, our contact in Corpus is familiar with my old, evil Corpus employer. Naturally, our contact in Corpus doesn't think too highly of my old, evil Corpus employer. Naturally, Corpus being the small town it is (despite its almost 300,000 residents), our Corpus contact also knows many of my former-coworker-still-friends in the area. It made for some fairly lively conversation as we drove from attraction to attraction. It's a small world, when you work in the travel industry: everybody knows everyone. So it's a darn good thing I actually am a reasonably nice person!

The trip was tremendous fun. I can hardly wait for next year's conference! I have to say, our hospitality suite setup is a lot nicer than the one we had last April. This probably means I won't be getting quite as much sleep, next time around. What the hell, conference is only a week long, and there are much more interesting things you can be doing, at any given moment, than sleeping. Such as examining pavement!

As much fun stuff as there is to see and do in Corpus (and I'll have to put those pictures up in Photobucket and post a link tomorrow), the most surreal moment of our trip came last night, when we stopped for dinner in Kenedy. We arrived at a little hole-in-the-wall place - my favorite kind! - called Barth's, recommended by our photographer. We arrived around 8 p.m., a little past the dinner rush. "Just go ahead and sit anywhere," a hostess informed us, after we'd been standing timidly in the doorway for at least five minutes. "Smoking's up here, non-smoking's in the back."

Well, of course. We passed the salad bar, an array of iceberg lettuce and pickled beets, wilting sadly in the cigarette smoke, on our way through to the non-smoking room. There were no open tables there. Or rather, there were several tables - but most of them were in a portion of the room where the lights were off altogether. Three of them stood in the lighted room, all uncleaned. We stood and looked uncertainly around us for a few moments. Finally we moved the dirty plates and the cash tip from one table onto another dirty table and sat down. A waitress appeared and wiped our table down. "What would you folks like to drink?" she asked.

We ordered soda, but the gloom that descended after she left was impenetrable. My boss, the photographer, and I were on this trip. We all get along very well, but it had been an awfully long two days, and we were tired. The silence stretched on interminably. The waitress did not return.

"So," says the photographer, Kevin, after a while, "do y'all just want to go to Subway or something?"

We left - I stopped on the way to apologize to the harried young waitress, who was polite, but seemed frankly relieved - and filled up the gas tank, then pulled into a Dairy Queen a quarter of a mile down the street. Here we ordered burgers at the counter, but fast food was apparently not a concept with which Kenedy was prepared to grapple last night. We sat at a Formica table and made awkward, weary chit-chat with one another. After twenty minutes, I remarked, "You know, I think maybe they're inventing cattle."

Eventually the food came. We ate in silence. Kevin wanted a milkshake, and I'm not impartial to Blizzards myself. He approached the counter again. Sorry! The Dairy Queen was fresh out of ice cream. Kevin looked around the room. Several people were eating sundaes.

My boss, undaunted by the "Restrooms closed for cleaning" sign posted on the door, took a chance on the bathroom, and was successful, too. Kevin found the men's room likewise to be perfectly in order. I started wondering if we were all characters in an episode of "The Twilight Zone."

The sensation didn't dissipate after we left. Kevin drove, wending through the darkening countryside as lightning flickered restlessly in the rainless clouds. He and I talked about books and movies, or were silent. Martha dozed in the backseat. We passed three or four other small quiet towns with Dairy Queens, lit up only just enough to showcase the silhouettes of chairs perched upside-down atop Formica tables. There was no ice cream to be found anywhere in Texas last night. I gazed out the passenger window as random discharges of electricity illuminated the sky.

Today we had a division-wide birthday celebration - tres leches cake with whipped-cream icing, plus cookies, yogurt, chocolate cupcakes, and fresh fruit. Life is normal. Sweets and dairy products are readily available. And it's an honest living, too.

You Know You're a Texan When...

...your first thought, upon catching sight of the Atlanta airport control tower, is, "Hey, that thing looks like one of these."

Now I want one. A chocolate frother, I mean, not a control tower, and not an airport, and certainly not the one in Atlanta.

By the Horns

My flight didn't get into Syracuse until just before midnight last night - not too bad for me, as that's just 11 p.m. my time and I'm a night owl anyway. But my dad normally goes to bed at a reasonable hour. Still he came to the airport to pick me up, and then we sat up talking until two.

Don't you just love flight crews with a sense of humor? I thought we might actually give our ATL-SYR flight attendants a round of applause for the safety demonstration. They were great fun, but definitely a little tired; the guy read off the wrong flight number when welcoming us aboard, briefly confusing a few of the passengers. "I'm sorry, that's the number of tomorrow morning's flight back to Atlanta," he explained, "I'm just looking forward to leaving Syracuse."

"Hey!" shouted someone from the back of the plane. And I understand. I'd rather be in Syracuse than Atlanta, too.

Perhaps the pilot was tired as well. "Please use caution in opening the overhead compartments as contents may have shifted," the flight attendant read off as we taxied to the terminal, adding after a moment's thought, "especially after that landing."

My dad and I talked about a little of this and a little of that, though somehow we ended up with the relative merits of Mahler vs. Wagner (not that there's really any comparison), as well as the relative attractiveness of Austin Lyric Opera company members to members of other opera companies, and especially to the great opera stars of the past, many of whom apparently never heard that trans fats should be avoided rather than, say, taken intravenously.

"Why is it," my dad wondered, "that Wagnerian sopranos always seemed to be so large?"

The answer popped into my head just as I said it. "They had to be," I said, "in order to make it all the way to the end of the opera without dying of starvation." You see, I don't know if any operagoer has ever maintained consciousness through the entire Ring Cycle - or even just "Götterdämmerung"* - but a little-known fact is that Kirsten Flagstad was always a size 2 by the time she'd finished a performance, and was forced to refuel on massive quantities of smorgasbord to get her ready for the following evening. The sacrifices people will make for their art!

And as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, and still much too keyed up, I started thinking what an excellent quick-weight-loss program this would make. The problem would be devoting your life to the study of music and singing so you could become good enough to join an opera company and be cast as Sieglinde or Brunnhilde or Senta or Elisabeth or whoever - and that would take many many years, and I'm sorry but you really need to have already started on it - and then only do one performance, retire from the stage forever, and go have a salad.

You can't do this program in the comfort of your own home. Your helmet would poke holes in the ceiling.

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*German for "That God damned ring"

Get Outta Town!

I'm leaving behind this for over a week of this.*

Oh yeah, and I get to see my parents, too. :)

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*If for some reason you are reading this post in winter, do not, repeat, DO NOT click on these links.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles

Magda and Dumas are safely home in Barrow now. They traveled back with heavy hearts: the urn in which their father’s ancient ashes reposed overturned in the back of Dumas’ car when they hit a pothole in Gonzales, an ignominious scattering for the dignified and stern old Russian. Shaken, his children swept what they could out onto the beach without further ceremony. Their trip back to Alaska was spent mostly in silence, pondering the foolishness of their efforts, and wondering why they had once more made this epic journey, for so little reward to anyone?

But their depression was not destined to last, for on their return, they were overjoyed to find their brother Edwin safe at home; he had survived his sojourn in the belly of the whale, and in due course he emerged from it in the natural way, completely unscathed – only wanting a long shower, and expressing a marked disinclination for sushi.

Dumas is now a changed man: abandoning his dream of bringing a Super Wal-Mart to his hometown, he is now cultivating grapes in a fledgling vineyard where the retail giant was once to set its mighty foot, and looks forward to sampling the as-yet-unnamed fruit of his Bacchanalian efforts.

Magda, meanwhile, is meditating on the myriad blessings of her own personal advantages; loving and supportive family members; kind, loyal friends; a fun, steady job where her useful work is appreciated and rewarded; and the excellent health to continue enjoying all this wonderful bounty for a long time to come. What a lucky creature, what a child of good fortune she is. What could she possibly have to complain about?

Okay, so the sunburn hurts really really bad. But hurts will get better.

Day Three: You Learn Something Every Day

Day Three was yesterday, I'm late, sorry. Been kinda busy.

Okay, so yesterday we started off with a motivational speaker/trainer. I liked her better than last year's, and I definitely liked her WAY better than Mr. Wave My Hand in Front of Your Face Oh Look You're Inexplicably Weakened Now I Can Push Your Arm Down for No Readily Apparent Purpose (who, based on a couple of quick interactions with him on the phone when he called for my boss and he assumed I was "just" the secretary, is also a prick) but let's face it, a motivational speaker is a motivational speaker.

There are four types of people in the world, and if you're one of these, you may have learned to ACT like another one some of the time, but you are by nature and in your comfort zone one of these only:

A Director: Speaks in nouns and action verbs. Makes decisions and gets things done. Focused on the ends.

A Socializer: All about the good times, a dreamer, dynamic, vain, self-centered, fun, talkative.

A Relater: Cares about peace and harmony above all else, will do whatever it takes to negotiate a happy balance among others.

A Thinker: Analytical and detail-oriented, goes nuts if things are out of place or don't go according to plan.

Naturally, the problem with putting people in boxes (even if you do remember to poke plenty of air holes) is that they don't necessarily fit into just one - though, when questioned on it, the speaker insisted everyone does. There are four of us here in my group, as it happens, and a couple of the others eagerly seized on the notion that, hey, we've got one of each! A Director (my overall boss, whom I'd classify as a Socializer, if I had to pick), a Thinker (my immediate boss - good enough, but she's nowhere near as inflexible or as uncomfortable with shifting situations as the speaker was saying), a Socializer (me) and a Relater (our section admin). I tried explaining that I'm actually very shy, but nobody would believe me.

Ah well, it'll all blow over.

After that we were back on the bus for tours, as well as our group photo. Have you ever organized a group photo of 90 people? I bet you think it can't be done within 20 minutes. Well, I did it. (I guess maybe the photographer helped.) I was down there with the group screaming at everyone to divide up by height and maneuver everyone into position (the PA system on my bus doesn't work, so I've done a lot of screaming the last few days) and damned if we didn't get that shot done and everyone on their way back to the buses in 10 minutes flat.

I rock.

We also have to do a big cheer for our bus (the green bus again!) and last night, after all the touring was done, I actually had everybody up to my room to practice. This didn't look suspicious at all. First I had to run down to the hospitality suite, where one of our sponsors poured me a glass of wine. "Here," he told me, "this is a really nice red, give this a try.

"Oh thank you," I said as my glass was filled, "I have to go take care of something. Excuse me." On my way out I caught Kevin, the photographer, who's on my bus but was taking care of other duties during our tours this afternoon, so he didn't know about our rehearsal plans. "Hey, could you come with me for a bit? I need help with something," I told him, and led him off to my room.

Hotel rooms are not all that big, it turns out, when you get twenty excited, giggling people into them. We practiced our cheer several times, occasionally shushing each other lest someone from one of the other, lesser buses might be next door. They must not hear it yet. They must not know how badly their little blue and yellow butts are going to get kicked later today.

And then my phone rang. General panic ensued, but everyone shushed down into subsided giggling and I answered it calmly. "Hello?"

"Oh, hi, Elizabeth," said an unfamiliar man's voice, "Is Kevin in your room by any chance?"

Uh-oh. "Um," I said. "I don't, um. Who's calling, please?"

It was someone I don't know, an industry person in town for the conference. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and gazed frantically at Kevin. "It's [so-and-so]," I whispered, "what do I do?"

"I know him, I know what he needs," said Kevin, "I'll talk to him." So I handed over the phone.

That's my old reputation over and done with, and a whole new one just starting out. Hopefully I can 'splain everything tomorrow after our big debut.

Although when you get down to it, why should I care? I'm a Socializer!

Day Two: I Told You So

I can't really talk much about it here, but I can tell you that today I learned that Jim Bowie had a big knife... a big knife. Also I learned that his brother pounded, and pounded, and pounded the steel.

I'll just have to explain it later.

Oh hey, we made it on the local news tonight! They got some footage of my group at the bordello.