There And Back Again

Two days ago, about this time, I completed my first business trip. I was sent to Minneapolis, Minnesota for a training course called Crucial Conversations, given by a course named Vital Smarts.

I was up ridiculously early Monday morning (which means anytime before dawn in my book, 5:30 in this case) to go the East Texas Regional Airport for a puddle-jumper to DFW. From there I sat around the terminal until my flight to Minneapolis, about 4 hours later. I finally got to Minneapolis around 1:30, got my rental car (a Mustang convertible--terrible instrumentation panel), and got lost trying to find my way around 1-way streets in downtown Minneapolis (in which 5th St. meets 7th Ave., with a few named streets mixed in to mess you up) to the Raddison Hotel, where the company had decided to put me up.

After I got settled in my room and checked-in with work, I found out that the class I was supposed to fly to Chicago for in a couple weeks was already full, and had to cancel plans with my folks. By the time that was done, it was past 7, so I decided to go looking for some food. I then discovered one of the great things about Downtown: the 2nd-story Skywalk that connects most of the buildings. You can get almost anywhere downtown without ever having to step foot on a sidewalk or go outside. The annoying parts were that it's a very confusing layout and there aren't many maps to help guide you from building to building, and that everything except the major stores closes up at 6, so all the food joints were already closed. Had to venture out of Downtown to get dinner, then come back in, which I survived and only got lost once. I didn't touch the car again until I was leaving town.

The class was 8-5 on Tuesday and Wednesday. Not a lot of revolutionary material, just general stuff about disengaging your emotions. They also gave us the book and audio CDs, which I have yet to read. The intent of my going to the course was to evaluate it for the rest of my department, and my general evaluation was that there may be some nuggets to pull out, but the course itself isn't worth sending people through normally. The fact that I was the only non-manager there didn't help much (most people were managers or executives from hospitals). I've still got to go through the CDs and book to see if there's anything more directed there.

Tuesday evening I decided to venture down to the Mall of America, courtesy of the Light Rail that runs straight there from a station 2 blocks from my hotel. Unfortunately I didn't know it was 2 blocks, and ended up walking to the wrong end of the Nicollet Mall before figuring that part out. At the MoA I went straight to the aquarium, which didn't exist when I was last there 10 years ago. It's a walk-through underwater aquarium, so my engineering training kicked in right away at how many tons of water pressure were around me trying to turn me into filleted bits of shark food. Having stingrays and tiger sharks resting on the tube directly above me didn't help much with that part, but by the time I got halfway through I was getting over it. They have a small touch pool near the end, where they keep some smaller stingrays and sharks. They'd just fed them, so they were very active, and I eventually mustered up the courage to touch one of the stingrays; very slimy feeling, but I'm not sure how much of that was just the water. That was the last stop in the aquarium, so I went on and walked around all 3 main levels before grabbing dinner and heading back to the Light Rail station. I didn't buy anything except dinner and a Strawberry Banana Julius, not that I'd planned to. A mall is never a good place to buy something, especially not a mall designed as a tourist trap.

Wednesday evening, the class was over, and I was debating what to do. I found out that the Hollidazzle, a small Christmas parade down the Nicollet Mall, was starting that night. The cold weather had finally come in that day, and the temp was about 12 degrees, but that didn't deter me from going down to see it. I even was able to get pictures of about half the floats before my camera's batteries froze; I'll try to post some of then here in the near future. After that, I went back to my room to warm up, and watch CBS for the night. However, during CSI:NY, I heard real-life gunfire outside my window. I wasn't able to see the actual shooting site; I was on the 6th floor, and there was a bus between us. From what they said on the news later, two guys got into an argument, one of them pulled a gun, and I heard 4 or 5 shots. It took the police about 5 minutes to get there, and the ambulance another 5 past that. Rather poor response time in my opinion, given it was light traffic downtown at that hour, but the guy who was shot was moving and looked OK when they got him into the ambulance. I just checked the local news station, and it says that as of the next morning he was listed in serious-to-critical. That kinda spoiled my mood for the rest of the evening.

Thursday morning, I was up too early again, and got lost again trying to find the I-35 on-ramp. Managed to get to the airport eventually, and checked my car back in with Avis. The flight to DFW was fairly good, though we hit some turbulence during our descent. I even think I got some sleep on the flight, which is amazing. When we got to DFW, I sat around for a while, then walked all of B Concourse, and found that it connected directly to D, so I walked all of that too. Then, an hour before my flight's supposed to leave, they announce that they're providing a bus to Longview for anybody who wants it. They hadn't canceled the flight yet, but given the cold weather had followed me from Minnesota and it was actually snowing outside, plus what the turbulence we'd encountered on the way in would do to a puddle-jumper, I decided the bus was a good idea. We didn't leave the terminal until almost an hour after our plane was supposed to leave, and there were only a half dozen of us on the bus, so I think the plane made it. However, we made it to Longview safe and sound, and it worked out since that's when Nacho had just gotten into town and was able to pick me up.

Friday I was back at work, in the mad rush to get caught up. Now it's the weekend, and I'm starting to look ahead; I've still got more catching up to do, and Nacho and I need to go look at an apartment on Monday. We hope we like it, because the price is good and it's the close to both LeTourneaus, while still being in what looks like a safe neighborhood. More on that in my next post, hopefully.