on the wroad with wrob

Goooooooooo Gophers!
It is gophers, isn't it?
I'm in Minnesota, the land of lotsa lakes.
It is lakes, isn't it?
Cut me a little slack. Ain't seen a lake or gopher yet.
I'm in the beautiful twin cities. And they are. If Minneapolis is as lovely as St. Paul, i could get lost here a while. I'm on a five-day trip for my peanut butter company, spreading the love at the Nature Valley Bicycle Festival, home to the men's/women's Nature Valley Grand Prix, the first professional bike race i've ever seen. I'm not in the monkey costume. Bananas can't do it all himself, and i'm a show of one this time...plus, it would be cruel to stick someone in that costume for an outdoor, day-long summer event. I'm giving and selling peanut butter and gifts, and providing loving support (i.e. tubs of PB) to the Peanut Butter & Co. TWENTY12 women's team. All proceeds go to the team. We started sponsoring them this year, and this is the first i've met them.
What a long, peculiar trip it's been, and i haven't even gotten to day two.
I set my alarm clock for 4AM, to get my 8:15 flight. My sleep was short and fitful. That day, i had started feeling a phantom shoulder injury. It may be a tear, of which i've had a couple in my life. A bad one can keep your arm from raising over your head, and take years to heal. I have no memory of injuring it, but during the night, the pain every time i shifted was enough to wake me up. Working the festival solo, i was going to have to lift a lot of boxes of product, too. Ah well. It may not be a tear though, as last night's sleep involved much less pain.
My trip started with a brain fart of prodigious proportions. I arrived at JFK Airport in a timely manner...only to suddenly realize that my flight was out of LaGuardia. I've only flown out of New York from JFK and Newark, and somehow...the word "LaGuardia" on all my documents just hadn't sunk in. I now had to get from Bumblefuck, Brooklyn to north Queens in, oh, half an hour.
I made it in less than an hour, thanks to an Airtran that cuts through some barren NY wasteland, possibly created in part for morons like myself. I got through LaGuardia security (losing only a water bottle and toothpaste, and not the handleless screwdriver i'd feared losing) with enough time to get breakfast and a paper. On the flight, i mostly slept and did healing meditation.
Arrived at M/St.P Airport, i went to get my rental car. We'd booked a mini-SUV. Hertz didn't have the car we'd booked. In my rental experience, reserving a specific car is a lot like predicting what color baby my sister is going to have next. Pretty much a crapshoot.
RENTAL AGENT: (to you) Well...nope, we don't seem to have that'n today. Hey Ron, whatta we got?
RON: We got this'n here.
RENTAL AGENT: Izzit runnin'?
RON: Uh...yup.
RENTAL AGENT: (to you) Same rate. Good 'nuff?
The agent asked me if a "Yukon" was okay. I asked whether it had storage space (i don't know much about cars, see). I'm now pretty sure "Yukon" is Swahili for "pregnant water buffalo". A couple of my NY bedrooms have been smaller than this thing.
Once i was on the road, i had my first-ever experience with a "GPS"! Great googily, it boggles the mind to think where we're headed, in terms of technology doing the work for you. Will the GPS soon be telling us that the driver in the Saab behind us got handed divorce papers today, and has had four fuzzy navels? And how long will it be before children ask us what exactly a "map" is? Of course, listen to me, with my equally preposterously-coddled mindframe. Me and my "maps"...the spirits of Lewis and Clark shake their heads in shame.
Despite my Luddite ways, i almost like the GPS.
And then, in the swank hotel parking lot, i backed up...and a REARVIEW VIDEO appeared on my mirror. Great effing googily. I wanted to find some strangers, and ask them to put on a little skit behind me.
The first day of the festival was wonderful. There were a lot of booths, but not many food stands. Many people told me i was the best booth by far. That's a fair cop. Our peanut butter is awesome in more ways than one. We have eight flavors, the two you'd expect, plus cinnamon raisin, maple, honey, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and spicy. I'm the guy behind the booth, and i'm nibbling away too.
It was a looooong day. Working alone will do that. No food or bathroom breaks. I was never swamped, but it was a slow and unending stream. Actually, probably the best pace to have. You have time to talk with everyone, and offer as many tastes as they want.
I'm not sure whether i'll have more of these non-monkey trips. I ended up feeling short-changed during contract negotiation. Ugh, negotiation, money...but as much as i love this job, i wouldn't do it for free. The original offer i was given, extrapolated to a yearly salary of $24,000. For an international company needing someone with a high level of integrity/knowledge/people skills, that seems low. To be paid less than the cost of the hotel, or the car rental, doesn't exactly scream appreciation.
But that's minor, in the big picture. I had a whole lot of fun, and made a whole lot of people happy.
Nice work if you can get it.
P.S. The color of my sister's babies isn't really unpredictable, but wouldn't that be cool if it were?