Business Trip #1

I won't go into what I do for a living, but this time of year is my busy season, involving a LOT of work and travelling all over Texas.

My boss comes into my office on Monday around noon. He looks at me rather strangely and says, "Are you going to be in Live Oak tomorrow?"

I've had quite a few "Oh Shit" moments lately, WAY past my comfort level. I pull up my calendar and sure enough, I have to be in South Texas the next morning. I also needed to have reports finished and run (these reports in particular take about 10-14 hours) to take with me. And Live Oak County is in south Texas, about a three hour drive from Austin. So I bust my ass to get the reports started, then run home to pack. Lucky for me I've gotten good at travelling, and I can do a one day trip with a small bag. So at home I grab a suit which I can iron at the hotel, my toothbrush and product, and run back to the office. The reports have been running for about 3 1/2 hours and it was about... 1/10th finished.

To hell with it. I closed up shop and headed out the door. My biggest problems with going out of town on such short notice were:

• Not having CDs burnt. Three hours of trying to find a station in BFE (Bum Fuckin' Egypt for those of you that aren't Texans).
• Not leaving early enough to miss rush hour. Especially since I have to drive through two cities to get there.
• Not having time to get my suit cleaned. At least Febreeze is my friend.
• Not having time to stop off at the liquor store.
  

So I took off towards the bustling metropolis of George West, Texas. To get there, drive south out of San Antonio. Drive until you're completely lost in the middle of nowhere, then turn right and go 15 miles.

Back to the radio. I was ok going through Austin and San Antonio, but after that, pickings were rather slim. Scanning through, I heard plenty of Tejano, preachers (on a weekday afternoon...on FM. For real), and country. I finally picked up a station that sounded promising, until I heard this:

"K***, today's top hits, and now Cutting Crew with I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight."
Read that again, you'll get the irony.

Also on that station the ads were a little odd, mostly help wanted ads. I'm talking 90 second ads for assembly-line workers making $7/hour. I thought I heard that wrong, but they repeated the wages FOUR TIMES, as if that was a executive salary. In addition, some of the other points they made sure to advertise were "Paid Jury Duty!" "Free Parking!" and "On-Site Cafeteria!" Now, not to rag on the low-wage people, cause we were all there at one time... Ok, maybe not Paris Hilton... but if you're making $7/hr, 401K's might not be too much a priority.

So I finally get into town at about 7, check into the hotel. The other guy from my office was already there. I call him and we meet up downstairs to go to dinner. That's the good part of travelling. Yay company card! So we start driving around, looking for a restaurant. 20 minutes later, we're still looking. We end up eating dinner at Burger King. I swear I'm not making that up. That was the nicest place we could find. The next day I asked a lady where they go out to eat. She said, usually on special occasions we go out to the Truck Stop. Really. I think I got a hernia holding back laughter.

These are the kind of places I have to go to all summer long. Don't get me wrong, I grew up in a briar patch myownself. The people are as nice as they could be, and they actually use words like "varmint."

Other than that, it was pretty uneventful. I didn't have my laptop with me, so I ended up making paper airplanes in my room all night. Oh, the TV was on, but in order to change the channel, you had to push down the buttons on the remote until they came out the other side, sometimes taking a fingernail with it. And apparently it was a dry county. Wish I would've known.

One down, ten to go.