Trip 00: Ephrata, WA

Before I get going on all of my summer trips, I thought I'd do a quick recap on my very first trip!  It's not really a summer trip, so I'm calling it Trip 00.  I was at that odd in-between stage of not-really-trained but not-going-to-get-more-training, so I was a bit apprehensive about it.  Plus, I'd never really traveled for work before, so it was definitely a bit of a learning curve!

After getting the truck and trailer all squared away, we drove out to Ephrata, a small town in central Washington.  It was about a three-hour drive (possibly longer, towing the trailer), and it was a really pretty drive there over Snoqualmie Pass.  We went straight out to the site once we arrived in town, since we wanted to get everything set up first.

Set-up generally involves putting up a large event tent, 30-50 chairs, and an utter ton of cones put out in specific, measured locations for each of the five activities we run each event.  Once the cones are paced out, we either chalk or spraypaint the ground to mark where they go, as we then take down all the cones and set out just the ones needed for the first exercise.

Clearly, as we're dealing with cars (or buses, or large trucks...), we need to set up in a place with enough room for the vehicles to maneuver.  Usually this involves a large parking lot.  In Ephrata, though, this meant we set up on an unused runway at the municipal airport.

An airport in the middle of the prairie.  Cell phone pic.

Note that I did not say that it was an unused airport - just the runway we reserved was unused.  This meant that we had to escort our students on and off the airport in a mighty convoy led and closed with our company vehicles flashing every single light that can be legally installed on a vehicle (which translates to police-like blinkers and flashers and strobe lights) while we crossed an active runway (after stopping to scan the skies for taking off or landing planes, of course).

It was, in fact, fairly awesome.

We had four full events, which translates to two full days of events.  Luckily, we set up on Monday night, so Tuesday morning we could get straight to work!  Two events on Tuesday, followed by dinner in the same small, hole-in-the-wall bar as Monday night with the other guys working the event (the waitress remembered our orders - does that make us locals after a single trip?), and then back to the runway for two more events on Wednesday before tear-down and heading back towards home.  I managed to get home by eleven, which wasn't too bad, but yes, I was definitely exhausted by the end of it!

Still, it was definitely pretty

I've been told that the summer events aren't that packed - it's supposedly a single event day bracketed by travel days, rather than two full days crammed right next to each other.  Still, as long as I get myself to bed early enough, I can manage these long days... I think I fell asleep before 9pm (it was still light out, at least) and had no problem waking up at 5am!  The hardest part was the last night, getting home so late.

But it was a lot of fun to hang out with the other guys on the crew, and as the only girl, I'm lucky enough to not have a roommate at the hotel (unless there's another girl along, which doesn't look too likely)!  So as a prelude to the summer, it was work-intensive but still a blast.  We'll see how the real trips go!