Trip 02: Seattle, Washington

After our late night back to Seattle from Tampa (and adventures with sentient trash cans), I was back in Seattle for a whopping two days before my next flight out!

One of those days was spent setting up my new netbook, which I have to say is very shiny and makes taking a computer with me on these trips a whole lot easier, and double-checking what I was leaving behind versus what I was taking with me.  The second day was spent at a work event - the reason I flew back to Seattle in the first place!

The two cool things about this event were that it allowed me entry onto a military base, and that I got to drive the company Mustang through the driving course.  Oh, and get called "Officer Beth" by a bunch of kids who thought I was a police officer.  Hey, I'll take what I can get!

As nice as it was to be back home, the quick turnaround from the East Coast to the West Coast and then back again was pretty rough.

But the kitties were super cute when I was home!

After just two days in Seattle (one of which was my second day off in June... it was a busy month, what can I say!), it was time to board a plane again and head off to my third event of the month: Atlanta, Georgia!

Trip 01: Tampa, Florida

I'm in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where I have finally again achieved internet access!  So without further waiting, I present to you Trip 01 Part 1: Tampa, Florida!

Tuesday morning, bright and early (well, so early it wasn't bright yet), Matt proved that he was an amazing boyfriend by dropping me off at the Seattle airport at 4:15am.  E-A-R-L-Y.  I met up with coworker R, made it through security, and boarded a 6am plane to Chicago, where I would make a transfer to a plane taking me to Tampa.

Trip 01 officially began! 

I should interject a bit of background here, before I continue.  I am not what one would call a seasoned traveler. I consider anything in the vicinity of Ohio to be "the East" (I've learned not to tack "Coast" onto that after several years of people pointing out that Ohio is, in fact, land-locked except for that whole Lake Erie thing).  The last time I had to deal with time zones on a trip was in 1997.  The longest flight I actually remember... is about two hours long, from Seattle to San Diego.  While I know I've been on longer before, I don't recall them at all!

So, as I'm sure you have guessed, this summer is proving to be an interesting experience for me!

The flight to Chicago was about four and a half hours long... that's a long time to be in one seat!  Still, flying into Chicago was a lot of fun.  I had a window seat, so I was able to look out over Illinois as we approached Midway and I really enjoyed everything I saw.  I wrote quite a bit in my journal, which I'll quote here:

Flying into Chicago was interesting - Illinois really is flat!

Yes, I am that observant.  Still, for a San Diego/Spokane/Seattle girl, it was odd to see a place scraped even like that.  I'm used to hills and mesas and mountains nowadays, not endless prairie!

Another thing I noticed was the green - and connected to that, the water.  The river didn't seem that long - I don't even know if it was the Chicago - but there were dozens of little ponds and lakes just scattered everywhere.  More trees than I expected, too: great lakes of woodland, and from the air I could watch the rivers of forested land trail off and split into little streams and rivulets that died out eventually into just farmland or suburbia.  It's far more green land than I expected.

Also flat.  Have I mentioned the flat?  From the air I could see for miles, all the different towns with their water towers sticking up over them, names I couldn't read painted on their sides.  I saw one town that was just a small curve where the two-lane road curved itself, and what looked like an old road still visible, heading west, through several fields.

It was surprisingly pretty.  The further east I go, the more it seems like I can just see the years lying on the land.  I looked out over the farmlands and thought about the pioneers that settled them, and wondered about the Native American tribes that originally called these lands home as we passed over the huge swatches of trees that separated towns.  Even as we came into Chicago, the houses made me think of the past - they're different houses there, all narrow brick houses rising three stories or so high, and make me think of ladies in swooshy skirts with parasols and gentlemen in suspenders or top hats.

All in all, for a half-hour approach into the airport, I was definitely taken with Illinois.  Still, we were just there for a little bit between planes, and then it was time to hop down to Florida.  Our bumpy ride continued - I haven't mentioned the turbulence, but that was a theme of the air travel this week!  

It was 91 degrees in Florida when we landed, and then I learned what humidity was.  Whew!  The first thing I did was put on shorts and sandals!

I'm in a hotel!  Exciting, I know. In my defense, I don't have many pictures of Florida!

We met up with my other coworkers (who shall here be referred to as S, J, and D) and had dinner at the hotel cafe, but it was fairly late with the time change, and we didn't do much beyond dinner and settling in.  I very much played the tourist, taking a look at Tampa while I could:

It's greener here than I expected, but a different type of green - kind of a brown and tan green compared to the dark forest green we flew over in Illinois.  Lots of shrub-like trees, and three types of palm trees - the tall ones, the short stubby ones, and ones that remind me of cactus, with the prickly fan leaves from Palm Sunday's weaker processions.  They grow in hug bushes alongside the freeway, bushes the size of living rooms made u of dozens if not hundreds of those fans.

There are [real] trees, too, but they all seem... languid. Most of them have branches that droop back down towards the ground, and even h few that reach upright for the sky have moss dripping down the branches like dried kelp.  Spanish moss, I guess - I've never seen the real thing before, and it gives everything a bit of "haunted mansion" feel, desolate and old and forgotten.  The ivy that climbs the tree trunks looks different, too - smaller, more fanciful leaves and an air of quite, despondent conquest as it both clings to and drapes off of the trees.

Everything's pretty, in a sultry kind of way.  The sunset was hazy, all golden-red ball of fire in the sky, and I tried to take a picture but don't think I quite caught it.

It really looked much more awesome than this.

It's the furthest southeast I've ever been.

Our hotel rooms were very nice - each of us had our own little two-room suite, with a living room and a bedroom with a huge king bed.  I felt kind of bad about it, actually, since I felt like I wasn't using it all!  

Wednesday was a pretty low-key day.  We did a bit of work, but had most of the day to settle in as we saw fit.  D and S and I went to the grocery store to stock up on breakfast food and drinks.  Then we had really good Japanese food for lunch and went back to the hotel.  I, being ambitious, have decided that I am going to attempt to get in shape this summer, so I went to the hotel's exercise room for some running (half a mile in 5:30; ouch) and biking (a mile in 3:30, better).  Hopefully those times and distances will increase greatly as the summer goes on!

I rewarded myself with some time hanging out in the pool with D afterwards, and we had dinner at the same cafe again before we met up with the rest of the crew for a meeting.  After the meeting, we went to the parking lot for the event on Thursday - we were allowed to block it off and start set-up at 9:30pm.  It was a great night going into it, about 85 degrees and with a huge orange full moon out, but before long, the moon started to become eclipsed by clouds...

Had our meeting at 8 and went out to the site at 9:30 - very warm and muggy.  I got to drive the Tahoe - big car!  We unloaded and sweated putting the tent up in the heat, watching a really nice full yellow moon slowly get covered by the clouds, with lightning flickering in the distance.  Just as we were adding the weights [to stabilize the tents], the wind and lightning really picked up - we storm-lashed the tents as much as we could, and in the middle of everything there was a giant crash of lightning and all the lights in the parking lot died.  Then the rain started - a giant torrential downpour of rain, big thick drops.

The aftermath, part 1!

Since there was a weather advisory because of the lightning, we stopped set-up and ran for home.  We were only out in the rain for probably ten minutes, but we were dripping wet and soaked straight through - wetter than when I had gotten out of the pool that afternoon!

Picture chosen to show off crazy rain aftermath... and also awful farmer's tan from the work shirts!

Because we couldn't finish set-up that night, we woke up early Thursday to go back out and set-up before the event.  Everything went very well, even though it was still ridiculously hot!  We were chugging water like it was going out of style, and after the event, during tear-down, things got even crazier trying to stay hydrated and cool:

Towards the end of tear-down, we were resorting to desperate measures to keep even semi-cool: pouring a whole water bottle over our arms, dunking our hats in the cooler ice water [then putting them back on - heaven!], and sticking ice under our ball caps.  All of these worked... for about five minutes!

The event itself went very well - it was my first even of this kind, and it's a bit different from the other ones I've been trained on.  There were many more media at the event than I had expected - even national CNN came out!

I'm fairly sure my image or voice will be on tv at some point soon from all of this - CNN was here this morning, plus all the local stations... I had a microphone wired up to me for a while.  It was kind of funny how unused to media I was - I turned around at one point right into a camera, said, "Sorry!", and tried to get out of the way only to be told, "It's okay, you're what I'm filming right now, you're not in the way."

Like you do.

(I did manage to get myself on tv; send me an email if you want the link to the news story.)

After the event, we rushed back to the hotel.  S, R, and I had to go to the airport right away for a Saturday even in WA (J and D get to drive the trailer over to Atlanta in the meantime).  We had lots of time in the airport - two hours in Tampa and two in Atlanta for our connection.  It was a really late flight into Seattle (we landed at 12:30am Seattle time, which meant for us it was 3:30am!), and combine that with not getting too much sleep the night before due to aborted night set-up and early morning set-up, and I was pretty exhausted!

I will leave you with proof:

The trash cans in the Atlanta airport eat recycling.  Like, you put in recycling and the trash can turns on and sorts and crunches it separately from the trash.  I am untraveled enough to think this is quite possibly both the coolest trash can ever as well as the most disturbing.

Ah, the non-urbane observations of a sleep-deprived traveler...

-Beth

Where is home, anyways?

So even though I'm off jetting (driving?) all over the country, I want to give you an idea of my home base!

I live in Seattle, WA, with my boyfriend Matt and our two adorable kitties.

See?  Adorable.

Oswald is the older, bigger cat on the left - he's probably around two or three years old and he's absolutely huge.  Not fat-huge, just big-huge.  When we took him in to the vet, we asked about his weight since we were concerned he might be getting chubby as he was getting fed regularly again.  (He was a stray, and from some behaviors we've observed, we think he was kicked out of a home at some point - who would want to get rid of such a handsome kitty?)  The vet looked at him, and as she went to pick him up, started to say, "Well, he's overweight, so..."  Then she picked him up, and felt how little of his weight is fat, and corrected herself: "No, he's just big!"

He's a very affectionate cat.  The whole reason we settled on him can be summed up in one word: headbutt!  He nuzzled right up against Matt even in the cage at the animal shelter, and so we couldn't help but take him home.  He's a champion purrer and much calmer than his adopted sister!

Lina is the little black cat on the right.  She's probably about a year old now (the shelter wasn't really sure of her age when we got her), and she's rambunctious and inquisitive!  Surprisingly enough, she's also the lap-kitty of our two cats - Oswald is calmer, but doesn't like laps too much, so it's Lina that curls up in my lap when I'm at my computer or against my side when I go to sleep.  She purrs and flops over quite contentedly.  We call her our "little" kitty, even though she's definitely grown a ton since we adopted her!

Of course, they both go crazy when we bring out the laser pointer Lisa gave us for Christmas, but that's another story...

Anyways, home!  Beyond the kitties and the boyfriend, Seattle is a great place to live.  Don't get me wrong, I still miss living in Spokane sometimes - I miss my gaming friends, the group of good friends and the LARPing that I was just getting into when I left, Jack and Dan's grilled cheese sandwiches, the Spokane River, Gonzaga, and even just the whole laid-back, slightly redneck feel of life there.  But for a girl who always swore she'd never live in Seattle, I think I've adapted pretty well!

Home is a fantastic apartment with a walk-in closet, a folding table instead of a real dinner table, the comfiest couch in the world, two racks of DVDs, five bookshelves, no TV (my sixth-graders are aghast), a well-stocked pantry, and embarrassingly white and undecorated walls.  (Seriously, we have four things hanging in this whole apartment: my whiteboard to-do list in the hallway by the office, a painting Matt's dad gave us in the hallway to the bedroom, a framed sampler my mom gave me in the office, and my DIY quote from Transmetropolitan over my desk.  And I've lived here for ten months!  I have a goal for this summer, obviously!)

At least it's an awesome quote.

Home is rain every month of the year, and hail when you least expect it.  Home is predicted snowstorms evaporating but snow days in February because my school is above 1200 feet.  It's living in one city but working in two others.  It's ice cream for dinner some days (because I'm a grown up, darn it!) and date nights with Matt other evenings.  It's Tuesday night games with the guys and random days when Matt's brother comes over to hang out.  It's sitting on the couch with my laptop and going off on field trips with my middle schoolers.  It's driving too long in traffic to get to school but seeing Mt. Rainer over the freeway on clear days.    It's a Starbucks on every corner, rainboots exchanged for sandals come nice weather, and dozens of places I just haven't found yet since I haven't lived here long enough.

Crossing the floating bridge over Lake Washington on the 90 on my way to work.  That's Mercer Island in front of me.

This summer is going to give me a chance to appreciate being both home and away - I'm going to have the chance to travel, but also the chance to be home in between trips.  Even though I'll only be home for about two weeks this summer, I have some exploration planned (hikes! picnics! farmer's markets!), some apartment work to do (garden! non-blank-walls! cookie experimentation!), and some lazy me time scheduled (books! video games! more books!), all of which you might hear about on this blog.

What can I say... you can keep track of me even when I'm at home!

This post is scheduled to go up at 8am on Sunday morning, just as I'll be boarding a plane for Atlanta, GA and the third part of Trip 01.  I'm putting together a recap of the first parts of the trip (Tampa, FL and WA), and should have that ready for you all soon!

-Beth

Upcoming... Trip 01

Tomorrow the madness begins!

As of Sunday night, I've received my flight information for the first half of the trip, so everything is now official!  Here's what Trip 01: FL, WA, GA, and PA will look like for me:

(Monday June 13: Last day of work at my school)
Tuesday June 14: Fly to Tampa, FL.
Thursday June 16: Event in Tampa.  Fly to Tacoma, WA.
Saturday June 18: Event south of Tacoma, WA.
Sunday June 19: Fly to Atlanta, GA.
Monday June 20: Event in Atlanta.
Tuesday-Wednesday June 21-22: Drive to Philadelphia, PA (drive date/time TBD).
Thursday June 23: Event in Philadelphia.
Friday-Sunday June 24-26: Drive to Harrisburg, PA (drive date/time TBD).
Monday June 27: Event in Harrisburg.
sometime after June 27 but before July 4: Fly home to Seattle, WA (I don't have my ticket yet, so TBD!).

It looks like I'll have a few days of downtime in Philadelphia - hopefully I will have the chance to go explore some history while I'm out there!

Future trips aren't expected to be either as long or as coast-to-coast as this one is - the Tacoma event is a one-shot deal that I'm leading out here, and couldn't be rearranged once the main summer schedule was set and overlapped a bit.  So they're pulling me from the main summer things for a day or two so I can lead the event south of Tacoma, and while I'm gone, my supervisor and the other crew get to drive the trailer from Tampa to Georgia.  I just get to fly back in at the end for the event the next day!

I spent most of this weekend (well, Sunday; I had to be at school for tear-down on Saturday) packing up my things and cleaning the apartment.  Matt will be home with the kitties while I'm gone, but I still wanted to leave it at least semi-neat before I left for... two weeks, it looks like!  There are just a few more things to add to my bags, which are already packed, and then I should be off on my first adventure of the summer.

Hurrah!

-Beth

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!

Last week of school

This week is the last week for this school year.  That means it's the last time in a while that I will wake up, pack a lunch, and head out to face this every morning:

Lovely, isn't it?

So of course, this final week is filled with preparations for the end of the year: final projects, packing up all the textbooks, cleaning out lockers, and grading.  Lots of grading.  Have I mentioned the grading?

Students are finished with school on Friday, but all of us lucky teachers get to come back right away on Saturday to do pack up the whole middle school - there's construction on campus, so we need to be out of the building right away otherwise the project might not be finished by September!

Sunday we thankfully have off, and then I'll be back one final day on Monday.  I won't be allowed into my building, due to construction, but we'll have the final end-of-year meetings and looking-ahead-to-next-year talks, and then I'll be off for the summer!

What this really means, though, is that I have just this last week to prepare for the summer.  I'm making lists, gathering up all my supplies, and in general trying to make sure that I'm set to go... because I'll be starting right away.  But that's another blog post... stay tuned!

-Beth

Keeping Track of Beth

Hello, everyone!

Welcome to Keeping Track of Beth!  I have such a great summer coming up that I couldn't resist creating a blog to show it off a bit.  It'll let you keep track of where I am, what I'm doing, and how my summer is going - I'll be posting stories and pictures from my summer here to share with everyone.

So, to start things off, some introductions and explanations, because I know not all of you have heard the full story of why my summer is going to be so much fun!

With summer rapidly approaching, I knew that I would need to find a summer job.  Teaching is wonderful in that you get the summers free from work... but unfortunately, it means you also have a summer free from paychecks!  As rent and bills don't really care about pesky things like summer break equaling no income for teachers, I started my hunt for a summer job in late winter/early spring.

In between making cookies, of course.

Luckily enough for me, around the same time, the company Matt works for (a wonderful place that provides new driver training for teens and corporate fleet training for companies, which I am not going to name on the internet) decided to look into hiring outside applicants to act as lead instructors for their defensive driving events.  I talked it over with Matt and decided to apply - he loves the company and his job, and while I didn't think I could ever do his part of the job (put my life in the hands of a brand new teenage driver?  Not 'til I have kids of my own, thanks!), I'd always been interested in the defensive driving events.  I applied for the job, interviewed, and was up front about the fact that I was dating a current employee.  After demonstrating my teaching skills by instructing grown men in the proper way to create friendship bracelets, I was hired!

I am insanely happy with this job.  Not only is the job perfect for my schedule, with weekend events during the school year and tons of events in the summer, but I've realized just how much I enjoy it.  Don't get me wrong - it's a lot of work!  It involves twelve-hour days running around outside regardless of weather dealing with cone, cars, and courses. But I'm constantly learning and having fun as I work, and this summer, it's only going to get better!  Why, you ask?

Well, my company has paired with an insurance company (again, not named because this is the internet!).  Because of this partnership, the team I work with is being sent to 27 different cities around the United States to run defensive driving events for local drivers.  We know 25 of those cities already, and of the 25, I live in one (Seattle, WA), and have driven through two others (Fresno and San Fransisco, both in CA).  The others are completely new to me, and I'm excited to see them first-hand!

Some of the cities on the list!

This blog is where I'll keep track of all the places I go to this summer, as well as what I'm up to at home when I'm not traveling!  I want to have a record of what my life looks like, and I decided that sharing the awesome parts with all of you will be a fun summer project.  It's definitely shaping up to be a fun ride, so stay tuned... I'll be out and about before you know it!

-Beth