Wisconsin

Last week, I traveled to a homeschool conference in Wisconsin to recruit for PHC. A few interesting happenings in my travels.

I was flying Dulles to Chicago on a 10:30AM flight. I made it through security and was just checking for directions to my gate when I heard my name called. I turned around to find a PHC student. Discovered that he'd been on the trip to Prague which had returned the day before. He was now flying home and was on the same Dulles to Chicago flight as I was. We chatted in the gate area waiting for the flight.

The flight itself was a bit of a treat for me. It was on a 767 (I think)--a bigger plane than I normally fly. I think the last time I was on a plane that large on the trip to Greece a year ago.

On the flight, I worked on the presentation "How to Prepare Your Homeschooler for College" that I would be giving later that evening as a vendor workshop. I'd listened twice to the presentation as done by a regular member of the admissions team and taken detailed notes. On the flight, I went back through my notes and re-organized my scribbles from one of the times listening. In the end, I think I had 7 or 8 pages of detailed notes. If I were doing the presentation regularly, that would get condensed quite a bit further, but for the first time on a topic I'm not intimately familiar with, I wanted to have more details in front of me.

I made it to the resort where I was staying and the conference was being hosted without any problems. In the shuttle from the airport to the conferenc, I had to twice plead, "I don't have a tv" for my cultural ignorance. The first time, I was talking with a guy who was coming in for a bicycling convention. He expected me to recognize their keynote speaker--a commentator for the Tour de France. After everyone else was dropped-off, I was chatting with the driver. He started talking about chefs he watches on the Food Channel and I was again unable to recognize the names. I still don't miss having a tv.

Checking in, I asked at the desk for a couple of packages (display and literature for the booth), as I'd been instructed. The front desk didn't find it, but thought it might've gone with the conference materials and placed at the booth. I found my room and then headed to find the booth area and check for my packages.

Before I even made it to my room, I heard my name being called again--this time a PHC graduate who was representing Generation Joshua at the conference. He'd flown in the day before and had already located our booths, located together in the hall.

I made it the booth, but there were no packages there. I headed back to the front desk and asked again. This time they called down and checked with their shipping center, which confirmed that the packages were there. The packages were brought to the front desk in less than 10 minutes. I was able to set up the booth with plenty of time to spare.

As none of the resort eateries appeared to be serving and I hadn't eaten all day, I walked across the street to a little place that served pizza and pastry. They were playing big band music, which I enjoyed listening to and made me want to go swing dancing again. By the time I finished my meal, it was raining steadily with a nice breeze blowing. I walked back to the resort and ran back to my room to change into dry clothes and dry my hair a bit before going to greet people at the booth and give a presentation.

Manning the both went well. Most people were more intent for the evening on checking out curriculum, but I did collect a couple of addresses of interested people and talked with a number of others. Several of the people I talked to had questions along the lines of how to prepare for college, so I let them know I was doing a presentation on it a bit later. Most of them showed up for the presentation.

When it was time for the presentation, I headed back to the assigned room. On the way, I was met by a couple of women who were happy to see me, as the room was locked and no one was there. I notified the front desk that the room was locked and they said they'd send someone to unlock it right away. We headed back to the room and stood out in the stuffy hallway, where a crowd of about 10 soon gathered for the workshop. One of the women went back to the desk and reminded them again that the room was locked; they said they'd send someone to unlock it. Still locked, so she returned to the front desk again. By this point, I had gone ahead and started giving the presentation there in the hallway. About 15 minutes into the hour block of time, one of the conference staff who had been working with the resort on the problem showed up with the answer--we were actually booked for a different room immediately down the hall. Unfortunately, it was also locked (and we would've seen anyone who had come to unlock it from where we were). So we moved to a less stuffy, but higher traffic area of the hall and continued with the workshop. It took me longer to get through than I had expected/hoped, but I was answering some questions as I went and we still did a bit of Q&A at the end, so I figured the timing came out well. The attendees of the workshop were very complimentary and told me that I did well.

Another couple of hours at the booth after the workshop wrapped up the day.

Friday, I spent all day at the booth (10:00AM-7:30PM). I talked with more people about PHC. I found another booth selling kitchen items and was able to pick up a pair of wire whips for my Bosch. She hadn't planned on bringing any Bosch parts with her, but found that she had a pair of whips when she unpacked at the conference, so was willing to sell them to me when I asked.

The vendor hall closed at 7:30 on Friday, partially to allow vendors the opportunity to hear one of the keynote speakers--Ken Ham. The PHC grad working the Generation Joshua booth had struck up an acquaintance with Ponder Pictures--another vendor. We spent a while hanging out at their booth before we caught Ken Ham speaking.

Saturday, vendors opened at 8:00AM and closed at noon. The vendors closed several hours before the conference finished around 5:00, at the requset of the resort. I'm guessing so the vendor space would be available for another event yet that weekend.

I'd originally scheduled myself for a flight leaving Milwaukee at 5:00 and getting back into Dulles at midnight, while knowing there was a flight that left about 3:30 and got in around 9:00. Once I made was familiar with the layout of the resort and how things were going, I called the shuttle company to move my ride back to the airport from 2:45 to 1:15 in hopes of catching the earlier flight.

Saturday afternoon, I finished packing up and was ready to go just a couple of minutes after 1:00. The shuttle was right on time. When I checked in at the airport, I asked to be placed on standby for the earlier flights. I made it onto the 3:30 flight to Chicago. About 30 minutes before our scheduled departure in Chicago, they announced at the gate that we did not have a plane. (They never did give any more explanation than we didn't have one and operations was working on it.) Of course, everyone who had connections or just wanted to get home was immediately at the counter trying to figure out how they could make it. For most of them, the gate agents said they couldn't do anything until they knew how late the flight would be. One of the gate agents noted that there were only 15 seats left on a flight for Orlando--destination for some of the passengers. She went ahead and began moving those passengers onto that flight. About the time we were originally scheduled to board, they announced that we had a plane waiting for us at another gate. Everyone needed to move to that gate and we should be able to depart around 6:30. I was sitting close enough to the flight attendents working the flight that I heard them immediately comment, "make that 7:00." Sure enough, by the time we all made it over to the gate, (I got my boarding pass), we boarded the plane, and were pulling away from the gate, it was just a few minutes before 7:00. I landed in Dulles close to 10:00--later than I had hoped, but still much better than the midnight flight I'd originally booked.