On to DC

Without much time for posting, here’s a very fast summary of the last couple days of our drive:

We visited Troy Grove, IL, birth place of Wild Bill Hickok. This is the stunning memorial in the town square:

We drove through some crazy weather -

Then arrived in DC and did almost no sight-seeing (I was too interested in sleeping). We did, however, get the requisite “oops it’s sticking out of your head” shot -

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Bad Pedestrian, No Cookie

I’m back from vacation! I’ve just spent a week in Las Vegas, and although it was really delightful to get out and do something different, I am awfully glad to be back. I love the lights and the shows and especially the food, but as I’ve pointed out in a previous post, I am at least marginally demophobic, and the vast multitude of people was beginning to oppress me. Primarily, I refer to the stupid people, of which there was a vast multitude.

There are, of course, the people who have apparently gambled away their fortunes (or their children’s fortunes). You can spot them sitting in the food courts with a cup of coffee, staring dumbly at the wall or angrily at their spouses. These people make me sad. These people remind me why I don’t gamble.

Then there are the people who are from Wyoming or Kansas but have dressed up in their Vegas best. This often means clothing that is far too tight or revealing for the person wearing it, heels that are impractically high, and – in the worst case scenarios – sequins. These people make me laugh. These people are the reason to sit at outdoor cafes even on hot days.

But then there are the truly dumb ones: the ones who think that crossing Las Vegas Boulevard while the hand is red is a primo idea. This category includes nearly everyone, and these people make me mad.

Okay sure, 80% of the time there really weren’t any cars coming. But in every case, the cars did, in fact, have the right of way, and the 20% of the time when there were cars coming, the pedestrians who were in the way got all snarky. One man, after nearly getting run over by a very large van, spouted several profanities that made it clear said pedestrian was pretty sure he was invincible. Poor man. Drunk? Gambling-induced dementia? No, probably just plain old tourist-centricism. “I have spent $200 in your city! You owe me everything!”

(From where this photo was taken, that Eiffel Tower is over a mile away.
Seriously! – 1.1 miles, according to travelocity.)

Las Vegas Boulevard isn’t exactly a pedestrian zone. It can’t be. Have you ever tried to walk from one end to the other?? You look down the way, think to yourself “gee, I think I’ll just hop over to the Paris to see what’s there” and four hours later, when you arrive, you realize that their Eiffel Tower might be smaller than the original, but it’s a helluva lot bigger than you thought, and a helluva lot farther away. The point is, the cars were there first, and they are bigger and badder than we are.

I am firmly in favor of traffic laws. As a driver, I like to stop for people in crosswalks. (People not in crosswalks? Completely different story. Five points each.) As a pedestrian, I like it when drivers stop for me while I’m in a crosswalk. This makes for a happy traffic world. And don’t get me wrong… sometimes I’m that pedestrian who’s not in the crosswalk, but I have rules for that too. Here they are:

1. If there’s a crosswalk nearby, use it. A block is not too far to go out of your way to be safe and legal.

2. If you’re using a crosswalk that is not by a traffic light and a car must slow down for you, acknowledge this kindness (even if he is legally required to do it) with a smile and a wave. Show your appreciation by making some attempt at haste.

3. If you must cross when there’s no crosswalk, you may only do so when the coast is completely clear.

4. If you do a bad job determining how clear the coast is and a car arrives and must slow down for you, signal your embarrassment at breaking traffic laws and inconveniencing the driver by waving and scooting your butt just as fast as it will go to the other side. For the love of all things good and decent, do not continue sauntering across the street as if you own it. There are cities in this world where that could get you killed. (See above comment about point value.)

And the world will be a better place.

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Reply from Toll Troll HQ!

And surprisingly, the customer service folks are much less troll-like than their booth attendants. I’m pleasantly surprised by the reply (if not horribly impressed by the proofreading skills. Have I mentioned how important I think those are?)

Laura, I would like to apologize for the frustration in trying to find out how to pay the missed toll at the same time I would like to thank you for bringing the issue regarding no information on your ticket to pay the toll.  This is a new system and I have brought this to my managers attention along with supervisors for toll collections so this can be corrected.  Indiana does not send violations for unpaid tolls, some other states including Illinois does.  If you could please send the unpaid toll to

ATTN: Donna Behre
ITR Concession Company
52551 Ash Road
Granger, IN 46530

Also in the future I believe you will have the option to pay online for missed tolls.

Thank You
C. S.
Customer Care Agent

“Mile for Mile we’re here with a smile”

So there we have it, and I am satisfied with that reply. It was a personal reply and sounds like they’ll be trying to correct the confusion. The mild dig at the Illinois system amuses me too, since I took pains to point out how lovely I thought their system was compared to Indiana’s. I suppose it’s only fair that Indiana fires back.

And thus Indiana has redeemed itself in my opinion. I’ll leave that address in tact up there in case anyone else is trying to get this figured out too. Customer Care Agent’s name has been left off to protect the innocent and such.

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Paying the Toll Troll

I have just finished paying my missed Illinois tolls. Thank you, Illinois, for making my job so easy.

Next, I tried to figure out how to pay my Indiana tolls. There is no information anywhere on the web (that a reasonable amount of searching has revealed, anyway), and so I am writing an email to the Indiana DOT. I want to make very sure that they know I’m making a reasonable effort to get this taken care of. I am not toll dodging.

Dear DOT,

My husband and I recently traveled through Chicago and up I-90 into Indiana and eventually north to Michigan. Upon beginning our journey, we were unaware that the interstates around Lake Michigan were toll roads. As we have gotten into the habit of not carrying cash, we were unprepared for the tolls. The toll attendants in Illinois helpfully informed us that it wasn’t a problem, we could pay the tolls online, which I have just finished doing.

Grateful for the easy option, we continued our trip onto the Indiana portion of I-90. When we reached the first toll booth there, the attendant was helpful (if annoyed) at our lack of cash. She gave us a receipt for the missed toll, which I confess I did not examine very closely at the time. The next toll both we encountered was at Lake Station, where we exited the tollway. The attendant there insisted we had to pay cash. When we clarified our complete lack of ability to pay cash, she demanded our license and registration, eventually issuing another receipt similar to one we’d gotten at the previous booth.

Let me start by apologizing for the inconvenience we caused your toll attendants. If the ease of the Illinois toll system had not misled us into believing that our situation was reasonable and easy to fix, we would have made a detour to find cash before arriving in Indiana. However, the fact remains that we missed two tolls through no fault of our own, and I will not be happy if I receive a bill in the mail with a penalty. There is no information whatsoever on the receipts which provides directions on how to pay these missed tolls. I am a good citizen and wish to get this taken care of as soon as possible, but I have also been unable to find information on how to remedy this situation on your website, or on the izoom website. Please inform me as soon as possible what I can do to take care of these tolls. Our trip will not be taking us back through Indiana (and I will take great pains to avoid your toll roads in the future), so I hope there is a way to resolve this by mail, online, or by phone.

Missed Toll ID #1 6649531684301200 for $.50
Missed Toll ID #2 4982981684429002 for $.30

Regards,
Laura Floyd

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Will All Vegetation Please Move Right?

On the road from Chelsea to Ann Arbor yesterday, we passed a sign that I thought was great. Alas, we passed it too fast for me to get a picture, but it said: “Plant Traffic Right Lane.”

I immediately looked over to the right lane to see if there were any vegetables on wheels or flowers with feet (ala Fantasia) traipsing down the highway. (Okay, maybe I didn’t expect to see anything, but it was fun to imagine.)

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Ghosts of Grandparents Present

Stop me if I start waxing philosophic. Visiting graveyards does that to me.

Today, Dustin and I took my grandparents for a drive through Chelsea for the Family History tour. It was a perfect day. Despite the fact that it’s already November, the weather is gorgeous (in the 50s today), the trees are in brilliant color, and the whole town is simply scenic.

My grandfather was born here in 1918. Six months before he was born, a tornado swept through and destroyed his family’s home, their church, and ruined much of the local crop. He has several historic photos, which I’ll have to see if I can get copies of. His family quickly rebuilt the house, and he was born there in the middle of a blizzard where no doctors could reach them for a week.

Both my grandparents are good German stock. Heck – everyone out here is good German stock. The graveyards are full of Wenks and Meyers and Koebbes and Hiebers and on and on. In fact, the graveyards were something of a tour highlight this afternoon. The area is quite old, dating to the early 1800s, and as a result, the graveyards are numerous and well-populated.

One graveyard is particularly important to my grandparents. There, you will find an impressive number of Wenks, along with various other offshoots of the family tree. In fact, you will even find my grandparents’ tombstone. Yes, the same grandparents who were giving us this little tour. Their stone has been carved and in place for the last 20 years, along with pre-paid arrangements at a local funeral home.

I find this complacency about death very disconcerting. Okay, we’ll all die eventually, I’ve come to terms with that. But having your tombstone ready to go while in your sixties? I know my grandmother never expected to see the new millennium, but seriously! They’re lucky they didn’t wind up suffering from gravestone Y2K problems with all that anticipation.

My grandma has old genes. Her mother lived to be 96, and considering grandma’s current age (87), she’s in pretty good health. When we suggested she might match her mother’s age, she got flustered and insisted she wanted nothing to do with being that old. Even my grandfather’s grandfather (making him my great great grandfather) lived to be 74. That’s not too shabby for a 19th century farmer. Not too shabby at all. My grandfather will be 90 in January.

So while my grandparents speak nonchalantly about their upcoming funeral and merrily dole out bits of inheritance here and there (“here, Laura, I’m sure you’ll want these dish towels!”) I just tag along for the ride and am grateful I’ve been able to spend so much time with them before their so-anticipated date of departure from this earth.

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Toll Road of Dooooom

Onward in our epic journey!

Yesterday we left Madison, Wisconsin for the most distant locale on our trip: Chelsea, Michigan. My father’s family has been here since shortly after they hopped off their respective German boats, though that’s been several generations ago. Our arrival brings the town’s population up to a round 4,400. (Oooooh.)

But to get here, we had to travel down around the tip of Lake Michigan, through Chicago, and back up again via Interstates 90 and 94. Much to our dismay, the interstates there are currently toll roads. I couldn’t tell you why – they certainly don’t seem to be in especially good shape.

The first toll stop we came to snuck up on us. No sign, just a spot where you could pull off and pay a toll – but only if you wanted to. We were already past it before we realized what it was. I’m sure there was a camera somewhere shooting a picture of our license plate so they could send us a ticket. Swell.

The second toll stop was easier to figure out; if you didn’t stop, you couldn’t continue traveling. Much more logical that way. We scraped the bottoms of our purses, wallets, and seat cushions to come up with the required $0.65 and thought to ourselves, “uh oh.”

We don’t carry cash anymore, as a general rule. Who needs cash, these days? Credit cards or checks make life so much easier. While I was in Europe, you could even use your bank card to buy pops out of machines, or newspapers from stands. It was wonderful.

And so we came to toll stop three. We pulled up, looking guilty and hopeless about our lack of cash. The woman in the booth just laughed, though, and told us we could pay online within 7 days. She gave us a little ticket with the toll stop info on it, and off we went.

Wonderful! think we. This just got a lot easier. We don’t need cash after all!

Well, that was Illinois. (Thank you, Illinois, for making tolls as un-yucky as possible.)

The Chicago Skyway had its own special toll. The troll in the toll booth there wasn’t nearly as happy to help us out, but did anyway. Turns out you can’t pay that toll online, you have to mail it in. Oh well. Toll plus stamp still isn’t so bad.

And then we arrived in Indiana. Up we roll to the first toll stop. “Hello, we’re sorry but we ran out of cash. Can you please give us the info so we can send in our payment?”

“No, we only take cash,” says the toll troll.

“I’m sorry, maybe you didn’t understand, but we don’t have any cash. Not any. Well, three cents, but I guess that isn’t enough. What are we supposed to do?”

The toll troll purses her lips and looks like we just spat on her wedding cake.

“I’ll need your license and registration,” she says in her most intimidating voice.

Ye gads! Are we being arrested for not having $0.85??

She takes our info and retreats to her booth where she clacks away at some machine for awhile, shortly reappearing with a ticket (her word – looked like a receipt to me) showing who we were and that we had failed to pay. It looked almost like the other forms we had received, but there was no information on it about how to pay.

“How do we pay this?” we asked.

“I don’t know. Most people pay cash like they’re supposed to,” she replies. “They’ll probably send you a bill.”

And thus, off of the toll road we went.

What a mess! If I hadn’t been set up by the wonderful system in Illinois, I might have expected it. We can’t be the only people who try to operate cashless, or Illinois would never have set such a lovely system up to start with. Do the people in Indiana know that they have a trap set like that? If my “bill” arrives with an amount due of more than $0.85, believe me, they will hear about it. I can be a toll troll too.

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It’s 10:00 AM. No Waffles for YOU!

I am a lazy clerk’s nightmare. I am the bane of the rude telephone help center operator. I am the scourge of idiot salespeople.

To be fair, I could be worse. I don’t throw fits. I don’t make scenes. But I do tattle. I am of the belief that if no one tattles, the problem I encountered will not get solved and someone else will be slapped in the face with it later. (Also to be fair, I tattle when I’m impressed as easily as I do when I’m unimpressed. I think people who do a great job should be rewarded for that.)

If I wasn’t so young, I’d say I must come from the Old School of Customer Service, where having some customer service skills was actually important. Back In My Day, people treated you right! But no… there have been people doling out bad service as long as I can remember. I truly believe that I was never one of them. All my first jobs were in retail and sales, and somehow, I found bosses who cared whether I was friendly and polite. They trained me in making customers happy and why that was so important. As a result, I have no patience with people who can’t be bothered to help me out.

We are currently on the Madison stop of our Epic Voyage Across the Midwest. We stayed in a Super 8 Hotel last night, and I was delighted by the stay because it was a very good value for the money, quite clean, and everyone we spoke with last evening was friendly and helpful. All in all, the Madison Super 8 gets high marks.

This morning, however, I ran into a shining example of What Not To Do at the continental breakfast. Fortunately, I wasn’t the recipient of the irritating incident, but I found it so surprising, I have to share anyway.

Continental breakfasts, as a rule, end at 10:00. Checkout is at 11:00, so that makes plenty of sense. Since this is a lazy part of the vacation, Dustin and I didn’t make it downstairs until 9:50, which was just fine. It was nothing special as far as continental breakfasts go: a couple cereal options, a plastic dome full of toastables, a couple waffle makers, coffee, juice, etc. I took some cereal and tea and settled down.

Ten minutes later, at 10:00 on the nose, the gal from the front desk came around and started cleaning up. Just as she unplugged the waffle makers – just! – a gentleman came down and asked if he’d missed his chance for a waffle.

“Oh, well, I just unplugged them,” the clerk says. “It’ll take them ten minutes to warm up. But you can help yourself to anything else over there.”

I had a hard time not dropping my Rice Krispies-filled jaw at this. She had just unplugged the waffle irons. We had, all three of us, watched her do it. There would not be ten minutes of heating up involved. They were still quite hot enough to burn a body. The gentleman pointed this out.

The clerk, looking annoyed, replied: “I really need to get these cleaned up.” And that was the end of the discussion. The man, graceful in defeat, grabbed a cold, stale pastry instead.

Now tell me. Is 10:00 a sacred hour? If those waffle irons aren’t put away by 10:10 on the nose, would the desk clerk lose her job? Would it have been a terrible inconvenience to plug one of the irons back in, let the man take 5 minutes to make his waffle, and start clearing up on the other end of the little buffet? What did she really gain by denying him his waffle, other than irritating him and – unknown to her – me too?

Sure, there have to be limits. If you have 50 people who want waffles and don’t come down until 10:00, that’s more difficult. Allow me to make a suggestion: let them make waffles until the pre-filled cups of batter are gone. It’s a tidy solution. “I’m really sorry… this late in the morning I can’t make up any more batter, but perhaps you’d like some toast instead?” By the time the lucky ones are done making their waffles, you can have the rest of breakfast cleaned up and that only leaves one little project to finish up while all the diners slurp their coffee.

But there weren’t 50 waffle-crazed fiends. Just one lonely guy who wanted one lonely waffle.

A little inconvenience on the part of someone who spends most of her shift reading newspapers is certainly worth the price of two customers who might not return.

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Salute to Fargo

I might have to turn this into a series.

I work in the travel industry. One of the things my office helps people do is come up with ways to attract people to certain destinations. We talk a lot about what people think of when they think of this-or-that city. For the most part, it’s what you’d expect. In the Black Hills, you think of Mt. Rushmore. In San Fransisco, you think of a big bridge and smelly people wearing flowers. In Texas, you think how sad it is that Bush had to come from such a nice place.

What does North Dakota make you think of? Fargo, in particular?

Dustin and I are currently on an epic road trip to visit (ultimately) my grandparents in Michigan. Along the way, we have lots of other stops to make. We are currently in Fargo, North Dakota on our second stop. We checked into our hotel and the desk clerk gave us a map of the area, printed by the Fargo-Moorhead CVB. A little logo in the corner announced:

So let me repeat: what do you think of when you think of Fargo?

To be fair, I’m sure the CVB had a rather tough time coming up with a good motto, and it’s easy enough to see what they were going for. To give you an idea of how hard I imagine their job was, let me suggest a few mottos I suspect they probably rejected:

• Where the weather isn’t warm, but the people are.
• Where it doesn’t always snow.
• You like snow.
• Relax. Get snowed in!
• Where we don’t really put people in chippers.
• Yabetcha.

So Fargo – I applaud your effort, and admire your willingness to use that motto even though everyone who reads it must laugh. At least they won’t forget.

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Epic Belgian Email #35

This is a cheater Belgian Email since I am writing it not from Belgium, but rather from the Great Northern Lowlands. As the topic will be entirely dedicated to my last week in Belgium, however, I think the claim is valid.

So greetings hello and welcome! I think I sent everyone a note to let you know I was here and alive, right? Good. I’ll fill you in on the Netherlands soon enough, but first, all about my exciting last week in Belgium.

The week was irritatingly sprinkled with pointless academic obligations. On Monday, I had to sit around outside a classroom while all the professors in our program debated the quality of our theses. We got no feedback from them, so we just went home when it was over. On Thursday, the same thing happened concerning grades for our coursework. At least this time, after the deliberations, they announced who would be graduating, although nothing more specific.

With my name thankfully on that list, I proceeded to the graduation festivities on Friday. This was about what you’d expect out of a graduation ceremony, only much less ceremonial. It included all the departments of the Faculty of Letters, both undergraduate and masters students. There were no fancy gowns and caps, no pomp and circumstance, just lists of names read off and speeches in Dutch done by people who were probably important. I graduated Cum Laude – third best and third worse of those in my group to graduate on time.

I managed to find my slacker of a promoter after it was over. He seems to have liked my thesis just fine, but had nothing at all to say about the fact that he never bothered to read it before I handed it in. Much to my extreme satisfaction, once I got my grades back, I discovered that my best thesis grades (we got 7 of them) did not come from him, but from one of my other two readers. So maybe my thesis wasn’t total rubbish after all, though I’m still not convinced it was the quality of work I could have done if I’d had a little guidance.

In between these lovely academic ordeals, I spent the week traveling about with Marianne. We spent the first couple days in her hometown of Maasmechelen. Her mommy cooked me yummy Belgian dinners (stuffed red peppers one night, something fried and breaded the next…) This is also where the Chicken Summer Camp is, so we dropped Germaine and Josephine off at their new home. They’ll be learning to get along and play nicely with other chickens and also geese for the next few months. They weren’t doing very well at that at the time we left. I’ve got some great pictures that I will try to put up soon.

Chickens taken care of, we went out that evening with some of Marianne’s friends to play cards and pool (and drink beers, of course). It was really nice. Her friends were great, and very tolerant of my language deficiency, and we had a good time.

The next night we went to Koen’s hometown of Sint Truiden. His family was also fabulously welcoming. His mommy cooked us stoofvlees (beefy stew kind of stuff) and homemade fries. It was very yummy. Then we went out with some of Koen’s friends. I didn’t like them so much; too much smoking and drinking and annoying me. I was glad, in the end, to retire to his backyard, where Marianne and I were sharing a tent in the rain. It wasn’t very warm, but at least it was dry and quiet.

The last day, Marianne and I went up to Blankenberge (I think?) which is on the Belgian Coast. I was tired and ready to be done vacationing, but it seemed like a pity to miss what was supposed to be the nicest destination. We got going late, but it was okay to take just the afternoon. We walked along the coast then went and saw the sand sculptures. I guess this is a yearly activity – famous sand sculptors from all over come and make famous Belgian landmarks out of sand. I took a bunch of pictures, which will eventually end up on my website. Stay tuned. We then had a nice meal (Marianne’s 8-legged dinner stared at me through the meal until I gave him a cucumber hat to get those beady eyes off me) and headed back to Leuven.

That was the morning I graduated. After that, I went out and spent the weekend with the Evans family in Namur. They are so wonderful to me. On saturday, they gave me a bit of a sending off party. All my friends from my congregation showed up (well, at least as many as could fit around the garden tables, a few of which we pilfered from the neighbors). I helped cook the meal, which included three kinds of quiche, chicken in a crazy-yummy sherry sauce, saffron rice pilaf, homemade spaghetti, and lots and lots of cookies and ice cream and cherry tart and cupcakes for dessert. Mmmmmm!

The evening continued with some rousing karaoke hooked up to the living room television. It was hilarious. Everyone sang along to all the songs, so no one felt dumb taking a turn holding the mike. I think Yellow Submarine was the highlight of the evening.

I stayed with them through Monday morning, just relaxing and pretending to be in a family. They’re no substitute for my own (I miss you guys!!) but I’ll happily take what I can get. Two more months to go!

When I got home (to Leuven, let’s clarify), I packed and cleaned and packed some more and cleaned some more. Jeroen came and rescued me at 6 or so. We were supposed to be taking my bike back to the bike rental place but… well… it’s a long story as to why that didn’t work. Ye gads. After giving up in frustration, we decided to go out to dinner (mexican!) and a movie (War of the Worlds). I then had my last sit-out on the terrace in Oude Markt, drinking Kriek and yapping about nothing at all. It was a good way to conclude my stay in Belgium.

Somehow or another, the next morning, I got myself, my two suitcases, and my two backpacks onto the train. (I even left one suitcase with the Evanses! Sheeeesh.) I had to change trains three times before I got to Nijmegen, which was truly taxing. By the time I got picked up, I was ready for a nap. Instead, I got to go meet (and re-meet!) lots of people working in the office and living in the excavation house. Everything is falling together to look like it will be a really great summer. I’ll give more details in my next email, but let it suffice to say for now that although there are no chickens this time, there are ducks and frogs (I guess the spiders and mosquitoes don’t count).

I started working yesterday, and I must say, I’ve forgotten how hard this work is, and how dirty. Yikes. But it’ll be good for me. Especially after my muscles learn to cope and I find a happy balance between sunscreen and blowing dust…

Okay. Time to give this epic up for now. I hope the summer continues to be wonderful in all your respective corners of the globe. Your first Netherlandic Epic should be arriving some time over the weekend… Very much love and many hugs!

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