John usually doesn't travel for work either, but he started his new job last week and as luck would have it this week is the annual meeting for representatives from all the Creative Cities around the world. They're gathering in Montreal, so after one day all together yesterday, the boys and I dropped him at the airport this morning. Here's the beautiful thing about the Cedar Rapids airport. We dropped him off an hour before his flight, went to SuperTarget, and on the way back south an hour later, we swung by the airport again to see his flight take off. There was a gravel lot just to the east of the runway and of course there was only one United flight taking off anywhere near that time, so we were sure it was him. Small airports can be a pain with the high cost and lack of direct flights, but this was definitely a perk.
Now we'll just see how the three of us do without him until his return Friday evening.
I won't bore you with the details of my trip--it's an annual program for which I am the coordinator that gives faculty an opportunity to meet with Iowans in their own communities to learn more about the issues of greatest concern statewide. So we went to Waterloo, Tripoli, New Hampton, Decorah, West Union and Sumner over the course of the three days. Exhausting to be sure, but it was rewarding to hear the 30 faculty rave about the experience. One even wrote in an email, "I never use the word awesome. This was AWESOME!" Makes all the planning and the stress of herding 30 people around for three days worthwhile.
Perhaps the coolest thing that happened had nothing to do with the months of preparation I put in. As we were driving a rural highway from Decorah to West Union, we suddenly felt the bus slow down. Not slam on the breaks, but enough of a change to make you look up to see what's happening. I saw an animal in the road and after a split second realized it was much too hairy and large and lumbering to be a dog. In another split second one of the faculty shouted out, "Look! It's a bear!"
Indeed it was, a black bear that had been spotted roaming the area a few times over the previous few days. The bus driver actually stopped the bus and pulled over so we could watch it make its way slowly through an adjacent field. One of our crew called the local sheriff, who ended up finding it later and using an ATV to gently direct it away from the town of West Union and into an unpopulated, wooded area.
