End of 2019 travel...

I may have had a bit of a travel hangover after Scotland (not a real hangover, we did more sampling than drinking), but that didn't mean that I didn't travel a bunch. Here's an overview of where I went in the last 3 months of last year...

Sunset at home, looking at Mt Hood

I had consecutive one-day turnarounds coming home from Scotland and leaving on a work trip; Scotland - Stuttgart overnight - Portland overnight - Williamsport, PA (cumulative time change: 13 hours; net time change: 5 hours). It was worth it because: 1. I tested the limits of working remotely (Germany is doable!), 2. Scotland was gorgeous (see previous posts), and 3. the training in Williamsport went well. Compared to my other PA visits, Williamsport was green, walkable, and had a great coffee shop.

Light thru the clouds on the Susquehanna River

 Then there was the sales trip to California, a zip-trip to Long Beach for a rather dull trade show in a rather brilliant location. I genuinely like my co-workers, who made the time go by at least a bit quicker! The truth is that most of us are more or less pragmatic introverts. We recognize that we need to work together, but we're happiest in our own worlds, working away independently. Any of us who are too social eventually go to the dark side and join the Sales team.

The next trip took me back to the east coast, this time to Blacksburg, VA. It isn't often that I get to teach students, so training at Virginia Tech was a treat! It reminded me in many ways of WSU, a land-grant school that dominated its tiny agricultural town. The fact that it is 10 minutes away from the first ridge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, with twisting roads along streams, made it one of my favorite training locations thus far. I squeezed in a hike at Cascade Falls and tour of Smithfield Plantation before flying out of Roanoak. If I had to live in the Southeast, the Blue Ridge Mountains would be manageable.

Bonus: there is a colonial plantation in Blacksburg! This old slave cabin was almost as cool as the actual house.

  Of course, Mid-West trips happened, too, with their weak coffee and flat-land drives. Training in Dearborn, MI gave me a chance to visit the Henry Ford Museum for the first time since a trip with Oma and Opa in middle school. I also met up with friends from Washington, who moved out to the Detroit metro a few months ago. They are a little less enthusiastic about it than the last time I visited... evidently, Midwestern suburbia is slowly getting to them!

On the way home, I detoured through Northwestern Iowa for J3's football game. Orange City is an interesting place, a very conservative town in the old Dutch tradition. It, too has a good coffee shop, which some community members boycott on the basis that the shop doesn't exclude other members of the community. Unfortunately, close to the stadium there are only styrofoam cups with tea-strength darkness and a confusing selection of powdered additives.

The last chain-trip (is that a good word for multiple trips smashed together?) was a double-header to Canada. First, there was Yank Thank in Creston, where we documented how to make Nana's turkey and gravy. Finally, the trip to Quebec, which comes every year and still seems to sneak up on me. This time I stuck around for the Christmas party. I wonder if I can keep up the habit of only coming every-other year, now that I don't have the excuse of another party to go to? In any case, Quebec City and the company outdid themselves. It was the perfect primer for Christmas festivities! 

My favorite addition to "Le Marché de Noël allemand" (German Christmas Market): a giant Advent calendar! 

Aside from the street signs, this corner of Quebec could nearly be Edinburgh...