We served as “booth babes” today. I am temporarily co-opting that term from the Marquis, who has performed a similar function recently, albeit in a sports coat. We didn’t have to dress up much to run our booth today. It was a North Country Trail booth. The GG dressed up in Elmer Fudd Stormy Kromer gear. Yer fav-o-rite blahgger dressed up in regular old KW winter hiking gear because yer fave actually hiked this morning.

The GG drove from our loverly hotel down south to the pavilion where our event was set up early this morning. I took off on foot, wandered a bit of East Lansing, then crossed over to the MooU campus to get a photo or two of the dorm The Commander and Radical Betty lived in way back when and just generally walk around.

When I went to school at MooU, I remember buildings. I walked from my apartment to the music building and back one or two or three or sometimes even four times a day. I had a few classes in other places that I can’t remember now (and don’t care to) and sometimes I actually went to the “libes”, as a social butterfly roommate called the library. I knew that a river ran through campus. I remember visiting that river on various occasions in various places. Today, I actually walked the sidewalk that RUNS ALONG THE RIVER and contemplated why I didn’t remember actually doing that before. Ever… The short answer is that I am very much a different person now than I was when I was a college student. The long answer? I do not know. That maybe sounds backward but it is not nearly as backward as you might think it is…

Eventually I turned south onto Farm Road and hiked a couple miles down to the Agricultural Pavilion. I spent the rest of the day interacting with the GG and The Beautiful Chelsea (who visited us) and our fellow NCT buddy G (who helped man the booth) and some of the couple hundred folks who visited our booth. I don’t actively try to engage people in conversation but I do get animated when people ask questions that I can answer (or look up on my iPhone, which I did multiple times today).

There were many many time / space warpy moments today. We represent a chapter of the NCT that maintains trail in the eastern yooperland. I suspect a lot of people were thinking we drove down from the yooperland to be at the symposium. While it wouldn’t be unheard of for folks to do that, I was always quick to note that we live on The Planet Ann Arbor Ice Road Asteroid. And G lives in Lansing. It’s complicated for me. Grew up in the UP and have family property there. Yet, I have lived on The Planet Ann Arbor Ice Road Asteroid for umpteen bazillion years, raised kids here and am on my third (or thereabouts) career here. Still, you can take the girl outta the yooperland but you can’t quiiiiite take the yooperland outta the girl. In the end, maybe that made it all more interesting (or at least surprising) for folks visiting the booth. Or maybe they didn’t give a hoot. I don’t care either way.

I had a heckuva lot of fun today but I am an introvert and so I was taaaarrrred by the late afternoon. And then we had a damn snow drive all the damn way home. Jupiter (or whoever), can I you tell I am done with this crap? But we made it safely and after we schlepped all of our stuff into The Landfill, we hoofed it over to the neighborhood pub for dinner AND DRINKS! Sheesh! Knight’s Steakhouse or @strongdrinks if you want to follow them on Twitter.

The GG wanted me to write something short tonight. Sorry buddy. It’s my blahg and if you don’t like it, just don’t read it. [insert big cheesy frog-dog grin here].

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