Cultural Whiplash

Fresh off returning from the Orient, I had to turn around a few days afterwards and fly to Little Rock, Arkansas with a road trip to Mississippi.  Some serious cultural whiplash there.  Shanghai was packed with Gucci, Rolex, and Louis Vuitton shops.  The deep-south was loaded with KFC, Sonic, and rundown strip malls.  I am not sure which place felt more foreign.  

For those who think business travel is glamorous, TV and movie lie!  Here is a summary of my trip.  Got up Wednesday morning and had waffle breakfast and movie with the kids (who were on school vacation).  Being late, I next sped 90 mph to catch my plane (my fuzz buster saved me several times).  Arriving in Little Rock at 5:00 pm, we drove 90 minutes, grabbed some burgers and then spent until 10:30with a location company talking patents.  And patent talk is even boring to patent attorneys.  Back up at 5:30 am with more waffles an more patent meetings until 10:00 am.  Next we took a 3 hours road trip through Mississippi broken up by lunch at a Pizza Hut buffet for a two hours meeting with a local generator company.  Finally we had a 4 hour road trip back to Little Rock where we arrived at the wrong hotel at 10:15 pm and the right hotel at 10:30 pm.  We stayed at the Holiday Inn Presidential,a Clinton Themed hotel.  I was a little reluctant to explore the hotel as I worried that I would run into a Bill Clinton tribute massage parlor and strip club.

I think the best part of the trip was the southern country side.  Lots of fields and catfish farms.  As charming as it was, I was worried that if we broke down the words out of Bubba 1's mouth would be, "He got a real pretty mouth, ain't he?" after which Bubba 2 would agree "That's the truth." (cue dueling banjos).

 

I was not lost on me that I took two six hour road trips exactly one week apart.  The first was through China, driving over the Yangtze river.  The second was through the southern US, crossing the great Mississippi.  Below are the contrasts of the two river crossings.

By far the most exciting part of trip was driving through a storm with a tornado on the way home.  The sky just dumped buckets on us.  We were able to follow the storm on radar on our iPhones.  According to the weather service, a tornado touched down a few miles behind us.  It didn't matter as we couldn't see more than 20 feet during the most intense part of the storm.  Obviously, we made it out OK, but the fact that the local was visibly on edge was definitely a cause for concern.

Back on the home front,  Adrienne had the kids for the week.  She made the most of it.  They went to the local Montshire Museum.  Charlotte is posing by the exhibit sponsored by my company, Hypertherm.

She also took the kids to see Oz, the Great and Powerful.  The good news was that they were the only ones in the theater.  The bad news was that the only theater showing the movie was a 75 minutes away, though that is also the nearest stadium theater (I think it is worth the drive).  Charlotte was excited that she could put her feet up on the seat in front of her.

Adrienne also strove to put some culture into the kids and introduced them to several famous artists at the Currier Art Fine Art Museum in Manchester.   Despite an art indoctrination, it didn't stop Patrick from photo-bombing his mother's picture of the tree blossoms.

It worked out that my plane landed in Manchester the same time that Adrienne was headed to lunch with the kids at the Red Arrow diner in Manchester (a must visit eating place).  I drew the short straw and had to sit where Hillary Clinton had sat - I've had enough Clintons for the week.