DGCon Day 0
By JoeBruin88. Filed in Life, Spiritual and Travels |Tags: airport, Chicago, conference, Desiring-God, downtown, Life, Light-Rail-Transit, Minneapolis, ORD, Spiritual, train, transit, transportation, Travels
NOTE; As I write about the conference, there will be two kinds of posts, personal and session summary. The following post is a personal one. I apologize in advance for all my grumbling, but I was exhausted when I left for this trip.
What a whacked up day it was. Last night after taking my exam, I procrastinated on my packing for the trip for several hours. The test was the culmination of the past few weeks of being busy at work and at school while trying to work ahead at both so I can go away to this conference without worrying about stuff that I’ve left behind. So with that said, I finished packing at about 3:00 AM and went to bed, then woke up at 3:45 AM. Josephine and I were out the door by 4:00 AM.
The relatively short flight from San Diego to Chicago was so uncomfortable. But I really think it was more because I was dog tired. Sleeping on airplanes is not one of my abilities. I was sure glad to get off the plane in Chicago for a two-hour layover. The last time I was in the Chicago airport was seven years ago for our honeymoon. Josephine and I were on our way to Miami for our Caribbean cruise. I remember how cool-looking the Chicago airport seemed to me and how vast.
After lunch at Chili’s, I just waited for my last leg to Minneapolis. I tried to relax and take a short nap while lying down on an uncomfortable, hard chair in the gate area. But the constant announcements over the loudspeakers disturbed what little dozing off I could get.
The flight to Minneapolis was worse than the first. Sorry for all my complaining. It’s a little “foreshadowing” of something I’ll write about later. Though only one hour long, I had a window seat, which normally would not have been so bad. But the sun was beating down on the side of the plane and making me hot. Plus, the ventilation system was not turned on until shortly before take off, so by takeoff time, I was burning up. On top of it all was a little girl talking out loud during the whole trip.
Grumble grumble. But yes! I finally landed, though still not feeling quite like I’m getting away for an uplifting weekend.
My buddy, John, arrived about a half hour later on a different airline. And now we were finally on our way. We rode the Light Rail Transit to downtown Minneapolis. The train terminal at the airport reminded me a lot of the Athens subway. That part of the train route was in an underground tunnel.
The ride on the train was very cool. I could feel myself starting to relax a little, though still extremely exhausted. I need sleep!
On the train ride, John must have taken about three or four calls on his cell phone. Little did I know then that he would spend quite a deal of time on the phone this weekend since it was a “working” trip for him with his national sales conference immediately after the conference.
After a brief look at a map of downtown Minneapolis, we started the short walk to our hotel at the Embassy Suites. I was very impressed with downtown Minneapolis. It is extremely clean and quiet, unlike Los Angeles or even San Diego. The architecture of the downtown buildings are fantastic, along with the layouts of the streets.
When we finally made it to the hotel room, I was relieved to see that it was very nice, though obviously older. Surprisingly, the Internet is not included in the cost of the hotel room. And the talk of the hotel prior to this trip was about how there was going to be free breakfast and dinner. So when we got to the downstairs reception area for the free “Happy Hour”, I saw that they were just serving chips, popcorn, and pretzels. But you could get alcoholic beverages for free. Kinda lame.
I think the evening with John got off on the wrong foot when he started talking to me about his Amway Quixtar Network 21 business … again. And despite my other efforts in the past to gently let him know that Josephine and I are not interested, I had to listen to a spiel again. So as gently, but forcefully as I could, I plainly let him know that I was not interested in building an Amway business. After that, I could tell he was slightly irritated and possibly his feelings were hurt. But the plain truth is: I don’t particularly like Amway and we’re just not interested in adding an additional business onto what we are already doing with Sunrider. So quite possibly, this encounter set the tone between us for the entire weekend. But I was determined to get the most out of this weekend conference for myself. After all, I came because of the inspiration I find daily in listening to the teaching of John Piper. And I’m here to be encouraged spiritually in my walk with Jesus Christ.
So we ordered an awesome pizza that was delivered to our room. The pizza was homemade Italian sausage, extra cheese, and lots of garlic. I watched the season premiere of Smallville, which was totally awesome. I will have to watch it again when I get home because the reception of it faded out in some key parts.
After unsuccessfully trying to write this article and upload my pictures to Flickr because of the lame Internet service (not worth the $20 I paid), I gave up and went to bed, totally spent and exhausted.
I promise I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow!