The Map that Got Me Into All of This

I remember many years ago, probably around 1960, my father returned from a trip to Puerto Rico. He sold Philco appliances in those days and won a trip there! In any event, he brought home one of those free ESSO maps that you could get in the old gas stations. What intrigued me so much was the fact that the map was printed in English and Spanish. It was at this point I really wanted to learn Spanish (yo entiendo, pero no puedo hablar). More importantly my eyes opened up to the enticement of travel; I learned that the world does stretch beyond the horizon.

Recently, playing around on Ebay, I located a copy of the same map that caught my attention years ago. I was determined to win it and I did! It wasn't all that expensive, but the sentimental value is now priceless to me. So I'm posting an image of it here.

Today's map isn't free anymore; it's a GPS or some high tech device!


On to a more prosaic issue; I'm supposed to fly tonight to a small town near Evansville, Indiana. I've worked for this customer all over the US for a number of years and they always try to control the travel (book my flights, tell me which ones, etc). I never allow a customer to do this for me as I just feel like I've seen too many bad things happen with this kind of arrangement.

In any event, I yielded to their pressure and bought a ticket on American (AA) non stop from O'hare (ORD) down to Evansville (EVV). Yesterday I started getting concerned about the weather here in Chicago and even called the guy and left a message, telling him that I was considering plan B; Southwest from Midway (MDW) to Louisville (SDF) then a drive.

Well, this morning he calls me back and tells me how he thinks all will be fine, etc. Thank goodness I had bought the ticket on SWA, for AA did cancel the trip about 3 hours ago due to weather at ORD. It was my pleasure to call him back and tell him (sort of diplomatically) that if we had stuck with his plans, we would have had to cancel the meeting.

That's enough for today; I've got to get out to MDW and then to SDF and then onward.

But there are moments when you love leaving voice mail and this was one of them.

Coming tomorrow (if I can get online from the hotel in EVV), how to call into someone's voice mail without having to even talk to them. A wonderful tool for the person who wishes to avoid confrontation!