HOWe Things Are…

“Should we be worried? because the email with details about shuttle service from the airport to the university where the conference is held says here is a map of the Indianapolis airport”. I’d checked the email to see when a third coworker from Dallas would arrive in Indiana and noted the disturbing detail that the shuttle service appeared to be from a different airport from the where we would arrive. We were on our flight to Chicago en route to Fort Wayne (not Indianapolis), Indiana.

When we landed in Chicago, coworker Loren sends a text to the university shuttle people contact… and gets back confirmation that we were headed to the wrong airport. Shuttle people also texted helpful information about a shuttle between Fort Wayne and Indy airports. Unfortunately Chicago airport doesn’t have free wireless, at least not easily obtained free wireless…  We acquire 30 minutes of “free” wireless, check the shuttle thing, which doesn’t work because they only leave at certain times, and acquire a rental car reservation.

In Fort Wayne, also an airport without free wireless, we’re happy to discover it’s a small airport, which is so nice for getting luggage and rental cars…  I figure, we can leave the airport and find a McDonalds to get wireless to get directions to where we’re going (our destination is, by the way, closer to Fort Wayne than it is to Indianapolis).  I figure there’s bound to be a McDonald’s near the airport.  There is not.  There are corn fields.  I follow some signs towards “Downtown” which has us driving by yet more cornfields (and no signs of McDonald’s or any other such thing).  Loren calls his wife Michelle, who gets us directions over the phone (yay).

We head off and all is well until we get off the freeway to take some road North (the instructions say North).  Apparently this is the road with our destination.  However, we of course, have no idea how far we need to go on this road (which goes mainly through cornfields).  Maybe 30 – 45 minutes later, Loren is not feeling good about the amount of time spent on the road and calls Michelle who informs us that the destination ought to have been relatively close to the freeway.  As it turns out, it was not North we wanted, but South.  This we discover after turning around and stopping at a gas station that was closed but had some helpful folks with an RV outside.  They had a map.  We explained about how we didn’t have directions or a GPS because we were planning on a shuttle service.  The woman said they also didn’t have a GPS…  “but then, we usually know where we’re going”, she said.

So sure enough, relatively close to the freeway (but in the other direction from where we went) is our destination, just an hour or so detour out of our way with the heading the wrong direction.  And, as it turns out, good fortune for having a rental car because we arrived Sunday night prior to dinner and meals started on Monday night at dinner.

All is well…  except the part about how the rental car (missing a hubcap and with a cigarette burn in the driver’s seat, which the rental car guy said he noted but not on my copy of the thing)…  the rental car’s low coolant light came on.  It’s probably fine.  As is the missing hubcap and cigarette burn…  For more fun at this conference…  last night tornado warning so got to spend time in the basement at 11:00 last night…  Looking forward to going home tomorrow…