Yesterday was November 17, which, seeings as I always do what I am told to do, I drove Miss Puerto Rico to the Arlington Convention Center to a Trade Show.
I can tell you Miss Puerto Rico is among the show goers you see here in the photo.
Hour upon hour of being vertical at a trade show was exhausting, with the exhaustion enhanced due to the need to haul the bags of what I guess is called swag. Soon my bags of swag grew so heavy I used two of the 48 inch yard stick swags to carry a couple of the swag bags over my shoulder, in hobo with a stick mode.
I am thinking a 48 inch yard stick should be called a yard stick plus, what with it being a foot longer than a yard.
As we made our way through the Trade Show time and again I found myself being given a greenish concoction called a Margarita. The Margaritas were tasty, but sometime around the 7th or 8th Margarita something about the concoction seemed to be making the swag seem heavier to carry.
I have not been in all that many convention centers. The only ones which come to mind are the Fort Worth, Dallas, Seattle, Tulsa and Oklahoma City convention centers.
The Arlington Convention Center seemed extremely minimalist compared to the others I have been in. The exhibition hall in which the Trade Show took place was rather spartan. Meaning I was tired of being vertical, but there were very few seating opportunities, and those were all occupied and consisted of being folding chairs.
Most of the vendors had bowls of edibles for the show goers. Candy type edibles. I had not had myself such a thing in a long time. Last night I had a Snickers, Nestle Crunch, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, York Peppermint Patty, Mars Bar and others I am not remembering. I'd not consumed so much candy type stuff since I last went to one of Miss Puerto Rico's company Christmas Parties, way back in December of 2008.
Another thing about last night. I have an aversion to being in crowds. Even an outdoor crowd, such as what populates the Prairie Fest, quickly gets on my nerves.
I think my aversion to being in crowds stems from a traumatic experience in October of 1986, about a week before Vancouver's Expo 86 was to close. The crowd was HUGE. If I remember right it broke the attendance record to that point, then broke it again and again as the Expo wound down.
So, it was nearing closing time. I was heading to where I'd parked near the southeast entry. Others were heading other directions. At a point where several Canadian pavilions were located the walkway was under a high cover. The passage through this location was only a couple hundred feet wide, which sounds real wide, but is not when human gridlock occurs. It is an awful feeling to suddenly find yourself only able to move in slow increments.
Crowds can panic in such circumstances, such as what has happened many times in Saudi Arabia with Muslims making their trek to Mecca.
Last night's crowd at the Trade Show did not reach an Expo 86 level of human congestion, except for a couple locations where throngs had gathered to await the reading of a raffle ticket.
Eventually I made it safely home and this morning feel no after effects, thus I was up early and in the cool pool shortly after dawn, with the outer world heated to a semi-balmy 51 degrees....
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