I met Virginia. She's hot.

Here is a picture of me since some of you have been requesting one. This is what I look like! Remember?

This might be a cranky post, it was a cranky long weekend. We were exhibiting at the Af'ram Fest in Norfolk, VA, an African American festival that's been happening annually for more than 20 years. The festival itself was fine, but the weather was hotter than hot. Low to mid-90s and intensely sunny with little breeze, and our trailer was placed on blacktop which just magnified the heat. Our only relief was in the mall across the street where there was actual air conditioning, but our breaks were few and far between- only 30 minutes each day, and on Saturday and Sunday we worked for more than 12 hours and were on our feet the entire time. Ouchy. I got sunsick or heatstroke or whatever its called on Sunday and stopped being able to keep food down so they sent me back to the hotel for a few hours. Overall it was not my favorite weekend.

There were over 100,000 visistors to the festival over the three days. Our trailer was placed across from some art and tshirt vendors, and next to an U.S. Army trailer where they gave out free personalized dog tags if you gave them your address and phone number, but I sweet-talked the Army guys and scored tags for my team and I (see photo). Over 500 festival patrons visited Big Pink which is huge, so despite the extreme discomfort it was successful numbers-wise.

The thing about working such a huge crowd is, I'm actually not so much a people person. I can be when it's required, but days of dealing with that volume of people, especially combined with the constant loud music and noise, wore me down in a hurry. I think there is a certain point at which people begin to take up more than just physical space; its like their personalities and their voices take up even more space. And even when you are outside and maintaining your personal "bubble" it can start to feel very very crowded and squished and even oppressive. That is when I get very overloaded and crave nothing more than stillness and silence.

So right now I am homesick and I miss my apartment and my bed and my neighborhood and my books and red tea caramel lattes and my friends and Midwest weather and my car (so new! so shiny! so lonely!) and salads from Veg Out and Toro Sushi and board game nights and making my own cosmopolitans and Lake Michigan a block away and so many other things Chicago has that (insert random small town here) doesn't. Who needs anonymous hotel rooms with slow internet, bad pillows and boring old HBO when you can have Chicago and everything wonderful and exciting in it?

I'm just crabby. In 26 days the tour will be done. Tomorrow we are exhibiting at a pharmacy in Richmond, VA. This weekend we'll be in D.C. for the national Race for the Cure on the national mall, which is our highest-profile appearance of our entire tour. I am very excited for it and I love Washington D.C., so it's something good to look forward to. After that we go to Charleston, West Virginia where we have an unbelievable THREE days off in a row. Like whoa.

You should all download the song "Golden Days" by the Damnwells. It is my song-of-the-moment and you might love it too.

OH and I enabled comments due to my brother Adam's (heeeeey itch) request so you should leave a comment to say hello. I am pretty sure you can do it even if you're not a blogger member.

Notebook

I hereby call to order this extremely tardy blog update. The first order of business is an apology for no updates in 8 days. The second order of business is for me to say, HOLY COW, I just watched the LOST finale and IT WAS TOTALLY INSANE.

This entry is called "Notebook" because it will be a random collection of notes and anecdotes Bob Talbert-style (remember him, all you Michigan readers?) from the past week or so that may or may not be coherent but which are hopefully semi-interesting. You can find picture descriptions in italics.

Indians: Let's go back to the Fond-du-Lac reservation in Cloquet. They had a casino on the reservation, and we learned that on the 15th of every month, every single member of the tribe gets $400 automatically loaded on a Visa card. The money they receive comes directly from casino profits. AND- children don't receive the money, until they turn 18. At that point they are given a lump sum of $40,000. Forty thousand dollars! Insane. Unfortunately there is no financial counseling or advising options, and much gets spent on drugs or alcohol. Seriously, what would you do if someone handed you a free $40,000 when you were 18 and still in high school?

I've included a pic of our team with two ladies from the reservation plus Amos, our truck driver. Some day you will hear much more about Amos.

Jersey: After Minnesota we spent two days driving to New Jersey. Now, I know Bon Jovi is from there and all, but New Jersey is HORRIBLE. Specifically the roads and drivers are the absolute worst I have ever experienced. And rude and loud and obnoxious. Ugh Ugh Ugh. I will die happy if I never have to go back to New Jersey.

About the driving. Our hotel was located across a highway from a mall, where I decided to go on a day off. According to the front desk however, there was no way to get there on foot, only by driving. In the course of trying to cross the street, I ended up getting on the Garden State Parkway; then some other highway; then some OTHER highway. Finally I managed to exit and was about to turn onto a side street to collect my bearings when I got rear ended! Good lord. It was this guy in a Honda, about my age, which just hadn't been paying attention. His car was messed up but the van had not a scratch, thank heaven. Otherwise it would have meant hours spent on the phone, making a police report, accident reports for the company, paperwork, etc etc. Since the van wasn't hurt I elected not to tell.....anyone. Ha! So, one of the pics o'the week is my reflection in the bumper while taking precautionary pictures of the "damage" while Eddie, the guy who hit me, stands in the background.

New York City: We stayed at a hotel just ten miles outside NYC and had some time off so I went in for an afternoon to be a tourist. It was my second time there and I can still honestly say I prefer Chicago any day. Give me clean streets! Give me space to actually walk on the sidewalk! Give me Michigan Avenue! Give me above-ground public transportation!

LPGA Pros: On Monday we brought Big Pink to a country club in north Jersey to exhibit at the LIFE event, an annual golf tournament benefitting the Val Skinner Foundation, which is actually the founding sponsor of Komen on the Go. At the tourney we had dozens of LPGA pro players in the trailer checking out our resources. They were all very nice. I think there is a high percentage that are lesbians. Because of the way our trailer gets set up, with a "faux hedge" around the bottom, it literally looked like it was rising up out of the golf course.

Team: Our work ensemble of six has simultaneously begun to bond and fracture more. Fracture in the sense that the four of us who don't work on this project year-round have discovered we're all basically on the same page with the "Nick and Kim are getting really obnoxious with their overzealous optimism" train of thought. So a bit of an Us vs Them is beginning to form. The most annoying thing for me is the way they will make statements about how "We can do better!" or "We've got to really step it up today!", but they cannot give us any specific things to improve or change. I cannot even express how frustrating this is. They get all broad and philosophical about "stepping up our game" but when asked are completely unable to provide specifics. Ugh Ugh. I miss my REAL boss!

However, we have begun to bond more in the sense that we're getting to know each other better and have been hanging out and telling stories that are non-work-related. Yesterday we found out that Rasheedah, who it turns out is 30, has been estranged from her mother (a paranoid schizophrenic) for five years. They have had no contact and have no idea where each other is or what each other is doing. And her father has never been in her life, so she's sort of orphaned in a way. Also, Kim told us that her she lost her younger brother to suicide two years ago. He was 18.

90210: I picked up season two of Beverly Hills, 90210. It is pretty bad. How did I never realize how horrible the acting is?! And yet it's still so fun to watch...I just yell at the screen a lot more now than I did when I watched in middle school and was so caught up in the "drama" of it all...

Podcast: I talked with some company people and have received the ok to record interviews with women (and men) who come through Big Pink so that I can put together some experimental podcasts. As of now it's just something that would be shared within Event 360, but they are interested in potentially pitching the idea to Komen as a regular thing for the fall leg of this tour. I think there is a real possibilty of really making a name for myself with this podcasting project. I'll keep ya'll updated.

On the Horizon: Tomorrow we are exhibiting at an Apple Discount Drugstore in Salisbury, Maryland. I am fully prepared for it to be a lame day. Then we drive to Norfolk, Virginia where we'll be settling in for four days to exhibit at the Af'ram Fest (read: african american) over Memorial Day weekend. It will be interesting to be in the racial minority of such a large group (100,000 visitors to the festival expected over three days).

More updates soon, for real! Night ;)

Baggage

One post tonight wasn't really enough, because I still want to give background on this tour and my co-workers and the stops we've already made before I began this blog, but I also don't want to write an entry that's 8 miles long. So separate entries is how I will break things into manageable pieces. Plus I don't want to go to sleep yet.

So this pic is of three of my co-workers. Our team is like this: We have 6 people, plus our semi driver (as in, semi-truck, not someone who only sort of drives).

Two guys, Jeremy and Tim, drive in a big white truck that pulls our generator and satellite. They handle the mechanical, technical and IT aspects of our daily setup and breakdown. During the days they hang out in their truck napping and watching movies, and stepping in to help if something technical or mechanical goes wrong.

Then there are four of us that travel in a 12 passenger van. We are the customer service people, the ones who interact with the public, and we also handle many aspects of setup and breakdown that aren't so intricate like signage, tables, chairs, cleaning, etc.

The three in the picture are the other customer service folks, from left to right: Rasheedah, Kim and Nick.

Rasheedah is from San Franscisco and has done lots of marketing tours before, including one with Nike where she would go with a team to soccer events to promote Nike shoes. She says "hella" a lot and sometimes reads the bible in the van. You can see she's not overweight at all and yet she eats more and more often than almost anyone I know. Lots of power bars in between meals and snacks in the van, including a jar of Vlasic pickles, that is currently open but not being refrigerated. She listens to techno music and gospel. I think she is around 28 or 29.

Kim is from Chicago and actually lives about 3 blocks away from me. She used to work on the Out of the Darkness suicide overnight walk for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention that our company used to handle; when we lost that project last September, she moved over to Komen on the Go. I don't know much about her other than she had a brother who died, and she has a tatoo on her lower back that honors him. She hates debating and does not participate in debates or spirited discussions at all. Also, she and Nick are dating. She is 26.

Nick is from Minnesota and considers it the most beautiful and best place on earth. At restaurants he always asks the servers for their recommendations. He has good music taste, though he sometimes listens to Jesus music in the van (not the subtle Creed kind, the straight up "He is our savior, Jesus died for our sins" kind). He used to be very overweight. He considers each and every purchase very thoroughly and agonized in particular over a recent luggage purchase hence the photo in the luggage department taken in a TJ Maxx in Rutland, Vermont. He is 26.

There are a couple interesting things to note. One is, in the three people above whom I travel with and work with most, no one EVER swears. Seriously! Most of you know how infrequently I swear, yet somehow in this group I feel like a potty mouth for saying "shit" when my thumb gets smashed by a metal bar. It's very odd.

And there is never any mention of sex. Not that I am advocating dirty jokes or sitting around having detailed discussions- but I also cannot recall a time since 6th grade I was around a group of people of similar age when nothing sexual was EVER mentioned. Also very odd.

I must mention I was very surprised when the Jesus music started playing in the van, especially b/c I had mentioned during my first night with the group that I am Jewish. To me it's like, here's yet another instance of Christians being assumptive and dominating religious culture. Does that sound too harsh? Probably because I considered myself agnostic until I was about 21, I have always been very sensitive to when religion, any religion, is being forced on me. But ESPECIALLY when they already knew I am Jewish!

Also, there is never any sarcasm. Ever! And no, I'm not just being sarcastic about that. Everyone is very chipper and upbeat and go get 'em, to the point of syrupy obnixousness at times. Lots of "Definitely!" and "Perfect!" and "Awesome!" Oh how I miss the cynicism and biting wit of my virtual team co-workers....honest to God, this is what being in Pleasantville must be like. Remember that movie?

Ok, that's enough for tonight, I think its bath time. Tomorrow we are back on the rez for a second day before driving down to spend the night in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Then we have a couple travel days and a couple days off before a major Major event in Paramus, New Jersey with an LPGA breast cancer charity event. So look forward to more writings soon!

Ojib-what?

"Would you like to say your thoughts and prayers over the tobacco?"

Not a phrase you hear every day. But today at the Fond-du-Lac Indian reservation in Cloquet, Minnesota, that's exactly what the spiritual woman with the long gray hair and suede moccasins said as she walked in front of me and the rest of the KOTG team, brandishing a small plastic bag of pungent, shredded tobacco leaves. Most of us took pinches and were instructed to hold them in our left hands, which are closer to our hearts. After awhile the woman collected them all in a bowl and stuffed the tobacco in her pipe, which she smoked while singing prayers in the native language and turning to face the North, South, East and West separately.

Today we took Big Pink to the reservation (or "rez" as the natives call it) to take part in a ceremony honoring the tribe's recent partnership with Susan G. Komen for the Cure and their newly active mission of cancer education and prevention, and to exhibit at their tribal community center. We learned that the mortality rate for the Ojibwe tribe is so low, members are considered elders at 52. Cancer is the leading cause of death, followed by diabetes.

Yikes, right? The craziest thing is, after this big ceremony highlighting all the reasons why women NEEDED to come through our trailer, needed to educate themselves about breast cancer- we had a very dismal turnout. And the weather was gray and often rainy; most of the day we scurried around covering or uncovering computers with tarps, rather than interacting with locals. Big Pink was almost empty for hours on end.

But it wasn't all bad. Everyone who did stop in and all the people who worked to arrange our stop on the rez were extremely warm and expressed profuse gratitude that we visited. They even presented us with gifts, including a long sleeved t-shirt that says "NO METH ON MY REZ!" on the back. Ha?

Amy on the Go

Hi! So, wow. I have a blog. Neat. I'm actually sort of surprised it's taken me this long to jump on the blog wagon. Back in my AmeriCorps days I had a livejournal but that was so 2002.

While I've been thinking about starting this up for awhile, the reason I'm choosing now is that I've hit the road again, this time working on an educational tour sponsored by Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Basically, we take our big pink trailer all around the country and educate people about breast cancer, breast health and self exams. We are in a different town nearly every day, staying in hotels and exhibiting "Big Pink" (our trailer's nickname) at community health fairs, festivals, charity events and even Wal-Mart parking lots.

It's interesting how I got hooked into this tour, which is called "Komen on the Go," or KOTG for short.

I work for an event production company that handles mostly large-scale fundraising events for nonprofits. But Event 360 has their hands in some other pies too, like consulting, smaller fundraising events and this mobile educational tour. Our biggest event is the Breast Cancer 3 Day, which benefits Komen for the Cure, and I've spent the last 1.5 years as a recruitment coordinator for the 3 Day.

Just over a week ago I was back in Chicago in my home office when I received a phone call from Event 360's director of recruitment. She let me know that someone had unexpectedly left the KOTG tour and they were wondering if I'd be willing to fill in for a week or two. Face-to-face interaction with the public, breast cancer education and travel? I jumped at the chance! They put me on a plane and in less than 24 hours I met up with Big Pink and the rest of the tour staff in Albany, NY.

Yesterday my company asked me to stay with the tour for the duration of this first leg (there will be a second one in the fall). I accepted, which means i'll be on the road til June 25th. Wow!

Already we've been to some great places- a quaint little town in Vermont called Rutland; Exeter, New Hampshire; Manchester, Connecticut; York, Maine; Elmira, New York....

Right now I'm in a hotel room in Erie, Pennsylvania- we are exhibiting at the local Wal-Mart tomorrow before heading to Toledo tomorrow night. After that we'll be in Chicago for a couple days (just a stopover, no exhibit there) before heading up to an Indian reservation in Cloquet, Minnesota.

My hope is to update every few days with anecdotes, pictures, and whatever else strikes my fancy. For now here's a couple pictures of Big Pink- a pretty incredible feat of engineering featuring 5 large flatscreen monitors, 4 mobile computer kiosks with looping video, and about 16 laptop computer stations where guests can access the Komen website and its infinite resources on breast cancer and breast health.

Until next time...have you done your self-exam this month?