I was out of town at a conference yesterday and without e-mail access for an entire day. There were a couple new Dells in various locations where we were conferring, but I wasn’t that desperate to check my spam e-mail.
The conference site was the Hotel Pattee in delightful Perry, IA. I’d actually been here before when I took Leah for an overnight on her birthday when she was pregnant with Ava. It’s a really, really neat location. The hotel is right across the street from one of Iowa’s 101 Carnegie libraries, and Perry’s has been restored in magnificent fashion by the Ahmanson family of California, who made a fortune in insurance. The Ahmansons also restored the hotel and provided funds for other improvement projects in downtown Perry.
Perry has a Tyson meat packing plant that “processes” 8,000 hogs daily, which means there are plenty of Mexican restaurants in town, if that’s your thing (it’s one of my things, but we had to eat conference food yesterday–it wasn’t too bad, thankfully).
I ended up winning a big coffee mug in the drawing at the end of the day. It says “Research King” on it, which is cool. Too bad I don’t drink coffee.
On the way to the conference, we saw an SUV lose its front left wheel on the interstate just as we were driving through Des Moines. The wheel took off and bounced over the barrier into the oncoming lanes, but I couldn’t see if it hit anyone. Somehow, the driver managed to maneuver though traffic and get over to the median without causing an accident. Amazing. I was about 400 yards and a couple lanes away, so we weren’t in any great danger, but it took a little driving to get away from the guy. So, the last three times I’ve been on Interstate 80 I’ve seen accidents. One motor home on fire; one semi crashed and ablaze; and now this SUV with the frisky wheel. It’s enough to keep a fella at home.