Spring Forward!

Written Wednesday, March 03, 2010 by Trippin'

February left with a cold, snowy bang didn’t it? Just how much snow was dumped across the country this past month? Seeing reports of 20-30 inches became quite common. At one point, as much as 69% of country had snow on the ground! Snow even fell in Florida along the Gulf of Mexico!

The weather sure did its number on our National Rural Electric Cooperative (NRECA) Annual Meeting in Atlanta. The team was driving down I-75 when the snow started falling heavily on February 12th. The show was set to start Saturday, February 13th and we weren’t so sure we’d be able to move people from the hotels to the convention center in three inches of snow and ice predicted for Atlanta. It may not sound like a lot to the rest of the country struggling to deal with 30+ inches but that little bit of snow down South created quite a headache for downtown Atlanta. Temperatures were in the 20’s and the wind was brutal. Buses did a little ice dancing, but the show must go on and on it did! We were minus one staff for a bit of time as one of our travel team members, Brandi, lives in Philadelphia, PA. She couldn’t get her car out of her driveway, fly out of Philadelphia, nor could she get a train but the ever resourceful Brandi did get a ticket for a Greyhound and rode from Philadelphia to Atlanta! It only took her 27 hours to get to Atlanta! UGH. How’s that for not giving up! Brandi, we salute you!

As the team was winding down the show in Atlanta another STS team was kick starting Microsoft MVP Summit in Seattle! Fortunately, the weather in Seattle cooperated much better than the rest of the country and part of the Atlanta team flew to Seattle to help out. At the end of the week, between two cities, STS had shuttled ranchers, farmers, CEO’s, speakers, actors, CNN analysts and some of Microsoft’s best and brightest.  We shuttled in the rain, snow, ice, wind, and sun. We drove hundreds of miles and flew thousands of miles to make both events successful.

Now, the ever important question – how did our Complaint Free Living Challenge withstand that week? Well, there was a lot of bracelet switching going on and I think I even saw one fly across a crowded room! Or, at the very LEAST something that definitely gave the appearance of a purple streak!

Trying hard not to complain is tougher than you think but this is a pretty tough team. We proved how tough we were that week so I know we’ll make it.
Since then, we’ve all settled back down a bit and are getting ready for another busy month. March has Microsoft Tech Ready in Seattle, ACE Hardware Spring Show in New Orleans, State Farm Mutual Fund in Naples, Florida, an event at Kennedy Space Center, CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas, and several mini programs out of our Seattle office. We’re going to be shuttling, moving, staffing, booking, flying and driving like crazy this month!

Spring: to dart; shoot; to be resilient or elastic; to issue with speed and force; to grow; to come into being; to make a leap or series of leaps ; to leap or jump up suddenly

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