As I briefly mentioned on Friday, last week’s travels did not go well; every single flight went from wide open when I scheduled it to tight by the time I checked in 24 hours in advance, to nigh-impossible by the time I arrived at the airport. On Tuesday, my flight from Minneapolis was delayed for just long enough to cause me to miss my connection to St. Louis by minutes, then the next flight was delayed by hours (and it was a rough landing too). Then on Thursday both I and an air hostess were booted off of our flight to Chicago, and there were no other flights that day which weren’t horribly overbooked, so I had to do another one-way car rental and invited the lady to ride with me (which actually turned into a fun little adventure as we quickly made friends during the drive). Then driving back from Bloomington to O’Hare on Sunday I got a brief scare; I was cruising along with the traffic coming into Chicago (fairly heavy but not slow) in the left lane when I heard a crash behind me; a glance in the rear-view mirror revealed that the driver of the car immediately behind me (maybe 30 meters back) had lost control, crossed the shoulder and crashed into the concrete guardrail. My guess is that he was both texting and going too fast, glanced up and realized he was about to rear-end me, and then lost control while trying to swerve and brake; I shudder to think what would’ve happened had he not glanced up in time to wreck only his own car and not my rental as well. It certainly didn’t do my nerves any good; I had been watching the flight loads grow increasingly worse for the previous several days, and none of the backup flights looked any better. But apparently Aphrodite interceded with Hermes on my behalf, and four people ahead of me must have missed their connections or something because I got onto my flight at literally the last minute (as in, the gate agent walked me down the jetway herself and closed the door behind us, and I had barely time to get settled in and take my meds before the captain announced we were about to depart).
But while the travels were difficult, the events were great! My Minnesota State event on Monday had the largest attendance yet, and my St. Louis crowd was very enthusiastic and not much smaller; I got to meet Dr. Eric Sprankle and spend some time with my friends Kendra Holliday and David Wraith in St. Louis, and then made some new friends at the Libertarian party convention in Bloomington.
My talk was very well-received, and the audience questions at all three events were top-notch and thoughtful. On Saturday evening I got sort of roped into being the auctioneer for a fundraising auction, but even though I’ve never been an auctioneer before I am a fast learner and it was a lot of fun (and two of the items were my own books!) So in the end I would call the week a definite success; I just hope Hermes is done playing tricks on me now! If you’d like to help make future events like the Minnesota State & Sex Positive St. Louis screenings possible (eg SWOP Behind Bars in Florida in June, and Woodhull conference in August), or to soothe my frazzled nerves from my travel misadventures, please donate to my fundraiser! And don’t forget that even though GoFundMe won’t let me list the rewards for donations on their own page, those rewards definitely do exist and we’ll be starting to send them out in just a few weeks!
