Big-Girl Engagement

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I haven't had a big-girl engagement in nearly a year, what with all the marketing PowerPoints and sales events. This is going to be interesting.

Trip Basics, Day 1

Travel: Amtrak Cascades 507 TUK-PDX (Business class, free wifi). I picked a beautiful window seat on what turned out to be the less-scenic side of the train, next to the door that wouldn't close properly, but overall it was wonderful anyway. This is the only way to fly. I wrote conference speaker proposals most of the way, and even briefly helped a colleague debug his TFS-Project Server integration.

Lunch: Turkey havarti sammitch from the Bistro car. I forgot to use my $3 off coupon!

Transfer: Uneventful, efficient taxi from the train station. Carfree living in downtown Portland: recommended.

Hotel: Portland Waterfront Marriott, arranged by our customer. Martin stayed here recently (same customer) and raved about it. He's right: it's wonderful. My room is on the 11th floor with a panoramic view of the riverfront, mountains, and an unreasonable number of lovely bridges.

Dinner: Walked to nearby Murata for sushi. Intimate, with unpretentious decor: semi-private tatami rooms, the usual fabric wall hangings and geometric wood/paper screens, all under acoustical-tile ceilings. Two ancient Japanese chefs, gnarled like bonsai trees, running the sushi bar. I got a chef's choice sushi platter: appetizer, miso soup, 8 nigiri, 1 small roll, canteloupe for dessert. Almost incomprehensibly delicious, even the canteloupe.

A few tables away, an older couple dined with a mom and her daughter. Mrs. Older Woman wore a hip black beret and enormous dark movie-star sunglasses, indoors, at night, in rainy weather. Her demeanor and conversation, with which I became very well acquainted throughout the meal, prompted me to dig for my phone to text my little brother: The Grande Dame Eddy Hammond has come back to life and is eating sushi in this restaurant. Noisy, impossible to ignore, aristocratic, exacting yet gracious, just like I remember. This was mostly a delightful and nostalgic thing, though I may need to go back and re-read for comprehension those chapters in the book I brought with me.

Evening: I had requested, and while away had been delivered, additional decaf in-room coffee packets and--yay!--a to-go cup full (12 oz.!) of real half-and-half, which since I don't have a mini-fridge I stored in the ice bucket (ice tied in the plastic bag so it won't dissolve the paper cup). Sipped coffee, emailed, wrote conference session proposals, watched Rachel Maddow, slept fine but should have arranged to do so sooner.

Trip Basics, Day 2

Breakfast: Decaf Americano and chocroissant at the barbucks™ (bar at night, Starbucks in the morning) in the hotel lobby.

Transfer: Uneventful taxi from the hotel across the river to the customer's office.

Why I'm actually here, part 1: Free-form consulting and advising with a large group of PMs and team leaders, very much different from my usual experiences giving planned lectures and demonstrations! This customer is highly self-sufficient and are executing most of their migration and configuration work themselves; I'm here mostly to bounce ideas off of, as far as I can tell. I delivered value by gently talking them out of customizing their work item states, which is technically possible but almost guaranteed to be a logistical and maintainance mess for years to come. In the afternoon, I demoed reports and the feedback management tools. The requested and planned demo of work item queries was cut short as soon as they saw the query editor window: "oh, is that all? we all know how to use a thing like that." I like these folks.

Second breakfast/elevenses: Yes, really. The customer brought in coffee and pastries from the bakery downstairs. I topped off my Americano with coffee and ate one half of a chocolate chip macadamia nut scone.

Lunch: Pizza, provided by the customer. I knew better than to take two pieces, did it anyway, and then could only finish one. #jerk

Transfer: Our sponsor/champion, a dev manager, offered me a ride back across the bridge to my hotel, and arranged to pick me up tomorrow morning too. Accepting rides from a customer (or a very large Pacific Northwest software firm's sales representatives) is potentially creepy in some circumstances, but when I've had a chance to interact with the individual all day already and it's a short drive suitable for small talk, it turns out to be pleasant.

Dinner: Another hotel in which the advertised high-end restaurant is closed, this time due to off-season lull. The barbucks™ in the lobby serves a reasonable and upscale menu, so I made plans to work in my room for a few hours and then shuffled down with my book for an Oregon pinot noir (exceptional; if you forget to specify a size, you get a grande), market salad with balsamic vinaigrette (pretty OK), crab mac & cheese (bland), and a mixed-berry (including strawberries!) cobbler a la mode (nom). Nice atmosphere, great service.

Evening: You're reading it. I miss my dog.

Trip Basics, Day 3

Breakfast: barbucks™ Americano and an almond croissant the size of my head.

Transfer: The dev manager who came to pick me up even helped me with my suitcase, which was embarrassing. I will try harder not to let that happen. 😊

Lunch: Jackpot! Russell Street BBQ with three really nice managers (dev, QA, and I-don't-know-what-he-does-but-he's-very-good-at-it). Ribs (fell off the bone pretty well), classic sauce (just how I like it), greens (if you're going to get BBQ on your shirt at lunch with a customer, this is the safest way to do it), and mac and cheese (totally better than last night's).

Why I'm actually here, part 2: All-day training, strategizing, consulting, and idea-bouncing. The über development director asked to meet privately with me after lunch. It took me a minute to comprehend that he really was asking my opinion of how his company was doing! Then, I was so surprised by the idea of a super-senior manager caring about my advice that I briefly forgot that I did actually have a bunch of it, which I scrambled to organize in my head and lay out for him. He took notes! Apparently this is what they pay me for!

Transfer: One of the QA leads, from the last training session of the day, asked how I was getting to the train and then offered me a ride. Her teammate drove my colleague Martin when he was here last fall: "ranting the whole time about how backward the USA is...!" On my ride, we talked about Rick Steves travel instead. Similar theme, with less ranting and more cuisine.

Travel: Amtrak Cascades 508 PDX-TUK (Business class, free wifi). In Portland, you check in and are assigned a seat. I got a single seat on "the mountain side", which is Amtrak's euphemism for "not the side with the nice views", but it's nighttime and all the seats on "the water side" are doubles so whatever. Immediately across the aisle from me, two strangers who were thrilled to sit together (there are lots of empty rows) and decided to share their entire life stories with each other and the entire rest of the car for the entire trip. I scouted the other Business Class car for empty seats. No luck: found a full-volume cell phoner over there, talking too loudly to hear the announcement happening at that exact moment in which the conductor was requesting that cell phoners take their conversations to the vestibules for the comfort of others. FML... until I found the charger cable, after all, for my dead iPod. Pentatonix to the rescue. I swear I would pay extra for a seat in an Introverts Only car.

Back to work: gotta write an executive summary. Two hours until I get my puppy back!

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