To Connecticut and Back Home

Defying the threat of rain, sleet, and snow last Monday morning, I left Cincinnati at 7:00 AM on a flight to Philadelphia and then on to Hartford. I was on my way to Middletown, a city in which I had lived for a brief time and worked for only slightly longer. Since being an employee on site for four years long ago, I have worked for the same organization remotely (in four different home offices, plus countless temporary lodgings) as a part-time contractor and consultant. This was my first official business trip back to the "home site" since I had left in 2002. So it was a coming home of sorts.

Much changes in a dozen years, of course. I didn't go back to the same building--the organization had moved into fancy new offices up the street in the intervening years. At least eight of a staff of about 25 were no longer working there--most having retired. One of the joys of the trip was being able to meet the newcomer replacements face-to-face and in their various habitats--the better to remember who they are and what they do when I converse with and about them by email or, less often, by phone.

The purpose of the trip was intensive training in production and quality assurance techniques for a rather complex XML-based monthly publication. Intense it was. I know the content well, but getting it all to slide properly into a remote host's system took quite a bit of orientation and practice, and just how successful we were will make itself clear in the coming months. In between the training sessions I had a little time to meet with regular staffers and with a couple former colleagues, and it was pleasant reminiscing. The weather was cold, and my day started at 8:00 the second morning and 7:00 the next. Though my hotel was in town and only about a half mile from the office, I did not have much chance to walk down Middletown's Main Street and enjoy the old ambiance, but I did do fairly well at sampling from the 25 "within-walking-distance" restaurants listed in my hotel guide.

My flight home didn't get me into the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport until 10:45 PM, so I had arranged to take a shuttle to a nearby hotel to spend the night. Good idea, because by that time I was too tired for anything else. Thursday morning my "personal driver" came and met me for breakfast, and then we had a pleasant drive home counterclockwise around the metropolitan area of Cincinnati, in bright sunlight. It was good to get back to our little apartment on the north side and to get my computer hooked up in my office again.

This was the first time I felt that I was truly coming "home" to Cincinnati.