So I managed to survive the road trip to Minneapolis and back.  We three
engineers left work Tuesday afternoon at 4pm in our rented Lincoln
Continental.  After a two hours of travel and lively conversation/bitchfest
about work we stopped off in Mason City at a Perkins for a late supper.  One
hour later, we get our food.  Never going to a Perkins again, it wasn't even
busy.  While we were there, the place had a free illusionist who wandered
around to entertain the kids with simple card tricks and sleight of hand. 
Several times we contemplated eating the leftovers from the other tables and
pummeling the magician.  Another 2.5 hour drive and continued slamfest of work
conversation and we arrived at our roach motel.  It was small, no frills, but
clean.  I declined to go out to the local bars with the other 2 guys, as I was
just beat.

The next morning, all of us were awaken way too early due to the thin walls. 
I had the cast of Stomp running above my room.  The other guys thought they
had the neighbors' showers running next to their beds.  I want to thank our
trip planner for being so damn cheap for putting us there instead of the nice
Radisson where the symposium was held at.  You also have to grimace when the
planner informs you that she put you up at that place because she was going to
thinking of using that hotel chain on her next trip, but wanted us to stay
there to "let her know how good it is".

After a few misturns, we arrived at the hotel and had enough time to get some
breakfast there.  We went to the symposium area to find the presentation room
packed full of engineers.  Over 150 people, and I think I counted 6 women
total and a handful of minorities.  Yup, your typical Midwestern engineering
population distribution.  And we got a table at the back end of a 100+ft. room
to watch one projection screen up at the front corner.  Needless to say, we
had a tough time reading anything put up on the screen.  After the hour of
keynote (pontification), we headed to the hands-on training room.  We arrived
to find the room overflowing with people.  Either the hosts of the show
overbooked, or they allowed anyone to show up without registering for the
training.  We ended up standing in one corner for about 15 minutes before
leaving.  The next couple hours of presentations were pretty worthless.  Lunch
wasn't free as we had to turn in our contact information to be able to get
into the food line.  After lunch, I barely stayed awake for the next
presentation.  At least the snowing was interesting to watch.  I figured the
trip was going last another day if the snowing would keep up all afternoon. 
Fortunately, the snow quit by early afternoon.  My final 2 hour training
session had the same problem as the morning session.  We ended up leaving 90
minutes early figuring that we had served our time.  So in summary, we learned
that technical symposium means sales pitches with basic introductory technical
training.  Not what we had signed up for.

The ride home was pleasant with more conversation and music from my CD
collection.  We ended up stopping at the Cabelas in Owatonna to check out the
store and its exhibits.  After 2.5 more hours of travel, we stopped in
Waterloo for some late supper.  I even managed to talk the guys out of hitting
the strip clubs as I just didn't want to go into one of those degrading
places.  I'm sure I'm going to get crap for that for weeks to come.   By 9pm
we rolled into Cedar Rapids and I was home in bed by 10.  So, all in all, it
was a fun drive, too bad the symposium was a waste of time.  At least we got 3
free meals on the company.  I hadn't eaten that well in a long, long time. 
And our new catch phase is "it's only a rental".  Shoutout to Shardik.