Friday, March 04, 2011

a major award

My brother travels a lot for work, and often gets assigned to towns around the U.S. I'd never heard of, such as Truth Or Consequences, NM or somewhere near Cadiz, KY (I wish I could find that pic of the "Cadiz Laundromat" he sent me). He has to dress nice. But I guess because of the flights and hotels, there isn't too much leftover to pay the employees a whole lot. I guess he racks up airline miles, so that's a plus.

At the end of 2010, he called me to say he'd won an award from his company: "Most Traveled." Apparently, my brother had spent 40 weeks on the road, at 21 separate project sites. He was out of town for most of the year, but he made the most of it by taking side trips on the weekends. He's called me from the Staples Center, Vegas, the top of the Space Needle and from the Houston Rockets' game. A few times he even made it home to see us.

I'd asked him to send me postcards. At Christmas he handed me a stack of picturesque scenes from everywhere he'd been--not a bit of handwriting on a single one. That kid. Here is the lineup* of where he was, with side trips in parentheses:
10/4/09 Clinton, MO
10/24/09 Sibley, MN
10/31/09 Schuyllkill, PA**
11/15-22/09 Benton, KY
12/6/09 Dallas
1/16-23/10 Sibley, MN (Chicago)
2/6-14/10 Winnfield, LA
3/20/10 St. Clairsville, PA (Pittsburgh)
4/17/10-5/1/10 Truth Or Consequences, NM (Las Vegas, Los Angeles)
5/15-22/10 Okmulgee,OK (Chicago)
6/10/10 St. Croix Falls, WI
6/26/10 Chillicothe, MO
7/11-24/10 Lubbock, TX (Washington D.C.)
7/31/10-8/14/10 New York City
8/22/10-9/6/10 Walla Walla,WA (Seattle)
9/18/10-10/2/10 St. Croix Falls,WI (Chicago, St. Louis)
10/10-15/10 Watertown, NY
10/17-22/10 Rosemead, CA (Los Angeles)
11/1-5/10 St. Croix falls, WI
11/7-12/10 Coldwater, MI
11/28/10-12/17/10 Monticello, AK (Chicago, Houston)

The company gave him a little certificate along with his award, which was a $5 Starbucks gift card. I'm sure he took his time to figure out just how he was going to spend it.

***UPDATE***
Apparently I overlooked this postcard, which was in the pile of blank ones:
 
Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX

And here was the verbose message on the back: 

"This is some statue on campus in their Quad I guess."


* I tried to check the spellings, but sorry if I misspelled your town.
**he wanted it noted that it was 14 straight 12-hour shifts

2 comments:

  1. Postcards you want, postcards you got, haha.

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  2. NYC and Watertown for New York? I'm not sure if those two cities could be any more opposite.

    He travels more in a month than I do in a year!

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