Milwaukee

I meant to post about my trip to Milwaukee while I was in Milwaukee, but you know how things go. After hours of teaching “Customer Delight” and Safety and Sanitation, a girl has got to do something else besides sit in front of a computer screen, trying to come up with something creative to say about a city she is not even going to get to see.

As far as Milwaukee goes, the airport was very nice. Much bigger than I expected, but recently updated, free WIFI and of course, filled with Starbucks. The Avis Rental Car lady was very nice and suggested that we eat at Knopps (a famous local frozen custard place which happened to be right down the street from the hotel), and we were upgraded for free to an SUV. I have no idea what it was, but the gas pedal was so light, I peeled out multiple times throughout the trip. I was traveling with a co-worker and I think I kind of started to freak her out. I am a good driver! This car was just touchy.

The hotel was a Marriott, so of course, it was really nice. I taught all day Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Wednesday, we went to Knopps and I see why they are famous. They make Vanilla and Chocolate frozen custard everyday, but they also rotate two specialty flavors into the mix daily. On this day, the specialty flavors were Burgundy Cherry and Turtle. I didn’t get to taste the cherry (although I saw people eating it and it was a gorgeous color of cherry red) but I did sample the turtle. It was vanilla frozen custard mixed (and when I say mixed, I mean perfectly swirled) with caramel, chocolate and whole pecans. I was incredibly fresh (made within the hour) and so, so good. I actually ended up with a heaping cone of chocolate in the end and that was also wonderful.

On Wednesday night we had dinner at Noodles and Company around 9 pm and headed off to bed. We planned on meeting at 6:45am to head to the airport. My co-worker said her flight was at 8am and I was sure mine was around 11:45am, so I would just have to sit around the airport.

At 6:45am, my dreams were interrupted by a light knocking on my door. At I leapt, naked directly from the bed to the closet (which was at least 10 feet away) I groggily came to the realization that I had overslept.

“Hold on a second,” I croaked towards the door.

I threw on some clothes, and opened the door.

“Sorry, I overslept.” I said. My co-worker came into the room and stood there as I hastily threw all my stuff into the suitcase (of course I hadn’t packed the night before, what and break my procrastination habit created in the early years of traveling with Krispy Kreme. Always pack the morning of…)

I had glanced at the clock in my naked leap to the closet and it had said exactly 6:45am. Fully packed, dressed and mossy-mouthed and bleary-eyed I looked at the clock on the way out of the door and it said 6:47. Damn, I’m good.

We got into the SUV and peeled out into the rainy grey morning. As we neared the airport, my co-worker pulled out her itinerary to confirm her flight information.

“Uh, Ellie? You’re going to kill me.”

“Why, what are you talking about?”

“I don’t know what happened. I really thought my flight was at 8am.”

“When is your flight?” I asked a little hesitantly, my un-showered body tensing.

“Um, 11:45am!”

There was nothing to do but laugh about it. We were pulling into the rental car return at this point so we figured we would just try to get out earlier. I went to my airline and she went to hers. It was then that I realized that I was also wrong about my flight. I wasn’t scheduled to leave until 1:45pm and at this point it was a little after 7am; and I was scheduled to arrive in Greensboro at 6:10, a full 11 hours from then. I spoke to the lady at the counter. She got me a 10am flight out of Milwaukee, but could do nothing about the flight from Cincinnati. So I sat in the Cincinnati airport for 5 hours until finally boarding my flight home to Greensboro.