Why WITS16 Didn't Work for Me

A friend recently informed me that I wear my heart on my sleeve.  I think she meant it to be an insult. Actually, I know she meant it as an insult, because an expression of pity accompanied the comment.

But I don't see it that way.

Creating/being in social situations tops my list of needs. I feel "off" if I don't hold a conversation with a new person every day. I'm one of those geeks who speaks to every person she passes. If I see someone struggling to get to their flight gate with heavy or awkward luggage, it takes everything in me to not jump up and help them.

I like to make others' days better. And as cheesy as it sounds, I truly believe that offering a quick "good morning" can literally change a stranger's day.

So when I arrived at the 2016 WITS (Women in Travel Summit) conference on a beautiful Saturday in California, I was super excited for the chance to mingle with hundreds of women from so many different walks of life, with so many different experiences, but who shared my obsession with travel.  Hell, that was my ready-made ice breaker right there.

Unfortunately, I arrived at the conference on day three (which was originally day one, but the leaders later added more days and activities) and took a spot at the almost-full table in the back, my table of ladies barely noticed. Throughout the day, I tried to insert myself into others' conversations but it was no use. Everyone had already formed comfortable friendships...long story short, I felt (ironically) very alone.

And it colored my entire WITS16 experience. When group activities were announced, I exited the banquet room and grabbed coffee or chatted with the vendors in the lobby. The leaders had also planned some really cool excursions that I'd hoped to group up for, but ultimately I just drove back to my hotel.

No new BFFs for me.

I'll look for other travel-related conferences and events...and I'll post what I find here. :)

What I Bought
Info about the Women in Travel Summit
Members of this large grassroots organization are a great resource for solo female travelers: She's Wanderful
I stayed at the breathtaking Air Venice in Venice Beach

The ol' "Shifty Eye"

"All inclusive": Free booze and sunburn wherever you turn.

So I'm sitting in the corner of a hotel lobby in the Dominican Republic, kneading my sunburn and cursing myself for not using sunscreen earlier today. 

Sitting in the corner of any given crowded room gives you an awesome vantage point.  

Case in point: I'm watching this married couple waiting in line to check in to the hotel.  She looks tough. They're like every American sitcom couple. He works 80 hours a week and golfs. She complains about life and cooks meatloaf on Thursdays.

Yeah, that couple.

A slender/blonde/attractive (take your pick...they're all the same, right? #bittermuch) woman walks by.  My eyes dart back to the couple because I'm nosy and I want to read both the husband's and wife's reactions to this ostentatious disruption of reality.   

The wife is busy checking her purse for something, so she's missing all of the action.  The husband, however, is immediately aware that a hottie is in his field of vision. He does a quick glance, and we know what's going to happen next.  He's going to find some way to look again and take in her entire being, then he's going to store all that data and quickly return to whatever he was pretending to do.  But it'll be sooo smooth and quick. 

I love this part. I call this highly-evolved, stylized cognizant method of ogling "The Shifty Eye". It should have it's own theme music, really.

Okay.  It's about to go down. As I'm texting this, he's already turned away from his wife to "check his texts". Now, let's observe how smoothly he pulls it off...

This is awesome. It's like watching a NatGeo promo with the driving background drum beat and the way-too-serious voice over guy...

Okay, he's "texting"...and "texting"...aaaaaand 

BAM! He pulled it off without a hitch, ladies and gentlemen! He just glanced up very directly at the hottie, practically mentally undressed her, stamped the image and stored it in the appropriate folder in his brain and returned to "texting"...all within like 5 seconds.

I seriously want to put down my phone and write "10" on my napkin and hold it up for him, but I don't want to call him out and disrupt his natural habitat. I wish I'd recorded it.  It's a thing of beauty, really.

Seriously. Men are amazing creatures. Whenever a man pulls off The Shifty Eye, it's like watching the marine biologist guys try to catch a whale on camera. You know they're going to surface at some point. But to watch it in action is awesome.

They think they're so slick and shady. But really, this is proof that they're only as slick as the length of rope their spouses give them. Tthe wife is still busy getting their papers or credit cards or whatever's in her ridiculous giant purse, so she isn't minding the environment. The woman is completely unaware that a private fiasco just went down. 

Men are great social chameleons. They'll be whatever you want them to be, as long as the room's colors don't change too quickly and give them away. 

People watching at it's finest. Cheers!

What I Bought
Hotel Riu - Punta Cana
Aftersun Aloe Vera Gel (only available at stateside CVS's)

*** Fare Alert ***

New airfare bargains including this r/t Detroit-->LaGuardia on specific dates for $141. 

Visit Orbitz.com for the details. 

Traveling Amidst the American Political Saga and our Evolving Social Climate

I've taken a few quick trips to nearby locales recently. I traveled solo, as typical, anxious for the opportunity to meet new friends with interesting stories and backgrounds. And I've noticed something odd lately...maybe you have, too...

We talk to each other differently.

I mean to say that how we interact with strangers who we may have formerly approached apprehensively...well, it's all changed.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that our current state of political affairs has a lot to do with it.

We have an outspoken, often foot-in-mouth but at-least-he's-honest non-politician running against the first female front runner for the Executive Office of the President of the United States. An office that is currently held by the first African American family to receive it.

Regarding the former contestant, I'm positive that his sardonic nature and often incredibly insensitive tone are indirectly related to the influx of Caucasian men and women, also on vacation with their families, who approach me (a plus sized African American female) plainly and without the aforementioned apprehension, simply for general conversation.

Plainly, I think the race for President has made us more comfortable with one another. We're not as timid about approaching someone, even if we suspect they live a completely different lifestyle than we do. We're not afraid to voice our opinions to strangers. And that makes me happy.

That's the positive influence our presidential candidates have unknowingly bestowed upon us. We're more comfortable expressing ourselves to people of other cultures and ethnicities.

But here's the negative impact. We're more comfortable expressing ourselves to people of other cultures and ethnicities...

Sigh.

My Uber Guy is CRAY!

My Uber driver is CRAZY!! He's...

1. Driving all over the lines
2. Running other drivers onto the shoulder of the road
3. A speed demon in the right lane
4. Facebooking and Googling at over 85 mph!

I think my spleen just flew out the window.

#sweetbabygeezus

#coveringmyeyes

*** Fare Alert ***

R/t flights DTW --> MIA via American Airlines for $107! Multiple dates on September, October and January. 

Orbitz.com. 

Sea of Kits

So I got a little carried away yesterday and made a "few" too many hygiene kits. I had to put half of them in my trunk just so that we wouldn't trip over them. 

If you live in the Detroit area and you'd like some to distribute to someone(s) in need, please follow the links to the left to contact me. They'll be in my trunk, so if we work together or you live in the area, I can just bring them to you. :) #outofspace #gotcarriedaway #simmerdown #helpthehomeless #weekendwarrior

*** Cruise Alert ***

Carnival Cruise Line is running a 36-hour cruise sale that ends tomorrow. It advertises cruises as low as $249, but I did a quick search and found one from LA to Mexico, 4 days, for just $153pp!  

Follow this link for the deets. :)

*** FARE ALERT *** Domestic & International Flights from Detroit

I am absolutely astonished and enamored by some of these flight deals. So much that I checked to make sure they weren't typos. I couldn't wait until I got home...I had to share them with you! Visit orbitz.com for more details. 

40% Off Luggage on eBay

Visit eBay for the deets:

Summer Getaway http://r.ebay.com/kbAKOD

*** Fare Alert ***

Round trip flight Detroit <--> Atlanta via Spirit Airlines for $80! 

Visit Orbitz.com to check out the fare alerts in your city. 

Respect The Trek.

It is only logical that I begin this blog with a discussion about the splendor of Star Trek.

Gene Roddenberry, Awesome Genius, created the Star Trek vision in the 1960s both in hopes of inspiring humanity and offering a possible technological evolution.

Without Roddenberry, without Star Trek, you and I wouldn't be "here" right now.

Why, you ask?  Well, you poor, sheltered soul, because almost every convenience you use (although I wonder if you live in a cave...?) owes its creation to Star Trek.

Even blogging. That's right.

Blogging 

Began life as daily audio logs (i.e., "captain's logs").

Cell Phones

See "subspace communicators", circa 1966.

PDAs

This one's a no-brainer. Clearly.

Sliding Doors

The Trek made us lazy and snobby with the sliding door concept.  Until then, grocery stores, office buildings, hospitals...they used handled doors.

Robots? 

Lieutenant Commander Data. Duh.

Leadership

There's no greater example of true leadership than demonstrated by the captains of the Enterprise and Voyager. (This excludes Captain Sisko, since I refuse to acknowledge DS9 as a Star Trek series.)

Captain Jean Luc Picard (TNG) inspires confidence, equality, unity, vision and integrity.  Every TNG episode is a lesson in leading a unit, even under stressful circumstances.

Social Consciousness

It's no secret. The resolution to every ST plot is to acknowledge and better appreciate the other guy's culture.  Even episodes with heavy emphasis on the half computer drone Borg are resolved with ways to better understand (and/or stay the eff away from ) them.

Our desire to help one another is one of our basest instincts. Roddenberry injected this idea into every plot. Romulans trying to kill us? Let's find out what they want and help them get it.  Species 8472 (fluidic space creatures) tearing my ship apart?  Let's try to understand why, even if it means killing us.

Roddenberry patterned the original characters in the 1960s, just as race relations, feminism and nationalism where under a magnifying glass.  It's said that he created the various "races" in close alignment with social stereotypes of that time. (He never confirmed this.)

That two seemingly-opposite species could learn each other's languages, visit the other's planets, participate in their traditions and shake hands at the end of each episode meant that perhaps we could, too.

So show a little respect for Star Trek. Without it, you probably wouldn't have that computer on your desk, with the monitor you're looking at, reading my words and snickering.  You wouldn't be sitting right there today.

That's right. I said it.

How To Make a Hygiene Kit

Looking for a great, simple way to help your local homeless community?

Many people I speak with are often uncomfortable handing out cash to strangers. Does this person really need it? Will they use it on the right things?

One way to smother those thoughts is to create hygiene kits.  It's super simple. Here's how:

Visit your local dollar store. Buy hygiene-related stuff. Done! :)

Okay, it may be a teeny bit more complicated than that. But the two "must haves" are toilet tissue and ziplock bags.  After that, you're pretty much free to build the kits as you like.

And build as many as you like. You may be thinking that dollar store = tons of stuff, but reality will sit in when you're charging $100 worth of dollar store items to your card and your basket is half empty. The number of kits will never be as valuable as what's in them. Ten kits that contain the whole spectrum of personal hygiene items will always outweigh 100 kits with two items in them.

Think quality, not quantity. Imagine keeping the kits in the back seat of your car, and distributing them when you see persons in need. Is it better that you have 99 more like it, or that what you're giving them can really help them?

Here's a quick list of items I've used to build kits on the past. Remember - there is no standard for making them. A hygiene kit is exactly what you want it to be...

• Toilet Tissue (2)
• Bottled Water (3)
• Toothpaste
• Toothbrush
• Toothbrush travel case
• Washcloth
• Shaving cream
• Disposable razor(s)
• Wet Wipes
• Maxi Pads
• Hand Sanitizer
• Travel napkins
• Deodorant
• Shampoo
• Comb or brush
• Personalized note of encouragement 
• Recyclable tote bag

I'm probably forgetting a million things, but I'll return to this post often to add things as I remember them.

Thanks for reading. Please contact me with any questions. I'm happy to help!