The Lone Star State

January 28 - February 1, 2009

In the past the coming of the new year is exciting until you reach January 2nd. Then the hard facts of many more months of snow begin to set in as does the wondering if spring will ever arrive. In the past three years the realization that January 2nd was here only brought excitement because this meant that the ACCT conference was fast approaching. As I exited the Soderquist Center, I wondered if the ACCT Conference would exit my life. Well, I didn't let it. Somehow, the way was made and I, along with Leah, Lauren, Laurinda (3 of Lynette's staff) and Lyentte found our way to Houston, Texas.

I love the ACCT conference just for the tiny fact that it is in a different location every year. I had never been to Houston before which was the case for Portland last year. The conference was good. I will admit that it wasn't as good as last year when it comes to the workshops, but as a networking function, it was hard to beat this year. The world became very small as some of the other Service Crew folks were from Converse, Indiana which is a whole, whopping twelve miles away from Marion. Through getting to know them, we discovered that they drove to Houston. Although this was very impressive, I asked the next question with a little angle of my own. "What did you drive down?" I asked. I am sure to Joe this seemed like a innocent enough question. "A mini van" was pretty much all I heard from his answer. My mind immediately began to do the math. 2 of them plus 5 of us equals 7. Being the sharp man that he is, he caught on to what I was thinking with my next question. "And that holds 7 people right?"

Prior to this conversation, the 5 IWUers thought it would be fun to try and find a line dancing place. I mean what else do you do when you go to Texas? Fortunately, line dancing is choreographed which made the idea of going dancing much better. It has been tradition ever sense Lynette and I started going to this conference to skip the closing ceremonies on Saturday night to do something fun. Last year we ran to Washington. The year before that we went and saw Blue Man group and the year before that we went and hung out with people that we knew that lived in Denver. Traditions take a little effort sometimes, so when I saw the opportunity door open, I walked through with boldness.

Like I said, Joe is a sharp man. He's next question to me was, "Where do you need me to take you?" Pulling out the don't want to inconvenience you card, I replied, "well, there is this line dancing place only 2 and a half miles away that we were thinking about going to. We can walk though."

8:30pm rolls around. We find ourselves piled into a minivan and heading toward The Wild West. Line dancing was the expectation. Instead we arrive to see couples contra-dancing. We are now faced with the biggest issue. 5 ladies sitting there with no one to dance with. What about Joe and Derec (the two guys from Converse, IN)? Upon agreeing to bring us they verbalized that if the place we were going didn't have any pool tables they were going to drop us off and go find a place that did. Fare enough. When we entered, they saw the pool tables and went toward them bringing us to our current problem.

After watching the couples work their way around the dance floor (average age about high 30s low 40s), one of us spots an older man sitting across the dance floor all by himself. Opportunity! I turn to Lynette, know that she can't turn down a good challenge, and double dare her to go and ask him to dance. She and Lauren accept my challenge. Minutes later, Lynette is pulled to the side of the dance floor for a practice round on steps. Then she is out of on the dance floor. While Lynette is getting her dance lesson, the last of us walk over and join Lauren who fills us in on the details.

Lynette sat down next to Leroy and casually inquired about the couples where dancing, He told her the polka and asked if she knew anything about it. She replied that she didn't and then she proceeded to ask if she would like to learn.

Leroy didn't sit down again for about an hour and a half. Once a song was over, he would ask if one of us wanted to dance the polka or the two-step or the waltz and then off one of us would go with him. Throughout the course of the evening, we found out that Leroy was 80 years old. He had climbed the highest peak in 41 different states. The only states left where in the Pacific Northwest including Washington the home of Mt Rainier. 41 states is a lot but over the course of 80 years that isn't too bad. Well, after further inquiry we discovered that he has only been doing this for the past 5 years. If her climbs Mt Rainier he will set the record for the oldest man to do it (the current record being 78).

When 10 o'clock rolled around we noticed the atmosphere of the Wild West change to be a little bit more wild so we decided it was time for us to leave. Of course we couldn't do that without getting our picture taken with our fantastic teacher. We all left the Wild West with a mutual affection. While getting ready to go, we knew that we made his night for he told us a couple of times and that he would have a story to tell all of those friends that usually met him at this place but couldn't make it this evening. That was a good feeling. But we can only hope that he felt and thought the same thing because without him being there we wouldn't have had such a great time or such a fabulous story either. Thanks Leroy!