Hershey Squirts....and humility...

Yo...Well its been 1 week since i posted last and figured i need to catch up on it.  I have been a few places and received some news about future travels and adventures.  Since Birmingham, Al and United (bonerheads) mindlessly losing my A/V bag, I have been to Dallas, TX, Cleveland, OH, Detroit, MI, Baltimore, MD, Bethlehem, PA, and no Harrisburg, PA.  After taking what seemed like a million years talking to the United (bonerheads) airline baggage services, I had them ship it a week ahead of schedule to Baltimore, because cognitive thinking and problem solving to get my bag to me is truly a problem for them.  My seminars in Cleveland and Detroit went off without a hitch.  The hotel I stayed in in Detroit was pretty nice.  It was a Radisson and the accommodations were comfortable.  One problem though.  I got up in the morning and was kinda parched so i go to their little cafe and order a thing of milk.  They give me the pint sized cardboard carton of milk and i head to my seminar room.  Well, being parched and all, i open up the milk and start to chug......after the first chug, i realize that this is wrong, just flat out wrong.... god dammit, the milk that i was craving and was going to quench my thirst with is sour, ridiculously sour.  I have never had sour milk before, and i don't recommend having it, but it officially ruined milk for me for the next 5 days.    After that incident, my seminar is fine and I take my speaker, who is a lady probably close to seventy with grey hair that was clearly dyed, bright orange with grey streaks, nice but a little bit of a kook, to the airport and wait for my plane to take off.   So i board the plane and settle in for a chance to sleep and maybe watch a movie.  As we are flying I have my head phones on and hear the faint cry of a baby, but notice everyone on the plane kinda glancing around and looking confused at something.  So i take off my headphones and low and behold there is a meowing sound coming from somewhere on the plane.  Some lady had snuck a  goddamn cat on the plane and was holding it in her arms while the 2 Japanese passengers next to the woman were laughing their heads off because this magician of a lady seemed to have pulled this cat from thin air. After a loud and what seemed like an eternity meowing session, the lady put the cat back, to where ever she had stuffed it...... maybe she took the name of the animal too literally and thought that was a place to store it to have friends or somethin.  Anybody think thats gross??  Really?! Yea, well, I think its coooooooooool......... (if my parents are reading or any of their friends....sorry guys....but come ooooonnnnnn)

Okay so the next week arrives and I fly into Baltimore, MD late and am unable to meet up with my friend Eric and Elliott due to my arrival time and having my hotel an hour north.  Shit.  My presenter this week is a lady I had before who is easy to get along with and pretty nice, as long as i bring her a receipt for her meals....(....my thoughts, "I'm not a bitch, I'm not a bitch, I'm not a bitch....okay I'm a bitch.")   I have my seminar in Baltimore and everything goes fine.  Next I'm in Bethlehem, PA, and except for a mentally disturbed woman hassling me for change and talking about the trippy carpet in the hallway for like a half hour, it went fine.  I got a chance to go to the Martin & Co Acoustic Guitar factory which was really interesting, and got to pluck some strings on some guitars (which I 

dont normally get to do with this job) right off the

 line.  After that, off to Harrisburg, PA which is not to far from Hershey, PA......home (I didnt press the 'm' in the word 'home' hard enough 

and i typed hoe......AHAHAHAHA god i love my job) of the Hershey Chocolate Company.  I was excited to go on the Hershey chocolate tour.....God I havent been this disappointed in a while....

    I get up in the morning and am ready to go.  Did all my paperwork the night before and had everything in line so i could leave work at 10:00 and head to the Hershey factory to catch the free tour.  Except for our seminar site being kinda ghetto and having to hunt down a few things to get the presentation going, I was home-free to go to Hershey.  Now, this town of Hershey is devoted to chocolate, hershey kiss streetlights, cocoa is in every store name, and the town just smells like chocolate.  There is also a theme park that resembles disneyland.  As i get to the "factory tour", I expect to like 

put on a hairnet shower cap deal, and walk through the factories process and have somebody there explaining to me the steps in chocolate production.  I  arrive to my destination and there is a girl, probably a few years older than me, standing at the entrance to the facility. I ask her, "Am I gonna be the only one on this tour?" to which she replies with a confused look, "Uhhhhh yea..." and I proceed to what I believe will be an enriching adventure of the Hershey factory which includes me dipping my finger into the giant vats of chocolate and licking my finger with a giant smile on my face.  I arrive at the "tour" site and I am ushered alone into a pod of some sort on a track and for the next 15 minutes watch as animatronic cows sing and explain to me how chocolate is made in terms so that a 2nd grader could understand how chocolate goes from a plant and into their stomaches.  This was embarrassing....  I was alone..... on a kids ride...... with cows singing to me....about how chocolate is "made".....and how fun chocolate is to eat.... and drink.... and love....   oh and no surprise at the end they took my picture.... (which was taken by a cow of course....yes they learned how to use cameras apparently).....No Justin I didnt buy the 12 dollar picture to immortalize my embarrassment.   I officially feel like a retard (I know, not PC).   This experience has been a lesson.  I will look deeper into this type of shit so I  wont walk away to my car with a red face of humility and laughing while a 27-year-old woman looks out of the window at the factory wondering what the hell I was doing there.  Case closed.  

  Okay well I head to State College, PA tonight where Penn State University is and expect everything to go okay.  Who knows, maybe ill crash a college party and be that guy.  HOLLA!!!!  Then after that I go to Pittsburgh to hopefully see my friend Nick Desimone and possibly go to Primanti Brothers, an awesome restaurant known for having great sandwiches that they put fries and coleslaw on.  I am looking forward to having these experiences for the next couple days and hope they make up for what turned out to be an overwhelming mistake........  Deuces from Harrisburg, PA