Well, I did not think it possible to improve upon last year's MLSA experience, but this one beat it by a mile!
Nice drive up about 3 hours, pull into the hotel on the big lake, and nothing but police and sheriff cars from all over the state, made me quite nervous. Check in, no room for us, get put in the sister hotel express, which turned out much better as you could smoke there. No bar at either place, oh no, what to do? Not to worry, Skip's Lounge real close by would be even better.
Wearing the Boys of Summer shirt turned out to be a big plus, as we met lot's of people that know the boys, and think highly of them as we do. We played a big joke and took lots of photos with their competitors, like signing contracts, really funny!
As usual, turns out we get more contacts and information at the bar than at the conference. First night, drive an hour back south to a very large casino, go to order a coffee, no wallet. Rush back to the car still in the valet, it was in the back seat, our guardian angel was traveling with us once again. Couldn't drag GF LakeChair out of there, leave at 3:30 am, just miss hitting a critter, then, the whole hour back I had to drive about 45 as we saw at least 75 deer on each side of the highway eating grass, scared me to death.
Next morning, we learned the DNR got in trouble for sinking a boat with a bubble in the pool last year, so all were on their best behavior.
We made lots of contacts with the vendors and made a friend with the MDEQ lady in charge of our region, that had never even heard of our lakes (tells you that nobody followed the rules in the past). She let us set up our photo/info boards near her booth and we would bring people back and show them all we have uncovered and changed so far. Going in people tend to think we are flighty girls who laugh a lot, then once we talk people have lot's of respect for us.
That night we decided to try Skip's lounge near our hotel. Upon walking in the first thing I saw was 2 shuffle board tables, my best game, along with Karoke, a dance floor and a few locals. Within 20 seconds of walking in we were converged upon by two conference attendee's who must have been a few sheets to he wind already. GF LakeChair came up with the best way to describe this experience "Grope & Hope." Once again, that guardian angle was with us as it turned out one of them is the Drain Commissioner of 13 years of a large county in the state, and the other was the VP of a huge Engineering Firm that deals with dams, watersheds, wetlands,sewers, storm drains,etc. Although they were soused, I went to my car and brought in all our photo boards and tried to write down what the drain commissioner was saying. He said he has a PHD in Efluvial streamflow morphology, and all our problems are fixable. They weren't exactly interested in talking shop, and as luck would have it, nobody else from the conference was there. We had a blast, playing shuffleboard, singing karoke, dancing and drinking, and non stop laughing. The term, "need some help" will be a phrase that will make us burst into laughter when we hear it for the rest of our lives. Since we are good girls that would never cross the line (when the bar closes, the party is over!)we are reevaluating what the line really is. Next morning we made it in by lunch and met Larry the engineer who gave us tons of info, even a c.d. regarding the drain code and a promise to come down here and take a look with the commissioner who is sort of an adversary of our drain commissioner who has not helped us. Turns out, it is a simple process to get the creek where we outflow fixed. All it takes is 5 stakeholders in the watershed to sign a petition, the drain commission then has to form a board to review it all, then the county would pay 20%, the city would pay 25% and all the people living in the watershed would be assessed over time for the balance. It is just that people on the creek have gotten nowhere for many years going about trying to solve the problem, in the wrong way. Our sub board in the past has treated the creek like it was separate, but it is not, we are all connected.
This experience has GF LakeChair willing to continue on, as there simply isn't anything better than non-stop laughter for four days. Our Summer of Fun has started!
