After nearly a week, I’m back home safe and sound after a long journey. Maybe not long for some, but since I drove, it was long for me. Last week a friend and I drove to the OCW writer’s conference in Portland, OR.

Since we all know each other online, but most have never met each other face to face, we all wear name tags. Some tags had identifiers, for example mine said “Faculty” then under that, what I was doing on an official basis for the conference – Author, Mentor, Worship Team. For others, it simply had the city that person was from. I guess the tags only had one line for a description, so that’s what mine said.

Many people asked where I was from, so I said “Vancouver.” Keeping in mind that we were in Portland, OR, most people nodded and said “Oh” while mentally placing on the map how far everyone came from. Looking on the map, Vancouver, WA is next door to Portland OR. Therefore, I let the pause hang after the “Oh” then qualified it after about 5-10 seconds, adding “Canada”. Eyes widened, everyone then said an additional “Oooooohhhhhh……”  Only needing to be asked a dozen or so times, I knew the question about to be asked. My reply. “Yes, it was a long drive. Eh.”

But the drive was great. Long, but I don’t think there was more than a minute of dead air space between myself any my friend Tina as the tires ate up the miles. Once we arrived at the conference I had a good time with old friends and made a lot of new ones. Since I was taking appointments to coach beginning authors I couldn’t attend all the classes, but I went to some, and they were good. I talked to a few editors, some professionally and some socially, plus I played bass guitar for the worship band. Overall it was a great conference, even though I never made it to the pool.

Maybe next year.