The State of Confusion

Ok, I know I haven't updated in a while, but who cares, no one's reading this garbage anyway. Moving on. I felt compelled to post about my last business trip. About a week of pure confusion in the state of Iowa. Now Iowa, in and of itself, is not a mysterious place. They've got corn. No real mystique there...or so I thought. The story goes a little something like this (cue flashback music)-

I drive to DFW airport, board a shoe-box size plane, fly to Des Moines. Upon arrival we go into the "facility" to do some work and meet up with our liaisons. Our contacts are...well...a bit odd. One is curiously quiet, the other is an Uncle Jessie look-a-like (Dukes of Hazzard, not Full House). He's got bib overalls, floppy leather hat, long grey beard, the whole works. We begin our work, and it's blatantly obvious that Uncle Jessie is a bit off. He's throwing an uncomfortable number of winks at me and my co-worker. I shrug it off. Break time rolls around and U.J. (abbreviated) starts showing us pictures of his mud bogging truck. An unmistakably MANLY sport. Horsepower, mud, high decibels, the perfect manly venture. He proceeds to talk about good looking women, yet again, very heterosexual. Break time is over, we get back to work. One of U.J.'s co-workers comes in and tells us to watch ourselves around old U.J., that he's a self proclaimed "Try-sexual". If you don't know what that means, it means he likes girls, guys, cows, Chevrolets, and potted plants. This blows my mind completely. Here we have the un-gayest looking/sounding/acting guy I've ever seen. This begins the oddities. We leave, and I notice that mid-grade gas is ten cents cheaper than regular....do whaaaa? Then we see Dakotas, a bizzaro world Hooters. Same food, same atmosphere, ugly waitresses. This opened my eyes to the fact that I hadn't seen one good looking lady the whole time. Not that it would have mattered, no one there talked. They just sat there, staring into space. Better than 75% of them anyway. They all just seemed so beaten down, which isn't odd I suppose, just the sheer number of beaten down individuals threw me. I finally saw a great looking girl in the weirdest of places...inside the greasy, dark, dank facility where I was working. I got a BLT that didn't come with Mayo, was asked whether I wanted hot tea or Iced tea (I'm from TX, that's weird), was asked if I lost a cat at the hotel (three times), had the worst $10.00 hamburger on planet Earth, and heard the F bomb more times in three days than I have in 22 years. Whew. What have I learned? I've learned that Iowa and it's residents are an enigma.....and they have corn. Thank the good Lord above I live in Texas. Do we have rednecks? Yes. Major weather swings? Yes. Trailer parks? Yes. Some of the most scandalous women in the world? Yes. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. Iowa? With luck I'll never have to venture back, my mind can't handle another round with Uncle Jessie.