Friday, February 27, 2009

Allentown, PA

OK, so this weeks trip was to Allentown, PA to work on an obsolete instrument that was built by a company my company purchased years ago. The good news (in terms of job security for me) is that I am the ONLY engineer in my entire company that can work on it. Someone had the good sense to send me to the factory half a decade ago to train me on one they were refurbishing. There is a PHD at our company (the man that trained me) who is capable of working on it, but he's not about to get on a plane to do a service or repair. :-)

Fortunately, it takes an entire day to fly from Austin to Allentown so I was well justified in spending an entire day just to travel, with no need to go directly to my customer. That means I got to fly pretty! :-)
I adore these 4 inch stilettos but have been hesitant to wear them as I think perhaps they are less than appropriate for everyday wear and may draw too much attention. Believe it or not, my wife was the one that talked me into it by pointing out that women DO wear shoes like these, and besides, I'm already breaking all of the rules, why the hell NOT wear your favorite shoes? It didn't take a lot of arm twisting, and so my favorite shoes it is!





Now don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, but I've got to tell you wearing shes like those for 14 hours will definitely make your thighs and calf's sore! Nothing amusing or interesting happened on the flight to Allentown.
No smart ass comments to or from me. No dirty looks, but no smiles either. Sheesh, you would think everyone is getting acclimated to seeing crossdressers - what kind of fun is that??!! Got to the airport and grabbed my tool box and large suitcase. When you add the backpack I carry for my laptop and cables I was pretty well loaded down when I headed for the door to get to the rental car lot. It was not an automatic door so I was just starting to wonder how I was going to work getting the door open and my huge bags through it, when a gentleman in his early 50's pretty much ran to get around me and open the door. I thanked him and received a large smile and nod in return. :-)
When I checked in at the hotel, the young lady behind the counter hesitated for just a fraction of a second when I gave her my name. It was very quick, but you could tell her brain had just locked up.
.. "Does not compute. Does not compute"
She recovered quickly and she was awesome! All smiles and you could tell she was genuinely amused.





My second night there, I met with Sophie Lynne for dinner. She was drab (in boy mode) so I didn’t take any pictures of us together. Sophie was a great host and went out of her way to try and show me something of Pennsylvania and also treated me to dinner! I'm often uncomfortable meeting with men because I have met one or two who led me to believe that they were also crossdressers, but then it turned out that they were not - they were admirers. I have no problem with "admirers", after all, people in glass houses shouldn't ought to be throwing rocks, but I DO have a problem with those that mislead me to get me to agree to meet them. I was probably a bit reserved with Sophie at first while I tried to determine if this might be the case, but it very quickly became clear that she was one of "us" and I started to relax and enjoy the evening. Of course it didn't hurt that she bought us each a shot of whiskey - LOL. (Yes, I AM a redneck!) Good thing we had that shot too, as it turns out they were doing Karaoke and all but one of the singers was TERRIBLE. Sophie's got a good sense of humor, and was very easy to talk to - I really enjoyed the night.





My next night there, I had planned to go shopping and to dinner, but I got a call from another one of our engineers who lives a few hours away in PA. He found out I was in the area and he and his wife met me for dinner. The bad news - no Kimberly time that day. The good news - I like this couple and enjoyed the time.






Like my first day, this last day of the trip is dedicated just to traveling, this time home to Austin. It's a relatively late flight, with my not getting home until around 10PM, so I decided to fly home pretty. This is only the second time I've flown out of an airport other than Austin and so I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night and was a nervous wreck going through security. But hey, I'm sitting in the airports gate area as I type this and I had no trouble what so ever - everyone treated me like gold. Allentown is a relatively small airport in a very conservative area, so if they didn't give me any trouble, I think I can assume that I wont have problems flying from ANY US airport.

1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed reading your posts, living in Allentown myself I know if you had ventured out you would not have had an issue. I am a Transsexual & we have seen a big change in the way people think as well as the way they treat us who are different. Glad you enjoyed Allentown, please come back again & I will show you a few Trans friendly places. :-)
    God Bless, Roni Hepner

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