Business Travel Romanticized

As someone who likes to travel, business trips seemed to me like the best opportunity in the world.  I envied my dad who often traveled to some of the most amazing parts of the world on trips paid by his company.  However, these trips often turn out to be dreadful experiences.  Business travel is often romanticized by transportation companies in the media.  There are many ads featuring happy businessmen strolling through airports and relaxing on planes then walking out into the sun on a beach in Puerto Rico.  In reality, these trips can be nightmares.  The ads always fail to mention the possibility of a delayed flight and having to wait hours on end at a gate waiting for the poor weather to pass over.  Once on the plane, you may be seated next to some very obnoxious people with nothing to do except stay within the cramped area.  Even if the destination of the trip is some exotic island, there is rarely any time to enjoy it while attending the all day business conference.  Most people do not understand what really goes on during a business trip thanks to the romanticization of them by travel companies.  

Perilous Flood

This past week may have been quite a perilous time for many people in the Chicago area. The excessive rain has caused many houses and streets to flood, which has brought lots of damage to cars and furniture.

Last Saturday when the weather first started to pick up considerably, a large "lake" suddenly appeared in the middle of the street that I live on. A few people went over a few blocks to check out the damage in our surrounding areas, and they concluded that our street had much more water than those near by. The sky looked as if it were going to rain again fairly soon, and something needed to be done. My neighbor called the Village of Glenview Maintenance and described the large amount of water in the street and asked for something to be done about it. The Village said that all of the streets were like that and the water would recede shortly. My neighbor was persistent and finally convinced the Village to send a few people over. Once the Village Maintenance Crew arrived, one of the guys said, "Wow, that is pretty bad." They explained that there really wasn't anything that they could do except leave a large pile of sand for us to make sand bags out of.

Even though only a few people on my street were actually severely effected, nearly everyone that lives on the street was helping in some way. Some people were putting sand in bags, some were wheelbarrowing the bags down the street to the water, and others piled the bags into walls to stop the spread of water into the homes. Eventually we did as much as we could, but it greatly reduced the impact of the next wave of clouds.

In this perilous time, the small community on my street first turned to the local government for help. After we received none, we turned to each other and helped our neighbors. Even though many people could have been chillaxing inside their dry homes, they decided to help the greater good and aid the other community members, because they knew they would do the same for them.