I'm fresh back from a week-long trip to The Netherlands for work. I left Saturday the 12th with my two bosses, Mike Van Zee, the mower project engineer, and Seth Schreur, the engineering manager of Vermeer's forage division. The objective of the trip was to get some face-to-face time with our counterpart engineers and managers at Lely, with whom we are close partners and work closely with on some product lines, especially mowers. I'll err on the side of caution and stay light on project details, but we accomplished most of what we traveled there to do.
As per usual, an international trip involving Nate Cox experienced a hiccup or two. Our flight from DSM to O'Hare was delayed right off the bat, so we knew we wouldn't make the flight from Chicago to Amsterdam. We rebooked to catch a later flight to London and then to Amsterdam. While attempting to book this apparently nearly full flight, someone from the airline called and demanded the phone be handed over the counter to one of us, something none of us had ever seen. Another curious sight was a man walking through the airport wearing tap-dancing shoes, possibly the most annoying casual footwear available. Once we boarded the plane in Des Moines, power issues forced a deplaning, which seemed like a cue to give up and try again on Sunday. Reboarding was announced while we were on the phone with Vermeer's travel agent, so off we went.
Our seats on the O'Hare to Heathrow flight were supposedly reserved but not guaranteed, so we gambled the possibility of having to sleep in Chicago. When I checked in at the counter, something was fishy as a reservation for a flight to Bangalore popped up when the agent scanned my passport. She also assured me my two checked bags would meet me, even though I only had carry-ons. Befuddled, I corrected her and she did whatever magic airline agents do behind the counter. Throughout this part of the trip, I didn't have the heart to tell Mike or Seth that the travel issues were likely caused by whatever unfortunate travel karma I have. The trip back was fine though, so maybe my luck is changing.
We arrived in Amsterdam in spite of the airlines, rented a sporty Volvo T3 (which I didn't have to drive), and drove about an hour to our hotel in Vlaardingen, just outside of Rotterdam. Our travels coincided with a product manager meeting that was attended by forage segment director Joe Michaels and baler product manager Phil Chrisman. They and two Lely counterparts stayed at our hotel.
Being a business trip, the agenda was quite full and didn't include much time for sightseeing. Typically, we'd eat a very nice breakfast at the hotel, go to Lely for the day, go out to dinner with everyone else from Vermeer along with several Lely folks, then head back to the hotel fairly late. The exception was Wednesday afternoon, when Jelle, Seth's counterpart, took us to a large canal lock. Basically two movable dams, these 1000 ft structures block off a main shipping lane from the ocean when storm surges or high tides are expected. Without it, large parts of Rotterdam would flood. Five inches of snow fell and stuck on Tuesday, and we watched a couple dozen kids sled down a man-made hill in the area. That much snow is a big deal in Holland, and driving on Tuesday was chaotic; the country set a record with 1000 kilometers of traffic jams. Even with Seth's experience driving in snow, handling the rear-wheel-drive, moderately powered, slick-tired Volvo was a chore.
The food was excellent. From the exceptional hotel breakfasts to a Greek restaurant to an up-scale restaurant to an "Australian" pub-style place, every part of the meal was of wonderful quality and served in just the right quantities. The dairy products were especially notable, and it's easy to tell the Dutch take great pride in them. Coffee is also taken very seriously. Single-serve coffee vending machines are easy to find at Lely, they serve every kind of non-fufu coffee you'd need, and trips to them are taken often. I normally try to keep my habit to one cup a day, but drank well over that on this trip. I probably shouldn't admit how much coffee I drank last week, but I only had one cup yesterday morning, and had the shakes this morning.
We have regular webcam meetings with Lely. I'd met Jelle (say yella), and Sjoerd (say shoe-erd), one of Lely's mower project engineers who's played a key role in this project, in person in August in Pella, but had not met Harmen, another mower engineer, and Chris, a product manager who has worked mostly with mowers since he was hired in July. Harmen is a couple years older than I am and is more or less my Lely counterpart. Chris is Irish and almost exactly my age. Originally from Waterford in the "sunny southeast", he knew the area I had lived in well. He's also about my height, which was notable because virtually everyone towered over me last week. The Dutch are seriously tall. All of them are quite agreeable to be around and I am glad to have had some good chats with all of them. An important part of these trips is getting to know these people in person, which I definitely believe makes working with them more comfortable and more productive because we understand each other's modes of thinking better.
The most enjoyable part of this trip was no doubt the people. The Dutch are an extremely polite, rational people. My first impression was that anyone so well-dressed and proper would look down upon a typical American, but the opposite was true. Rarely have I been so genuinely engaged by people I barely know. Whether talking to Jelle, Sjoerd, Harmen, or anyone else from Lely I happened to be in a room with no matter their job, I was spoken to eye-to-eye so to speak (not literally given their crazy tallness) and listened to very earnestly. There were no cellphone distractions. Such courtesy is something only a small few Americans have, and we may not even realize we're going without it until we experience it firsthand. I shall strive to be able to give my attention to others as fully as the Dutch do.
1/19/13
1/8/13
MT Christmas, Iowa City New Year's Surprise
Happy New Year! I have been back at work for a week after a trip home for Christmas. It was a very good time, and I was glad as always to see my parents, Grandma, Bozeman family, Alicia, and luckily this year my mom's brother and his family joined us from Texas for a more wintry, and truly white, Christmas than they're used to. The food was exceptional as it is at any Daehne gathering. I wish I got to see all of my family more, especially the Daehnes, whom I only see every other year or so.
We visited a ton, cooked, ate, played games, cooked, ate, and admired the snow. I fed a couple days for my dad but somehow didn't have to fix a single piece of yellow hay equipment. I had some good visits with friends and neighbors as well. I was happy to fit one day skiing at Bridger with Mr Larry Lee in before I had to leave. Can't wait to see everybody again soon!
I drove this round for several reasons, of which I had to keep reminding myself:
The drive back to Iowa, however, included another story but not about roadtripping. I've been seeing a girl for almost three months, so not quite long enough to have planned Christmas around each other's families. She's from Iowa, and was with family around Christmas but didn't have as long a break as I did. I convinced her that I was going to spend New Year's in Montana to make the most of the long drive. I schemed with a friend of hers and planned secretly to surprise her in Iowa City, where her and her friends would be. To do this, I left on the 30th, drove hard, got to Pella the afternoon of the 31st, showered and changed, and got back in the truck for another hour and a half. All the while, I had to make it seem like I was skiing, going out with friends, or spending time with family. I somehow kept the ruse afloat, and showed up as planned. As I sat in the living room with a smirk on my face, she walked past me twice, and looked straight at me once before she was urged to notice something in my corner of the room. She was shocked. Mission accomplished. Happy New Year!
Work's sending me to the Netherlands next week, so more stories forthcoming!
We visited a ton, cooked, ate, played games, cooked, ate, and admired the snow. I fed a couple days for my dad but somehow didn't have to fix a single piece of yellow hay equipment. I had some good visits with friends and neighbors as well. I was happy to fit one day skiing at Bridger with Mr Larry Lee in before I had to leave. Can't wait to see everybody again soon!
I drove this round for several reasons, of which I had to keep reminding myself:
- It cost about as much as flying
- I didn't want to gamble six weeks ahead of time when would be best to fly. This worked out very well because the midwest's first blizzard of the year rolled through the day before I left, and flying would have been a nightmare.
- I'd be able to haul a lot more stuff than I could fly with
- I'd have the freedom of having my vehicle there
The drive back to Iowa, however, included another story but not about roadtripping. I've been seeing a girl for almost three months, so not quite long enough to have planned Christmas around each other's families. She's from Iowa, and was with family around Christmas but didn't have as long a break as I did. I convinced her that I was going to spend New Year's in Montana to make the most of the long drive. I schemed with a friend of hers and planned secretly to surprise her in Iowa City, where her and her friends would be. To do this, I left on the 30th, drove hard, got to Pella the afternoon of the 31st, showered and changed, and got back in the truck for another hour and a half. All the while, I had to make it seem like I was skiing, going out with friends, or spending time with family. I somehow kept the ruse afloat, and showed up as planned. As I sat in the living room with a smirk on my face, she walked past me twice, and looked straight at me once before she was urged to notice something in my corner of the room. She was shocked. Mission accomplished. Happy New Year!
Work's sending me to the Netherlands next week, so more stories forthcoming!
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