Grand Rapids, Michigan December 2010

The week between Christmas and New Year's I found myself once again in the city of Grand Rapids. I was there to conduct training sessions for my clients. I'd been really apprehensive about going up there at this time of year because that part of the country had been getting a lot of snow and bad weather. I booked a hotel right in downtown, where the training facility was located, so that I wouldn't have to drive far.
My hotel was right off highway 131. Every time I see this sign I think of the Glen Miller song - "K A L A M A Z O Oh what a gal, a real pippero, I'm going to Michigan to see the sweetest gal in Kalamazoo". I know, I'm a dork.

But seriously, my hotel was in a great location. It was right on the edge of downtown next to the Grand River.
This is a view of the Grand River on my side (the hotel side) of the bridge. The building is the Grand Rapids public museum. There is an old fashioned carousel inside that you can ride. Across the street from my hotel was the Gerald R Ford Museum.
A view of the Grand Rapids Public Museum from the downtown side of the bridge. Since Grand Rapids had experienced a lot of snow, I fully expected the roads to be treacherous for driving but I must have hit the sweet spot in the weather. The streets were perfectly dry and very easy to drive on. It was, however, really REALLY cold. I believe the temperature was about 27 degrees.
My training class finished up a little early on the first day so I walked around downtown for about an hour before I went back to the hotel to finish up working for the day. They had a skating rink downtown - like a little mini Rockefeller center.
I don't know why but I thought this sign was kind of funny. Notice the ground is dry here. There's not even any leftover snow!
St. Mark's Episcopal Church was built back in the late 1840's and is the oldest public building still standing in downtown Grand Rapids. The walls were built from stones that were brought up from the Grand River. When I drove to the training site in the morning, you could see this church all lit up (it was still dark outside) and it was beautiful. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to stop and take pictures.

Driving through downtown, I noticed that it had a real nostalgic feeling. It made me think of downtown El Paso when I was younger. The buildings were still decorated for Christmas (which I also didn't have time to photograph) and it just really had that old-timey feel. I liked it.

Apparently, Grand Rapids is known as "Furniture City". There were a lot of immigrants that came into the city looking for work. The working conditions were bad and the wages were low. In 1911, the furniture workers went on strike. The statue above is in commemoration of that strike. It's right outside the Gerald R. Ford Museum.

There are a lot of things that I would like to have done while I was here. As always when I travel on business, there's not a lot of opportunity to be a tourist. I generally get out of my client meetings after museums have closed, etc. I would sincerely like to come back here for a weekend where I could spend some time exploring the city.

I headed back home on the 29th. I was really concerned that I might get stuck here due to the weather conditions elsewhere. I had to fly through Chicago and they were getting weather later that evening. Luckily, I made it home without any problems. While I was on the flight from Grand Rapids to Chicago, I took some pictures.
The sun appears to be setting. The clouds just looked like you could reach out and touch. It made me wonder - what does a cloud feel like?
This I thought was just beautiful. The colors and the way the light is shining through made me think maybe God was letting me get a quick peek inside. The clouds here were also amazing. This was above Chicago where we had to fly around for about 10 minutes in a big circle. When we finally began our decent into Chicago, we went through that thick group of clouds. It got noticeably colder as we went through the clouds.

It was a really good trip.