Dayt 5 Lions International Convention Chicago 2007

Day 5 (Saturday, 30 June 2007):

After breakfast, we had a speech by the A.P. Singh and then we listened to the upcoming International President. Both gentlemen were excellent speakers.

The big moment was Deepak Chopre!

He gave a wonderful speech, full of philosophy and what amounted to theology. I'm not sure how this related to the 2007 – 2008 "Challenge to Change" that the new International President is pushing but so what? It was a wonderful speech and I regret the lack of sleep last night that left me drowsy at times. (One of the Kansas "DG Elects" told me she'd slept through part of Dr. Chopre's speech. That's a pity but then I never expected central Kansas to be a hot bed of exotic philosophy. On the other hand, Kathie and I have both studied such things, mainly back in the 1980s…)

(My lack of sleep? About 2:30 am, I woke up with my left leg in a moderate amount of pain. I woke up about 1:20 this morning with my leg hurting mildly. So, I took one of the 800 mg Tylenol Kathie had been prescribed. It said "take with food". I didn't have food but I did have Pepto Bismol and I knocked back a shot of that. This was a big mistake! I would have been better off taking a couple of the 200 mg Over the Counter Tylenol or even one of the Oxycodone I'd been prescribed. I hurt all over my body! About the only place where the pain abated was my ankle! I had stomach pain, pain through my lower back and the odd pains elsewhere. {The line from "DOA" by Bloodrock "pain is flowing all through my back" comes to mind.})

After Dr. Shopra spoke, we had a break for the toilet and then some bad coffee and it was back for another session. The speaker was an Australian International Director who spoke of how movement does not mean you are actually going anyplace. He talked about a species of Australian caterpillars which crawl across the forest floor and ate pine needles. The members of this species place their snouts in the posteriors (butts) of the caterpillar ahead of it and follow that caterpillar. An experiment was done: a group of these caterpillars were put on the rim of a flower pot and the lead caterpillar's snout was pushed into the posterior of the last caterpillar. Thus, the whole circle went in a circle for 7 days and 6 nights until they died of exhaustion and starvation. There was plenty of food near them but none of the bugs broke out of the circle and went for it.

After all, they were sure the leader would take them to good eating grounds and had no way to comprehend that there was no leader…

Then, at 11:18, I took the scooter over the elevator. Several of the six elevators didn't seem to be running and there was an enormous crowd. Elevators would come up to the 10^th floor but would have too many folks on them. Other elevators would open and Fellow Lions would swarm aboard them. (I suppose I could have forced my way through the crowd but it didn't seem worth the fuss.) When there was literally a handful of Lions left, we secured an elevator!

A couple of the Lions who had waited near me got on the elevator and I drove on. I did have to ask a couple of people to move from between me (the scooter actually) and the back wall of the elevator. It seems the elevators aren't deep enough to allow me to ride the scooter on without touching the back wall. (I am not looking forward to leaving the hotel on Saturday when I'll have to stump out on my crutches!)

We were going to meet at 12:30 for lunch and it was 11:r43 (or so) before I made it to my room. I "freshened up" (ok, I used the head), read for a while ("Tekla" by Stephen Brust) and left the room at 12:17 PM. This was later than I had wanted to but I intended to leave early in case I had another hassle with getting an elevator. The elevator arrived quickly and it was an uneventful trip. (In other words, there were no Italians or Brazilians there to push their way ahead of me!)

The six spouses went to a very nice Ti/Chinese restaurant were the very charming waiter did a nice sales job and earned himself good tips. If only the waiters/waitresses in Dodge City could see how it is done! If only the "wait staff" in Dodge City could appreciate how professions act…

After that, it was return to my room, update this diary and take a nap!

Dinner was at a local hamburger place where I had three (3) pork chops that were larger than I expected.

To enter this place, we had to go around to the back of the restaurant and an employee opened the back door. I motored in and had no trouble going down the aisle normally reserved for employees. (I got some startled glances.) Tom L. hopped on the scooter and drove it to a parking place. Leaving, Tom thought he could bring the scooter around to where we were seated but it wasn't possible. So, I leaned on his shoulder and walked over to the scooter.

We startled a woman who obviously had not expected me to come by. She got off her bar stool, pushed it in and let me by. I then had to ask a couple of folks to move because their seats were protruding into the aisle but they were very gracious and moved. I thanked one woman and she acted like it was nothing worth thanking her about. I'm glad I thanked her as she was quite gracious.

We then went back to the hotel and all was cool.

We did find out the cost of internet connection was just under US$10 a day (from noon to noon). I'm thinking of asking if the McCormick Place has a free Wi-Fi hot spot. If so, we can take Kathie's laptop computer there and go on-line. We can handle this if possible.