Friday, November 02, 2007

Walking Through the Town of Insurance

As I write this it's almost 7:30 pm on Friday evening in Hartford, CT. I'm here on business performing at a conference at the Hartford Convention Center in the heart of downtown Hartford. This is actually my first visit to this city and I gotta say it's very picturesque this time of year. Chilly breezes blowing off of the Connecticut River (which is around the corner from my hotel) that kick up the various colored fall leaves around my feet.

Being in the middle of downtown, I walk everywhere I need to go. Restaurants, the post office, the convention center itself. This morning before one of my scheduled performances, I decided to go get breakfast at one of the cafes I had remembered seeing after arriving in town yesterday. I had taken the initiative to check the weather for Hartford before leaving Southern California, and saw that it was going to be cold. The highs here have been in the low '50s. Not too terribly cold, but with the wind, it feels much colder. In preparing for the walk of several blocks to the restaurant, I thought that the sweater I was wearing with my jeans would probably be sufficient enough to keep me warm. the only jacket I had brought was my heavy leather jacket. Putting that on over my sweater, I thought, would be too hot.

Boy was I wrong...

I should have worn the jacket as the breeze kicked up and blew right through my previously "thick enough" sweater. To make matters worse, the restaurant wasn't where I thought it was and the walk took longer than anticipated, and me farther from my hotel, until I was just about prepared to walk into the next unlocked door I came to -- be it a restaurant, Andy Gump, or Church of Scientology just to get out of the friggin' cold.

Yesterday afternoon, with my trusty iPod clipped to my belt, I took a walk along the bank of the river and came across a plaque on the support of a bridge that I was walking under. The plaque was commemorating the three biggest floods in Hartford history by showing the three different water levels of each flood. I believe the highest one was thirty-six feet. "Holy Crap," I thought standing there and looking up at the water level mark. I looked at the trees and the buildings that were nearby thinking that all of these would have been wiped out. It was unbelievable. And two of these floods were within two years of each other in the 1930s. I think that that is when you start to really consider moving. Instead of moving, however, they built a dyke after the second flood.

Three big floods in Hartford's history. No wonder this town is known for it's insurance...

--Shawn

Shawn McMaster
Conjured-Up Creations
P.O. Box 973
Newbury Park, CA 91319
(805) 480-0703
www.conjuredupcreations.com