[LowSider]

Originally posted by Honclfibr
after spending two weeks there on business. And here's the strange thing: I miss it. Not the business side of things, we worked 16 hour days for 10 days straight through the weekend, it was hellish, I hate field tests. But the people there, it's a weird thing, I've never felt so at home in a place before.

We were up there working on a suspension system for MCI, a motor coach company on the outskirts of Canada. I've been to several different plants for this project, PrevostCar in Quebec, NovaBus in Montreal, Hendrickson Suspension in Chicago...this place just seemed somehow different. There seemed to be very little in the way of class division between the blue collar workers and the white collar engineers...the people who worked in the prototype shop were engaged with what they did and interested in the work that we were doing, they wanted to help us and they wanted to understand what we could bring to MCI as a company. They had a large depth of experience and were not shy about speaking up when they thought that their knowledge could be helpful, and the engineers there weren't afraid to get their hands dirty, working side by side with us and the prototype shop workers to make sure we had all the resources we need.

And beyond that, the whole city seemed so much more friendly and approachable than any other I'd been to before. People on the street would make eye contact and say hi to you as you passed, and patrons nearby us at restaurants had no qualms about striking up a conversation with us when we ate out; they wanted to know what we were doing in the city and wanted to tell us who they were and what they were doing in Winnipeg, whether they were long time residents or just visitors. During one dinner I struck up a conversation with a guy next to us who had just ridden out on his R1 from Vancouver to visit a friend in the city; I told him that I had a bike back in Boston and he was interested to know how the riding was in my area, and spoke at length about his trip out from B.C. and how he was enjoying the new R1 that he'd bought just 1000 miles ago.

Then there was the cab driver who brought me to the airport; when he heard that I was from the U.S. he wanted to talk about the hurricane in New Orleans and find out what I knew about how people were doing down there and what our government was doing to help them, and shared his own experiences growing up in Winnipeg during the 50's and the floods that they had in the city then, as well as the diversion construction that they had done to prevent future disasters.

They're doing recon.