Two Nerds Girls Dressed in Pink in a Western Bar

Last night our bones were tired but our brains needed to keep going. We have been on the road for four days driving across the US Mid-west.  We had met with over 20 people conducting business meet and greets. We had taken countless business meeting notes. We had about five different coffee stops.   I alone must have had over 500 milligrams of caffeine. If you need to, look it up on the web–that amount of caffeine is extreme.

Throughout the roadtrip we have heard two songs repeatedly. There has been Stevie Wonder’s Superstition and the Commodore’s Brickhouse.   Those songs truly keep our spirits up and in particular “Brickhouse” as there are some funny melodic leaps throughout the song. If you like to sing along on the road Brickhouse will keep you happy.

By the time we reached our small midwestern town  we were extremely tired, had a very full bladder and our veins were popping from the repeated caffeine jolts. We found our hotel that appeared to be out of a scary midwestern movie set.  Checked in and went in search of food. Not many options. Manged to get some grub and a got (meaning strong) rum drink.  we checked our emails and knew we had to still work that night. No rest for the weary. we decided the best way to work was to go to a local bar.

We packed up our laptops and papers and headed to the totally closed off bar with no windows and a sign stating that no firearms were allowed.  We pulled open the heavy door and a waft of smoke hit us head on. We are from New York. New York bars have no smoke anymore. This smoke grabbed at my throat in less than a New York minute. I twitched my nose and headed straight to the bar.

We looked around. We were the only women. The bar was huge with about 30 different tables or more as well as darts, pool tables, cigarette vending machines and the like.   The bar was filled with men in baseball caps and jeans. Many had cigarettes dangling from their lips. they all turned and looked at us. We were carrying laptops, dressed in girlie colors and perhaps looking like city slickers.  I asked for a sweet drink and she asked if I liked liquid marijuana. I thought for a quick second and said “sure”. When in Rome, right?  My colleague got a black russian or some version thereof.   Our drink couldn’t be more different.

We grabbed our drinks and went to a table that was up against the wall and we both sat next each other facing the crowd of men.  We opened our laptops and proceeded to talk business. My drink was delicious and my brain was being powered. Words were flowing onto the word document. Every once in a while, the men would try to look at us through the corners of their eyes. Some stared outright.  We worked and worked and ignored the looks.

At one point, a guy comes over and asks us what we are drinking. We tell him. My colleague notes that he is probably going to get us a new round of drinks. I turn up my lips. I didn’t get that script at all. The die-hard New Yorker in me thought that he was just inquiring in order to make fun of us. I thought he wanted to see if he could take a peak at our laptops and see if we were actually working.   The other part of me also thought that our drinks were way to silly for a guy to go order at the bar.

There we were two nerds girls in pink working away at a smoky mid-western bar in a sea of baseball-cap laden men wondering what our blue and black drinks were all about.

Onwards to the next bar ….

In case you are wondering a liquid marijuana has several types of rum, midori, blue curacao, pineapple juice