Mommy and Trekker's Tail from Philadelphia

October 1, 2008
Abigail –

It’s me, Trekker. Mommy and I are in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PA). You have never been to this state (technically speaking) but you were in Mommy’s belly when Mommy and Daddy went to visit in May, 2007. You visited a place called Brockway, where Papaw was born and raised. Great Grandmother Betty and many of Papaw’s family members live there still. Anyway, Philadelphia is on the other side of the state (and it is a big state), close to New York City, a place that Mommy and I traveled to before. We are here listening to people talk about fiber (again). This time, though, we are not sitting in the dark “back room” but everyone (all 30 people!) are in the “front room” with the people who came to talk about fiber. Mommy is even the one of the team members doing the interviewing, and it takes 3 hours to talk about all of this fiber! Can you believe that anyone can talk about fiber for that long? Mommy would tell you that there is actually much more to fiber than people realize, but that is for another day. It is fun to be in the front room talking directly to the people. It’s much easier to eat healthy when you are the one doing the interviews!

For this trip, we had to get up super early in the morning and we did not get to talk to you before we left. Don’t’ worry, though, Mommy rubbed your head and blew you a kiss before we left. She can’t reach all the way down into your bed anymore since you are such a big girl and they had to lower to its lowest level. This meant that she could not kiss you directly! We made it to the airport with no trouble because it was so early and everyone else was sleeping (which is what Mommy wished she was doing) and not driving on the roads. Lots of people from her team were on the same flight so it was fun hanging out at the airport before the flight. It did not take very long to fly to Philadelphia and Mommy amused herself by reading on the plane. Mommy misses reading. She is too tired at night to read and she does not travel very much to catch up on planes. I know, she does read stories to you, even though you get distracted halfway through most books. Someday maybe you two will have a bookclub where you both read and book and discuss it. I think that will be some time and you will need to be interested in a book for more than just a few minutes first.

Anyway, the whole gang arrived in Philadelphia and broke up into two mini-vans. One mini-van headed to the research facility and the other one headed to the hotel. We drove through the city on the way to the facility (Mommy did not go to the hotel first), it was really pretty. Many significant events for our country occurred in this city, including a famous scene in a Rocky movie. I am kidding, yes, there is a famous scene from that movie and the building with the steps are indeed there, but there are even more significant events that occurred there, from a very long time ago. The thing called the “Liberty Bell” is here too, something you will learn about in school someday. There is a cool river that runs along the city too and there were boaters in it and runners on the side of it. There were big, old trees lining the river and the city too. Mary Kate (also called “MK”), the newest member of Mommy’s brand team was the driver. She is actually a very good driver and follows directions well. I thought I would include that since someone named Jana had picked on MK about her driving at one time. We did not find any issues with her driving at all. We actually thought she did a fine job. When we arrived at the facility where the interviews took place, everyone got settled and got some lunch. Then it was arts and crafts time! We know that you love arts and crafts from everything you send home from school. We got to cut and glue and paste. We don’t usually get to cut and glue and paste, so it was something new and different for us.

Eventually, the group that went to the hotel arrived and we all “pre-briefed.” This is a fancy word for “going over the plan of action” as Nana would say. Although Nana usually makes a list and we did not make a list, it was already made by the two leaders, Nancy and Pam. Mommy actually worked with Pam lots of times when she worked at Iams and went places to talk about cats and dogs. She is really nice and good at leading projects like this. After the pre-briefing, everyone was broken up into teams and then we all sat at different tables so we could have conversations with people about fiber.


This probably does not sound as much fun as what you do at school every day, but it is actually really fun. Mommy loves working with her team and she also loves learning about new people. Since you are very good and saying “hi” these days, I think the people would enjoy talking to you too. We will have to figure out how to get “fiber” into your vocabulary sooner than later so you and Mommy can have some interesting talks.

After our three-hour discussion, we did a quick “debrief” (discussing what happened when we went through the plan of action we “pre-briefed”) to share with everyone what we all learned in our different discussion tables. It was not actually very quick, which is what happens when thirty people are sharing thoughts. Keep this in mind when you are working on teams, ok? At Mommy’s work, they call this sort of hindsight “key learnings.” We don’t know why they call them “key” because that is obvious and “learnings” is not a word. But, that is one of the many funny words that Mommy and Daddy learn at work.

After the long “quick” debrief, everyone was ready to go to the hotel! Mommy was pretty tired after her early morning and long day, but many of her team members where having a “night cap” at the hotel bar and that’s usually a great way to get to know your team so Mommy went down there. She did talk to Daddy for a little bit and heard about your day and an update about the landscaping project. Daddy has been doing lots of coordinating with the landscaper and we are getting closer to a final design. It will be very nice to have it finished. Anyway, Mommy had a really fun time talking to her team members and even though she stayed up too late, was glad that she spent time with them.

The next day we had another “pre-bried”, conducted another session with consumers, had another “debrief” with “key learnings and action steps” then headed to the airport. Even though everything was on time, Mommy did not get to see you that night because she got home after you went to bed. It was a very good trip for us but Mommy was glad to be home with you.