NOLS Tour de Flatlands

On Tuesday I met up with NOLS Word of Mouth Coordinator, Kary Sommers and Katie Price, our WMI/NOLS Pro Marketing Coordinator in Minneapolis. Kary had already been in the area for a week attending the Association for Experiential Education conference. It sounds like it was great event for NOLS with an opportunity to connect with college students who will be the future of outdoor education. Kary still has a dull headache caused by the drummer in the exhibit hall.

On Wednesday Katie, Kary and I spent the day at Macalester College where we had a table near the mailroom (it was good to see that even in this time of cell phones and email college students still check their snail mail, too.). We spoke with a steady stream of students and were occasionally updated on election news by passersby.

In the evening we did a presentation to a small but fun group of students on the Macalester campus. I hadn’t watched the NOLS video, The Expedition for a while. It was cool seeing how many of the folks who just happened to be in the video have stayed in touch with the school over the years—James, who stops in to visit whenever NOLS is in NYC; Logan, who introduced us to travel with used veggie oil a few years after his course; Zandy, who took a NOLS instructors course and ended up spending three months traveling on the NOLS Bus; Deb whose image graces the front of the NOLS Bus; and of course “Crazy Cool” herself, Kirsten, who now works in the NOLS development office.

Yesterday we were at Augsburg College, where we had a constant flow of traffic and plenty of great conversations. We also got to witness a fairly interesting sign of the times.

We were located in the student center at a table next to Larry and Jay, a couple of Army recruiters. Very nice guys, who we spent time visiting with during slow traffic times.

Soon after lunch I looked across the foyer to see a young man standing there holding up a sign that said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” I couldn’t resist and went over to talk with him a bit about what he was doing. Kyle is a senior at Augsburg and he stands there whenever a military recruiter is on campus. I asked him if he ever went over to talk to the recruiters. He said he hadn’t, that he thought that would be a bad idea. We talked a bit more and it turns out he is very interested in NOLS. So I gave him NOLS materials.

Our new friends, Jay and Larry, wanted to hear what I had found out. I told them that Kyle said, that he was “selling peace” and that he was interested in taking a NOLS course. That he seemed like a nice, sincere guy. Unfortunately Larry couldn’t resist now and headed over to talk to Kyle. I have no idea what his intention was, but a strident conversation ensued that was obviously going nowhere.

Jay, Kary, Katy and I kept an eye on the situation as we took down our displays, calling it a day. Occasionally, we could hear little bits and pieces of the conversation. “Billions of dollars for planes, while people starve.” “Fighting for freedom.”

By now we were ready to go. Jay, Katy, Kary and I walked in between Kyle and Larry and shook hands to say, “good-bye.” I reminded Kyle that he was late for his 1:30 class. And we were off. Kary and Katie to have lunch with a WMI instructor and me to do some paperwork. Hopefully Kyle and Larry reached a point where they could agree to disagree.

This afternoon we will be setting up for the Midwest Mountaineering Outdoor Expo. The Expo runs through Sunday. Have a great weekend. We will!

Bruce Palmer, NOLS marketing director