Nathaniel LeMaster

We, am sitting here are the airport and I thought that I might do a little write-up of the trip and the week that I spent in Kansas City for the 2008 SkillsUSA National Competition.

We left the house at 2:50AM Monday morning to drop off Matthew who was going on a car trip with Grampa and Baxter at 3:30, and then headed to LAX where I met my group at 4:00AM. Everything went well and around 6:00 we were headed out on our flight to Kansas. When I got to my baggage claim right after my flight I found my suitcase in a sorry state. It seems that the baggage handlers weren’t too careful and the entire side of my suitcase had come off. By some work of Providence, everything was still in the suitcase held in by a cardboard liner. I had a lot of fun (not) trying to carry my suitcase through the airport and to our rental car. We got to our hotel in good order and checked in. My room was ready so I headed up there and made my self comfortable.

We were staying in a Marriott hotel and I had one roommate. The rooms were pretty nice, I got a bed to myself so that was nice. We had a dinner Monday night. I studied most of my free time on Tuesday and then Tuesday afternoon we went to the opening ceremony at Kemper Arena. Wednesday I had my competition, a 2 hour 50 question math test. It was quite tough, and I did an ok job. I spent the rest of the afternoon looking over the competition area.

Thursday was when most of the competitions were held. The main building upper floor was a room the length of 2 city blocks by 1 block. From there there was many great halls underneath that and then branching out in other buildings. Rooms that were ~300×1000 feet filled with computers were common. Most of the hallways were blanketed with vendors on both sides. There were probably a couple miles of vendors. I believe that there was somewhere around 5,000 competitors, with another probably 15-20 thousand support individuals including parents, advisors, and vendors/sponsors. Something that is interesting about Kansas city downtown is that there are enclosed walkways that enable you to get to almost any hotel or convention center room that you need without going outside. We ended up needing them a few time because of the thunderstorms, and in the winter with the cold and snow. The doors were all double or rotating to keep the cold from coming in during the winter.

On Thursday I slept in, then mostly walked around looking at the different competition areas and taking some video and pictures. Thursday night, I went with Mr. Groman and his family to a baseball game. Friday, I went with Ron, and Mr. Groman and his family to a TWA airline museum, that was quite neat. They had a restored and flying TWA Constellation, a Martin 404 and they were working on getting a DC-3 up and flying. Friday afternoon we had the awards ceremony at Kemper Arena. I got a Bronze in Relate technical Math. I have a picture order form, so I will have a picture of that eventually.

Saturday I got up a little early and walked down to CVS Pharmacy to get some duct tape so that I could fix my suitcase for the return trip. I packed up everything and now I am here at the airport waiting…

So there you have it, I was up late a lot of nights, but I got to sleep in a couple of times, so overall I am not too tired.
God is good and has given me a lot. May I use what He has given me to His glory.

Thanks everyone for your prayers!

Sunday we are driving up to Sacramento for our annual Homeschooling Conference. That will be fun!