The Photo Shoot

I was invited to be part of a photo shoot that we are using in our future advertising campaign as well as ads in conjunction with the September 1 celebration (That's Libya's 4th of July). Karen, our corporate communications guru is trying her darndest to get everything done before leaving for the states to see her son graduate from the Marines in San Diego. She included me since I represent a certain demographic of white males over 50 who can walk and chew gum at the same time.

She had recruited kids from America, Australia and Libya for the shoot along with contractors, field supervisors and the like. We all met at the office at 7:30 am so we could get some good light and not be out in the heat of the day. We divided up into 4 vans and a sedan and headed out to the highway construction site that is one of our infrastructure projects.

It wasn't long until we got separated in the snarl of traffic and our driver turned off to take a shortcut. Since one of our infrastructure guys was in the front seat with him, we figured we'd just sit back and leave the driving to them (not that we had any choice in the matter). We wandered off for a while and my colleague sitting next to me asked if I knew which direction we were going. I told him that by my Boy Scout reckoning, and the shadows on the street, I guessed we were going southeast. We both acknowledged to each other that we thought that the highway was a bit less south and much more west, but what did we know, we're just housing guys.

To make a long story short and a longer drive shorter, we finally turned around, came back to town and then proceeded to make our way to the construction site where everyone was waiting for us . . . in the heat . . . with kids playing in the dirt. A twenty-minute drive had become close to two hours.

We jumped out of the car, got in place, took some photos and then shook hands, got back in the van and trusted that our driver could find our way back to the office without retracing his steps of the morning. We soon arrived safely back to start our day around 10:30