Re: [Mtgvenue] Updated potential meeting location list

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Feb 21, 2020, at 10:57 AM, Mary Barnes <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I just checked and Minneapolis does have direct flights from Europe (maybe they didn't previously).  At least about the same number of locations as does Austin, TX, which only has direct flights to 4 European cities and no Asian.  And, suggesting that we can guess bad weather and arrange meetings to totally avoid isn't realistic.  We had that flood last time in Dallas.    And, there was the bad Tornados in Dallas in October 2019: https://www.weather.gov/fwd/tornadoes-october2019 <https://www.weather.gov/fwd/tornadoes-october2019>   And, remember the disaster in Dallas with the snow/ice storm around the super bowl time.  At least Minneapolis has the infrastructure to deal with snow.  And, Austin had an issue last year due to lots of rain and contamination of the drinking water.    So, you can have problems with weather and infrastructure anywhere.  

Minneapolis is a hub for Delta, so it’s not too surprising that this is the case.   If you are flying on United (/partners) or American (/partners) then you will have to change planes in Dallas, Denver or Chicago, depending on where you are coming from.   So this is perhaps a bit of an inconvenience.   That said, Vancouver is insanely inconvenient from the east coast.  I have in the past actually flown into Seattle and taken the train to avoid the hassle.   But of course this just creates a different hassle.   I like Vancouver and am not suggesting avoiding it, but I do not think it’s any more convenient than Minneapolis if you are willing to be flexible about airlines.

Like Andrew, I lament the absence of Minneapolis from our list, mostly for the utterly silly reason that I have friends who live there whom I have not seen f2f in quite some time because it’s a bit of a schlep just to catch up over lunch.