from the north dakota annals: day one

Three planes later, here I am in Grand Forks, ND, my nightly waystation before heading up to the borders daytime, 1.5 hours north. I am here with two male colleagues who I have never met before, a gray Chevy Malibu that I am not authorized to drive, uncomfortable shoes, and a lot of buffalo. On the way to the car rental place from the airport (a room, one gate), I espied a billboard advertising God's Stimulus Act and bearing a picture of four ebullient babies sitting in a cardboard box, not unlike a box one might use to move documents hither and thither across a large copy room. Don't think about this too long. Soon thereafter, a sign for buffalo meat for sale, and then the buffalo. I learned from the dude driving us, a rather old dude in a trucker hat and wearing two hearing aids, that touring the buffalo zone, for lack of a better word, is the fourth most popular activity in Grand Forks.
"What about eating the buffalo?" I asked.
No response.

My colleagues have been here before, and reported to me that they remembered a restaurant, sort of like a midwestern Applebee's, where the year previous they had encountered a waitress of such extreme hotness that you could "die in her eyes." The only other choices were fast food, anyway, and it has quickly become apparent to me that my role on this nine-day work extravaganza will be to be as easygoing as possible and just do what I'm told. A quick look around the restaurant did not yield the eye-killer. When our waitress, a college-age girl, came to our table, both of my colleagues asked her where the eye-killer was: Where was the girl with "special eyes"? She responded, quite reasonably I thought, that she was not in the practice of gazing into the eyes of other waitresses, but this response was deemed totally unfriendly by my colleagues.
"If you want her bad enough, you'll find her," I declared, and this too was deemed unfriendly. You can't win.

Tomorrow at 7 a.m. we journey up to the borders for our first day of work. I am told there will be sunflowers on the way. And buffalo.