Ocean City

Leaving Denver, we headed to Baltimore-Washington Airport. Our car met us and we headed to Ocean City, Maryland for the Maryland Municipal League meeting. It was a two hour drive and we went through much of the areas that were having the terrible rains. I had never been to Ocean City and it is quite a city. It is growing a good deal and land prices are through the roof.

Henry Marafaffa of Gaithersburg, Maryland was our host and helped us get around the city. One amazing thing that we learned was that thousands of Eastern European young people were working in Ocean City. Every store and hotel had dozens of these kids working in the summer.

I spoke to about a thousand delegates on Monday and received a good reception. Several cities have signed on to the Inclusive Communities Program and there were several more who wanted information.

I met several former West Virginians at the conference. One was Scott Nicewarner of Hagerstown, Maryland. He is the son of Phil Nicewarner, a former principal in Harrison County that I worked with years ago. Scott is a great guy and we shared some stories about Clarksburg and Harrison County. He is an IT professional in Hagerstown and seems to being doing quite well.

After a nice evening on the Boardwalk, we got to bed early for what turned out to be a day long adventure dealing with weather and flight delays. The flight from BWI to Pittsburgh was canceled and we were sent to Philadelphia for a later flight. After starting out from Ocean City at 10:00AM, we finally rolled into Clarksburg at around 3:00AM in the morning.

So much for the "friendly skies". It wasn't really that bad. We got to see three airports in one day. haha