How I found a camel in Maryland

A long time ago I had a job as a temp employee to a large defense contractor.

I supported a program that was developing a new technology to track people and other moving objects on the ground from a plane.

As part of my job, I would regularly fly out to Maryland, rent a car, and drive around and have the guys in the plane track me with this new tech.

It was a fun job. I got to cruise around all day, take naps in between flights, and go back to my hotel to hang out. If it weren't so low paying I'd take that job again!

Anyway, because this technology was being deployed to the Middle East the company wanted to see if it could track animals like horses and camels because bad guys may ride those too.

The company already had a horse contact, but they did not have a camel contact. So they tasked me to find a camel that I could borrow for a few hours.

Uhhh...okay boss.

Naturally, I Googled "camels in Maryland" and of course, the nearest rental camel was in North Carolina and would need to be shipped up and cost thousands of dollars. Nope!

Other internet searches turned up nada.

Finally I decided to just ask the lady who owned the horses we used if she knew anyone with a camel we could borrow.

Guess what? She did!

She gave me the camel lady's contact info and we made a deal where I could run the camel up and down the owner's street for a few hours.

Thank you Henry the camel for your service to our country.

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A quick phone call from a warm contact might get you better results than a thousand internet searches. If you're on the hunt for a 1099 gig, don't forget to ask your existing network for help.

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