Gypsies do not like to stay. They only come to go away.

Advertising can take you to some pretty amazing places. Cocoa Beach. Manhattan. Santa Monica. It can also take you to Tulsa or Reno or Boise or Omaha or Louisville. Places that are, in a less obvious way, also pretty amazing.

It can take you to just outside of Tampa, where you spend your weekend shooting film because there's a tree there that looks like maybe it could be a tree anywhere in America, and that's just the sort of tree you need.

You visit these amazing places with equally amazing people. Smart, talented people who say funny things at odd times.

• "I'm all about making ads that make people feel like hugging people."

• "You know how every party ends up in the kitchen? Every shoot ends up at the craft service table."

• "Drinking is part of your job. It's time for you to be good at your job."

• "It's not a moral victory. It's a victory victory."

And when you're done shooting film at that tree in Tampa, the dozens of amazing people you have spent the last four days with pack up their cameras and their telescoping arms and their laptops and they disappear back to wherever it was that they came from. And you miss them all so much. But if they were the type that stayed, they wouldn't be advertising people and maybe you wouldn't miss them at all.

This is a good business we're in. Yes it is.

[Ed. - The title of this post comes from Madeline and the Gypsies by Ludwig Bemelmans. See photos of the trip on Flickr.]