Strangers may indeed find this a strange land.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

Is this microphone on? Good. As you know, the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials start here later this month and I want to thank you, volunteers, for showing up today for the second in our series of sensitivity sessions.

Our goal is simple: to make our visitors from around the country feel welcome.

To that end, we need to understand that many of these visitors are not like us. Some have never, ever protested while riding a bicycle in the nude. They do not come from places with slug queens and seven-foot "ducks on parade." Frankly, some don't know compost from sugar.

In short, their ways are not our ways. Someone from New Orleans isn't likely to cry crocodile tears if you go on about Eugene's pothole problem or how much you miss Icky's Teahouse.

Someone from Chicago, where a political hot potato is an alderman who's been caught funneling $3.5 million worth of work to his brother-in-law the plumber, is not likely to castigate a police union president who made fun of a councilor in a Web-page cartoon.

Someone from Los Angeles may look at our blue skies and feel oppressed by a sense of color and freshness.

We need to respect these differences.

OK, you're walking down the street and some fan from the Midwest asks where he can find a good steak. This would not be the time for you to encourage him to consider a tofu scramble or steer him toward - sorry, Freudian slip! - free-range, hormone-free beef. Just give him directions to the Sizzler and get on with it.

Yes, a question in the back: "What," she asks, "do we do if we're at a gas station and someone tries to pump their own?"

Great question and, to be honest, people, this is something we will face. First, do not panic. Second, do not - I repeat, do not - try to "be a hero" by offering them some well-documented lecture on the evils of Big Oil. Stall them with small talk - perhaps some pithy quotes from Gandhi - while trying to make eye contact with the attendant and give the universal eye-wink for "trying to pump their own gas."

Yes, another question, in the back: "What about questions regarding local history?"

Be willing to share about Eugene's past. A fan, for example, might ask what Bill Bowerman is standing on in that Hayward Field statue; this is a great opportunity for you to explain how our history involves a waffle iron. But don't be surprised if people from, say, Boston are nonplussed with your gushing on about, say, how old Mac Court is; Harvard predated the Oregon Trail by more than 200 years.

Another thing: People might speak a different language than you speak. When they say "frog," they might be thinking of a green amphibian instead of a joke-book salesman. Conversely, you say "Country Fair" and they think goats and curly fries. You say "tie-dyed" and they might ask who he was and are you attending his funeral.

Also, be prepared for questions that you might consider silly but, to newcomers, are not. These people will have formed their opinions of us by decades-old rumors and 15-second CNN clips; for all they know, we're that place with the fist-swinging Duck mascot where you can get a free vasectomy while watching March Madness and can visit, but better not stay.

They're more likely to link Oregon to Tonya Harding, anarchists and Keiko the whale than to Jon Krakauer, Ann Curry and DeFazio the congressman.

Almost out of time. Quick, you're a volunteer and I'm a visitor. "In Animal House," I ask, "did they really film that horse scene in the president's office?"

Boom, you need to have the answer just like that, people. Whew. For next week, per our homework assignment, please come prepared with your 10-word definitions for "sustainability."

OK, that's all for now.