Washington D.C. -> Island Park, ID
Yesterday was a big day. After a week of intellectually-intense web conference, I checked out of the hotel at 7:30am Eastern time, walked a half-mile to the McPherson Station, hopped a 15-minute metro ride to Reagan National, a 1h 35m flight to Cincinnati, then an almost 4 hour ride to Salt Lake City. At which point Becky picked me up for a 4 and-a-half hour ride to the ancestral cabin in Eastern Idaho to meet my parents and Charlie. All in all, the total travel time from the moment I checked out of the hotel to the time I arrived at the final destination (including the Kentucky layover) was approximately 14 hours and 30 minutes. Suffice it to say, my sitting-bones were hurting by then.
DC was generally good. Got in Saturday, and my man Rudi picked me up and drove me to the bizarrely-decorated Hotel Helix. My room looked pretty much exactly like the picture. Funky! The first two days of the conference were focused on ColdFusion, which is my core professional competency. These days were particularly useful to me, in terms of being able to mine the ideas of some of the heaviest hitters in the industry for the latest and greatest ideas. The next three days were about Adobe Flex which is an emerging technology (despite being on version 3) that puts the power of the Flash Player into the hands of non-developers in a useful and not-prohibitively-expensive way. I was less familiar with Flex, and many of the topics assumed a higher level of knowledge than I had. Still, I was able to re-jigger my schedule to get more “fundamentals”-based sessions.
Also, there were several extra-curricular activities that merit mention:
On Monday night continued my pattern of public drunken obnoxiousness that will eventually get me in terrible trouble. 
I met a cool old hippie dude at the bar who happened to be the VP of the Federal Employees’ Union. Then, moments later, I met a chemical company lobbyist, whom I promptly lit into as a scourge on the political landscape of the country. I knew I had crossed some kind of line when the old hippie was defending the lobbyist against my verbal onslaught. I think it was about the time I asked the bottom feeder how many people his company had killed this year.
Headache Tuesday, then met Rudi for a taste of real DC culture. Specifically a “chili half-smoke all the way” at Ben’s Chili Bowl. Hell of a chili dog, there.
Wednesday, I went out on walk-about. Saw the White House and various other landmarks. Good times.
Thursday I met up with a guy who’s aquaintance I had made on various drum-related internet fora, and who had always struck me as a righteous dude. Tim H. and I met up at Union Station, got a beer and some happy-hour appetizers, then wandered a bit, then found another beer (or 10) in a nice little bar with a guitarist in China Town. Good times, and good to meet a former figment of my imagination in the flesh.
Friday I stayed in, mostly, except for an excursion to the 7-11 and the Subway for a meatball sub. Good times.
/w
May 26th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
You were so close!!! Sounds like you had fun in DC - I graduated on the 17th and we have been entertaining the fam-dam-ly all week. Loved the rocket video - cant wait to see you guys!!! we are in town for 2weeks in july.