I head to San Francisco on Monday for the 2009 Web 2.0 conference – I’m expecting this conference to be great from what I have heard. This is the second conference in San Francisco I’ve been to in the past couple years so I am not as excited to tour the city after the conference ends each day, but this may have more to do with the fact that I am out there by myself this time. I hate eating out by myself and drinking alone is even worse so my first goal is to meet people that I can hang out with while I am there. I’m staying at the W Hotel which should be great, I know I’m the picture of the trendy traveler they are angling for…
I’ve shifted topic areas/conferences over the years so I’ve yet to find a group that goes to the same conference as me every year like others in the office. Maybe this will be the one that I want to attend every year…but I am already more interested in SXSW next year based on the topics and excitement my coworkers returned with a couple weeks ago.
Holly’s spring break starts on Thursday so she is flying out to SFO that night to meet me there – so far our plan is for me to pick her up after I pick up a rental car so that we can head to the second half of our trip once my conference ends on Friday. We are heading from San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe where from what I’ve seen will be equivalent weather to Michigan or colder. We’ll stay there for 2-3 days before heading to Yosemite to take in a bit of nature and a lot of scenery. This is the first year in some time that we haven’t traveled to Key West with friends over Spring Break – I will really miss the warm weather and cold Coronas by the pool… Don’t get me wrong…I am excited about this trip too, it will just be different. I’m honestly looking forward to seeing new parts of the country, and seeing amazing scenery that I’ve only seen in photos before. Sadly, I won’t be able to visit the Ponderosa Ranch from hit TV show Bonanza, in Lake Tahoe, as it was closed and sold several years ago…bummer. No matter what, I am ready for a break!
In other news…I was able to pull together a trip to Key West in October with some of my friends – sort of an extended guys weekend. This will be my first time in Key West during Fantasy Fest and from what I’ve been told it is a crazy party, like Mardi Gras on steroids.
I am going down there with a unique group and our diversity is something only rivaled by MTV’s The Real World. We have a police officer, an IT guy, an MBA/sales guru, a City Administrator and a University Student Affairs specialist – all with more degrees and masters degrees than we know what to do with. The chances of this trip coming together were slim to none (which may explain why our wives said we could try to plan it) but everything fell in place last week. We found a house with a private pool and 5 beds in our price range, which was nothing short of amazing. Airfare has been booked and now all that is left is for everyone to start working out again before we head south.
Holly and I still want to plan one more trip around July/August for our anniversary but we haven’t made any plans yet. Let me know if you have any suggestions! The idea of going back to Middle Island was thrown around but I wouldn’t mind camping a bit more this summer. Hopefully we’ll have plenty of time to spend at the cabin as well – I have a long list of projects I’d like to start on up there!