Real Kato Blog: BlogHer 2006: Friday, July 28, Part 1

The trip to San José.

This is Part 1 of Day 1 of my BlogHer report, for Friday, July 28th.

The BlogHer conference actually started on Friday morning, but we skipped the conference sessions because they were all things like, "How To Make A Shiny Happy Hyperlink In HTML!" So we just flew down for the Day 1 cocktail party.

On Friday morning, Amy met me at my house to leave for the airport. Unfortunately, some of the clothes I'd planned to bring were still over at her house. And I was desperately trying to finish loading up the GPS with San Francisco maps so I'd be able to drive around the city without getting lost. Eventually I abandoned the GPS loading so we could drop by Amy's house, pick up my clothes, and dash over to the airport. But you know what? Despite the fact that we only got to the airport 30 minutes before our flight time, I totally kept it together. Which is unusual for me.

When we got on the plane, there were two bags of chocolate covered raisins and peanuts on the seat, and a notebook in the seat back pocket. We figured, "whoo hoo, free snacks!" And we poked through the notebook, figuring we'd mail it back to whomever owned it.

It turned out that the notebook belonged to Jason Womack... who was standing a few rows away talking on his cell phone. He came back very surprised to find us reading his notebook. Good thing we didn't eat his snacks too.

I told him we were going to BlogHer, and he asked, "Is Scoble gonna be there?" I said, "Probably not. You know, it's a woman-oriented conference." Little did I know! (More on this later.)

Amy is something of a nervous flyer, so I got her plenty lubed up with some vodka tonics. With our drinks, they gave us those little snack packages with the pretzels and the cheese-flavored things. We wanted more, so Amy considered telling the flight attendants, "I'm pregnant, and eating for two." Of course, the vodka tonics would have been somewhat difficult to explain. "I'm also... drinking for two. Yeah." I guess that wouldn't have been entirely untrue.

We stopped in Dallas and ate at one of the airport restaurants. We were pretty dang hungry, hungry enough to eat burgers with fried cheese on them.

We were pretty happy after that.

The flight from Dallas to San José was fairly uneventful. We landed and took the shuttle to the rental car place, where they offered to upgrade me to a "premium car". I said "yes" without thinking, and they put me in a Ford Crown Victoria Land Yacht. They're not bad cars, but I really should have gone ahead and gotten the Mustang instead, even if it cost me a few bucks more.

We got to the Hyatt where the conference was being held, and checked into the hotel. The Hyatt was fairly nice, but not nearly as nice as the Westin where we stayed last year. Our room was tiny, it faced the train stop across the street, and it had a weird smell to it.

We relaxed and showered before going to the cocktail party... which I'll cover in my next post.

Permalink 3 Comment

Posted by Ken in: life, travel

Comments

Comment #1 from Phil (Guest)
2006 Aug 2 - 2:31 am : #

"I'm pregnant, and eating for two." Of course, the vodka tonics would have been somewhat difficult to explain.

Hee hee. That cracked me up :-)