Travel -- mm, love travel!
I'm attending the C4 conference in Chicago this weekend. I figured that since it's in Chicago, and I live in the Minneapolis area, I'd drive over, because, you know, it's not really that far... Well, it's about 6-7 hours (which I knew going in), and I left late morning. Of course, doing the math, that meant that I would hit Chicago precisely during rush hour.
At one point, just as I got to the city, I had to go through the last of the toll collection points, and I hit one that was backed up. This is when things came to a crawl, and while I had made good time getting to the Chicago area (it had taken me just over 6 hours with a few quick stops for gas and food and coffee along the way), I actually happened to reset my trip odometer and found that it took me over 45 minutes to go 0.3 miles.
I knew that registration was from 6 to 7 (mostly), so this is when I started to get a bit nervous. Things were pretty slow going all the way into the center of the city where the conference hotel is, but it turned out that as I got out of my car and looked at the time, it was 6:58. I checked in before going to the registration desk, so I ultimately was only about 10 minutes late, but for a while I was worried it would be worse.
I should probably also mention, that I just flew back from our 2-week vacation in France on the day before this (it was a long day -- basically a 31 hour day since there's a 7-hour difference, and we were flying with the rotation of the Earth). But at least I got a full night's sleep before the drive. Still, a 7.5 hour drive the day after an 8-hour flight: not highly recommended.
The first evening of C4 was pretty interesting. I'll hopefully blog about that in a little while (although, one might notice that the last time I blogged was over 8 months ago, so we'll see how well that idea works...).
At one point, just as I got to the city, I had to go through the last of the toll collection points, and I hit one that was backed up. This is when things came to a crawl, and while I had made good time getting to the Chicago area (it had taken me just over 6 hours with a few quick stops for gas and food and coffee along the way), I actually happened to reset my trip odometer and found that it took me over 45 minutes to go 0.3 miles.
I knew that registration was from 6 to 7 (mostly), so this is when I started to get a bit nervous. Things were pretty slow going all the way into the center of the city where the conference hotel is, but it turned out that as I got out of my car and looked at the time, it was 6:58. I checked in before going to the registration desk, so I ultimately was only about 10 minutes late, but for a while I was worried it would be worse.
I should probably also mention, that I just flew back from our 2-week vacation in France on the day before this (it was a long day -- basically a 31 hour day since there's a 7-hour difference, and we were flying with the rotation of the Earth). But at least I got a full night's sleep before the drive. Still, a 7.5 hour drive the day after an 8-hour flight: not highly recommended.
The first evening of C4 was pretty interesting. I'll hopefully blog about that in a little while (although, one might notice that the last time I blogged was over 8 months ago, so we'll see how well that idea works...).
Labels: personal
