Bursting the travel bubble

Phoenix happened. At times it was exhausting. At times it was fascinating, surreal, weird, overwhelming, tasty, and ear splitting. I woke at 4am last Sunday and didn't get to breathe until 8:30pm on Thursday, when I plopped down on the living room floor and checked my email at the coffee table.

I met a lot of interesting people, both at the conference and during the travel parts. I met a travelling CIO for a healthcare IT company, completely coincidentally on the flight home. On the shuttle van home, I met a retired insurance director who was playing golf for a few days after a trip with his wife to Bucharest.

I won't go into details about the work bits but I'm glad I had the opportunity to go and see what it was all about. I added a couple of photos of the hotel grounds to my photoblog. The place was beautifully decorated and is apparently the only hotel in the world with a Frank Lloyd Wright-influenced design. I only had twenty minutes to snap pictures between hotel checkout and another meeting so I'm just glad I could take any.

Note to Christy in the future: the key to success at these things is either to pace yourself or be willing to schedule a nap every now and then. Also? Attending the event that ends at 11pm means the event that starts the next morning at 8am will make life very difficult, if not painful.

I only left the hotel once for a work dinner so all I saw were strip malls and desert. I also (unfortunately) never visited any of the hotel's 8 pools even though I brought a swimsuit.

I think I was doing it wrong.