Travels

There are 246 posts filed in Travels (this is page 21 of 25).

Tour de Force

I felt very safe at my Port St. Lucie hotel last night. There were at least a dozen of police cars in the parking lot, and believe it or not they weren’t dragging shirtless men from their rooms like you see on Cops. Judging by the many K-9 cars (and the sometimes enthusiastic barking I heard from nearby rooms) I take it some sort of training was going on.

This morning I rode the elevator down with a cop toting a sweet bicycle and we struck up a conversation. He works (or did work) as a school resource officer in the Miami-Dade School System and has family in Southport. In fact his cousin, Sandy Spencer, was just elected mayor of Southport.
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Stuart

I’m in Stuart, Florida today for a presentation, having flown in at 7:30 last night. The flight was routine except for an incident right after we got airborne from Atlanta. About a minute into our flight we were all startled when the pilot suddenly banked the plane hard left. As I was catching my breath, I swear I heard the sound of jet engines getting progressively farther away. Maybe flying through the world’s busiest airport wasn’t such a keen idea after all.

Its weird that the hotel pool is still open. At midnight last night I was wishing it wasn’t.

Time to get this show on the road.

South Florida

I’m on my way to South Florida today for a meeting tomorrow. In spite of being born in Florida this will be my furthest venture south in the Sunshine State. Tomorrow’s high temperature is forecast to be 76 degrees. Any other time that might sound tempting but we really haven’t had a bad winter here (nor do I expect us to).

Back from Annapolis

Day two of training yesterday didn’t go as smoothly as the first day, and part of it is my fault. We were trying a new method of training (aside from the new trainer: me), and I didn’t test every aspect of the new environment. If I had, I would’ve discovered some tools were missing that we needed to use. I didn’t build the environment, but I am responsible for making sure it works and I didn’t do that. Fortunately we worked around it and everyone seemed to appreciate the new approach, warts and all.
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First day conducting training

I conducted training on my company’s product for the very first time today in a room wall-to-wall with students. The training went very, very well. No one suspected it was my first time conducting the training, nor did they realize I’ve only been working with it since June. I even got a kudos from a more-experienced coworker who heard some of my presentation.

It was also fun conducting training again. The last time I did that was to a roomful of Chinese in Shanghai back in March. That day still stands out as one of the best of my career. Who knew I’d be out of work just two months later?

Annapolis awaits

I’m off to Annapolis again today as I will be conducting product training tomorrow and Wednesday. Then its a trip back home Wednesday night to be ready for an 8 AM demo Thursday.

Fortunately we had a fun weekend so being away won’t be as hard as it could’ve been. Check wid’ ya later, yo.

Twenty five year reunion

I had a bit of a twenty-five year reunion tonight here in Charlotte, where I’m working for the next day or two. Remember how I tracked down some old friends last month when their high school reunion was held? One of those old friend was my buddy Doug Yoch, who happens to live in Charlotte now. I wrote him an email this morning letting him know I was in town and tonight we met up for dinner and drinks.
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Reunioned

We got back last evening from our Herndon High School reunion weekend in Virginia. Lots of fun was had. Herndon’s football team won the homecoming game against the Yorktown Patriots 35-31, too.

More on all that when I get a chance. For now I gotta get back to work.

Amtrak

I had unusual travel plans for my recent business trip to Annapolis. First I flew to BWI on Southwest (which curiously didn’t have all of their new line arrangements yet in place). I rented a car for the Annapolis leg of the trip. When I got done with work today, I returned the car to the Baltimore airport (via the Baltimore-Washington Parkinglotway), where I planned to catch a train south to Fredericksburg.
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