Crossing the Golden Gate!

I had a conference (or as I am now referring to at - a Mini Vacation) to go to for work. It was supposed to be in South San Francisco, but in actuality it was just outside of the airport in Melbrane. But, that was okay because the conference program was going to be a good one. Alot of downstream process development information, very relevant to my job... and to make it even better... Rick was going with me!

Well the conference organizers changes program at the last minute to consist mainly of upstream processing, not what I am interested in at all... so that meant the conference was not all that interesting (with the exception of "networking opportunities"), however the location and company definitely made up for it! The hotel we stayed in was right on the bay... you literally went out the door, walked ten feet and there was the water! It was awesome! Can I move there?

This was the view from right outside the hotel.

and what I looked like every the morning!

We spent a lot of time in a little town called Burlingame. There are a ton of cute shops (lots of shopping done there!) and great resturants. The culture in Claifornia is vastly dofferent than in Indiana... but I think we could get used to it... hum, maybe I need to look into a job there! Anyway, I was amazed at the nuber of people who commuted on bicycles. Everywhere we went, there were the cyclist! What a change from Indiana. What inmpressed me the most was watching them speed up a hill... and by hill, you know i mean small mountain, right? Rick and I got to experience that hjoy for ourselves one afternoon...

The conference organizers had scheduled Tuesday afternoon as free time, so Rick and I decided to head into the city to rent bikes with the plan to ride across the Golden Gate bridge. (Oh, and when I mean "head into the city... that's by the BART system, and the the trolly. Total travel time = ~60min, not including waiting for the next trolly or train.) I pride myself on my cycling skills, I mean Rick and I have gone for 40 mile rides before and we both plan on completing a century ride this year, but I have to say that I was deffinitly "put in my place" out there> The hills were killers. Here Rick and I are, humping up hills, huffing a puffing, and then being passed by some guy in a bike jersey just flying! I guess it's some consolation that there are almost no hills in central Indiana!

As hard, and humbling, as the ride was, it was incredible! We were total tourists... getting lost, standing around looking at the cartoony map that the bike shop gave us, getting help from the natives (I think they took pity on us.... how could they not... I mean we were riding bikes that had the logo "Blazing Saddles" on them and looking at a cartoon of a map!), and to top it all of we got awesome pictures from the bridge!
Here we are in front of the bridge... we then had to climb all the way up there... don't we look happ? We had NO IDEA of what we were in for!

Touristing it up on the bridge!
and riding the ferry back to the city.

All in all, the conference left a bit to be desired but the vacation was amazing...

Now we won't talk about the plane ride back... that was HORRIBLE!