After spending last week in England, playing tourist in London, then presenting at SQLBits #9 in Liverpool, I'm now in Portland, Oregon, getting ready for SQL Saturday #92 tomorrow, and the Portland Marathon on Sunday morning.
SQL Saturdays are always fun, and this one should be amazing, with all the speakers here before we all head up to Seattle for the 2011 PASS Summit.
This afternoon I went to the expo for the marathon and the excitement there is just as high, as this is the 40th anniversary of that event. You may have seen a number of people chatting on Twitter using the #sqlrun hashtag - a good number of people are running the half marathon on Sunday morning, and I'm running the full 26.2 miles. I have a goal to run a full marathon in all 50 states in the US, and Sunday will give me State #26 towards that goal. My goal is partly to keep in shape and partly to really see the states that I visit. It's amazing over the course of a marathon how much of an area you really get to see - not just the touristy places, but the areas where real people live and work, and that's why I love doing the marathons. Well, that and the sense of accomplishment after completing a race of that distance.
So, tomorrow we'll talk SQL all day, and Sunday I'll be running for 5-6 hours, seeing the real Portland.
See you here, or at the Summit!
Allen