Sore rear
So after getting blindsided by outrageous parking costs last year I decided to utilize SEPTA (South East Pennsylvania Public Transport Authority) for the first time to travel from the airport to the hotel. I also needed a rental car last year because I visited Troy after the conference. Anyway I was able to take the train directly from the airport to Suburban Station which is only 1/4 mile from the hotel.
The train was clean and somewhat modern inside. The same could not be said about the terminal or the tracks the trains traveled on. It all looked like it was in dire need of some TLC. I thought it was odd that the trains were an all cash business. There was no use of credit cards. Instead a ticket taker goes seat to after you depart and expects you to lay $8 of cash in their hands. Once you do they punch a paper ticket with a hole puncher multiple times, circa, 1953. I mean wtf SEPTA, really? The ride to the city might have taken 25 minutes which wasn’t bad at all. Once I got to Suburban Station I used Google map walking directions to orient myself. In the span of 5 minutes I walked in the door of the hotel, very cool.
I had about 90 minutes until the conference started. I was worried because I was already feeling exhausted since I was awake since 2:15. I was also worried that the hotel would not let me check in this early since it was before 10. Luckily the room was ready to go and they handed me my room key without issue. I stayed at The Westin last year as well so I already knew the accommodations would be very nice, which once again, they were.
So after unpacking some stuff and relaxing for a few minutes I collected what I would need for the conference and headed over to the building it was held in which is very conveniently located right across the street. I was somewhat disappointed they had no food out at this point since I had not eaten anything since 3:30 am. I did slam a couple cups of coffee to clear the fuzziness in my head.
So the conference started. I saw a number of familiar faces from last year as well as some new ones. There were significantly more RSU employees there than last year as they have been hiring a TON of new staff to help support their explosive growth. After the owner of RSU talked for a bit and introduced all of his staff it was time for the customer advisory board members, which I am part of, to say a little about themselves, what they use RunSignUp for, as well as any particular likes, dislikes, and potential wishlist items.
Bob had sent out the guidelines for our intro ahead of time so I had typed out a framework for me to speak from since I am pretty terrible at off the cuff speaking for prolonged periods of time. I’ll type out my thoughts until my fingers bleed but when it comes to trying to speak about the same subjects I just can not do it in anything resembling a similar manner.
So anyway it got to be my turn to speak. Despite having my notes I still found myself falling into a verbal black hole at various points where I started to expand on my points only to find my sentences leading nowhere interesting. Often I would just cut the sentence off awkwardly and move on to something else. Public speaking just isn’t a thing for me. So anyway I manged to get through my little spiel and I really had nothing else to say for the rest of the day, which was fine with me. My primary goal at this conference is to harvest ideas that are thrown out there and find ways to use them in what I do to make the runner experience better in our races.
The 1st day of the conference wrapped up a little after 4pm. I had another 90 minutes to kill before a shuttle was scheduled to take us to a group dinner. I used that time to get 150 push ups and a few games of Hearthstone in on my phone. It felt like a good use of my time.
Last year they rented a van to transport us to the event. The van was driven by an angry middle eastern man that was an extremely aggressive driver. He was constantly cutting people off and then swearing at the people he cut off, which I found odd. Well this year they rented a full size tour bus, symbolic of how much RSU has grown. Unfortunately there was one problem, the bus was too big to get down the street the venue was located. Instead it wound up dropping us off in front the art museum (the steps Rocky runs up) and we walked three or four blocks to get to the dinner. It was fine.
The dinner had unlimited food and drinks, all of high quality. It was held at the same place as last year, a boat house with a beautiful view of the river. Well the view was beautiful unless you looked closely at the river which had a lot of trash, debris, and brown muck floating in it. Of course this was another social situation where I don’t feel comfortable. Originally I intended to use alcohol as a crutch but the IPA’s they were serving had high alcohol content. Only two of them started to hit me pretty badly so I dialed it back very early. There were a handful of people I knew enough to chat with for awhile so it was ok. It wasn’t like I was standing in a corner alone holding a drink with a blank stare on my face.
The combo of the beer and food amplified how tired I already was. I wound up joining two other guys in walking back to the hotel instead of taking the bus. The one is a guy I knew from last years conference who started timing races when he was in high school, he is 24 or 25 now. The other was the software programmer that created Race Director, the timing software I have used for the last 7 years or so. It was cool to have some timer talk with them during the mile and a half walk back to the hotel. I took a shower, fell into bed and slept straight through the night for the first time in several days.
This morning I woke up without an alarm at about 6:15, allowing me to slowly get ready for the conference that didn’t start until 8. Today the conference was open to anyone that wanted to sign up, there were a ton more bodies there, somewhere close to 100. The majority of the day were presentations from various people regarding different aspects of race/event planning as well as the logistics of timing and how RSU makes all parts of event execution better. All of the speaker presentations were good although it felt like most of them went on longer than they needed to. Perhaps I felt that way because my rear end was really starting to get sore from of all the sitting over the two days. The chairs the meeting space provided were those web suspension varieties that are comfortable for short spurts but start to hurt after prolonged use due to their lack of cushion.
Today there was no speaking requirement of me which was welcomed. I basically took notes during the day and tried out some of the things that were being talked about real time on the laptop I brought with me. It was a good day.
This evening I was hoping Troy was going to be able to swing down to hang with me but he has a work commitment that scuttled that plan. Instead I plan to get some more push ups in and then perhaps walk around the area a bit to do some minor sightseeing and grab some food. Despite living in this general area most of my life, I only recall doing any Philadelphia sightseeing once or twice as a child. I made no effort to try to coordinate my evening plans with other conference attendees. For some reason I don’t initiate these sort of friendly gestures. Sure if somone invited me to dinner I would probably go but I am just as content to fly solo and entertain myself. It’s just how I am.
Tomorrow I have a half day of the conference and then it’s back to PA via an evening flight. I am not quite sure how I will handle the extra time there should be between the conference end and plane departure. I will have checked out of the hotel prior to the conference so I might be spending a lot of time looking out airport windows.