Category: Travels

Day seven of the trip is at an end. Not all that much to be said about today. It was a largely dry meeting and little else to do. At least we were fed decently.

Yesterday, on the other hand, was somewhat entertaining. The social event happened at a place called Los Amigos where there was a fire in a big pit and a buffet dinner. We were all bussed out there but the bus I was on took a wrong turn and ended up arriving slightly delayed. Not a big issue, really, though. It was kind of refreshing in a way. After the eating, there was entertainment in the form of a dance show. As I understood it, the two different groups represented the different kinds of Mexican dances, one being the so-called white man’s dancing and the other being the so-called native american dancing. Something the spokesman for the latter said was interesting, however. He said that they are Mexican, not Indians, and that technically, after a couple of generations, everyone is native american. While I’m not certain I believe his story about the origin of the term Mexican, it is a compelling story and it makes a great deal of sense.

All in all, the trip has been good so far. The meeting tomorrow is supposed to be done by midday which means I should have enough time to actually go out somewhere and look for the tacky mugs and tea spoons that I’m supposed to be collecting. I had no luck the other day when I went looking so hopefully I’ll find something, perhaps somewhere along Route 66.

It’s early on the sixth day of the trip which is also the first day of the actual ARIN meeting. In contrast to NANOG which is more of a conference of like minds, ARIN is an actual official meeting for an organization. I expect that by the end of the week, my brain will be essentially finished on account of the fact that it’s all official business. (Or largely so, anyway.)

Tonight is a social event at the Sandia Indian Reservation which should be entertaining. At the very least, it provides something to do with the evening.

With that, I am going to return my attention to the meeting.

It’s part way through the afternoon session on the second day of NANOG. So far, the presentations have been quite interesting. More interesting, however, was walking into the room this morning and seeing rows of tables somewhat densely occupied by geek types with laptops open to various things from the basic wallpaper view to email, web browsers, and even system monitors. When you consider the were probably three hundred people in the room, it gets even more interesting.

At this point, I can say with certainty that coming to NANOG was well worth it. As an added bonus, because it’s topics I’m interested in, it feels like a vacation.

On a side note, the wonders of modern technology have allowed me to keep in touch with my sister as she goes through the process of putting in an offer on a house. Now that will be a change if the offer is successful. It seems like every time I go on a trip, something significant happens. Perhaps I should stop going on trips? Or perhaps not. More likely it’s all coincidence.

The rest of the day went well enough. Some sort of scheme was introduced to try and get the collection of geek types at the meeting to circulate and actually talk to each other. I dunno how effective that will be but the bribe of a free drink might get a few folks to do it. Not being a drinker, I’m probably not going to bother with it.

The really boring stuff for the NANOG meeting should be basically done now. That leaves us to basically get on with the presentations and looting and all the stuff that goes on at NANOG meetings. Should be somewhat interesting.

A bunch of us mobbed a local eatery after today’s proceedings. It was one of those order at the counter type places and we had it lined up out the door onto the street. It was quite entertaining. They handled it well enough, though. The walk over to the place revealed some of the streets of downtown Albuquerque. That was nothing particularly surprising but I do remember commenting that the one street felt claustrophobic; the streets are quite narrow compared to what I’m used to and when you put up a couple of sizable buildings on either side, it makes things feel somewhat close. Still, there really aren’t all that many large buildings.

Well, time to go offline and arrange for some sleeping to prepare for tomorrows sessions.

It’s half way through the first day of the conference. The presentations on IPv6 have been somewhat informative so far, serving as they have to collect information I thought I knew into a single place. It’s also been interesting to actually see one of the folks I see very strongly on the mailing lists is no different in person than online.

Of course, there have been components of the presentation that are not relevant to me since I don’t use Cisco or Juniper gear but that’s to be expected. The lunch break is winding down now and things will be getting moving again in twenty minutes or so.

After a mostly uneventful day of driving, I arrived in Albuquerque unscathed. Well, as unscathed as 26 hours on the road (in the space of 36) will leave a person. Good thing I took time last night to scope out a simpler route from Pocatello to Albuqerque. Once it was reduced to “follow I-15S to US-6E to US-191S to US-491S to I-40E” it was a lot easier to figure out than about fifty sets of turns through random towns. Google gave more useable directions than the CAA trip planner although I have to admit that the CAA route was a bit more direct. Still, what good is a direct route if you can’t figure it out?

Today was the construction day, too. I knew I’d been far too lucky in recent years on road trips. There was no less then ten construction zones in the space of 100 miles on I-40. Add to that the various bits on US-191 and US-491, it probably added about an hour to the travel time.

Now that I’ve arrived, I don’t have to fret about just how things work at the hotel. Now I can get on with fretting about my purpose in being here.

Let me finish this entry off with,
“Greetings from Albuquerque. No wrong turns were harmed in the composition of this message. They were all left unmolested.”

The end of the first day is here. I stopped over for the night at Pocatello, Idaho. It’s not quite half way as I reckon it but if I get a decently early start tomorrow there shouldn’t be any problem. At least it looks like I get off the freeways at some point tomorrow so that should make things a bit less boring. Still, parts of I-15 really need to be actively driven what with the mountain passes and all.

I’d really like to know what gets into the US Customs officials, though. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one smile or, for that matter, seem anything less than grumpy or generally surly. Maybe they’re trained to be that way. Who knows.

I suppose it’s time to work out the route for tomorrow then pack it in. I figure I really want to be on the road before 8AM if I want to arrive in Albuquerque at a reasonable time.

Well, for the first time since I discovered the group, I am going to a NANOG conference. That ought to be interesting. This particular NANOG is a joint meeting with ARIN which my employer recently became a member of. I’ll be attending both conferences. I leave tomorrow morning and spend the better part of two days driving to Albuquerque (cue wrong turn jokes) where I’ll spend about a week attending both conferences. It will most certainly be interesting. The best part, though, is it’s mostly like a vacation even though it’s on the company nickel. (It’s industry related, after all.)

Possibly more from the road.

Day two of the return trip from the CoCoFest started off to a bit of a bumpy start as Fargo got slammed with a winter storm overnight and it was still continuing in the morning. Fortunately, the bulk of the weather was south of Fargo and I drove out of the worst of the weather by time I got to Grand Forks and by time I got to the Manitoba border, there was nothing to speak of weather wise although it was quite windy. I had no trouble with customs coming back across the border so I made good time in to Headingly.

I stopped for lunch at the Husky at Headingly. On the way out, I picked up a couple of hitchhikers who had been basically stranded in Winnipeg for two days on account of nobody wanting to pick them up. I do have to admit it made the trip from Winnipeg to Regina go a lot faster. I dropped them at the Husky in Regina and then went on to the hotel.

Turns out it’s a lot warmer here than it was in Brandon (both going and coming). I near froze both times filling the gas tank. It doesn’t help that they’ve removed the latches so you have to hold the pump lever continuously to fill the tank. Still, they have pay at the pump there now so it’s quite quick to get in and out of there.

With the time change on the way west, it’s only 7PM right now so I have lots of time to kill before hitting the hay. I expect I’ll be able to figure something to do with the time. I do admit it is nice not to be rushed on a trip like this.

The first day of the return trip has been mostly uneventful. The weather was much better for driving as it wasn’t raining continually all the way from Elgin to Fargo. Even so, it was a bit of a stress as I needed to get out the sunglasses in order to relieve eye strain. I’m also either getting a cold (or something similar) or my allergies were acting up worse than I thought. I think it was probably allergies and it will straighten itself out in a day or so.

Apparently there’s a winter storm warning for points south of Fargo so that could make things interesting in the morning if the weather comes further north than expected. It shouldn’t be too much of a problem, though, since I know driving in bad weather.

Probably the biggest excitement tomorrow will be the Canadian customs people. Hopefully they don’t search my car again.

I will close out with a word of advice. Do not drink water continually while driving. It means you’ll need to stop continually to empty said water back out again.