And the corruption of Krumy continues…see her blog post about the hike.

I’m here! I made it! Got home from Maryland last night after midnight and got up at 4am to make a 6am flight out of Harrisburg. Needless to say, I slept the ENTIRE flight from Newark to Denver. Arrived at noon, got my rental car, headed into Denver to pick up a couple hiking guides at Barnes and Noble. I had ordered a couple books from REI on Monday and had them shipped overnight. They still weren’t there Wednesday. It seems USPS won’t ship overnight to a PO Box. Gee, they sure take your money for it!!! Grrr.

Left B&N, grabbed some food and while I ate, paged through the guidebooks figuring out where I was going to go first. By 3:30, I was heading out of Denver and into the mountains to Mt. Evans, a “fourteener”. Drove a scenic byway that went almost to the summit then hiked the rest of the way. H o l y c o w. I walked slowly but had to stop several times on the way up because I was so lightheaded. And by the time I got to the summit I had a massive, pounding headache. Hello altitude. Geesh. Spent an hour or so at the top getting a bunch of video and pictures and just taking it all in.

Mick on the summit of Mt. Evans

View from summit of Mt. Evans

Mountain goat on Mt. Evans

Getting back to the lower altitude of Denver, my headache subsided but left me in a fog. Stumbled around a grocery store, picking up snacks and food for the next four days and checked in with my host family. Staying with a fellow DrupalCamper and his wife, cat, and awesome dog – a huge Akita!

Jane, Chris, and Tonka

Ronan

Spending the rest of the evening Facebooking, blogging, and figuring out my plans for tomorrow – what trails I’m going to hike.

Day 2
Woke up last night with another pounding headache. Ugh. I guess going from a few hundred feet above sea level to over 14,000 ft in the same day isn’t so smart. Otherwise, slept well. Got up to a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day….that was supposed to hit 100 degrees in Denver!!! I headed to the mountains early to escape the heat. First on the agenda was a hike up to Herman Lake – going from 10k to 12k. Only saw a couple people on the way up. But I lounged on a huge boulder by the lake for a couple hours and saw a bunch of people, including a Continental Divide Trail thru-hiker (Mexico to Canada!), and just as many dogs! It’s a requirement out here. If you live here and you hike, you must own a medium to large sized dog. No exceptions. Check! I’ll have that one covered when I get back home.

Afterwards, I headed into Georgetown. I was going to take the scenic byway down to Grant, but they were doing road work and the road was closed from 1 to 3. So I bummed around Georgetown, shopping and eating. At 3:30 I headed out of town but only got about .3 miles. The roadwork was complete but the road was still closed 5 miles on because of a rockslide. I wouldn’t be doing that drive today. Waah. Found another scenic byway heading north towards Estes Park (site of the ill-fated marathon last year). Nice views but still more roadwork. By the end it was 5 pm so I turned east, driving through Boulder (I love Boulder!) and back down to Denver. Still had a lot to do this evening to prepare for the conference tomorrow to figure out where I was going and when.

Continental Divide Trail hike

View from the Continental Divide Trail

View going up to Herman Lake

At Herman Lake

Day 3
First day of the actual DrupalCamp. Attended sessions all day. It’s good to be back amongst others passionate about Drupal and technology. And interesting seeing some of the things that are being done with Drupal – amazing stuff and I WANT TO BE A PART OF IT, DAMNIT! I can’t get there fast enough.

Brain is fried so today’s post is short. Got out of sessions at 6:30, went for supper at an Italian place, then back to the host’s house and watched Mary and Max. Odd little movie. Still processing it. Time for bed. Zzzzzzzzzz.

Day 4
Super incredibly awesome day of sessions. Virtualization rocks. Special thanks to m_rookie for the Ubuntu help! Spent most of the day downloading various components during the sessions so that I could get to work on setting things up in the evening. Stayed up way past my bedtime installing a Linux server and getting Drupal and Drush going. Productive day. The cat helped…in his own way.

Day 5
Wow, what a day! Way more than I bargained for. Hooked up with a couple Drupal developers (Kevin Bridges and Tyler) to go downhill biking at Winter Park, about an hour or so west of Denver. Umm…like….this type of biking…

My plan was to take the EASY trails! That lasted till we got off the lift. The first trail we took was an intermediate trail. 45 minutes down the mountain just on the inside edge of control…mostly. The second run and we hit the black diamond trails. WHAT??? I like having all my appendages attached and my bones in one piece. I do!!! Almost lost it a couple times but stayed upright. Third run and we were on the “most difficult” Black Diamonds. Had to get off the bike and walk it over rock boulders and down steep embankments several times but I landed at the bottom completely unscathed. By this time, every muscle in my body was turning to jello. So we stopped for lunch. Finished lunch by 2:30, in time to do 2 more runs. I told Kevin and Tyler I’d meet them at the bottom and opted for an “easy” route this time. Easier to control, yes. But harder on the muscles. I swear half of it was uphill! Came to a cross-trail about halfway down and there was Tyler and Kevin sitting along side of the trail, helmets off, hanging out. Huh? Found out that they were as shot as I was. So we became a hangout point for a half hour for others passing by where we traded tails of broken bones. We continued on our way on our favorite black diamond trail – the Bootcamp trail. Awesome jumps and turns. I came around the last turn of the trail just in time to see Kevin wipe out…exactly 2 feet from the very end of the trail on the very last run of the day. He was fine but it was hilarious.

Wow. Amazing day. Except when I took one to the tail bone going over a rock I couldn’t avoid. Hope I can sit tomorrow. Or it’s going to be mighty uncomfortable on the plane.

I opted for the full body armor rental package!

Woohoo! Another adventure!

Krumy, Me, Kathy J (KJ), Michelle-Blue Eyes (BE)

H.A.R.D., you rock my world! Thanks for the great memories and the incredible friendships. Can’t wait for Steamtown marathon in the fall. Who’s in? [snicker]

Made it to the airport to a delayed flight. They were waiting for a mechanic to show up to take care of a small maintenance issue. That’s always comforting.

Like a Fish Out of Water

Got to SF with only a slight case of motion sickness. No reading on the plane this trip, just daydreaming. Adhered to my #1 rule though (no barfing at all cost). Hopped a shuttle to the hotel. Back in the city. Sorry to those of you who think San Francisco is great. To me it’s just another concentrated area of concrete, steel, and people with too much noise, overpowering smells, and overwhelming commotion. Not my thing. Why can’t they have these conferences in Rocky Mountain National Park or Yellowstone or someplace where you can camp out and talk Drupal by a campfire? I just don’t understand.

Tried to check into the hotel at 1:30. Room’s not ready, take a hike till 3 please. Out into the streets to find some lunch. Back to the hotel, check in, nap, wrestle with the computer to get connected to the wifi, and figured out the game plan for tomorrow. No TV remote in the room. Oh well, I don’t want to get sucked in anyway. Whined to a friend about being in the city and about dreading the next four days of trying to find a niche to fit into, and then off to bed.

Code Sprint Day

Leisurely morning getting out of bed – 10am!!! Errr…well…it was 7 am in San Francisco but I was still on east coast time. Put on my big girl pants and made my way over to the convention center, stopping for breakfast on the way. Registered and sat down to look over the conference book. Code sprint started at 10. [What's a code sprint? Version 7 of Drupal is in the works. In order to release it, the remainder of the bugs must be patched and tested. The code sprint is a mass effort to get as many items in the issue queue taken care of as possible.] No idea what I’d be able to do to contribute but headed over anyway. Sat down in the “documentation” section, sure that I didn’t know enough to join the Services or Code testing areas. The guy next to me immediately started jabbering about some node thing he was working on. I was out of my league. The best developers in Drupal were sitting all around me. I clearly didn’t belong. Checked email, typed a few text messages, and packed up. Nothing for me to do here. Headed towards the door and got about 10 feet from it when a guy jumped in front of me blocking my way.

Him: “Are you here for the code sprint?”
Me: “Well, I was but I’m in over my head.”
Him: “No, no. Come sit down. We’ll have you testing in less than an hour.”
Me: “You sure? I really have no idea what I’m doing.”
Him: “Positive. Do you have a testing environment set up on your laptop?”

Within an hour, I had a server set up, was applying patches, and testing code with the group I was sitting with. Woohoo! Finally got over a hurdle I’ve been trying to clear for 6 months! And one that opens up a ton of other doors. Let the conference begin!

Went to lunch with my group, locals who knew their way around SF. I picked their brains on what would be a good route to run and see the city. Worked with the group until 5, then headed back to the hotel, grabbed supper, and decided what sessions I was going to attend for the next 3 days.

Conference Day 1

Me with Dries Buytaert, Drupal founder

Long day of sessions today. Nothing earth shattering – just confirmation of how far I can go with Drupal and how far I have to go with Drupal. The best part was the keynote speech by the founder of Drupal – Dries Buytaert. It was what I was looking forward to the most today. His speech last year was incredible. He didn’t disappoint. He has an amazing grasp of the larger picture of not just Drupal but technology in general and a clear vision for Drupal, and clearly illustrates Drupal’s path for the future. He has a way of creating a culture of sharing and collaboration, of making you want to give back to the community, and of energizing and inspiring you….I drank the Drupal Coolaid.

I attended sessions on security, the Top 20 Drupal API’s, the Views module, Object-oriented PHP, and Drupal as a Web service. Cool stuff.

There are 3,000 people attending this conference (up from 1,400 last year) so I was glad to see a few familiar faces – people I met at the DrupalCamp in Colorado last year. Got caught up with them.

Also made my peace with the city today. Not quite as intimidated or overwhelmed once I figure out where I’m going. The walking commute to and from the convention center is actually kind of nice. (Did I type that out loud?)

Drupalisms of the day:
Talk is silver, code is gold.
I want a Druplipet.

Conference Day 2
Another full day of sessions. Hard to believe it was only one day. Tried a different tactic this morning – session hopping. Instead of trying to stick it out in a session that I wasn’t getting much out of, I sat in on several for a few minutes each to get a feel for them. Ended up staying in sessions on internationalization (translating your site), the Views module (another one…it’s a complex module! I also have 7 hours worth of video waiting to be watched on the views module. Did I mention it’s a complex module?), practices to keep your admin simple for your editors, panels module, Drupal 7 theming, Drupalchix, and got stuck in one that I really didn’t belong in but didn’t have the heart to leave…something about gardening with Drupal. What??? Lots of good info I need to explore.

Also met up with Laura from PingV of Colorado. Her company helped sponsor the DrupalCamp Colorado last year. Found out the DrupalCamp CO is on for this year but the dates are still being decided. Woohoo!!!! Two trips to Colorado already in the works for this summer.

Conference Day 3

More of the same today – sessions, sessions, sessions. One on making patches to submit back to the Drupal community, one on Drush (a command line thing that speeds up development) taught by a 14-year old!, module development, etc. Started to get fried near the end. This is it, thankfully. Time to go home tomorrow….taking a lot of good things back with me – collected lots of resources to work through and made some connections I can turn to when I need a push in the right direction.

Looking forward to getting home and back into the regular routine again. It’s been ages since I’ve seen that routine. And I promise, HARD, that includes getting my butt out of bed to run in the morning!

The Drupal Song at the closing ceremony – the person playing the accordion is the 14-year old presenter:

Never did finish this blog post. But this was the essence of the conference. Don’t have the time or brain power to articulate the rest right now except to list some interesting facts from the conference:

• $72,000 spent on coffee.
• ZERO IE6 users on the DrupalCon website (yeayyy!), 43% Apple users.
• Had up to 2200 people use the internet simultaneously consuming a 92 megabit pipe. Whoever did the wifi at Moscone needs a raise.