Post TechEd.... and a new adventure beckons!

Gee… just a month since my last post!

TechEd is done. It was fun, but wow, so very intense this year. I was happy to help out the BPI team with some BizTalk presentations, and happy to help cover TechEd on behalf of .NET Developer’s Journal. Here’s what I wrote about the plethora of new things (including BizTalk Server 2006) heading our way: http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/99008.htm

I have some cool BizTalk tech content I’ve been working on that will become either a blog post or magazine article (or both?), but that’s not done, and that will have to wait because… I’m going on vacation!

People that know me know I like to go “walkabout” in the desert and disappear from civilization for days at a time, but, it’s 100+ degrees out there now, so I needed a new adventure. So: my 13 yr-old daughter and I are going backpacking in the Sierras. We’re starting at a place that the US Postal Service doesn’t seem to know about, the nearest zip code seems to be 25 miles away. And… I’ve been on that 25 mile road, with its 700+ turns (yes, many blind), no guardrails, and shear plunges to a certain and likely painful death.  Once we get there everything with a scent goes into special “bear boxes” lest a bear peel open your car like a sardine can to get at a tube of toothpaste or deodorant that smells like “food”.

Then, my daughter and I will be strapping *everything* we need to survive for four days (including a bear-resistant food cache, as bear encounters are likely) on our backs and wandering off into the wilderness. If your idea of “roughing it” is staying at a 3-star hotel, well… this ain’t that J However, we’ve got great equipment, some pretty high tech stuff, so we’re set. Upgraded to the latest GPS too, so I am now the very happy owner of a Garmin Vista C (http://www.garmin.com/products/etrexVistac/)

So, if anyone needs to reach me next week, forget it! I’ll be hiking out of Mineral King CA into some pretty spectacular country. We’ll be peaking at ~11,000 feet, and will probably get in a snowball fight, and there’s a chance we’ll see more bears than people. Here's a low-res photo of the valley we'll be starting out of: http://www.nps.gov/seki/mk_pic.htm