My trip to San Diego

We have an annual meeting in San Diego this time every year, so last week I was super busy and computerless.  San Diego is where the company Bionano Genomics is and we are a service center for them.   The company is awesome in that it gets all of the users of their technology together, and we have meetings where we talk about what we are doing and what the company is up to.  Last year I went and got sick a few days after getting there with a chest cold.  I did get to sit on a beach and get a few runs in, but not as many as I had hoped.  This year, I had planned to meet up with several people that i have met through blogs and through FB, and also wanted to keep to my running schedule.  If you follow me on FB, you know that this was the trip from hell.

Let's begin on the day we got there.  Our condo was on the beach and I could NOT believe our luck.  It was beautiful, the weather was perfect, and even though I seemed to be getting a cold, it was just a run of the mill head cold.  We walked on the beach, watched the surfers, and got wonderful pork tacos.  As the day went on, my cold was getting worse, but I had a new feeling, a feeling of something not right with my tummy.  That night we had a meet and greet at the host hotel, and I knew something was off, way off.  The food they had there looked amazing, but it was making me super nauseous.  They had free beer and wine, but I wisely stuck with just water and no food.  While chatting with some users (of the technology of course), it hit me, find a bathroom NOW.  I didn't make it (no one saw thank goodness),  but was able to clean up and head back out for more socializing.  Not really what I wanted to do at this point, but we were thirty minutes from the condo, and we needed to be there mingling with potential customers and collaborators.  Luckily, my boss figured out pretty quickly something was wrong we me and we tried to get back to the condo as quick as we could.  One of the girls from our bioinformatics group not only is a mom,  but she also knew pressure points, so she was able to keep me from throwing up till we got back.  Once we got back, it was a super long night praying to the porcelain gods.  The next morning however, we had meetings all day and I had to just pull it together and carry on.

That was the theme for the week for me, just pull it together and carry on.  My stomach bug (which my whole family minus andrew seems to have) is still lingering a week later.  I laugh because my boss asked me how I was so sick, but appearing to be normal.  I told her I guess it is about being a mom, we don't get days off.  I just sat by the door during the meetings, and if I needed to rush out, I did.  Lucky for me, the bug decided to attack from the other end after the first day, and other than my tummy making very loud odd noises, most people had no clue I was sick.  My head cold was quick lived, and I was feeling better from that by thursday.  Here are some pics from my trip that don't include the inside of the master bathroom, which is where I spent a majority if my time :)

Here is the one and only meal I got to really enjoy.  Pork tacos from a small taco shop.  Amazing.  

The view from our condo was equally amazing.  I could watch surfers and sunsets all day.  I huge thank you to my boss for getting this condo for us!  She really is the best boss ever and I love working for her!

My new friend.  We hung out together quite a bit one day when I was just trying not to feel like death sunning on the rock.

I did get to go on two runs.  One was two miler on the campus of Bionano, and the other was a almost 7 miles on the campus of University of California, San Diego.  We got to see many of the art work installations there and the beautiful campus, as well as some of the Torrey Pines area.  I didn't get as many pics as I wanted as I was pretty much just trying to make it through and enjoy the run as much as I could.  It probably wasn't the best of ideas, but it was a great way to see most of the campus in a short amount of time.  One of these days I will get to run San Diego!!!!!

The last night that we were there, I was feeling a bit better, so we headed to Stone brewery.  Last year I did not get ANY San Diego beers, so this year I had to have some!  We all did flights, so we could try lots new beers before we made our final selections.  I of course gravitated towards the stouts, and found an Oatmeal stout that I LOVED!  I had to be super careful though, since my stomach still wasn't 100 percent, so I opted for every sip or two, to drink twice that much in water. My flight that I did (one isn't pictured but it was another stout) lasted me most of the night.  I did have one 8 oz stout before we left, but again I made sure I drank twice that much in water.  

This is Andrew or "big andrew" as I call him, not because he is big per se, but he is bigger than my andrew.  It's sometimes odd to have two andrews in my life that I both talk to daily.  He is my FSA at Bionano and we work together closely.  He is also a fencer and was pretty big in NCAA fencing when he was in college.  Some day, he will be a super star again, and I can say I knew him back when!  He is also a runner so he took us on our running tour of the campus.  

We finally headed back Sunday, and of course our first flight was late getting out.  We were lucky in that our connecting flight was also super late leaving, so we didn't miss it. I don't know what we would have done since the national championship football game was in town and most of the hotels were booked and overflowing.  Unfortunately, when we did get on the ground in Kansas, two of our vehicles had dead batteries (and were covered in ice) and it was almost 1 am, so after the in towners were dropped off, I just crashed at my boss's house.  I finally got to see my red heads yesterday and got my car jumped off and running as well.  Grammy headed back today and I am looking forward post holiday and post trip to getting back into a regular groove.  I am again hoping for an even better trip to San Diego next year!