Monday, August 27, 2007

Hood To Coast 2007

The Hood To Coast Relay was this past weekend. If you don't know about it, and haven't read my previous blog posts about it, here's a quickie (and I know you all love a quickie, now and again): A 12-runner relay race starting at Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, down Highway 26 through Sandy and into Portland, then continuing up Highway 30 into St. Helens and over the Coast Range, finishing on the beach in Seaside. 197 miles total. 13-18 miles per runner, over 3 legs. And a kickass party on the beach afterwards! Was that a quick enough description for ya?

My team, Bunghole Liquors, finished in 26:24:30. Nike gave us some magnetic signs to keep track of our "roadkills" with (a roadkill is a runner you pass during your run). Our van of 6 runners had 119 total roadkills, of which 41 were mine. I think van 2 had 93 roadkills, bringing our team total to 212. My legs were Leg 6: 7.42 miles in 48:15 (6:30 pace, 15 roadkills). Leg 18: 4.15 miles in 28:41 (6:55 pace, 10 roadkills). And Leg 30: 5.35 miles in 34:55 (6:32 pace, 16 roadkills). My average over approx. 17 miles was 6:37. Not too bad, considering I hadn't trained much the month or so prior! Our team had a blast on the road. Of course nobody slept between legs. We were able to grab showers between our first and second legs, and shovel Olive Garden's nasty excuse for italian food down our necks, but sleep was next to impossible. I think one guy did grab an hour of sleep. Weak. It's not fun if you sleep! Here's a link to some Hood To Coast photos on Flickr, if you are so inclined. None of me, of course, since I had the camera...hopefully some of the others with cameras will kick down some more pics.

[EDIT]: I have to add a huge THANK YOU to the people at Red Bull for handing out so many cans of regular and sugar-free Red Bull to our team. I think every person in our van picked up at least 4 cans, and we drank them all (most of them with copious amounts of vodka!). My friend Kat was 100% correct when she said in her blog: "Red Bull = Liquid Crack".

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

SES San Jose, Day 3

Day 3 of SES San Jose is coming to an end. Guess I'd better touch on day 2 first, eh? The Expo started Tuesday, and the GTS team spent some time crawling through the booth areas. They definitely have the "A-Team" as far as booth staff goes at this show. Damn! Anyway, met some great people and heard about some amazing companies. Also picked up a good amount of swag, and tossed my business card in a whole bunch of lotteries for Apple iPhones, iPods, Sony PSPs, and even a 42" HDTV! Crazy. I doubt I'll win anything, especially with over 2000 attendees at SES. Of note, a couple of new friends, Monte and Lew from PromoPeddler.com, showed off their new iPhones. What an amazing device! Scott and I tried to get Alan to commit to buying us each one, but Alan wasn't sold. "Make us some money first!" was his response. Bummer.

Sessions Tuesday were very interesting. Some good info on PPC ad writing and Social Media marketing. There is a good overview on CNET News. The big event yesterday was Google Dance 2007. Google invited all SES attendees out to it's huge campus in Mountain View, and treated us all to a huge picnic and dance party. "Club G" is their on-site dance club. Very cool. Free food, beer and wine, and even a couple of free 'candy bars', offering bulk candy like Hot Tamales and Lemonheads. The lines for those were longer than the lines for alcohol! Priorities, people! Googlers are all quite young. Most looked like they just graduated from high school. Had a great time, and got a group to sing "Love Shack" by the B52's karaoke. We all had wigs, crazy hats, and inflatible instruments, and Google filmed our performance, and burned it to a DVD. I hope I get a copy! Nothing like a bunch of drunk geeks trying to sing while wearing funky costumes!

Today, sessions were also quite good. I particularly enjoyed seeing Rebecca Kelley from SEOmoz in Seattle, talk about link baiting. Great presentation, Rebecca! Skipped the first afternoon session to get a workout and some swimming/sunbathing by the pool in. Great weather down here, so I had to take advantage of it! Getting ready to hit the Intuit reception in about 30 minutes, and then the SearchFest/Webmaster Radio party at Club Vivid later tonight. I leave tomorrow, so I'll probably give a final update after I get home.

I leave for the Hood To Coast Relay Friday at noon. We're running from Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood down through Portland, and on over the Coast Range to Seaside on the coast. 197 miles, and it should take our team of 12 about 25 hours. Giddyup!

Monday, August 20, 2007

Search Engine Strategies San Jose 2007

Good afternoon, this is Robert reporting to you live from SES San Jose! Day one so far has been great. I skipped the first afternoon session though, in order to get a workout in, since I couldn't drag my hungover ass out of bed this morning to git 'r done. Last night's meet & greet at Gordon Biersch was a blast. And there are a lot of very attractive women in Search these days. Wow. I can't wait for the rest of the parties! Stay tuned for more, live from SES San Jose!