I'm back from my long business trip to San Antonio. I was supposed to return on Saturday morning (after putting the application into production late Friday night) but the customer messed up and production has been delayed by two weeks. So yesterday as soon as I could I headed to the airport and went standby on the first flight back to Dallas. I ended up on the ground in Dallas by 5:00 and was picked up by my wonderful wife and daughter.
I spent all week training, two classes that were each two days long. It was exhausting and stressful. Luckily it's almost over: one more two-day class next week, then a quick trip in two weeks for the production rollout, then I'll go into "maintenance and support" mode for this system and roll off onto some new projects.
I really wore myself out this week. Whenever I travel I stay up too late, and I had to get up early every morning so I could get to the training early and setup. I spent all day on my feet talking and training. I didn't eat enough. But I still managed to walk three afternoons/evenings at McAllister Park, the park with the wonderful trails I discovered last week. The only bad thing about the walks is that I walked in the evening, not the morning, so the temperatures were between 95 and 100 degrees. I'm really not used to those temperatures!
I managed to walk 6.23, 7.58 and 6.14 miles in the park on the trails. They are a mixture of smooth dirt, rocky dirt, some nice rock with scree, lots of roots, etc. The trails are really awesome--I saw tons of cactus and prickly pear, lots of other flora and fauna, armadillos, deer, wild turkeys, etc. I might try to take some pictures next week so everyone can see how awesome this park is.
Due to my travel schedule I took two days off (Friday and Saturday). Tomorrow it will be back to the roads. I'm planning on doing a little over 30 miles tomorrow; that will be three loops around White Rock Lake, and I'll have to add a little extra loop I've discovered to get over 30 (a standard loop is about 9.3 miles). I'm going to get up at 4:00 and get going as quickly as possible, both to avoid the heat and to get home early and spend some quality time with my family. All this travel has been hard on everyone and I really miss being home. Since I have to leave again Monday I want to spend as much time with them as possible.
I hope everyone is having good training and avoiding the heat.
