Welcome

We left Bloomington this morning around 6:15 am to make sure we were at the airport with plenty of time to catch our 9:30 am flight.

The flight went from Indy to Chicago and then on to San Francisco. In Chicago we got off of the plane to stretch our legs before the 4 hour flight to San Francisco. American doesn't give you anything to snack on during the flight just drinks. Other airlines I have been on recently at least throw you a bag of peanuts.

We got into San Francisco about 12:45 pacific time and then had to figure out how to catch the Caltrain to San Jose. Luckily the route was fairly well labeled and we took the airport tram to the BART and the BART to Caltrain. We almost lost Adam Basey and Matt Henry at the BART stop since the doors closed before they were able to get on. Luckily the conductor saw them standing there and reopened the doors to let them on.

The Caltrain was a double decker train and I hadn't seen that before. We all managed to get on the Caltrain with no problems. We rode all of the way to San Jose and then had the task of finding the hotel. I forgot to print directions to the hotel so we ended up asking a few people. We walked a long way to get to the hotel from the Caltrain stop. On the way back I am going to figure out how to get on the light rail to take that to the Caltrain and then back to SF.

The only tragedy we had was loosing one of the tubes with a few CHI posters in it. Luckily a few people were carrying copies of the poster so everything is ok.

After getting checked into the Ramada we went to get dinner and then to find the convention center. We are really close so the walk tomorrow won't be that bad.

Tonight we are probably going to have 5 people in a room meant for no more than 4 and honestly 3 comfortably. We are hoping to be able to relocate the two roommates we picked up a few weeks ago to another room since our room is so overcrowded right now.

Tomorrow is the first official day of the conference. Our CHI teams have their poster session tomorrow and will know by the end of the day if they are presenting on Wednesday. I just have to figure out what talks I want to go to tomorrow.

The more pressing thing for me right now is to get my video edited down for Jeff's class and to write my two reflection papers. I am hoping to get at least one of these done this evening.

There are a lot of students at the Ramada. It is really noisy and I am sure there will be a lot of parties here. Tonight I am just exhausted from the trip. It is 9:30 here and 12:30 in Bloomington so it is getting close to my bedtime.