I'm so behind on blogging ... but here goes a start to the finish of April ...
The last weekend of April, Phil, JJ, Gaby, and I headed to Monterrey Mexico. The site of our upcoming Latin America Conference. We got there a few days early to meet with vendors and prepare the hotel with what was sure to be a packed house. We were expecting about 400 people, to fit in a room that held about 300 ... standing room only was most definite. We get to Monterrey after a long day of traveling and realize that we were upgraded to the business level. The 8th floor with stunning views of the mountains ... yes mountains in Mexico. Phil and I got to our room and pushed away the drapes to realize that we had a huge PATIO ... bigger than most hotel patios. As we checked out our awesome new digs we realized we were the only one to have such a patio, there was only one thing missing ... some mexican beer.
So we gathered the troops and walked accross the street to the mall. The mall was quiet impressive. And although some stores were odd ... there were monkeys in the pet store for example, the mall had everything we needed ... including a grocery store for some dos ekkie's =) We were only in Mexico for a few days before all hell broke loose in the America Media. "Swine Flu in Mexico". We were in Monterrey, far away from Mexico City and not one time did I feel unsafe or at risk. Still we had a mass of people calling and emailing and cancellations of some of our top speakers unable to travel to Mexico. The day of our conference I got a call at 5 am, and emergency meeting to prepare for what could be the ultimate worst case scenario ... the cancellation of the conference. A few hours later our worst nightmare came true, the confernece was cancelled and there were talks the border might be closed by the end of the day. As we were helping people book tickets back to the US we got word there was an earthquake in mexico city ... sure what other disasters could happen in one day.
Our whole office got on a one hour flight to Houston back to the US. Our 1 hour flight turned into an 8 hour flight after we were grounded in New Orleans for more gas and because of a hail storm in Houston. We spent the night in Houston and then got on a plane to Miami the next day. Got into Miami 3 days later at 1 am. What a trip. I had a disposable camera in Mexico and got a photo CD from CVS. Obviously they rarely do film because there were only 19 pictures on my photo CD but 27 pictures taken. They also decided not to print a few of the photos, like this acceptable self portrait of Phil and I:
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