Back from Boot Camp!

Wow. Another week off gone by already? Where does the time go? Well, I hear that time flies, and this past week, so did I. I attended three of the fours days of “Hospitalist Boot Camp for PAs and NPs” put on by the AAPA, AANP and SHM. I couldn’t do the last day as I had to actually be a hospitalist and get back to work.

The conference was pretty good with engaging speakers, salient topics and great food. The host hotel, Westfields Marriott was quite nice although, sort of in the middle of nowhwere (Chantilly, VA). Located in what is essentially a huge office park for DoD contractors (Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Aerospace, etc), I’m surprised I didn’t need security clearance while I was out running, although, I’m sure that if I had set foot on their property, I would have met some friendly people with guns. One of the buildings had no external markings on it whatsoever, but it did have a fairly high level of security (i.e. tall fences and armed guards—probably classified as “low security” to industries that need really high security). Perhaps ironically, I was able to find out that it’s the National Reconnaissance Office by checking the area out on GoogleMaps. The ironic part, for those not in the know, is that the NRO “designs, builds and operates the nation's reconnaissance satellites” and I got to this information from a satellite image thanks to Google.

Anyway, aside from potentially making myself “a person of interest,” by mentioning all of these companies, I did spend some time networking with other PAs/NPs and reviewing plenty of issues relating to hospital based medicine.

That trip pretty much dominated my week off as I had to get anything I needed to get done, done in only a few days. Yard work, house stuff, and lots of yadda, yadda, yadda means I’m back to work in what seems like a blink of an eye.

Before taking off though, my buddy Rob and I got a good ride in at Harold Parker on the fully rigid singlespeeds--yeah!

Well, time to start looking ahead to my NEXT week off!

Drive to Vermont, Strike 2.

If you're a dedicated reader to this blog, you surely remember that a couple of weeks ago I made the trek to the Northeast Kingdom, hoping to ride some of the best trails in East only to be thwarted by torrential rain. Well, I gave good ol' Vermont another shot last week with about the same result.

I checked the weather all day prior to my road trip. I even double checked at 5:00am that morning, before my departure. All indications were that rain would be moving in late in the afternoon. I figured I had plenty of time to get up to VT and hit the trailhead by 10ish and get a good 3hr ride in.

When I hit rain in southern New Hampshire, I thought that I'd drive through it by the time I hit the White Mountains. When the rain didn't stop, I thought that once I got through Franconia Notch, I'd see clear skies. Sadly, my optimism disappeared when I was still driving through a deluge in Littleton, NH. I had another reason to go to Vermont, so I continued on to my wooded acres in East Burke.

That's right, there's been more action! We now actually have someplace of our very own to park and three stairs that, for now, go nowhere.

I've got to get some more work done on my perimeter trail and then eventually build my tent-deck... Rome wasn't built in a day, right?

Anyway, no work was done on this particular day. I essentially packed my bike and gear into the car, drove it all to Vermont, parked in my new parking lot, turned around, and drove home. Thankfully, my iPod kept me from going insane.