June 9

We woke up this morning at the KOA in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We showered, packed, had some breakfast, and decided our route for our trip into D.C. for the annual scientific sessions conference of the American Diabetes Association.

We had a map of downtown Washington D.C., a map of the greater Washington D.C. area, directions to the hotel from the hotel’s web site, and a point-to-point route from Gettysburg, PA to the hotel entered into our handheld GPS. We were NOT going to get lost!

We arrived at the hotel about noon. We pulled into the small registration parking area, expecting to be able to park the car in the hotels parking ramp. It turns out they don’t have a parking ramp — all they had was valet parking and the sign said that valet parking was full.

So, I went to check-in and to ask about parking options. When I came out, I asked the man at the hotel valet parking desk about it and he asked me if we were guests. I said yes and he said that despite what the sign said, I could use the valet parking ($28/day). If I preferred, he said, I could also go to one of the nearby parking lots, but all the ones nearby that he knew of were full or I could park it on the street, but I’d have to move it before 7 PM and every 12 hours or so and, by the way, even then there’s a small chance that it would get towed. I’m not sure if the latter two options were actually true or just his pitch to keep our business. I wasn’t going to spend my afternoon searching downtown D.C. for parking, so $28/day for parking was sounding pretty good.

The only hitch was that he said that the rear bike carrier would have to come off. No problem — a single bolt needs to be removed to take it off. And, oh by the way, the cargo box on the top would have to come off too because the ceiling of the parking lot probably isn’t high enough for it to remain on the roof.

So, 30 minutes and $45 in tips later, we had the rear bike carrier stored inside the minivan, the minivan in valet parking, the cargo box in storage, the bicycles in storage, and our luggage taken up to our rooms.

It was about 1 PM and I had been asked to attend a Bayer HealthCare pre-conference meeting at 4:30 PM, so we had some free time. We headed out to get some lunch and then wander around town a bit.

At 4:30, I attended a pre-conference booth training session for Bayer booth workers. It was great to go and see some of the Bayer HealthCare people that I met way back in January at their National Sales Meeting.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 11th, 2006 at 5:01 am and is filed under The Dream Tour, Diabetes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.