The week of January 18th I was off to California for the annual Pest Ed convention. This year they changed the format slightly with meetings on Tuesday in Montebello and on Thursday in Sacramento. I flew into Long Beach, CA on Monday afternoon and drove to Sand Diego to have dinner with Kyle. After dinner I drove back to Montebello to spend the night.
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| Saw this at a gas station in Long Beach. Not something you would see every day |
Tuesday was the convention and trade show. I spoke on localized treatment for Drywood termites. Since the room was mostly filled with people who do fumigations for a living they were not particularly interested in what I had to say.
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| #3, Ben Bourgoyne |
A secondary reason for this trip was to attend a couple of basketball games that my nephew, Ben Burgoyne was playing in for Pasadena High School. I take my video camera and film the games so his grandpa can see him play. I left the conference around 3:30 and drove to Glendale where Ben's team was playing Herbert Hoover high school. Pasadena won the game 64 to 32. Ben didn't play particularly well. I guess he was saving it for the Friday game.
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| Ben waiting for the girls game to conclude |
After the game I drove to Bakersfield to spend the evening. Wednesday morning I drove up the central valley to Sacramento. The valley looked much greener this year and there was standing water everywhere from the storms early that week. Wednesday afternoon I had a meeting with Dr. Jimmy Pitzer at Sacramento State University. Then I was off to the Red Lion hotel at Leisure town for the 2nd day of the convention.
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| The lake and fountains at the Red Lion resort, Sacramento, CA |
The Red Lion is an older facility and in fact they keep about half of the facility vacant. This is the location where 2 years ago I had to interrupt my talk because of the Jesus Rock band that was performing next door. This year we had the place to ourselves. After the meetings on Thursday I drove south to Madera, CA to spend the evening.
In the morning I met with my field development rep for breakfast, then it was off to Long Beach to meet Kyle and attend Ben's second game.
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| Ben's poster on the wall of the gym |
Friday evening Pasadena played their in city rival, John Miur high school. Dale and Susan told us to arrive early. Since we were worried about traffic we got there about 10 to 5. We watched the last 10 minutes of the girls game (Pasadena won 60 something to 8). They announced that the varsity game would start at 6:30 (instead of 7 like was listed in all the schedules). We decided to just stay and we were glad we did.
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| Ben (with the ball) waiting for the game to start |
By 6 pm the place was packed and at 6:10 they stopped letting people into the game. Dale and Susan did not get to see this one which was too bad because Ben took over the game in the last 4 minutes and helped Pasadena pull out a 59 to 49 win. I believe he had 17 points including 8 in the final quarter.
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| Waiting for Sarah Beth outside the Galeria |
After the game Kyle and I met Sarah Beth in Glendale and had dinner. The temperature was a very comfortable 70 degrees and there were lots of people by the Galeria just enjoying the beautiful winter weather. Kyle and I spent the evening near the airport in Long Beach where there were a lot of guests attending some youth hockey league tryouts. Seemed strange to see kids with hockey gear when the weather was so nice.
Kyle dropped me off at the airport Saturday morning and I was home by noon. Six days is a long time to be on the road.
