Except for Twitter feeds to and from my cellphone, I've been "away from keys" most of this past weekend, meeting for the first time with friends from the Internet and cyclists I'd only seen on TV.
This past Sunday, several notable dBloggers and other members of the Diabetes Online Community met in New York City for lunch at Marseille, a Mediterranean French/Moroccan bistro on the western edge of Restaurant Row. Present and accounted for were:
- Allison Blass, author of Lemonade Life, and her T3 boyfriend Erik;
- LeeAnn, author of The Butter Compartment, and her T3 husband, Jason;
- Cara, author of Every Day Every Hour Every Minute;
- Cara's T3 sorority sister Amanda;
- Val, author of Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Low;
- Amylia, author of One Type One and Aiming for Grace;
- Chuck Lin;
- Erica, whose blog is located at Haecceity.Nu;
- Tia;
- Wendy;
- me, and my T2 other half, Frank.
The occasion for the shindig was Cara's visit to New York City -- though it's hard to say whether she or Amylia had further to travel. Other notable NYC-area dBloggers were invited as well, but the holiday weekend and previous plans got in the way of them being able to attend. As it was, the size of our party stretched the bistro's ability to sit the lot of us together -- but we were animated enough that we hardly noticed. The food was excellent, the waiters moreso, and everything was a delight to the eye as well as the palate. Our reservation was set for 12:00, and we finally left at about 14:45. From there we split up, one group of us hiking back to Penn Station for trains out to various points north, south, and west. Frank and I waited at the station for Val's 17:15 Amtrak train to be called to board before heading to our own NJ Transit commuter train. We finally reached home around 18:30. More about the meetup can be found at LeeAnn's and Allison's blogs, as well as my own Blogabetes entry, "Make New Friends".
Since the first time Phil Southerland and Joe Eldridge were featured on dLife, I've been a fan of Team Type 1. So when the team's public calendar said they would be racing at the annual Tour of Somerville, a mere four towns away from me, on 25 May, I added it to my schedule and posted the event. As it turned out, the team had been in town for the entire four-day event, but since the calendar did not mention the earlier days, I had not thought to rearrange my schedule to cheer them on earlier.
The first race of the day was set for 10:45, and we first arrived on site barely in time for that race. I subscribe to the Team Type 1 blog over on Blogger as well as follow the team on Twitter. Still, this is the first time I'd seen the team in person and aside from the headliners mentioned in the blog, I hadn't memorized the complete roster (still haven't), much less been at a point to recognize the various players by their appearance. (Unfortunately this tends to make me look half like a poser and half like a monkey's nether parts. Trying to bluster past this only makes things worse.) Notwithstanding, I did manage to meet several members of the team, make contact with the team's PR manager (Sean Weide, the man behind both blog and Twitterfeed), and get some photos before the team's races. I've blogged more about the overall experience on Blogabetes, and my photographic attempts over at Diabetic Rockstar.
The Tour of Somerville races ended at about 17:30, when the winners of the final race were announced and presented to the audience. Between errands and being too tired to cook in, we finally got home for the night about 20:00... and I had over 500 digital photos to sort through.
I finally got the first pass through on photos done mid-day Tuesday, and the second pass mid-day Wednesday. I'm still catching up on e-mail and forum threads... may take another day or two. For the fun I had this weekend... it was worth it :)