Long Beach, CA

Some first impressions from my trip to the west coast.
My ride to the airport (yeah, the driver carries my bag – he literally pulled it out of my hand *g*).

the inside (huh):

The weather in Long Beach was pretty cold (about 16 Celsius, Bloomington was about 27 Celsius *argh*). Anyway, it was a sunny and nice day, and my rental car (Pontiac) is neat (I’m now proud member of the Emerald club – thanks to IU):

Ok, I should have printed a map :-(. They did *not* have a map of Long Beach at the Los Angeles Airport :-(. So I tried to find the hotel on my own. That was a clear desaster, but I think I found the place where several scenes for Terminator I were shot:

It looks extremely similar, I nearly went down to test the race track :).

Anyway, I found the hotel finally. It’s pretty far away from the conference, but it’s really nice (incl. free wireless) and the hotel + rental car is *much* cheaper than the conference hotel!

My first talk on Monday went *really* nice and the room was completely packed and we had interesting questions/discussions :). I’m looking forward to my second talk on Friday!