First Business Trip of 2017

It was actually a little weird to travel for business again. My last business trip was at the end of October 2016 due to my knee surgery at the end of last year. Thanks to flying 105k miles last year, I maintained my 1K status, which allowed me to be upgraded to first class for both flights. Given my knee is still sore, I was very thankful for the extra comfort and legroom.

Wednesday ended up being a 20hr day. We woke up at 3:30 am to catch our flight, then I went straight to Cisco, then Brocade, then Cisco again for meetings upon arrival. After my last meeting, we met up with Venkat Ghanta for dinner and got back to the hotel around 11:30pm --> so it was 20 hours from the time we awoke to the time we went to bed with work, work, work in between.

Thursday morning, we spent 30min on-site for work before driving with Frank up to Roseville, CA for our quarterly business review. We have been hammered by HP the last 2-3 times we've had these meetings, but this last meeting went so much better. At about 4pm, we had break-out sessions and I went with Tom Parker - my peer at HPE - to Top Golf and we hit some golf balls while we discussed work and life. It was a great bonding moment and I'm looking forward to continuing to work with him and help his team be successful. These little things go such a long way!

For dinner - we went to a Brazilian steakhouse. It was awesome, but totally blew up my diet for the week. I'm looking forward to this next week to get back on track!

Here are some fun photos of Top Golf - I've got to go again sometime - super cool!