Seattle for SIGCSE - March 7-12, 2017

These pictures were taken with my Fujifilm Finepix HS50 on the roads in the Seattle area during a visit for the SIGCSE conference, March 7-12, 2017. Images are shown at a resolution of 800x600. Larger image formats for some images are available by clicking the links below each image.

March 7: Amsterdam, New York, to SeaTac, Washington

After a morning stop at the office, it was off to Albany Airport to start my trip. The parking garage and the main long term parking lot were full, so I used the free valet service that is apparently a new feature of the long term lot. The flights were on time and easy and I got a ton of work done on the way. I stopped in Baltimore but didn't change planes. Even so, they let the through passengers out into the terminal for about 20 minutes. Arrival at SeaTac was on time, but things slowed after that. Baggage was a little slow, the rental car shuttle was slow, and the Avis rental car counter was ridiculously slow. Once I finally had my car, I found a good little Thai place for dinner (Emerald Thai in Des Moines), then checked into my Sleep Inn near the airport. First impressions there weren't great, with an excessive number of "park at your own risk" type signs, but I had no troubles.

March 8: Ski Crystal Mountain

My first full day in the area was my ski day. There's been a lot of snow, and it was expected to be a snowy day in the mountains, so I ordered a ride on a shuttle service to Crystal Mountain. I was glad I did, given how snowy the roads were in the higher elevations both ways. And I was also very happy with the ski day. It had snowed several inches overnight and snowed on for most of the day. An excellent powder day! I hope to go back some day when I can also appreciate some scenery. All I saw was white [6 Pictures]. I ended up skiing almost 20 miles according to Ski Tracks, with over 17,000 vertical feet [Ski Tracks Map][Ski Tracks Stats]. I got lunch at the higher end lodge at the top of the Forest Queen lift. The teriyaki chicken rice bowl was pretty good. After the very enjoyable but very tiring day of skiing, and the ride back down, I ended up trying Ezell's Chicken. It was good but not at the top of my list of favorite fried chicken places. [8 Pictures from the roads]

March 9: SIGCSE Day 1

This was the first day at the SIGCSE conference. so it was an early start to drive up from SeaTac to downtown [7 Pictures] in time for the morning plenary session. It was overall an enjoyable and educational day, which included lunch from a small place in the Pike Place Market, a short walk down by the waterfront [3 Pictures], and a quick couple tacos from a Taco Del Mar in the convention center before the conference reception.

March 10: SIGCSE Day 2

Day 2 at the conference, again filled with presentations and lots of talking with the vendors. This day's lunch was complements of zyBooks at their users meeting. After a ride back to the hotel for a bit late afternoon, I drove back up to downtown to meet a CCSCNE group for dinner at a fancy French restaurant named Place Pigalle. Very good, but quite expensive and slow. That made for a very long day. [6 Pictures from the roads]

March 11: SIGCSE Day 3 and old RPI crowd get-together

The last day of SIGCSE arrived quickly, and the morning sessions were very good, as was the conference wrapup luncheon. By the end of that, I was pretty tired and decided to skip the planned afternoon visit to the Boeing Museum of Flight (next time!) and went back to the hotel to rest a little and to listen to the Union Hockey playoff game I was missing (they won in epic fashion). Then it was off to Bellevue to meet up with some of the old RPI crowd who are now in the Seattle area. We had a nice dinner at Firenze, then drove over to Kirkland for gelato and to walk around that area. A fun evening! [3 Pictures from the roads]

March 12: Early return, SeaTac, Washington, to Amsterdam, New York

This was supposed to be a free day in the area for a second ski day or other touristy things, but it was cut short because of the impending snowstorm back in the east. Southwest was allowing free scheduling changes, and my itinerary was eligible since I was connecting in Chicago. So I spent the morning rearranging travel, took a little driving tour back up through downtown Seattle and a little more north [6 Pictures], then it was back to the airport area for the long trip home. The first flight got out pretty late, but gave me a nice view of the Seattle area on the way out [5 Pictures]. It was a quick visit to Chicago Midway's terminal, then a long way for deicing as it had started to snow before the late night flight to Albany was able to take off. I got to Albany in the early morning hours.

terescoj+pics@teresco.org - Sun Jun 4 15:55:39 EDT 2017