Last week I had a work trip to Scottsdale, to meet with some customers and learn a bit more about my new products. We had two days of meetings planned, plus a short meeting with a reseller on Friday morning before I flew home. The first day of the customer meetings went well, I learned a lot and made some good connections with some customers. We went out for dinner Wednesday night, which turned into a late night bar hopping. It was a bit crazy. We ended up at this one bar that was very festive - they had wrapped the whole thing in Christmas wrapping paper and lights.

While the outside of the bar was pretty crazy...

...the inside was absolutely nuts! This pic does not do it justice.

Near the hotel we discovered that Barrett Jackson had a showroom, and they had the original Batmobile on display!

After a very late night, our second day of meetings was a bit more challenging. But we got through, and dinner the second night was a little more tame. I think everyone was feeling it.

Our meetings on Friday morning got cancelled, so I took advantage to drive out to a Phoenix city park to go for a run. It was pretty tough trail run in the hilly desert area, but it was really beautiful

The top of the first climb of the trail run, looking back towards the city.

Saguaro cactus - pretty amazing to see them. The sun was still coming up.

The run was pretty slow and wiped me out, and I needed to be back for a call. I did some work, then got checked out of the hotel. Before heading out, I made a short side trip to the Desert Botanical Garden, which was about a 10 minute drive from the hotel. It was super cool, and had some great displays of desert plants (and lots of hummingbirds!). I wandered around for a little more than an hour, before heading out and finding a spot to work for a couple of hours before my flight back to Vancouver.

A whole series of different cacti - so cool!

Not sure what's happening at the top, but I saw this on a bunch of them.