The most amazing journey that I have done in the past years was definitely SQLcruise
(see http://www.sqlcruise.com) – a SQL Server
event organized and running by Brent Ozar (Blog | Twitter).
Without the speakers, and the sponsors we were 14 cruisers that were flying to Seattle
across the world for attending SQLcruise. Our journey took us from Seattle to Juneau,
to Skagway, to Glacier Bay, to Ketchikan, to Victoria, and finally back to Seattle.
Our home for the 7 days long cruise was the Norwegian Pear, one of the biggest cruise
ships I have ever seen in my life:
We left Seattle at Sunday (May 29) at 04:00pm. Here are some impressions cruising
out of Seattle and enjoying its skyline.
During the first days on sea we had a session from Buck Woody (Blog | Twitter)
about career, where we have seen that Buck is a really good story teller. Tim Ford
had a session about DMVs/DMFs in SQL Server and how you can organize them through
a periodic table – very interesting concept 
.
Brent also gave a session about SANs and how you can test and improve their performance.
After cruising the whole Monday and the half of Tuesday we arrived around 02:00pm
on Tuesday in Juneau, where I did an excursion to the Mendenhall glacier. Here are
some impressions:
After leaving Juneau Kendra Little (Blog | Twitter)
did a really great presentation on Isolation Levels and Locking inside SQL Server.
As you might know from her weblog NOLOCK is also acquiring some locks 
.
Wednesday morning we arrived at Skagway were I took a train and went up to the White
Pass Summit to the border of Canada. It was really awesome when you finally see all
the snow and you know you started at an elevation of 0…
After leaving Skagway we went to Glacier Bay, the most interesting part of the whole
cruise. Glacier Bay consists of a lot of different fjords, where you can see a lot
of different glaciers and a lot of wild life.
After we left Glacier Bay, Buck did a presentation on Communication, where we learned
a lot about how to communicate and which different variations of communication exists,
even when you are writing weblog posts like this. On Friday morning we arrived in
Ketchikan, where I did a kart tour adventure. Also very interesting and I had a lot
of fun!
With those karts we drove around 15 miles on very uneven forest streets “somewhere”
around Ketchikan. Those karts were able to speed up to 30 mph!
After leaving Ketchikan Brent did a presentation on Defensive Indexing which was also
very good and impressive. Brent also talked a lot of benchmarking and about his famous
Excel sheet, where he collects PerfMon counters. On Saturday evening we arrived in
Victoria, where I decided to stay on board and have the last night some fun at the
various bars on the ship with some other cruisers.
On Sunday morning we arrived back in Seattle, where I left the Norwegian Pearl around
08:30am and stayed the whole day in Seattle. My flight back to Vienna was leaving
on Monday morning at 07:30am ;-(
I have also to mention the sessions that Grant Fritchey (Blog | Twitter)
from Redgate, and Aaron Bertrand (Blog | Twitter)
from SQL Sentry gave! Without those sponsors SQLcruise would not be possible!!!
Thanks
-Klaus
