It has been nearly one week since SQL Saturday 132 in Pensacola Florida.  I was chosen to give my talk on “Know Backups and Know Recovery”.  The session was in the first time slot and when I arrived at the event just before 8:00 AM I had to walk through about 4 inches of water soaking my feet.  It was raining pretty hard and shortly after arriving the thunder and lightening arrive and I am not talking about Devin Knight or SQL Chicken.

I walked around and caught up with some of my friends and then headed up to my room to get setup.  It took a little longer and I would have liked to get the audio visual equipment hooked up but I made good use of the time asking questions that would lead into my presentation.  I was honored to have Tony Davis from Simple-Talk attend my session and spend some time with me afterwards.  It was great getting his feedback on my session.  It was a bit eerie though watching the fierce wind, rain and lightening out of the windows of in the back of the room.

My intention was to leave the event shortly after my session to spend some time with my wife and three kids that were back at the resort on Pensacola Beach.  I couldn’t quite leave when I wanted due to the really bad lightening.  Once there was a quick break I was able to venture out into the parking lot with water just below my knees.  When I got in my wife’s new Jeep Rubicon and backed out of the parking space I noticed several inches of water in the passenger side floorboard.  Oops.

I thought that would be the worst of it but upon leaving the university and driving down the canals of downtown Pensacola (they couldn’t call them streets that day) I encountered water levels of about 3 1/2 feet deep.  It was a rather strange feeling driving the streets of Pensacola in 4 wheel drive worrying about submerging your vehicle in too deep of water.  It was even more strange driving 15 MPH across a mile long bridge in a complete white out.

Once I crossed the toll bridge onto Pensacola Beach the clouds stopped dropping the wet stuff and it was rather pretty.  I pulled in the parking garage of Margaritaville and pulled the drain plugs out of the floor board of the Jeep and let the water drain out, then put on my swim suite and had some fun with the kids and wife on the beach and in the pool.

It was fun watching the twitter feed seeing all the new hashtags.  #sqlswim, #sqlscuba, #sqlmonsoon, #sqlflood, etc.

The drive home Sunday was just as adventurous with heavy rain the entire way.  We might not have had all the fun in the sun that the kids came down for, but we managed to spend time together, worked in some beach, ocean, pool time and got to be part of history for Pensacola.  All in all I think the kids will have some great memories from this trip.

Lets hope for better weather in Fort Lauderdale this weekend for SQL Saturday 141.