Why You Need Triathlon Tricks at BlogHer, or my Hunt for a Stuffed Mouse

When my husband first started racing in triathlons, I noticed that there were various balloons in the transition area. Some were the classic solid color balloons, but there were some fancy mylar balloons in animal and insect shapes. I found out that the triathletes tie them with their gear as a location aid.  When you come staggering out of the water and you're pulling off your wetsuit, it's helpful to have a highly visible signpost to guide you to your bike. 

This balloon trick came to mind at BlogHer this year. This year’s BlogHer had 5200 attendees.  Which is 1000+ more people than last year.  And a huge increase over the first BlogHer I attended in 2006, which had 700 attendees.  It was pretty challenging meeting up with people. I saw one woman wearing bunny ears and thought it was brilliant. Next year, balloon or bunny ears. This year,



 I had no chance run-in with Stimey.  Thankfully, there was Twitter.

Stimey and I are both very fond of rodents. I have had pet rats and gerbils over the years and she is crazy about mice and gerbils.  During the conference, Stimey kept posting all of these adorable photos of her stuffed mouse Algernon: having a drink, sitting in session, etc.  And we kept missing each other.  Here is a sample of our twitter dialogue:

I'll spare you all the tweets of my location to Stimey.  On Saturday night,  I started to think we might not be able to find each other.  So I decided a photo with virtual Algernon would be better than nothing. Here’s my tweet:

Note, that virtual Algernon is probably 5X the size of real life Algernon. This is the power of a high res photo on an iPad.

Stimey replied with:

and then we arranged to meet her at the CheeseburgHer party.  Success!  Yay!

Me and Stimey with Algernon

Algernon taking liberties upon first acquaintance

Check out Stimey's awesome post "Algernon Does NYC"