It's a Long Way to Minnesota, It's a Long, Long Way To Go...

By the time you read this I should be well on my way to Minneapolis. It is amazing how three hours worth of flying can consume an entire day. It will take about an hour to get to the airport and of course I have to be at the airport at least two hours in advance so I can clear security and customs. I then have a three-hour layover in Milwaukee before I finally board the plane for Minnesota. It seems that the total travel time, from my house to the hotel in downtown Minneapolis will be something like nine hours, only three of which will be in the air. Of course I fully intend to use this time to catch up on some reading and writing.

If you happen to live between Toronto and Minneapolis and see a MidWest Airlines jet fly over, feel free to wave. If I see you I’ll wave back.

In theory, Doug [2] should be waiting for me at the airport. We have exchanged pictures and assume we will recognize each other amidst the throng of people that will have shared my flight from Milwaukee.

Some of the other bloggers I hope to meet at the conference (or while I am in Minneapolis) include:

Adam [3], Tim [4] (I believe he said he would be there) and Justin [5]. And I suppose I’ll have to say hello to John Piper and some of the other speakers.

My wife remarked to me the other day that I seem either excited or nervous about this conference. I told her that it is a little bit of both. I am definitely excited to attend the conference, hear the speakers and meet some people I much admire. I’ll even admit that I’m looking forward to the spiritual excitement that always seems to accompany events like this. Now obviously the conference has absolutely nothing to do with me, and I am playing only a very small and insignificant role, but this is about the first time that I will bravely venture from behind my keyboard and actually meet a good number of the people who read this site. It is going to be odd, though I trust interesting and edifying, to meet people who know a lot about me even though we have never met.

In other news, I will be modifying the site just a little bit during the conference. I will be putting entire posts on the main page rather than mere excerpts. And with apologies to those of you who read the site via RSS, I will be updating posts several times during the day, so expect a higher volume of notifications than the usual.

Anyways, I trust this will be an edifying weekend for me and I hope I will be able to convey some of what is happening at the conference as well. Stay tuned! The conference begins tonight at 7:15 EST.