As I mentioned previously, I was on vacation for about 10 days and got back to Albany very early Wednesday morning (or late Tuesday night depending on how one looks at it.) And once back from vacation I had to jump right back into two other events I had previously put on my schedule. This meant I didn’t have much time to catch up on work or sleep. But it was worth it.

A confluence of events meant that I ended up being double booked this past weekend. The first event was some special cave rescue training called a Small Party Assisted Rescue (SPAR) class. This was a 3 day class, Friday through Sunday. However, in addition, students had the chance to show up Thursday night in order to test on their skills before participating.  I was both an instructor for this class as well as the site and course organizer. My second event was SQL Saturday Albany, which I had been selected to speak at. I’m also the User Group coordinator that sponsors this event. This double booking meant that I couldn’t instruct at the SPAR on Saturday. I do want to note that at both events there were a number of other volunteers, and some were doing even more work than I was.

Between these two events, it meant I was getting about 6 hours of sleep a night plus putting in a lot of driving. It was a long, tiring, essentially 3.5 day weekend starting on Thursday. Additionally the jet-lag made it seem even longer.

Why do I mention all this? Because, both events are very important to me and cover two large areas of my life. I’ve previously written about some of my SQL Saturday experiences and SQL Pass experiences.  This is part of my professional life. I feel very strongly about volunteering and speaking at these SQL events. I enjoy running our local Capital Area SQL Server User Group (CASSUG) for the same reason. I’m a better DBA because of the shared experiences of my fellow speakers. I’ve written about this previously here and elsewhere in this blog. I hope I’ve helped others.

Deborah Melkin discusses normalized vs. star schemas.

On the other side, as my slide deck often points out, I’m a caver. More critically I’m the Northeastern Regional Coordinator for the National Cave Rescue Commission. I’ve had the privilege of teaching 100s of people how to perform cave rescue, been a media resource during the 2018 Thai rescue, and have spoken and written on the subject. I am by no means an expert, I’m always learning, as are all my fellow instructors. But, we all are not only willing, but want to spend the time and money and effort to teach others. We are passionate about it.  I don’t mean this lightly. For this particular SPAR, while about 1/2 the instructors lived within 2 hours of the event and it was an easy drive, the rest either drove 5-8 hours, or spent all day flying on standby to get here or to get home. None were reimbursed for any of their expenses and in fact had to pay for linens if they wanted them.  They also had to take 2 days or more days off of work to come to New York.

Next summer, I will be the course coordinator for our 2020 National Weeklong here in New York State. This will bring close to 100 people to New York for a week of 14 hour days of teaching and learning cave rescue techniques. Fortunately, I will have a LOT of help organizing this event. But again, all the instructors and staff are volunteers who will travel at their own expense to be here and help teach.

So I spent my weekend volunteering, because I’m passionate about it. How was your weekend?