Finally: Kansas City Recap

So back in October I went to Kansas City, MO for a conference.  I was doing a poster presentation on some of my research, but I also had a lot of free time to explore the city.  Here I am with my poster, Vanna White style:

 And this is Aron Ralston.  You know, the guy who had to cut his own arm off.  He was one of the speakers at the conference and he was amazing.  Not only was his story amazing, but he is an excellent public speaker.  I normally sit in the back for these sorts of things, but I was in the second row for this one!

We flew in on a Wednesday and left super early in the morning.  Once we got to the hotel I made the executive decision to go for a run and see the city.  I'm really glad I did and I'm proud of myself because I normally would have taken a nap.  Unfortunately the run reminded me of why I hate city running.  Too many cars!  I saw lots of neat things, so I came back with my travel mates to check things out.  Here's the view of the city from the hotel:

One of my favorite sites was this dinosaur.  I saw it on my run and couldn't wait to have my picture taken with it.

This dinosaur was at Union Station:

Which is right across from the WWI memorial, which is atop a giant hill, which I stupidly ran up my first day in town.  Whoever said Kansas City was flat was a liar.

We also went to the Federal Reserve Bank.

Ever wonder what $40 million in cash looks like?  Wonder no more:

The other things I saw included that Power and Light District, which is essentially a couple of blocks of town that were bought up and developed and they put up a bunch of lighting.  Unfortunately it's really the only decent place to eat withing walking distance of our hotel so we ended up there a lot.  And I also went to a jazz nightclub with some friends.  That night it was a guy who played the trumpet, who also sang, and also tap danced.  Not exactly jazz, but it was funny!  And it was really just nice to be out with people enjoying a couple of drinks, which is something I don't get to do often when I'm home.

And the highlight of the trip was the rodeo we went to.  I don't even know where to begin in explaining that.  It's unlike anything I have ever done.  I'm not sure that it's something I would want to go to all the time, but it was certainly an experience.  It was hard to get good pictures since everything was moving!

You get the idea.  Well, that's it for now!