May 30, 2011

Championship 2011

Amazing!!!!
Farmers Championship is the top 3% of all of Farmers agents. 
Championship for 2011 was held in San Francisco.
Renee and I both thought there was no way that they could top last year’s
 Championship that was held is San Diego. That was an awesome time,
but they did top it!
 
Renee and I got there Saturday afternoon.
We stayed at the Hilton downtown.
We got settled into our room and decided to go check out the town.
What a beautiful city this is. 



 
We walked down to the water front.



 I can’t believe how steep the streets are.

Walking down was harder than going up.




We had a great first night. We met up with
Gerry and Chris McGree.

 He is an agent from Yakima.
We ate at this great Italian restaurant.
When done with dinner Gerry decides to hit every 3rd bars on the way back. 
WOW, bad mistake.
He and I started out with a shot of tequila and he got shots of Irish whiskey. 
It turned out to be a reenactment of the hang-over movie.
I lost my IPhone. That was an expensive drunk night. 
I stayed in bed all the next day. Wasn’t fun.


Each morning the company had arranged a group walk at 7am for whomever wanted
 to get up and see some of the sights of San Francisco.
Renee and I got up every morning and did the walk. 
What a great way to start out the day.
Each day was a different tour. 
They are famous for all the hearts around the city.
Union Square was great.



All of the Farmers meetings were really good. 
It is always great to talk to other people in Farmers and see how they 
work their agencies. 
We always get great new  ideas. 

Renee was on a panel of agents talking to all of us about some of the things they do. 
Renee talked about Facebook and how it can be a benefit to your agency and it’s FREE. 

We also had Leanne Tuohy and Michael Orr as guest speaker's. 
They are the true life people of the Movie 
“The Blind Side”.
Thier story was so wonderful. 
Renee and I got our picture taken with them.

This year the company did a “Networking Room”.
Renee and I called it the Austin Powers room, because of the furniture. 
It was really nice to have a place to go just for Farmers 
people to talk and share ideas. 
Oh ya, it also had a open bar. 
 And as always the dinners and entertainment were great.
We got a private concert with Rascal Flats.
What great entertainers they are. 
Everyone loved the concert, even those that don’t like country music.
They sang, told jokes, and interacted with the crowd. 
Thier song "Stand" topped the chart the day they played for us. 


Yes we were really close… 
I have to say my neck hurt after the concert. 
What a thing to bitch about LOL.


This year Farmers is sponsoring Nascar with the Hendrick's team.
Mark Martin is driving it this year, but we heard that Kasey Kahne  will drive it next year.
He is from Enumclaw, Washington
They had this car in the networking room, 
 
no one could figure out how they got the car in and out of the room.
 
Everyone got a choice of different actives to partake in. 
 
Renee and I chose to have free time. So we took the trolley down to the waterfront.
Look in the window you can see me standing on the outside and Renee sitting down.
          We were going to hike a couple of miles and just enjoy the city. 
Renee said to me that the “bike tour” gets to ride over the Golden Gate Bridge. 
I said WHAT!! If I would have known that I would have chosen to do the bike tour. 
Right then we saw a bike shop and went in and rented bikes for the day. 
 Off we go… 
Of  the hundreds of hours that Renee and I have ridden bike's we have never had a flat tire, and sure
 enough in San Fran I get my first flat tire. 
Good thing it was in a nice spot overlooking the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. 
We had to wait an hour for the bike shop to bring me a new bike. 
I was so excited to ride the bridge. Renee was really worried about the wind 
and how high it was. 
For awhile I thought she was going to chicken out on me. 
But she didn’t.
We saw all this police tape roping off a large area along with a volunteer sign. 
 We thought they were just doing a practice search but come to find out they were 
 looking for a 13yr old girl whom they thought might have jumped from the bridge. 
 We heard it on the news the next morning. 
 As of today May 30th they still haven't found her.
By this time I’m yelling because I’m so excited. 
I can’t believe I will be able to say 
“I rode a bike across the Golden Gate Bridge” 
I kept my camera on my wrist and turned on the whole time, 
so I could just click and shoot a picture.
 In all the pictures I got Renee was always on the left side of the sidewalk. 
 
Look how close the traffic is. 
 
I yelled to her to stop so she could take a picture of me. 
 
She said “NO I’m not stopping” LOL
 
 I got her to stop but she was hugging the pylon. LOL
Just fricking AWESOME!!! 
When we got over the bridge we rode into the little village of Sausalito.
We decided to opt out of riding back up this big long hill into the village. 
 
So we found the ferry terminal and what time the next ferry left.  
 
So we parked our bikes  and had lunch and a couple of beers.  
 
You just walk onto the ferry and a guy comes over and gets your bike and parks it. 
 
I was amazed how many people were doing the same thing that we were. 
Loved this sign. 
We got lucky this ferry sold beer...
Great view of Alcatraz and the city.
 Got off the ferry and took our bikes back.
So we thought that after all that riding we would just ride the trolley back to the hotel. 
 
Well we started walking until the trolley came by for us to jump on. 
 
We were ¾ of the way before the first one came by so we ended up walking all the way back to the hotel. 
 
OMG those streets are steep.
 This poor dog was just sitting outside a bar waiting for it’s drunk owner.
 
And NO I wasn’t the owner LOL 
We got back to the hotel and went to the networking room for a drink.
We were looking so HOT!!
That night was our last night and it was the “Farmers Idol” night.
They gave us each a t-shirt to wear. 
They had a room with stuff to bedazzle our shirts, what a great idea that was.
It looked like a sweat shop for women and a couple men.
After dinner was the talent show.
They had some great talent. This was also a great idea.
This girl blew it out of the water. She rocked…
A couple of the executives did a spoof from the movie
“Night at the Roxbury”
They were pretty good and very funny.
After dinner and the show everyone went back to the
networking room for our final drinks with everyone.
We love Rosa but we felt like giants standing next to her.
What a great way to end a wonderful week.
 
We closed down the bar and had to by back up at 4:30 for a 8:15am flight.
 
Then drove to Long beach WA to be guest speakers at another district meeting.
 
Thanks to everyone who had anything to do with putting on Championship 2011. 
 
It totally ROCKED!!!