BEGIN TRAN Five days; a user group, a Day of Data, four H-D stops, and almost 20 hours behind the wheel. Nashville first for a Music City Data talk, then a long haul toward Day of Data Pittsburgh — with an overnight stop dictated entirely by a Steelers home game.
Wednesday · Oct 7
Lafayette to Nashville
5.5 hour drive · Music City Data User Group
🚗Out of Lafayette before noon, 5.5 hours south to Nashville. Straight into the hotel, no detours planned.
⛽Buc-ee's, Smiths Grove, KY — a stop that needs no justification.
🛒Meet up with Jason and Sheila Romans before the talk.
User Group
Music City Data User Group
Presenting Intro to PowerShell with dbatools for the DBA.
🚗7.5 hours toward Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh itself is a no-go tonight — the Steelers are hosting my Colts, For the Shoe, and every hotel in the city knows it. Tridelphia gets the booking instead — it'll be home base for the next three nights, an hour out from the Day of Data festivities each way.
⛽Buc-ee's, Huber Heights, OH — fuel and a stretch break before the rest of the drive.
🏍Fink's Harley-Davidson and Valley Harley-Davidson — two more stops for the #V-RodDBA collection en route.
Friday · Oct 9
Into Pittsburgh — H-D Stops & Speaker Dinner
Hour drive in from Tridelphia
🚗Hour drive in from Tridelphia — the first of what'll be a round trip each day through the weekend.
🏍Steel City Harley-Davidson and Three Rivers Harley-Davidson — more #V-RodDBA stops, this time on Pittsburgh's home turf.
🍽Speaker dinner — [TBD: location].
Saturday · Oct 10
Day of Data Pittsburgh
#1163 · Hour drive in from Tridelphia
🚗Hour drive in from Tridelphia again, second day in a row.
Community Conference
Day of Data Pittsburgh 2026 (#1163)
Presenting Intro to PowerShell with dbatools for the DBA.
KEY WEST→MIAMI→JACKSONVILLE→MACON→LAFAYETTEno escort, bike on trailer, home Tuesday
BEGIN TRANSACTION Three days home. Bike gets one last ride — Key West to Miami on Sunday — and then it goes on the trailer for good. The Gulf Coast dealer run got scrapped for a straight shot up I-95 through Jacksonville instead, which turned Monday into more of a fuel-and-food day than a dealer day: a Costco in Palm Beach Gardens, Buc-ee's in Daytona and again in St. Augustine, a late lunch at Angie's Sub Shop in Jacksonville, then west on I-10 to I-75 and a fill-up at the Warner Robins Buc-ee's before Macon. No challenge coin on this leg — that's for when the bike's actually on the road, not the trailer. Tuesday is straight home, no detour through Nashville this time.
Sunday · Sep 20
Back to Miami
~160 mi · 🏍️ Last ride · No H-D stops
🏍Last morning in Key West. One more time down Duval — swing by Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville Records studio while you're at it — fill the tank, head north on US-1. The Overseas Highway on a Sunday is about as good as it gets.
📍Pigeon Key — MM 47. Pull off at Knight's Key and walk the old Seven Mile Bridge — cars aren't allowed on the original span, so it's foot traffic and turquoise water on both sides. Historic Flagler railway workers' island at the far end. 20 minutes.
📍Whaling Wall #95 Mural — MM 52, Marathon. Giant marine mural on the side of the Marathon shopping center. Pull over, snap a photo, back on the bike. Five minutes.
📍Islamorada — MM 81.5–82 (two-fer). Bass Pro Shops World Wide Sportsman has a sister ship of Hemingway's fishing boat the Pilar on display inside. Walk next door to Rain Barrel Artisan Village for Big Betsy the Lobster — a 30-foot giant lobster sculpture that is exactly what it sounds like. Park once, hit both.
📍3D Great White Shark Mural — Key Largo. Roadside pull-off, quick photo. The Keys do not lack for wall art.
🍽Lunch at Gilbert's — Key Largo, the last stop before the mainland. Waterfront, laid-back, tiki-bar energy. Closing the Keys out the way it should be closed out.
🏍Hampton Inn Kendall by late afternoon — same hotel as Night 4 on the way down. Bike goes on the MC-10 trailer. That's it for two wheels until home.
⛽Top off the Santa Cruz Sunday evening — standard station near Kendall. Tomorrow's I-95 run has real options: a Costco in Palm Beach Gardens, then Buc-ee's in Daytona and St. Augustine before the cut west at Jacksonville.
Monday · Sep 21
Miami to Macon via I-95
~650 mi · Buc-ee's only, no H-D stops · Santa Cruz + trailer
🚗9:00 AM, I-95 N out of Miami.
⛽Costco, Palm Beach Gardens — first fuel stop of the day, ~90 miles up I-95. No dealer, no shot glass, just cheap gas.
⛽Buc-ee's, Daytona Beach — same one the bike hit on its Ormond Loop day, this time from the Santa Cruz.
⛽Buc-ee's, St. Augustine — second Florida Buc-ee's of the day.
🍽Late lunch at Angie's Sub Shop, Jax Beach — ordered the "My Wife Kicked Me Out." Then west onto I-10.
🚗I-10 W out of Jacksonville, then north on I-75 toward Macon.
⛽Buc-ee's, Warner Robins GA — I-75 Exit 144, same one from the outbound trip. Fill up here, not in Macon — the tank stays full overnight so Tuesday starts full.
🏠Hampton Inn & Suites Macon I-475 — same hotel as outbound Night 2. ~650 miles on the day. Check-in 4:00 PM.
Tuesday · Sep 22
Macon to Lafayette
~640 mi · Straight through · Home
🚗9:30 AM out of Macon. The math on Atlanta is simple: leave by 9:30, through the city by 11:15 AM, clear of both rush windows. Morning rush ends around 9; afternoon doesn't start until 3:30. This is the gap.
⛽Buc-ee's, Adairsville GA — I-75 Exit 306, ~85 miles from Macon. Same one from Day 2 of the outbound. Fuel up before Atlanta.
🚗Atlanta ~11:15 AM, Chattanooga by noon. I-24 W from Chattanooga toward Nashville — clocks fall back an hour at Monteagle (~90 miles in) crossing into the Central time zone.
🚗Nashville is a pass-through this time — no #SQLFamily lunch stop, straight onto I-65 N.
⛽Buc-ee's, Smiths Grove KY — I-65 Exit 38, ~75 miles from Nashville. Same one from Day 1 of the trip out. Rolled in on fumes — the Murfreesboro Buc-ee's would've solved that, but it's still under construction. Should be open for the 2027 trip. Clocks forward CT→ET crossing into Indiana shortly after.
🏠Lafayette by ~5:30 PM ET. ~1,290 miles, three days, zero dealers on the way back.
COMMIT TRAN
V-RodDBA · September 2026 · Lafayette, IN | Part 4 of 4 — the end of the road
MIAMI→KEY LARGO→ISLAMORADA→MARATHON→KEY WESTFHP escort, no exceptions
BEGIN TRANSACTION Four days of dealer parking lots and one user group talk got the bike this far. What happens for the next three has nothing to do with any of that — an escorted ride down the Overseas Highway, a bike show, a pool party with a tricycle race in it, and Havana Nights at Casa Marina. No SQL content whatsoever, and no apologies for that either.
Friday · Sep 18
Kickstands Up — the Escorted Ride
FHP Escort · 10:30 AM from Peterson's H-D South
🏍10:30 AM, Peterson's H-D South, and however many bikes showed up for a Florida Highway Patrol escort down US-1. This is not a ride you pace yourself for.
🍽Jimmy Johnson's Big Chill — Key Largo. First stop on the chain.
🍽Robbie's of Islamorada — Mile Marker 77.5. The tarpon-feeding one, if that's still going on when we roll through.
🍽Sunset Grill — Marathon. Last stop before the final stretch to Key West.
🏠Check-in at Casa Marina, then Havana Nights — the theme dinner that kicks off the weekend.
Saturday · Sep 19
Bike Show, Pool Party, and a Tricycle Race
Casa Marina, Key West
🏍Bike Show, 10 AM – 2 PM — the V-Rod isn't entered in anything, but there's no version of this event where I don't walk the rows twice.
🏊Pool Party, 11 AM – 6 PM — overlapping the bike show by design, apparently. A tricycle 50/50 race/fundraiser happens somewhere in the middle of this. I have no further information and I'm not sure I want any before it happens.
🍹Rick's Bar, 8 PM – until — the closing party. "Until" is doing a lot of work in that timeslot.
Sunday · Sep 20
Leisure Morning, Then North
Key West → Miami · ~160 mi
🛒No FHP escort for the return leg — just a leisure morning, the Southernmost Point, Duval Street, fuel up before leaving. Nobody's in a hurry to leave Key West on a Sunday.
🏍US-1 N, back through the Keys, ~160 miles to Miami. Same road as Friday, none of the sirens this time.
COMMIT TRAN
V-RodDBA · September 2026 · Key West, FL | Part 3 of 4 — next up: the long way home
Sep 17 – 18, 2026 · Jacksonville to Miami, Florida
JACKSONVILLE→DAYTONA→SANFORD→MIAMIbike loop out of Daytona, then south together
BEGIN TRANSACTION This is the day the trip stops being one vehicle, for a few hours anyway. The bike comes off the trailer at Destination Daytona and runs its own loop north to St. Augustine and back — the Santa Cruz just sits there and waits. Once the bike's reloaded, it's the same vehicle again for the last 230 miles to Miami.
Thursday · Sep 17
The Santa Cruz Leg
JAX → Daytona → US-17 → Seminole H-D → Miami
🚗 Santa Cruz + MC-10 trailer + loaded bike
🚗8:00 AM out of Jacksonville, I-95 S, 95 miles to Destination Daytona. By 9:30 the bike's unloaded and I'm on foot in a 109,000-square-foot Harley showroom with nothing to do but wait.
⛽Buc-ee's, Daytona Beach — second fill-up of the morning, topped off at the Warner Robins Buc-ee's before leaving Macon. The Santa Cruz is good for maybe 250 miles towing the trailer, so this one was on the schedule from the start.
🏠Four hours of downtime while the bike does its loop. Bike's back and reloaded by 2:15, then it's US-17 S through DeLand to Sanford — the long way, but it skips Orlando and I-4 entirely.
🏍Seminole Harley-Davidson — 620 Hickman Circle, Sanford. One of Florida's largest-volume stores, and the last dealer stop before Miami. Santa Cruz stop, bike still on the trailer — chip and shot glass, no coin.
🏠FL-417 S to the Turnpike, ~230 miles. One more fill-up around Okeechobee to stay ahead of the range, then the Hampton Inn Kendall by 7:30 PM. Long day for a car that spent four hours parked at a Harley dealership.
Thursday · Sep 17
The Bike Leg
Daytona → St. Augustine → Adamec → Ormond Loop → back
🏍10:00 AM, off the trailer and north on I-95 — backtracking toward St. Augustine before the loop even starts, which feels wrong until you look at the map twice.
⛽Buc-ee's, St. Augustine — one of only two Buc-ee's in Florida as of this trip. Fuel and breakfast, tank full for the rest of the loop.
🏍Adamec H-D St. Augustine — same exit as the Buc-ee's, a mile up the road. Then back south toward Teddy Morse's Daytona H-D, the world-famous one, showroom included. Both on the bike, both worth the coin.
🌴Ormond Scenic Loop — 32 miles, oak canopy tunnels, Tomoka State Park, High Bridge Rd for the curves. No stoplights the entire way. This is the part of the day I'd have done even without the excuse of a road trip.
⛽Buc-ee's, Daytona Beach — the loop's exit dumps out about a mile from here. Fuel, lunch, and back to the Santa Cruz to load up for the reunion drive south.
Friday · Sep 18
Miami — Trailer Down, Bike Up
Park 2 Store · Peterson's H-D South
🏠Checkout from the Hampton Inn Kendall, straight to Park 2 Store and their automated gate. This is where the Santa Cruz and trailer sit for the next two days while the bike does the rest of the work.
🏍Peterson's H-D South — 19825 S Dixie Hwy, ten minutes from the storage lot by bike. Check-in for the Cartel Baggers Key West Getaway opens at 9:00 AM, light breakfast on-site.
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COMMIT TRAN
V-RodDBA · September 2026 · Miami, FL | Part 2 of 4 — next up: Key West, Cartel Baggers style
BEGIN TRANSACTION The Santa Cruz is towing the MC-10 trailer, the bike's riding shotgun on it, and somewhere around Bowling Green this stops being a road trip and starts being a full table scan of every Harley dealer between Indiana and the Key West. Three days, six H-D stops, and a Wednesday night talk in Jacksonville before the bike ever touches pavement on its own.
Monday · Sep 14
Lafayette to Nashville
~345 mi · Kentucky Dealer Run
🚗 Santa Cruz + MC-10 trailer, bike loaded
🚗11:00 AM out of Lafayette, I-65 S toward Indianapolis. Nothing scenic about this leg — it's just the on-ramp to the rest of the week.
🏍Harley-Davidson Louisville — 1700 Arthur St. Bluegrass H-D is closed Mondays, so this is the one that gets the visit. First of eleven dealers this trip; the browsing hasn't gotten old yet. Shot glass and poker chip — the standard haul at every stop, whether the bike's along for the ride or not.
🏍Harley-Davidson Bowling Green — 251 Cumberland Trace Rd, right off I-65 Exit 22. In and out before 3:30.
⛽Buc-ee's, Smiths Grove KY — fuel for the Santa Cruz, 120 pumps, clocks fall back an hour crossing into Tennessee somewhere in the parking lot.
🍽#SQLFamily Dinner, Nashville — Jason & Sheila Romans (The Data Shepherd). Check in first, then whatever local spot we land on. Martin's, Peg Leg Porker, Edley's, and Shabu Shabu were all in the running — Peg Leg Porker won out, and it was phenomenal.
Tuesday · Sep 15
Nashville to Macon
~347 mi · Four Dealers, Two Buc-ee's
🚗8:30 AM out of Nashville, I-24 E to I-75 S. Clocks jump forward again about 90 miles in, near Monteagle. Four Harley stops on the docket today, which is a lot of parking lots for one Tuesday.
🏍White Lightning H-D, Chattanooga and Mountain Creek H-D, Dalton — back to back off I-75, 30 miles apart. Dalton's showroom is a couple miles off the highway, downtown.
⛽Buc-ee's, Adairsville GA — lunch from the food court, because the alternative is a gas station hot dog and I have standards.
🏍Southern Devil H-D, Cartersville and Harley-Davidson of Macon close out the dealer count for the day — six down, five to go. Six more shot glasses in the saddlebag.
⛽Buc-ee's, Warner Robins GA — topped off for tomorrow's ~320-mile push to Jacksonville. Arrive Macon by 4:45, evening free. Downtown Macon, exploring, dinner at leisure. No agenda for once.
🍽Dinner options on the list: Downtown Grill (the blackened steak, and reportedly where Gregg Allman proposed to Cher), Natalia's, The Iron Rail, and Back Burner — but The Rookery won out. Allman Burger, and the bartender, Tyler, steered me to the onion rings as the side. He was right.
Wednesday · Sep 16
Macon to Jacksonville
The Main Event — Jax Data User Group
🚗7:30 AM out of Macon, quick top-off at the same Warner Robins Buc-ee's ten miles down the road, then I-16 E to I-95 S. Savannah passes by as a stretch stop, not a destination — that's a different trip.
🏠1:00 PM check-in at the Jacksonville hotel, and the bike comes off the trailer for the first time this trip — Adamec H-D Baymeadows, four miles away, is a bike-only errand.
🏍Adamec H-D Baymeadows — 8909 Baymeadows Rd. Lunch on the bike beforehand, either Jax Beach or Julington Creek Fish Camp, depending on which direction feels right that morning. Back at the hotel by 2, bike reloaded onto the trailer by 2:30. First stop actually reached on the bike this trip — that earns a challenge coin on top of the usual chip and glass.
Community User Group
Jacksonville Data User Group
Four days of dealer parking lots, and the actual reason for the trip is a 90-minute talk on a Wednesday night at Keiser University. Dinner's provided, which means I get fed twice today if the timing works out.
📍 Keiser University, Jacksonville — 6430 Southpoint Pkwy🗓 Sep 16, 6:00 PM ET🎟 In-Person🎤 My session: "Your Script Called. It Wants to Be a Function" — building a copy-pasted script into a real, pipeline-friendly PowerShell function, live
Depart the hotel ~5:30, half a mile down the road, park, set up, greet organizers. SELECT * FROM audience WHERE curiosity = 'high' — the rest is up to the slides.
🍽Dinner after with the Taylor family at Dockside Seafood, Jax Beach — Mayport fried shrimp and hushpuppies. Tried for Cookies and Creme afterward, missed it by ten minutes.
🏠Bike stays loaded on the trailer overnight — tomorrow it comes off again, this time in Daytona.
Sessionize Most Active Speaker 2025, and Redgate Community Ambassador two years running
This started in 2016, at my first SQL Saturday, in Chicago. I didn't know anyone. Andy Yun did, and introduced me to Hope Foley, and that was more or less it — ten years later I'm holding three badges I didn't see coming.
The following year I ended up on the Alaskan SQL Cruise with Tim Ford, and spent most of it with a full case of impostor syndrome — first year going to any major SQL event, surrounded by that much talent. It didn't really click until PASS Summit 2019, walking through the vendor expo with some coworkers. We passed the Microsoft booth, and Bob Ward greeted me. By name.
Attending was one thing; speaking was another. That took until PASS Summit 2022, where apparently everyone I talked to wanted to know why I didn't have a Speaker Ribbon on my badge. Jeff Taylor was the one who actually did something about it — "Submit to Jacksonville, and I'll give you a spot." That's the whole pitch that started my speaking career. PASS 2022 is also where I met Jason Romans and his wife Sheila, which turned into a real friendship; Jason started his own speaking journey the next year, at SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2023.
Sessionize sent me a badge earlier this year for all of that: Most Active Speaker, 2025.
The Redgate Ambassador title — the second year in a row now — has a good story behind it. Redgate Summit, Chicago, last March. Sitting at lunch, someone from Redgate introduced me to the table as a Community Ambassador — which, at that point, I was not. I wish I remembered who it was. I got home, applied for the actual program, and Louise Domeisen accepted me into it.
None of it happened alone.
Here's what the badges are, what they're actually for, and who I owe for them.
The Badges
Sessionize — Most Active Speaker, 2025. Based on submissions and sessions tracked through the platform over the year.
Redgate — Community Ambassador, 2025. For showing up to and supporting Redgate community events.
Redgate — Community Ambassador, 2026. Same reason, back for a second year.
Two badges, one program — Redgate hands the Ambassador title out annually, not as a lifetime achievement.
By the Numbers
2025 was 4 events and 4 presentations — SQL Saturday Jacksonville, Data Saturday Columbus, SQL Saturday St. Louis, and SQL Saturday Oregon & SW Washington. Not a huge number by conference-circuit standards, but apparently enough to move the needle on Sessionize's side of things. My full speaking CV has the rest of the history if you want it.
People Who Actually Earned This
Nobody gets a "most active speaker" badge by submitting to an empty inbox. Event organizers accepted the sessions, program committees picked the room and the time slot, and the people in the audience showed up and asked questions that made the next version of the presentation better. Ambassador is worse — that one's entirely about who invited me to the events in the first place.
Event & community organizers
•Andy Yun, SQLBek — the first friendly face at my first SQL Saturday, Chicago 2016, and the reason I met half the people on this list (sqlbek.wordpress.com)
•Jeff Taylor, JaxData — talked me into submitting my first session at PASS Summit 2022, and gave me my first speaking slot at SQL Saturday Jacksonville (jefftaylor.io)
•Peter Shore, CBusDATA — met somewhere on the Midwest SQL Saturday circuit — Columbus, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cleveland, Cincinnati, one of those. Spent years after that trying to get me on a CBusDATA agenda. (Peter Shore @ Sessionize)
•Louise Domeisen, Redgate — accepted my application into the Community Ambassador program, making the lunch-table introduction retroactively true (Redgate blog)
•Ben Miller — his two-day PowerShell precon ahead of SQL Saturday Indy kicked off my whole PowerShell learning journey (dbaduck.com)
•Bob Ward, Microsoft — greeted me by name at the PASS Summit 2019 expo hall, which did more for my impostor syndrome than he probably knows (SQL Server blog)
•Hope Foley, Microsoft — the first person Andy introduced me to that day in Chicago, back when I didn't know a soul in this community (Hope Foley @ Sessionize)
•Jason Romans, The Data Shepherd — friend since PASS Summit 2022, started his own speaking journey at SQL Saturday Jacksonville 2023 (datashepherd.dev)
This list is not complete. If you helped and you're not on it, that's a memory problem, not a gratitude problem.
The plan for 2026 and beyond is more of the same — more events, more sessions, more #SQLFamily. If you're running an event and need a speaker, my Sessionize profile is public.
