- The ADHI conference is now over. It was a good conference, better attended than last year, which is a good thing, and I think attendees had a good time and the sessions were interesting and informative.
Saturday night we went to Jay Vance’s suite for a reception. Jay is the outgoing president of the association. He’s done a great job as he is an energetic spokesman for AHDI. We had a nice time at the reception and Christine got a chance to talk at length with one of her Spectrum customers, which is always good because she can hear how terrific TQAudit is. Afterwards, we went back to our room and kind of collapsed, glad that the conference was over. We watched the Olympics on TV during the evening.
Sunday was another play day in Milwaukee. We’re really impressed with this city, at least the little bit we saw. It is a clean, friendly city and is well-adapted to tourists in the tourist areas. We decided that we would go on a river/lakefront cruise today. We always enjoy being on the water and we like the perspective of seeing things from the water.
We walked along the River Walk for a while scoping out a nice place for lunch. We settled on the Milwaukee Ale House, which is right on the river, and we had a nice table in the shade on the second floor balcony. We not only enjoyed our lunch, but we got to sit back and watch all the boats going up and down the river.
After lunch we walked over to the Milwaukee River Boat ticket booth, got our tickets, and boarded the boat. Before long, we were off. This was a narrated cruise that talks about the landmarks and architecture of many of the famous buildings near the river and lake front.
What I really got a kick out of was learning about 3 types of bridges we went under. There are some 180 bridges across the 3 rivers that run through Milwaukee. The 3 types that we learned about were vertical lift, swing and bascule. The vertical lift bridge is the one that raises the entire deck of the road. Swing bridges pivot from a central position so that they turn from being across the water to inline with the water. Bascule bridges have heavy counter weights that use gravity to raise the two sides of the drawbridge, the typical thing that people think of as a drawbridge. I didn’t know about the counterweights and the mechanism working with gravity.
Some of the river front has been developed and is now an up and coming residential area. The rivers have undergone cleanup and industry has moved out. Many large old warehouses have been converted into condos and apartments.
The confluence of the 3 rivers is near Lake Michigan, which has a large natural bay at the mouth of the rivers. Our tour boat went out into the lake under the interstate bridge high overhead. We then motored along the breakwater to McKinley Marina. There were lots of sailboats in the bay and on the lake and it was a pretty sight. Of course, I was enamored with the two lighthouses, especially the Breakwater Lighthouse because of its very unique shape.
From McKinley Marina the boat went along Juneau Park and the other parks along the lake. We learned that all this area was reclaimed land from the lake and much of the fill came from the earth removed during the building of the interstates around Milwaukee. From this vantage point, there were great views of downtown Milwaukee and especially the interesting building that is the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Back in to the Milwaukee River we had a pretty nice view of the Alle-Bradley clock tower which until recently was the largest four-faced clock tower in the world. A bigger clock tower was recently built in Dubai.
The 90-minute boat tour was very nice and an enjoyable way to learn a little about Milwaukee and see some interesting architecture.
After our boat ride we relaxed in the room for a while and then went back to Mader’s for dinner. We couldn’t resist using out coupon for free Reuben rolls that we so enjoyed Friday evening. And Christine had a Mader’s famous glass of sangria, which comes with the biggest blackberry I’ve ever seen in it. After dinner, we went back to the hotel and settled in to watch more of the Olympics.
So our time in Milwaukee comes to an end. This is really a nice city and we’ve enjoyed being here. The conference was good and Christine gave a great presentation with her Spectrum colleagues. And, she was once again recognized with the Innovation Through Technology Award for all her hard work in developing a software tool that has very significant impact on quality healthcare documentation. And, I think there will be some good things coming out of this conference for TQAudit (can you say Mayo Clinic??!!).