I’m still recovering from the long weekend and trying to catch up what’s happened in affiliate marketing while I’ve been away for the last five days. I apologize for not updating the blog on Friday, but a family emergency had my husband and I (and the doggie) making a last minute drive down to San Diego on Thursday night.

Here are some things I learned along the way on the 1200-plus mile round-trip:

At least in this particular instance, trying to make last minute hotel reservations on the Web was not as successful as doing it in person. That is exactly the opposite of what I have always believed. I never go anywhere without using the Internet to meticulously plan and book all facets of my trip. But San Diego is a huge vacation destination and it was big three-day holiday weekend, which meant every hotel I checked on the Net prior to leaving San Francisco was booked solid.

Getting a room looked very unlikely. Unfortunately, we had no choice but to cross our fingers, get in the car and hope that we would not end up staying at my sister-in-law’s place. She had triplets less than a year ago and has two lively boys that are 3 and 5 years old. Although the alternative was crashing in the rented SUV and fighting the dog and hubby for the back seat.

However, once we arrived in San Diego we were delighted to find there were plenty of rooms. Many of these vacancies were at the very same hotels we had already investigated on the Web before we left. It would have been great if there were some sort of email or telephone notification system that could alert me of reservation cancellations and allow me to immediately and automatically book that room. I would pay a nominal fee for such a service, especially since it would have seriously lessened my anxiety level (and nagging quotient) during the drive.

Because we drove all night and couldn’t check into our hotel until later in the day, I was on the hunt for a place to use my laptop so I could check in with the office. I discovered it’s not easy to figure out where to find Wi-Fi or an Internet café while visiting a new city. I know you can go to most Starbucks for wireless access, but for some reason my laptop wasn’t working with the system at Starbucks (maybe my computer knew that I am truly a Peet’s coffee person). Because I can access my work email via the Web, I was willing to settle for simply stopping by a wired coffeehouse and checking my email, but I never found one. Where is a copy of the Yellow Pages when you need one?

It was a real Catch-22 situation. If was able to get online I could have taken advantage of the burgeoning local search explosion and checked out detailed listings for Internet Cafes in the area. But then again, if I had a connection to look up local listings, I wouldn’t need to go to a coffee shop for access in the first place. I settled for telephoning the office. Luckily, there was no crisis that needed my attention. Actually, I’m not sure they even noticed I wasn’t there.

I finally got a few hours to relax on Saturday and was able to sit on one of the world’s most beautiful beaches - its #10 on the list – and have lunch at one of my favorite places.

The drive home was just the puppy and me. I have no idea how anyone coped on long road trips before the iPod. Yeah, yeah, I remember CDs and cassettes, but they just don’t compare to the joy of having access to 10,000 tunes and the ability to download audio books and a slew of interesting Podcasts. If not for my iPod, the highlight of my solo Interstate 5 drive home might have been a cup of Andersen’s split pea soup in Santa Nella.

Ok, enough about my weekend. I need get back to all that’s happening in the affiliate and performance marketing world. Let me know if there was a big happening that I missed.