Here is what happened on my trip (it's a little long, so I won't be hurt if you skip it):

Wednesday: This was my plan to get to my conference: Leave for the airport around 8:20 AM, get there at 8:45 AM, fly out of Madison at 9:55 AM, reaching Chicago at 10:54 AM by United. Fly from Chicago to La Guardia is at noon CDT and get to La Guardia at 3:11 PM EDT, and then take a shuttle for about an hour to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, check in to my room, come back in time to eat dinner and watch the first talks.

Oh, but wait…my flight is cancelled. So they transfer me to a Delta flight at 9:27 AM to Cincinnati, which will then have a flight at 12:50 PM to La Guardia and actually get me there earlier (at 2:30 PM EDT). So I get into the security line at approximately 9:05 AM. Now, the airport in Madison is not large by any definition. It contains about 10 gates and rarely has more than two planes on the ground at one time. Well, that doesn’t stop the security people from being slow. At about 9:20 AM, I was almost to the end of the line and (which really only had about 30 people in it to begin with, unfortunately they only had one security terminal open) and they call my name over the loudspeaker saying that I need to be escorted to the plane so that it can leave, so I go up to the security guy that is more or less in charge of watching people put stuff in there tubs and say that my name was called and whether or not I should just go through the security ahead of some people (who were being ridiculously slow). He said that they could only do that if someone came to get me…of course, they didn’t know where the hell I was. Most airports when they see you are on a flight leaving soon will just send you through as fast as possible. So, I waited and did the security stuff as needed, and what do you know, I was “randomly” selected to be wanded. Which is actually what happened to everyone with cancelled flights (I know this because everyone in my group had their flights cancelled…although we were not traveling together, so it was all different flights). Apparently, changing your airline at the airport is a terrorism flag…but of course they don’t look to see if it was because of a cancelled flight or because you chose to. Meanwhile, a little old lady that must have been on a cancelled flight as well was wanded. Let me tell you, I am willing to take the risk that she is a terrorist just so they don’t have to waste their time and resources flagging little old ladies as potential terrorists. So, my wanding was done at about 9:30 AM, they had held the plane up, I was the last one in and we basically were on the runway once I finished buckling up.

The flight to Cincinnati was fairly peaceful. When we were flying in, I saw this enormous house on a ridge overlooking a river. The house was not the most amazing thing though…there was a fountain in front of it that was even bigger than the house. So, also on the flight was one of the people in my group and we landed at the airport at around 11:15 AM CDT. Our next flight was to leave at 12:50. So, we went to go get lunch (we were famished). When we came back, though, everyone was gone. It turns out that Cincinnati is in the Eastern Time Zone…what the hell?!?!?! Who would ever imagine Ohio as a part of the Eastern United States? Of course, airports do not really have clocks that you can check without going out of your way, but it was still our own stupidity for not checking that out. Delta was very nice about it and we got a flight out to La Guardia at 3 EDT and would reach New York at 4:50 EDT. Interestingly, another person in our group came in on the next plane from Madison and was on our flight to LGA.

We were able to make it there fine, got our luggage and called the shuttle service at 5:20 PM. I also got my first sight of New York. Let me tell you, those buildings are tall. Downtown LA has a few skyscrapers, but all of New York seemed to have 10 story buildings or taller. Chicago doesn’t even come close. I was also able to see Yankee Stadium and Ground Zero from the plane, but really not a whole lot was exciting. They said that it would take about 20 minutes. Of course, we waited outside for an hour before the shuttle came. From outside the airport, we had a good view of Shea Stadium, Flushing Meadows, and the World’s Fair UFOs (that were in Men in Black). We picked up five more people, including another one from our group and then drove through Long Island to Cold Spring Harbor.

Once at the CSH Laboratories (this is the place where Watson and Crick posited the structure of the DNA double helix that turned biology into a molecular science), I had dinner (it was 7:30 and the dining room closed at 8, so I had to hurry). They were doing a buffet with a bunch of random foods I typically don’t like (salad with dressing other than ranch, for instance), but I was able to find enough to fill my stomach. This included duck, which I had never had before. It tastes like chicken, but is a bit tougher. They also had Haagen Daz ice cream, so my belly was filled pleasantly. After dinner we went to go check out the talks, but the auditorium was basically full, so we watched the talks on the TVs outside the auditorium. Of course, it is a lot harder to pay attention like that, and none of the talks were particularly interesting to me (I am, after all, a chemist at a biology meeting…there is a reason I am chemist with an interest in biology and not actually a biologist).

The room I was to stay in was in the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception, which I thought would be interesting. They had busses running to and from it every 45 minutes, so I took the 10:15 bus and headed over there with my stuff. The bus trip took 15 minutes (we were staying several miles from the labs) and the seminary itself was eye-opening. Walking into the room, the first thing you notice is how Spartan everything is (which is not surprising, since it is a seminary). The second thing you notice is the lack of phone or alarm clock. Thankfully, I had my cell phone, which could operate as both, but it would have been for them to tell us ahead of time that we might be staying in a room without such amenities.

Thursday: Much less happened the rest of the days, so the rest is shorter. Most of the stuff in the Thursday morning talks was way over my head, but then came lunch, where I had a hamburger off the grill. The other lunch possibilities were more eclectic catered crap (I think I dislike most catered food because of that). Then the poster session where I had a poster up came, and I think that went well…except for the whole standing up for 3 hours. Then there was a Wine and Cheese party, where they were giving out free shirts, so I picked one of those up. The evening talks were again well over my head and I basically felt completely out of place at this point. I also took a shower that morning in the seminary (there was a bathroom with shower in each room), and quickly discovered that it was designed for someone of Manute Bol proportions…Yao Ming might be too thick.

Friday: This day was quite a bit less eventful. The evening session of talks was the first where I didn’t feel like everything was way over my head, and after it was done, I even asked one of the speakers a question and the next day I provided a possible insight that she wrote down and is going to look into. Go me!

Saturday: The rest of the sessions I understood reasonably well, I think that I just needed to get into the half of the seminar I was actually interested in. There was a really great talk on some people that are sequencing the genome of the cave bear (an extinct bear) so that they can then apply that knowledge to sequencing Neanderthal man. I learned from that talk that in order to reduce contamination during cave bear sequencing, you need to make sure not to employ bears to work in your lab. That night also had the lobster banquet and a party afterwards. This was the first time I have had full lobster and I have to say, I was unimpressed. It was decent lobster, but the effort it takes to get to all of it is kind of ridiculous. Give me a cleaned lobster tail anytime and I will be happy. Afterwards, at the party I met a guy who is a relative of Joe Harris who was one of the great hitters in his day. They had a live band, but there was no one in the room with the band.

Sunday: They had told us that if we were at the Seminary, the last bus leaving the place was at 9:15 AM (with one each hour before). I decided to take the 8:15 bus just to be safe. When I got outside there were a bunch of people standing there and no bus. It turns out the 7:15 bus never came and the 8:15 was dubiously not there. By the time I was outside, they had already called the Lab, but it still took 15 minutes for those busses to show up and was particularly nerve racking (especially since breakfast ends at 9). We made it back in barely enough time for food and that was basically it of the conference. I made it to the airport at about 1:30 for my 4 PM flight (that was the time the shuttle was operating). United then put me on standby for the 3 PM flight because the 4 PM flight “might be delayed”. I made it to Chicago fine at around 4:30 and had to basically wait 3 hours for my Madison flight, which was pointless to try and change since my luggage was on it. Well, it turns out that my luggage was actually on the earlier Madison flight (I found this out because I waited for all of the luggage from our flight be collected and did not find mine anywhere). It turns out it was in their luggage storage room, so it was all good.