On Sunday I flew out to San Diego for the ICBP meeting (you may remember that in my last blog I threatened to extract a round of golf in Ireland from Bob Clarke in exchange for my attendance at that meeting). As luck would have it, he almost got off the hook; it was a very interesting meeting, and I came away energized to consider in vivo shRNA screens, among other ideas. As planned, I got to the airport by 2:00 pm on Monday, well in advance of my scheduled 3:20 pm flight, with a change in Denver, arriving in DC by 12:30 am. I’ll bet you can guess what happened next…
As I checked in (having been lucky enough to be upgraded all the way through to DC, no less), I was informed that the incoming flight had “mechanical problems” but that the problematic part’s replacement would be waiting for the plane when it landed in San Diego. Hopefully, we would get out on time for me to make my tight connection. Just in case, I asked if I could get some contingent alternate routing. The only available flight was the red eye, with no chance of an upgrade. I hate red eyes. I also mourned the loss of extra leg room.
I made it through security, and the plane was still listed as being on time. Then, the fateful announcement: the promised part was still in transit. I had no chance to make my connection, so I had seven hours to kill before I caught the red eye. Much as I love the San Diego airport, I turned around and went back to the meeting, where I attended a really great session on integrative analysis of complex data sets. I tracked down Bob Clarke as if he were prey, no longer believing that my softening stance re: golf in Ireland had been justified. Bob, being a clever and resourceful man, immediately recognized that I required food and drink. We went to a restaurant across the street with a few Lombardi colleagues, including Yuriy Gusev, had a very nice meal, and talked about systems biology, G-DOC and golf in Ireland. I then returned to the airport, navigated security, crammed into a full red eye flight surrounded at least five children under the age of six, and spent the next 5 hours trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to sleep while crammed into a medieval torture chamber hurtling through the air at 500 mph. Fortunately, I had a full day of work on Tuesday, so I didn’t have time to consider how miserable I felt. Thanks, Bob!
I can’t remember anything that happened after that. However, this is my last blog for two weeks, since I’ll be reviewing grants for the AACR Stand Up 2Cancer program in the latter part of next week.
Have a good weekend.