ASME conference in Tahoe

Last week I headed up to Lake Tahoe for my first time since moving to California to attend the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' Summer Bioengineering Conference. The conference was hosted at a beautiful resorts with a huge pool (complete with water slides and hot tubs) and tons of hiking trails which made it difficult to stay inside for the conference. However, while most conferences I've been to run from 7am-9pm everyday this one was only in the morning so we had the whole afternoon to go out and explore.

On our first afternoon off An and I joined with Tom Andriacchi's lab to go on a white-water rafting trip down the Trukee river. We were a big group and had 5 full rafts heading down the river. Since this was the first time I'd been rafting I was a bit nervous but for the first two-hours of the trip the water was so calm we spent more time in water fights than going down rapids. However, as our guide warned us, the last 20 minutes of the trip was by far the most intense - a series of class 3 rapids in rapid succession. Looking down the rapids I was sure that our boat was going to flip and I was going to be swimming in the freezing cold water. However, in the end, we all made it down safely with a few close calls but no one ended up in the water.

After a bit more stimulating conference talk, on our second afternoon we went for a beautiful hike up the end of the valley alongside a creek with a ton of waterfalls. Afterwords, we joined the conference to watch a group of 5 professors sing in their own band and enjoy some tasty food. That is one thing there is never a shortage of at conferences ... lots of tasty food. This conference also had an amazing hot chocolate setup with whip-cream and chocolate chunks that was to die for.

An and I were both excited for the end of the conference as Dan and Chuck were able to drive up and spend the weekend with us at the resort. We had Saturday morning off so we decided to ride our bikes from the resort down to Tahoe City for some breakfast. This was a great, easy ride with the reward of delicious huevos rancheros at the end. We also played a bit of tennis and swam in the pools before heading inside for the conference. That night we also had the banquet where I received an honorable mention in the abstract competition for my abstract "Crouch gait represents a simplified support strategy." I was pretty excited as this was my first conference award and I got a free copy of abacus, a finite element software.

Sunday the conference was over and Dan and I decided to drive around the west side of the lake and explore some of the parks along the shore. Needless to say, the lake was beautiful and we had a great time hiking and exploring the area ... I wish every conference could be this wonderful.