"There will be bumps."

We got back from the conference on Sunday in just enough time to turn around and head back down. By 8 a.m. on Monday morning, we were already on the road back to Tucson. It was a full incredibly motivating day, though. Although the conference covers a broad range of topics in both plant and animal biology, there were some very interesting, pertinent lectures that really held my attention and got me thinking about the next steps in my own research. I won't bore you with transient expression systems and plant based pharmaceuticals, but let me just say that it was awesome to a nerd like myself. It's also an incredible place to network. During the student networking lunch, our main speaker was an industry research scientist who went through his entire career path, noting the "bumps" that occurred along the way and how he coped with the occupational hazards that the sometimes sadistic life of a researcher can entail. I'm pretty sure that his favorite words were: "there will be bumps." We weren't sure if his talk was meant to comfort us during the rough times or inspire us to get the heck out of research, but he made certain that we all knew that there would be bumps in our lives.

The rest of the day went well, but Matoba didn't present until later in the evening, and by the time we got back to Tempe, it was 11 p.m. It wouldn't have been so bad except that Pierre and I had an adventure planned for the next day: biking from Tempe to Tucson.

After going over our course and getting a few hours of sleep, Pierre and I returned to campus at 5 a.m. to start our epic ride. We were stoked and our adrenaline overcame our tiredness as we rolled out of town. We did great for the first 10 miles or so, starting our adventure in the cool morning air. Then about 15 miles into it, my back tire went flat and I learned how to change a road tire. The only problem was that I only had one spare and 85 miles to go... We laughed when we thought of the speaker: we had hit our first bump of the day. But we kept going and about two miles later we got to some minor construction where the bike lane was closed. So we hopped up on the sidewalk (we barely noticed the cones at the beginning) and continued on our 20 mph pace when we suddenly came up on another rider who slammed on his brakes directly in front of Pierre. I was several feet behind when I saw Pierre go flying, skidding along the concrete like a pro baseball player into home plate... if baseball players wore spandex and clipless shoes and slid into home with a road bike. Another bump for us today. I have no clue what the workers were doing to "fix" the sidewalk, but it looked like they had either turned the thing to ice or had smothered it in butter. Either way, it was SUPER slick. Fortunately for me, I managed to stop before I joined him. A little shaken and with a huge white smear down his right side, Pierre got up and we continued on. Our day had already hit a few bumps, so we were hoping that karma would be kind, but a few miles later, Pierre's back tire busted... and I mean busted. Not only was the tube shot, his actual tire was ripped. Ridiculous. Lots of bumps. But there wasn't anything we could do but fix the tire, so that's what we did. And as I did, I set my Camelback down on its tube, and all of my water in the bladder leaked out (fortunately, I had two more bottles). At this point, it was almost funny. He put his only spare tube in and attempted to patch the actual tire while I called Angel to try to find a store to buy some spare tubes and a new tire, as I knew that we weren't going to make the additional 80 miles without them. At first, we raced to catch up with another road cyclist to see if he knew of anything, but he turned out to be a German biker who hardly spoke English, much less knew of any stores in the area. So, a police officer (who gave us directions early in our ride and then later watched us get our 2nd flat) pointed us in the direction of a Lowe's hardware store (which of course didn't have anything that we needed), before Angel called back with directions to a Target. So, we then headed 5 miles back up north to a little shopping area with a Big 5 Sports that opened at 10 a.m., a Target that opened at 8, and a Basha's that was already open. So, we each got a liter of orange juice and sat outside of Target like homeless people for 30 mins before it opened. At 8, Pierre went inside and bump... bump... bump... they didn't have anything for road bikes. Ug. It was already hot, and we were really disappointed about the not so epic start to our epic ride. At that point, we had three options: a)., Evelyn could come and give us spare tubes and we could continue on hoping that Pierre's tire would hold out, b)., I could continue on alone, or c)., Evelyn could come rescue us and we would ride in the van with the rest of the lab. We figured that, as much as we hated it, we had to choose c. So, Ev came and got us, and dropped me off at home so I could at least get a shower, and I realized that I left my house keys in my bag at the lab. With my roommates gone, I laughed, sucked it up to the bumps of the day, broke into my room, showered, and headed to the lab to my confused labmates. It was a long drive down in our weary state, and Pierre and I couldn't even stay awake at the lectures (which with the exception of labmate Latha's presentation, were quite boring). We did, however, have an all-lab, all-out poster fight after all of our poster sessions were over, which added some spice to an otherwise bland conference day. Even though we were exhausted, we did get back to Tempe in time to change clothes (again), and head out to the Tuesday Papago race. I seriously thought I was going to puke or die or just fall over, but I finished and by the end I felt great. I did, however, cut the post-race fiesta short and went home and crashed hard.

On Wednesday, Pierre and I were the only ones to attend the conference, and even though we were still exhausted from the previous day's endeavors, we loved the presentations of new research in biofuels, and we even scouted out some routes on the way home and sneaked around the Biosphere II for a bit before returning to Tempe.

After such an eventful week, I decided to have an easy relaxing weekend. We played some sand volleyball on Friday night and went tubing on the Salt River on Saturday, and on Sunday I hardly did anything at all. And, believe it or not, it felt great!!! I was able to get a lot of stuff done around the house and spent the remainder of the day reading and relaxing by the pool. No worries though, I've got some exciting stuff planned for the next few weekends, so stay tuned!