Laurel
Last week I spent Sunday through Tuesday in Laurel, Md. Laurel is your typical suburb with neighborhoods, strip malls and parks. It's a nice place, but I wasn't here to visit, I was here for a meeting about the project that I work on, NARMS, or National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System. Our last meeting for this was in 2012, so there was much to discuss as well as getting to hear about the future of the project. Usually when I travel I find a place to train, but because of the trip length, and meeting schedule, I wasn't going to get the chance to get some Jiu-Jitsu in. I've another work trip in June, so hopefully then!! A few years ago my job would send me to meetings and training's like this pretty frequently, but then the opportunities dried up for whatever reason. Needless to say I jumped at this chance to be able to see and learn some new stuff.
I caught a direct flight Sunday morning on Southwest to BWI and took a cab, yes a cab (my phone is jacked up so I can't use Uber) to my hotel. Since it was early and my room wasn't ready, I found a restaurant right down the block, Chidos, which served a mean Burrito Bowl and some outstanding margaritas. I relaxed there for a while, before heading back to check into my room. After unpacking and a quick nap I decided to head out for a walk around the area, but quickly realized that walking around in 90 degree heat wasn't the smartest idea. Since my meeting didn't start until 8 am the following day, I beat a hasty retreat back to Chidos for some additional ice cold margaritas!
The meeting itself was pretty interesting and well run. There were attendees from across the country including both state and university partners. Before getting into the presentations, we each stood up and introduced ourselves before moving into a brief program history for the new partners. Some of the attendees I remembered from the prior meeting a few years back, some I only knew from conference calls, so it was nice to put a face with a name, and others were completely unknown. Some of the Day 1 topics that were touched on included Research, Laboratory testing, a Q&A session and Data usage. Around 1230 we broke for lunch before reconvening at 1330 for the afternoon session which included more presentations, Methodology updates, Whole Genome Sequencing plans/usage, and funding discussions. We finished up around 1630, but had to wait another hour for the Super Shuttle (Super Shuttle being late or not even showing up was a recurring theme) to pick us up and take us back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.
The whole group of us (35 people) went to dinner at a restaurant which served both Indian and Thai food called Sapphire Restaurant, which was pretty damn good, or at least most of us thought so. They had a buffet with a few different Indian dishes which all were flavourful and quite tasty and most of the party elected to go this route. However a few decided to order off the menu and their food took a very long time and in at least two cases, wasn't as advertised. I dunno, if there's a buffet, I'm gonna order from it, usually the food is fresher and it's easier to deal with. Experience has taught me once you start asking people who aren't prepared (the chef in this case) to freelance, things tend to go off the rails.
Day 2 of the meeting started no different then the first with one Super Shuttle not showing up, and then another finally showing up late. Thankfully the hotel hired a van for us as a backup and got some to the FDA building on time, while the rest were an hour late because of Super Shuttle. The presentations today included discussions about the upcoming FDA Science Board review, a demo of an App and website for use in sample collection and data transmission, and a tour of the facilities and a break for lunch. After lunch we had a presentation on the future direction of the project and got to hear about some upcoming pilot projects which were near being rolled out. This was probably the most interesting aspect of the whole meeting for me, anything new or any sort of research is right up my alley. I've been doing the same thing for a few years so it's always nice to have a change.
We closed the meeting out with a final presentation from the director of the CVM before having a small awards ceremony where some of the partners were singled out for a variety of reasons. Our lab managed a certificate for excellence in communication. Finally it was time to go to the airport so we said our goodbyes and headed back to our respective states...except me. I headed to Orlando, the complete opposite direction for a 3 hour layover because that was the only flight at government rate. There was an earlier, cheaper, direct flight, but it wasn't government rate and the people who were in charge of the travel arrangements wouldn't put me on it. Doesn't make sense does it? Although I can't complain too much though since they were paying, it was certainly frustrating having the layover and getting home at 2am.