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Luckily for me Northridge is pretty much a giant ball of concrete and therefore me and my apartment were not in danger. However, given that the house we were supposed to stay in in San Diego was located east of the city in El Cajon, which if you look at the above map has a little fire icon directly over it, our perfect plans had to change. The occupants of El Cajon were evacuated and therefore we needed to find a new place to stay. All of the hotels within the San Diego area were full of evacuees but we were able to find a room at a hostel located right downtown. We couldn't find a room for the first night though so we had to leave a day later. Therefore on Wednesday, October 23rd, we got up bright and early and left for San Diego at 5 am. The meeting started that day at 8 am and it was supposed to be a 2.5 hour drive. So if everything worked out we would have half an hour to spare. Unfortunately everything didn't work out. Another little fire popped up at Camp Pendleton, which is located right next to the I-5 which was the route we were taking. The highway was closed forcing us to take a detour east to the I-15. This meant driving on the worst detour road given that it was winding through hills and under construction and reduced to only one lane for the majority of it. This lead to us sitting for 45 minutes at a dead stop while we waited for the cars going the other direction to drive through. In the end the trip took an extra 2 hours.
To give you an idea of what the enviroment was like during the fires, I've included some pictures taken on our drive. Now normally the sky would be bright blue. Also, when we opened to windows or were out of the car, I really got a craving for hotdogs.
Although the hostel that we stayed in wasn't a free house, it was actually pretty awesome. It was only 5 blocks from the convention center and it was located smack dab in the middle of the gaslamp district which is the main downtown area. Also, although we stayed in a room with two sets of bunk beds, the other set was empty so we got the room and bathroom and shower all to ourselves.
As for the conference, I found it really interesting and I enjoyed myself. I especially enjoyed the free dinners put on by the drug companies. On thursday night I attended one about lysosomal storage disorders and on friday I attended one about PKU. I was mostly just there for the free food but the talks were ok as well. The funniest part about the whole trip had to be seeing every morning all of these geeky scientists and doctors with their name tags and complimentary ASHG tote bags swarming from all parts of the city towards the convention center. I doubt San Diego has ever been so nerdy. Unfortunately I was one of them.
