I had a really good week at Keystone. I enjoy conferences quite a lot, getting to hear about interesting science and think up new experiments, talking to other scientists over a few beers and catching up with old friends. It was so good to see Sylvie again, it has been almost four years since I last saw her in Montreal. Sylvie brought along her student Veronique (my lab sister) and we all had a lot of fun together. We went ice-skating together, Veronique and I went snow-shoeing, we chatted about their results and Sylvie tried to convince me to move to Montreal. It was also good to see Chris again and to hear Jeff Bluestone give a talk about the same Foxp3Cre x Dicerflx data that I have. We finished up the conference with a really fun night at the bar playing air-hockey, until the belligerant waitress refused to accept Sylvie's Canadian driver's licence as a form of ID.
The snow was beautiful up in the mountains, and I enjoyed the hike a lot. We saw the snow trail of an elk and a ermine, and we saw a squirrel scamper from one tree to another. Still, the altitude was really tough, the cold sucked all the moisture out of the air, so I had mostly sleepless nights. I'm glad I got to see the mountains, but I don't think I'd come back to Keystone, especially if I wasn't going to see Sylvie.
