A Game of Firsts

My first presentation of my first paper at my first conference.

I certainly helped that the CSCE (Canadian Society of Civil Engineers) 2013 conference was held in Montreal, QC. After a bit of a shaky practice the day before in front of Sriram and Scott's research teams, I fixed things up majorly on Tuesday ready to present on Wednesday afternoon. There were a few other people from the civil department going, but Scott and I didn't happen to coordinate transportation with them, so we rented a car and drove down early on Wednesday. Plans for this trip also included doing the same type of field work that I did at the bridge in Brossard but at the bridge that lead to the spa Bota Bota (also built by MAADI Group), see Turlough, and go dancing at Cat's Corner.

After some really great and enlightening talks along the way, in the last few hours of the drive I finally pulled out my laptop and went over the changes in my presentation with Scott. Arriving within good time for my 3:30 session, I had to change and get ready (after a 6-7 hour drive) in the hotel bathroom since I couldn't check in. We weren't in the conference hotel, but we got bumped to each our own executive suite, which was ok with me!

A familiar view

Due to some mix ups, Scott was not able to attend my talk, and it turned out to be a very empty room. The one person I did know that was in the room was Jacques from the Aluminium Association, so I had a good presentation, but not too many witnesses, but that's ok. From then on, I could enjoy the conference!

The first night at the young professionals social, I met Kevin and Matt, two recently graduated UW civils that were in the dynamics class I TAed. There was apparently a new competition at the CSCE conference to present capstone projects and UW sent them. Hanging out with and a few others from University of Saskatchewan at dinner, the evening ended relatively early because everyone was very tired. But now that I had found to UW students I knew, Scott's conflict the next morning with chairing a session with the time slot we arranged with Bota Bota do to accelerometer instrumentation on their aluminium bridge would no longer be an issue.

The next morning I woke up, I meandered to the conference for breakfast, gathered the guys and took the car to the Vieux-Port with a heavy bag of big accelerometers (the kind we had before), accelerometers the size of sugarcubes, my laptop, the DAQ, and the mounting blocks we built for the last field test.

Portfolio picture from MAADI Group's site

Having a few extra hands around was a huge help, and it would also would have taken a much longer time had I also had to jump on the bridge and collect the data. After a few hours of us collecting tests and moving the accelerometers, Scott came by after his session to check out our installation. Scott and I later met with Alex at the office for a bit and got to hear about some really neat things he has in the works. When I responded yes to whether I brought my swim suit with me, Alex gave me a pass for the Bota Bota spa. Already planning a run the next day, I now knew how I was going to do my cool down.

Returning the equipment back to the hotel, I returned to the conference to listen to more talks and meet some pretty interesting people. Dinner was at the 3 amigos for the young professionals group, and I found out that many of the organizers or older people of the group were GNCTR captains or on the committee when it was at their university in recent years. Needless to say, that was a really awesome dinner table for me because I'm still very interested in being in the loop (UW Alumni team!).

I made a slightly early exit from dinner to go visit Turlough who originally invited me to the Rialto, but did not feel well enough to go in the end. So I went out on the metro to see him at his new place by Jean-Talon. We drank tea, chatted, and watched classic Doctor Who. It was a very comfortable evening!

Saturday morning I woke up early (like every other day during this conference) and went for a run down Peel to the Lachine Canal, along the water past Bota Bota, into Old Montreal, and back. Still catching breakfast at the conference, I went to the morning presentations and at an early lunch I scooted out to the spa. It was my first time at a spa and it was very tranquil. The sauna was peaceful and I just lay there for a while trying to let go a bunch of stress that had built up in the past few weeks, the driving, and presenting. I had to say, looking out over the edge of the jacuzzi and seeing all of downtown Montreal was pretty unique and awesome.

I eventually left and made my way back to the conference (I felt I should at least make a token appearance that afternoon?). Scott had his second and final presentation, which was nice that we didn't have to stick around on Saturday when people would be leaving the conference throughout the day.

Attempts to meet up with my cousin fell through sadly, but I made it out to Dunn's to have a victory smoked meat sandwich, walked up and around Mount Royal, had a small nap, then walked over to Cat's Corner. So ensued a really awesome (as expected) 4 hours of dancing, along with meeting new and old faces. After the run, lots of walking around Montreal, and dancing, my legs were getting pretty tired. On my way home, I came across a café that was still open and had some tasty looking macarons, which made a nice treat on the way back. Second super late night of the conference, I crashed and woke up 3 hours later!

Saturday was just a pack stuff up, get a little breakfast and head out, where we made it back to Waterloo around 1pm. Oh! and the one day I only had a coffee as a lunch, but I won another free coffee, so there were lots of happy things that happened on this trip. Oh yes, and I bought a pillow from HMV that looks like a TARDIS, I would have kicked myself if I assumed the small HMV in Waterloo had it and then didn't.

I miss Montreal. Is there a way I can live in multiple cities at once?