Grounded At ACS?

Posted by Carmen Drahl on April 7, 2008 in 2008 Spring National Meeting, ACS Meetings

I met Stephen Taylor on the shuttle bus ride to the convention center yesterday. He’s a chemistry grad student at the University of Cincinnati working on sensors for small organic molecules, and he gave a talk on Sunday in the Inorganic Division.

Stephen had the misfortune to book his plane ticket to the ACS meeting on Skybus Airlines, one of three airlines that shut down this week. The airline ceased all operations as of Saturday, April 5th, and Taylor told me he received an e-mail on Friday letting him know that he no longer had a flight to New Orleans.

How’d he end up getting to the convention center in time for his talk? “When you’re a poor grad student, you take what you can get,” Taylor said. In this case, that meant taking his car from Cincinnati, Ohio all the way to New Orleans on Saturday. Frankly, I’m impressed that he was able to muster up a genuine smile for my camera. Good attitude, Stephen.

Sound off, gentle readers: Did you have to miss the ACS meeting because of these airline shutdowns? Do you have a crazy meeting road trip story? We’d love to hear it.