The ARVO experience for me is always a mix of excitement and exhaustion. Meeting colleagues can spark new ideas, but also reveal new challenges and competition. Like always, this year’s meeting was packed with meetings, new collaborations, and lots of walking. I arrived Monday in Salt Lake City with just a backpack to catch my grad student’s talk, meet with our new department chair, and join an advisory board dinner at a steakhouse without steak. On Tuesday, I enjoyed crispy chicken sandwiches at Pretty Bird with my former postdoc Sook, then met with an incoming postdoc and prospective postdoc candidate before catching up with MD-PhD friends for dinner at Takashi, followed by a second dinner with my lab at the Copper Onion. Breakfast with a company CEO next morning included advice on engaging industry, followed by another CRO meeting that will hopefully produce a paper. In need of a break, I left the conference for delicious brown butter miso ramen and whipped tofu at Koyote, then explored fossils at the Natural History Museum of Utah. Among the most impressive of the collection were the mammoth, dire wolf, sabertooth cat, and giant sloth skeletons. Back at Temple Square, I perused the edifices of the Mormon headquarters, although the Salt Lake Temple itself was completely covered with scaffolding. I returned to my hotel to practice my talk before joining DFC lab’s decadent Indian buffet at Saffron Valley. I snapped photos of my trainees at their posters and gave my talk to a largely empty audience on the last morning, then detoured for Freshie’s 5oz warm butter lobster roll and clam chowda en route to the airport to join other faculty for our flight home. I finished the week welcoming my friend Phoebe as our invited speaker at Lemongrass before finally rejoining my family to spend a quiet Mother’s Day weekend over nearby pho, boba, and beef chow fun.