One of the challenges of picking a continuing education conference is finding a balance of an interesting meeting in a fun location. A new aspect being an employed physican is dealing with the fical year. Because of various other commitments, we had to venture away from our tradition conference options. Given these constraints, we ended up choosing the World Conference on the international Study of Lung Cancer. While the conference was more geared toward the oncology side of the disease, it did give us the chance to explore a new city, San Diego. If one attends a conference with the intent of 'learning', it does not leave much time for exploring. For this reason, I feel out photos don't do justice to all San Diego has to offer. Another issue that I can't hold the city or the conference responsible is that we happened to be in the city for the four hottest days of the year. The city is clearly ill-prepared for temperatures about 100 degrees. Still as a version of the saying goes: 'A bad day at a conference is better than a good day at work