As with my my summary of CASP1, there are two parts to this missive: The first part deals with my escapades in the sub-continent that is California. The second is about the actual details of the conference.
After the conference, we decided to 
head south and
explore the Californian desert. Our first stop was Joshua Tree
National Park, so called, believe it or not, because of the presence
of numerous 
Joshua Trees. These
are interesting organisms because it is hard to pin point immediately
how they survive in the desert heat given their appearance, but these
plants (which is what they are) represent a focal point for a complex
community.
After that, we headed off to Death Valley National Monument. The
name arises from the fact that early settlers thought it would be a
short way from Nevada to California, but ended up suffering in the
intense heat. But there's more to Death Valley than the name would
suggest. We began our trip at the 
Artist's
Palette and went onto the 
Devil's
Golf Course. Other great points include Badwater (the lowest
point in the Western Hemisphere), Furnace Creek (one of the hottest
places in the world), and Dante's Peak (spectacular view of the entire
valley).
Death Valley is marked by 
large gorges cut
due to the flow of either lava or water, 
sand dunes,
and 
some amazing
adapations of living organisms to this climate. The most
exhilarating experience was when I climbed down the Ubehebe crater
(going down was really fast---coming back was quite a workout!).
On our way back, we decided to go through Reno and over the mountains when we ended up right in the middle of a huge snowstorm in the Lake Tahoe area. At one point, we were surrounded by snow rising up to nine feet on the ground. We were lucky that we just made it through before they closed all the roads, but not without some scares. Our trip over Donner pass took almost 4 hours!
This conference was the culimination of essentially four years of work on my Ph.D. The graph-theoretic clique-finding method we developed was rigourously tested in a blind manner and it performed quite well (as you can read from the published papers). My talk was very well-received. I can't wait for CASP3!