If after a long day of conference-ing, you are looking for something fun to do with your lab, your department, or newly made friends in New Orleans, I highly recommend getting a group together and going to Escape My Room New Orleans! If you’re unfamiliar with the concept, Escape the Room is a type of game where players are locked in a room, and in order to escape, they need to find clues and solve puzzles using objects in the room within a set time limit. And no, you cannot use objects to bash your way out; this game values brain over brawn.  Good thing we’re here for the Biophysical Society Meeting and not the Bodybuilding Society Meeting.

Last night, a group of biophysicists from the University of Pennsylvania got together to participate in Escape My Room New Orleans! The rooms are centered around the famous DeLaporte family of New Orleans. The room we tried to escape from was the Jazz Parlor, where a murder happened (cue dramatic music)! The escape rate of this room is about 38%. I won’t go into any details of the room as to not give away how to escape, but I know our group definitely had a blast. While wearing eclectic clothing, we worked together and escaped the room with about ten minutes to spare! Funny thing though, is that when we escaped the room…we actually didn’t realize we did. Miss Kay, our hostess for the night, said we escaped in the most bizarre and interesting way anyone ever has. While not every group in the 38% of groups who escaped found all the clues, Miss Kay said she was shocked that we basically escaped without certain, key clues. Like, no one has ever gotten out with the key clues we missed. We did get far in collecting clues, but I guess we didn’t need those clues to get out. We attest our success to being true scientists, where when something needs to be done (e.g. escaping this room), and we don’t know how to do it, we just keep doing different things until that something gets done. Which is exactly what we did. And if you escape, you get to take an awesome picture, proving to the world that you escaped, just like we did! So, if you do end up trying to escape the room, I wish you good luck! Also, I'm presenting my poster today from 2:45-3:45 PM, Poster 466! Feel free to stop by!

Take it easy in the Big Easy,

Martin

ESCAPE MY ROOM 633 Constance Street New Orleans, LA 70130 https://escapemyroom.com

PS: Betsy and I (the ones in the main picture frame) were the ones who ultimately "figured out" how to escape the room. Go us!