Texas A&M is located in College Station, Texas. College Station and Bryan are adjacent cities and are sometimes (to the annoyance of travellers) referred to interchangably. The closest airport is Easterwood Airport, which is actually in College Station, Texas. Typically, one takes a turbo-prop plane from a larger airport to Easterwood Airport.
The next closest airports are in Houston: Houston Intercontinental and Houston Hobby. (These are about 2.5 hours driving distance from College Station.) After that, it's Austin and then Dallas.
IF YOU PLAN TO DRIVE FROM THE AIRPORT then we would not recommend the Austin or Dallas airports: your drive will be 1-2 hours longer than from Houston (and 3.25-4.25 hours longer than from Easterwood).
SHORT FLIGHT VS. LONG DRIVE: For those of you deciding whether you'd like to fly or drive to College Station, we point out that Enterprise has a rate of US$155/week for car rental. (A quick check of other firms yielded rates which were over US$20/week greater in price.) Alternatively, if you are a domestic visitor and can get state rates, Advantage offers a US$37 one way rate between Houston and College Station. (So you could spend US$74 but NOT use the rental car while in College Station.)
You can find a web-page with driving directions and important phone numbers HERE.
Conference participants will be staying at La Quinta Inn. The address for the hotel is 607 Texas Avenue, College Station, Texas (Tel#: (979) 696-7777), but the hotel is actually on a small street called Live Oak, behind a Denny's restaurant, not far from the intersection of Texas Avenue and University Drive.
La Quinta operates a free shuttle between the airport and hotel; hours are 8am to 7pm. Just use the courtesy phone in the airport when you get in. For those arriving outside these hours, the hotel is a 15 minute taxi ride away, costing around 15$.
Walking to Blocker (the main building for the conference) takes about 20 minutes.
A more detailed
MAP, with
KEY, (both
in PDF format) can be downloaded from the last two links...
Parking is free in Lot 50 for the duration of the conference. Lot 50 is located at the intersection of Bizzell and University, and is a 10 minute walk from Blocker.
From May 17-24 there will be bus service between La Quinta and the Blocker building. Buses will depart La Quinta at 8:00 and 8:30 in the morning, and depart Blocker at 5:45 and 9:00 in the evening (with the exception of friday evening, when there will only be a 4:00 evening bus).
For the preconference, talks will be in Blocker 156; the main conference talks will be in Blocker 158; both these rooms are in the first floor of Blocker.
Texas weather is delightfully unpredictable. (For instance, during May 12-14, 2002, the temperature ranged from 59F to 93F.) We recommend that you dress lightly but definitely bring a jacket and an umbrella. Current weather information can be found HERE.
Texas A&M has a rec center with an excellent pool, quarter mile indoor track, climbing wall, weight rooms, and raquetball and squash courts. A week long pass is 24$ and a daily pass is 6$. Hours are 6am-9pm weekdays, and 10am-9pm on weekends. It is on Wellborn Road, across the street from Kyle Field, about a 20-30 minute walk from Blocker.