I am placing user data in the session then passing it to viewdata to view on a page. Now when my user walks away from his computer for a while, the session ends and the data
I'm assuming you're authenticating the user in some way, but are you using Forms Authentication?:
ASP.Net MVC Framework - Using Forms Authentication
If you're already using Forms Authentication, you need to make sure that the authentication cookie expiration time is just a bit shorter than your Session timout.