Day 4, June 17th

Quotes of the (past four) day(s):

"Hey yo, we got room keys." -Frank

"H'okay"

You would not believe the red tape that went into just allowing us to post these sites. Amazing.

Anyway, these past four days have been awesome, with the most sporadic schedule I've ever lived through. Breakfast at 1:15 PM, on top of a mountain until 3 AM, geology tour at 8. Craziness. I confess an acute nostalgia attack: forced back to Macintosh computers. That's all I have to say about that. I never would have guessed that my back would have survived these past four days: aligning a 12" Meade with Arcturus and climbing ~K feet. Killer.

June 18th, Friday:

Everything here has consistently far surpassed my most optimistic expectations. The people are uber cool. The PI and Co-Is are brilliant and some of the nicest people I've met. I haven't spent a dime. The landscape is indescribable: in the day, views of New Mexico's "normal" are post card; at night, the skies exceed artificially enhanced star maps. It's kind of funny, I had expected 24/7 tedious poring over star charts and radiotelescope drivel, but instead, the hard stuff is there (CCD search for 11 Parthenope (Ned, man, kudos for putting up with me)) but more frequently there's excitement: spotting spy satellites, Messier marathons, philosophy over Parthenope. And I have learned so much more in such a short time than I thought I could, given so little sleep. Bit it's all with fun.

Frank and I have dubbed our room the Party Room, and last night at 4am we had a tea party with the whole crew. We're collecting tea bags and bath mats like it's our job. However, there hasn't been too much time to do laundry and the Party Room has reached critical status as far as clean clothes go. I have a pair of socks, a pair of quicksilver trunks and my trusty speedo still clean. It's a problem. But it's cool though, because New Mexico is hot, but really dry, so humidity is a non-issue and you only feel dirty after running up large mountains. I have some great pictures already, almost three rolls.

Taking a musical relief from the research, a "Won't you step into the freezer" phenomenon has swept the team, releasing funk, dancing, and a good jam. The party has only just begun. A team of basketball girls has moved in four rooms down the hall. No worries though, in an effort to prevent breaking young girls' hearts, the party room (and I) have decided to keep things with everyone on a plutonic level, however, as with everyone else, PR 114 is a equal opportunity provider and does not discriminate on the basis of age, gender, or musical preference.

Ghetto-Fabulous Kate tore it up, up in hurr last night, got down in the PR Pad and shook it like a Polaroid picture 'til Big Man Sun came up to chill with us'ns.

For the sake of preventing redundancy, check Frank's site for a full quote and button list.

Ellie is really, really disruptive, though she denies it vehemently. And I did NOT, at any time, punch her in the eye.

And to all the people looking for rooms at the Hilltop House, please contact the main desk, not the Party Room, for your service is not appreciated early in the morning while I'm asleep, thank you. Seriously, step into my freezer.

Monday:

H'okay. So. The past couple days have been awesome and absolutely hysterical. Really cool, but not as funny, we worked on mathematical equations for the radius of the orbit of the asteroid we've been tracking. It's been really cool. We looked over the calculations and finally figured out the problem with the equation we put into the calculator and now we've figured it out and graphed it. Par Murphy, our results don't match John's "official" results so there must be considerable error, but we're getting there. Todd gave an excellent speech on neutrinos before freeing us to dabble with our sites. We're listening to the Red Elvises, who we saw last night. So now we revert back to Sunday:

Sunday:

Not really into the idea of getting <2 hours of sleep to go to the Buddhist service, Frank and I slept 'til 2ish. After that, we shoved ourselves into Big Blue to head to Bandelier to go hiking through some ancient Anasazi village ruins. That was really cool. Once again this trip, I was reminded of how out of shape I am, since climbing up to the cave I was really really out of breath. Granted, the atmosphere here is thin and less conducive to physical activity, but man, that was really pathetic. The humiliation was well worth it, cause the view from there was amazing (pictures to come). We chilled for awhile in our respective rooms before heading to Ashley Pond for the Red Elvises. Pizza-enough said. The Red Elvises blew me away and changed Frank's life permanently. Donning their top hats, leopard skin print or Chinese dragon pajamas, they tore up the Los Alamos stage. The saxophonist had a striking resemblance to William Shatner and the keyboard/tambourine/accordion player looked like the guy from the David Letterman Show. The bassist had an appropriate Sickle and Hammer between his pickups and they're antics, I'm sure, have been matched by only a few. Frank, Kate, Ned, Ellie and I danced the night and our breath away. The rest of the crew came later, but no one in all of New Mexico jammed like we did. We grabbed some punk kids to form a line center stage, Ned broke it down with his legendary break dancing, nearly missing several elderly Korean women. Even Galen came and jammed with us, busting a move or two.

After that awesome show, we left for Fenton Hill two shirts, four CDs, and 6 signatures richer. The night was particularly cold and the team particularly reluctant to do anything but sleep. Ned and I squeezed in a good game of chess before heading out for another healthy dose of TPoint/asteroid frustration, but I feel (delusional or not) like we made some progress. The moths really need to go though. Thus ends one of the most exciting days of this trip.

In the spirit of going chronologically backwards-Saturday:

Spent our time at the Canyon School learning about radio waves from Don. Perfect preparation for the VLA on Tuesday. Then John helped us work through some of the asteroid equations. We determined the radius of the asteroid, but since then computer models have shown that we were slightly off. The small error is fine, though. Saturday was the big day at the Gisler's. We went swimming at the White Rock Community pool, and there played a crazy game of basketball and an equally crazy game of Marco Polo. Significant events: Ellie got a cut from someone (allegedly me, but I was no where near her and only saw it after it was already there), Juanama took a 7 inch square chunk out of Frank's arm. Apparently cannibalism is legal in Georgia (just kidding, Juanama). After that, we headed to the Gisler's for Galen's birthday party (which was actually Monday). They have an awesome house, and the most and weirdest instruments that I've ever seen in one place. So Frank, Katie and I jammed for a while, trying different instruments: a smattering of saxophone, a little guitar, some accordion, etc.. The Gislers had awesome food for us: shrimp, fruit, chicken, and most of all brownies (of which I ate seven or eight). We had an oranges & cream sherbet and vanilla cake for Galen's birthday, and then the whole team watched "Contact". I had seen it a long time ago, but it was good to see it again. Now that we're actually going to be at the VLA, it gives the movie a whole new flavor. We ended the party with a couple rounds of chess and at least so far I've been doing okay.

After the party, Party Room 114 held one of its (in)famous tea parties. We all hung out until three-thirty-ish, when everyone but Katie and Ned left. Past that, it got a little bizarre. Ned thought he was a banshee on speed and when you're running low on sleep, hilarity is magnified. Ned walking on Katie's back resulted in one of the funniest moments of the trip to date, but see Frank's site for the full story on that. Anyway, they stayed for awhile and then left us so we could get some sleep.

Back to Monday, we ate at the Central Avenue Grill before heading out to a lecture at Bradbury on the Origin of the Elements, given by this really cool German scientist. Really, really interesting lecture. Only thing was that two rows behind where I was sitting was this kid who's convinced he's God's gift to physics, so from him I present these two brilliant quotes:

The first comes from earlier on, the first lecture of the series (the one on cosmology). Salmon Habib was explaining how the geometry of spacetime was essentially flat. He was answering a question: "The answer has to do with the geometry of spacetime," to which our fine friend in the back row (who we'll call Sparky) piped up "Euclidean Geometry," which has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I guess the word "Euclidean" sounded somewhat intelligent to him, so he had to find a way to display his brilliance. His plan backfired. Today, he matched himself. The speaker was explaining that the pairing of neutrons and protons in atoms, improving stability, lead to a zigzag effect in the abundance of certain elements. Sparky felt it necessary to once again flaunt his obvious brilliance and asked, "is that analogous to the octet rule for electrons." The speaker, unable to contain his wonderment, responded with a deft, "No, not at all." Another point for you, my friend.

Similarly, this scene has turned into a pillar of team humor and is still enjoyed, despite its occurring last week:

Salmon Habib had been countering attacks from an elderly gentleman in the back who appeared to be completely unconvinced of Salmon's arguments. The man asked question after question, trying to find a hole somewhere, and it was getting to the point that everyone felt that his extreme discontent was inappropriate given the setting. Finally, after fielding several questions since the man's last parry, Salmon called on the man a final time. His question, obviously a last resort, was: "So, is mass conserved?" Salmon Habib answered with a definitive, "No," and the indignant man removed himself from the room. Sheer brilliance.

Tomorrow: the VLA!!

Tuesday:

So Saturday night we saw the movie "Contact" and Tuesday we were there. As unrealistic as the plot is, yet how cool the VLA, I wasn't prepared for how freaking huge those antennae really are! The Very Large Array is in the middle of nowhere in a valley near Soccoro. While we were there, this magnificent thunderstorm came and scared our guide inside (figuring he knew what he was talking about, we followed suit). We did get to check out the correlator and the control room and everything. I got a picture of the "Astronomy is looking up" sign (from "Contact"). Then we took a million pictures before heading to the gift shop. I got Sarah something cool. Then we went to Val Verde for dinner. Frank got a ridiculously red rare steak. He loved it though, so...After we came home, everyone congregated in the Party Room and we worked on our slide show for awhile. Then Frank and I updated our journals and headed to bed. Fairly uneventful day otherwise.

Wednesday:

This morning we got up pretty early to go to the explosion. We went through like 5 million safety and security checkpoints and three long miles later we were standing on a hill waiting for this thing. 600 lbs of chemical explosives. Sure to be a good show. 3...2...1 Bright flash and a huge puff of smoke and dust. Then the air pressure/sound wave hit us. It was awesome! So incredibly loud. It made a smallish mushroom cloud before settling again. We were all excited, except Frank, who cut himself in a failed attempt to climb a tree (stick with rocks). Lunch - one word: Quizno's. Sweet carbonara satisfaction. Since then we've been working on our presentation, whether at LANSCE or at Canyon School. I think we're heading out to dinner now, so...'til later!

Dinner tonight at The Blue Window Bistro. It was very good. Elizabeth gave the owner of her veal-conscious mind. I had a very small cesaer salad (not real hungry) that tasted like fish and I felt very pettite. Good root beer though. Then over to Bradbury for a lecture on robotic telescopes. And now we're back at Canyon School, working the sites and prepping the presentation. Until tomorrow.

 I found this picture during my freetime, which I appropriately spent at enduringvision.com:

http://www.enduringvision.com/archives/alpic21.htm

Tell me that's not awesome.

Quotes of the day:

Ned: I almost cried when I first touched that right-click button.
Chad: I peed a little.

Turkish: What's that in your belt?
Tommy: A gun.
Turkish: Well I know that, Tommy, but what's it for?
Tommy: For protection.
Turkish: Protection? From who? Protection for zee Germans?