Greetings one and all! Been an interesting week and a fantastic weekend (though sadly I forgot my phone/camera so I don't have pictures for you all, which is most unfortunate).
This week, the temperature has been dropping and dropping and it has been COLD. We got a nice bout of snow at the beginning of the week before everything decided to warm up briefly, then turn to ice that has yet to really melt. But the snow was nice when fresh!
Work wise, I have been getting an education in science politics (as opposed to political science). I had an abstract for a talk that was due, well, today. It was going to be on my work at ALICE specifically, covering the experiment's detectors and the basic physics of what I'm doing. The talk was aimed at biology, chemistry, and physics undergraduates at the Nebraska Academy of Science. I say was because during the approval process, I was stonewalled by one particular member of the physics board. ALICE has been getting more and more obsessive with what people are publishing under their name. This is understandable when it comes to avoiding substandard papers and the like, but this was a talk that could be given to tourists.
Well, this particular nameless board member (nameless because people from ALICE have heard of this blog so I'd rather not dig myself into too big of a pit even if they're unlikely to read it) though that this was going to be a talk at a conference of particle physicists, presenting the latest ALICE results. He tore into my abstract berating it up one side and down the other and added a few choice statements about my pessimistic attitude that "there will be nothing new presented" because surely my work will advance by April! Clearly he didn't read my description of the conference. When I explained it to him he did back off somewhat, but still wouldn't approve it until we talked later.
All of this was done on very short notice (I found out in late January that I would be giving this talk) and upon telling me that we needed to discuss it, he then proceeded to ignore my emails until the weekend was upon us and the problem, for him, went away. He is less than my favorite person right now. Apparently he has a bit of a reputation for dismissing students out of hand. I'm a little frustrated at ALICE in general for a few things at the moment, and this didn't help my opinion.
Ultimately I wrote a different, more generic abstract that I just finished submitting. It will cover basically the exact same stuff, but I won't be able to use ALICE results, even past ones that have already been approved. Politics sucks, stay away from it. As much as is possible.
Fortunately, the WEEKEND was amazing! I went to a ski area called Les Contamines with the two other people in my office, Matt and Davin (pronounced Dave-in) and a friend of Davin's named Barbara who is from Italy. All four of us are decent skiiers (though Matt apparently had only been once before, he managed some black runs just fine). Les Contamines is apparently a famous ski area (maybe some of you have heard of it, I hadn't) and it certainly was worth the hour and a half drive.
Let me say this, in lieu of the pictures I wish I had taken. I have grown up hiking and skiing all through the Cascade Mountain range in Western Washington. My mother tells a story where a friend of hers was raving about some mountains, possibly the Blue Mountains in Idaho, and how gorgeous they were. My mother looked at them and though "I mean they're pretty, but they seem kind of ordinary." Later she realized that they were in fact considered a very pretty range, it was just that she grew up in sight of the Cascades that they seemed merely reasonably nice. The mountains near my home, as those of you in Seattle know, are absolutely stunning. The Alps in winter leave them far behind. I spend most of the drive just staring out the window at them. I had seen them in Summer, and they were pretty enough, but covered in snow from top to bottom, each tree an iced needled pointed towards the sky with the sun glinting on every facet of each snowflake was absolutely breathtaking. The Alps are incredibly steep as well, and these mountains are fully capable of looming up suddenly as you round a corner in all their grandeur.
That was just the drive to the ski resort.
Les Contamines reminded me a bit of Whistler, but that is just because Whistler is the largest ski area I've ever been to, and also a world class ski resort. This place was immense! We took a gondola ride and a very long quad-chair before we got to the mid-point lodge. From there, a number of lifts are available depending which way you ski down. The top of the mountain took three more lifts to get to, and we went straight to the top. The first half hour of skiing consisted of getting to the top of the mountain! Hehe.
The conditions were among the best that I have ever skied in, though it was very cold at -15 centigrade, which amounts to around 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Enough to make any exposed skin hurt when flying down a mountain. I brought my ski blades (they're about 3 feet long for those who haven't seen them) and I can do pretty much any run with them. I had them waxed and the edges sharpened at REI during Christmas Break, and they absolutely flew! They turned well on the few icy patches too, which was great. We did one particular run a few times because Matt, who was getting a great high out of the fact that this was his second time skiing and he was managing the top of the mountain without much trouble, enjoyed it so much. It was a decent red run.
The difficulty system here is slightly different from the states: they have green, blue, red, and black. Red is sort of a hard blue rather than much harder than some blues at Steven's. The blacks were a little overrated as well, at least the groomed ones were. There were places where the powder was thick that provided some challenge, but that's just because the ski blades, though amazing on moguls, have technical difficulties due to lack of surface area that result in face-ground interactions. Especially when I don't see the powder before I ski into it. But I only fell once, and that because part of the slope gave way so I'm not ashamed to admit it. :P
We stopped for lunch at one of the many lodges up there and had some sausage and fries with some good mustard. That was good, but then we had some vin chaud, which is among my favorite things now with skiing. Take a strong red wine (doesn't have to be particularly high quality, and in fact if you use a high quality wine, it's a waste of a good wine) and heat it with orange slices, cinnamon, some sugar, and cloves. I don't know of you boil it or not, but my instinct says no. It is a delightful warm delicious thing that Switzerland and France both do very well, and very much hit the spot after that cold.
After lunch some difficulties set in, however. Barbara lost her lift ticket and had to go back down to get a new one, and everyone else's goggles started to freeze up. Going inside and removing excess clothing, though among the best feelings in the world, does cause the delicate balance between keeping warm and fogging goggles to be upset. I had to go back inside to apply the anti-fog (cat crap for those familiar with the stuff) because, as it turns out, when applied in the cold to already iced goggles, it doesn't work very well.
So after a couple of frustrating runs, we all managed to figure out the goggles and had a blast for the rest of the time. Barbara joined back up with us after the bout of fixing goggles and it was all smooth skiing from there.
The last bit was actually among the most fun runs. You can ski allllll the way down to the base where the gondola starts, even skiing right through some cabins that would be very nice to rent for a week at some point in the future when I have money. The run was fairly shallow, but quite narrow and had no railing or anything on the side that lead off into trees, and there were a lot of people on it at the end of the day when the lifts were about to close down, so dodging the falls and slips while avoiding the edge made for a fun run. I mean that actually, I did have fun! Hehe.
We returned the rental gear (everyone but me had rented) and went to a pub near the gondola for more vin chaud before listening to Guns N Roses on the way back to CERN. One of the best ski sessions of my life!
Hope life is good with all of you back home!
Ciao!
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