The Last Team Meeting
I'm in Flagstaff now (that's in Arizona in case you didn't know). I've actually been here for the last two weeks, I just haven't gotten around to updating this blog recently enough to tell all of you that sooner (by "all of you" I mean the 0.2 people that I think actually read this thing). I've been here the last two weeks for a Team Meeting for the research group that I'm a part of. Basically, it's the same thing I went to Leiden for last year - this year it's in Flagstaff. This is the last year the project is funded, so it's our last team meeting. There will be groups in the future that I'll be a part of, but who knows if they'll have large enough budgets to send me on trips all over the country (and occasionally the world). I hope so.
Anyway, today is the last day of the meeting. It's been a weird meeting: the first week most of the group was here, so it was like you might expect a meeting among a bunch of astronomers to be like, but the second week only a few of us stayed in order to work on writing papers and such. Each day there were less and less of us here as people left throughout the week, so that by today (Friday, the last day of the meeting) there are only three of us left. The whole dwindling number of people as the week progressed thing really made it feel like the project was ending. The three of us (me, Neal [that would be my advisor in case you were wondering], and a grad student from CalTech) are kind of like the last hold-outs. Or something like that.
Last week a few of us went on a 13 mile hike in the Grand Canyon. 4.5 miles down into the canyon over a vertical change of about 3000 feet, 4.5 miles across a plateau halfway down the canyon, and then 4.5 miles back up the same vertical change of 3000 feet. It was almost definitely the most difficult hike I've ever done. I think there's two reasons for that: (1) I'm hopelessly out of shape thanks to working too much over the last several months, and (2) We had a time limit because we had to be out of the canyon by about 4:30 pm in order to make it to a banquet. I'm really glad I did it, the hike was an incredible experience... but I do NOT want to do something like that again anytime soon. At least, not without getting in better shape first. The last mile or two up damn near killed me!
I have tons of pictures from my day at the Grand Canyon. But I'm staying next week for a vacation with my parents, brother, and grandparents - half the week at the Grand Canyon and then the other half of the week in Las Vegas. So I'll post pictures some other time when I have more to post (basically, I'm just to lazy to post them now).
Ok, I'm done.
Anyway, today is the last day of the meeting. It's been a weird meeting: the first week most of the group was here, so it was like you might expect a meeting among a bunch of astronomers to be like, but the second week only a few of us stayed in order to work on writing papers and such. Each day there were less and less of us here as people left throughout the week, so that by today (Friday, the last day of the meeting) there are only three of us left. The whole dwindling number of people as the week progressed thing really made it feel like the project was ending. The three of us (me, Neal [that would be my advisor in case you were wondering], and a grad student from CalTech) are kind of like the last hold-outs. Or something like that.
Last week a few of us went on a 13 mile hike in the Grand Canyon. 4.5 miles down into the canyon over a vertical change of about 3000 feet, 4.5 miles across a plateau halfway down the canyon, and then 4.5 miles back up the same vertical change of 3000 feet. It was almost definitely the most difficult hike I've ever done. I think there's two reasons for that: (1) I'm hopelessly out of shape thanks to working too much over the last several months, and (2) We had a time limit because we had to be out of the canyon by about 4:30 pm in order to make it to a banquet. I'm really glad I did it, the hike was an incredible experience... but I do NOT want to do something like that again anytime soon. At least, not without getting in better shape first. The last mile or two up damn near killed me!
I have tons of pictures from my day at the Grand Canyon. But I'm staying next week for a vacation with my parents, brother, and grandparents - half the week at the Grand Canyon and then the other half of the week in Las Vegas. So I'll post pictures some other time when I have more to post (basically, I'm just to lazy to post them now).
Ok, I'm done.
posted by Mike at 6:10 PM
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