Yes, it’s the Myth Busters.

So, back in the month of June (The 21st, to be exact), the summer students, a handful of NRAO employees, and about 30 other people took a trip to EMRTC. EMRTC (Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center) is located a stone’s throw away from where I work, and across the street from the HR people in Socorro for NRAO. It’s run by NMT, and it is used to test explosives, train people to deal with explosives, and to perform research around things blowing up (to clarify, that is their research concerns things blowing up; they do not, I fear, put scientists out in a field with lab coats and beakers and begin throwing grenades around). The government does a lot of work with them, as do people like Mythbusters. While much of what they do is obviously at least semi-secret, rumors still exist about what people have heard they do. One such example was a contract from the Navy. The Navy, it seems, wanted to know what one of their shells looked like after it was fired but before it exploded. So, EMRTC got a naval gun, loaded the shell, and fired it into a large stack of hay. The problem with that was the hay had been around for too long, and various poisonous critters had taken residence underneath. Oops!

So, we ducked out of work in the middle of the afternoon and drove the half mile or so to EMRTC’s offices. There, we had to turn in our cell phones and cameras (people who brought either, that is; the summer students and NRAO employees were told ahead of time about this, and most didn’t bring either cameras or phones with them). Then, they had to verify the citizenship of everyone. Americans loitered around for a bit while the foreigners were taken into another room and given a special briefing. Eventually, we  all loaded into some Suburbans and a school bus and went on our way.

The testing facilities of EMRTC are located around M Mountain, the prominent geographical landmark of Socorro. So, we rode through a security checkpoint and out on a road heading off to the mountain. The convoy we had, with two suburbans leading the way along a desert road, reminded me of a scene from a movie, although I couldn’t quite figure out the genre (in related news, I saw two Inmate Work trucks today. After they passed by me, four trucks pulled out from side roads — one in front, two in the middle, and one behind. I was waiting for an explosion or gun shots, because, had it been a movie, that’s when the prison break would have commenced.) Soon we started snaking up the mountain — and snake we did. The bus driver was good at what she did, because she was taking the curves with some speed like a champ.

One of the most interesting things about the trip was everything to see on the way up. Blown out tanks, mobile artillery, missiles, plane fuselages, bunkers, sandbag walls, more bunkers, buildings… it looked like the set of a war movie (one set in a desert, mind you).  We would round a corner, see two tanks on a hill, crest a hill, see a bunker looking toward a plane, then pass up against the walls of the road… Despite the heat, it was a fun trip.

Eventually, we got to the blast zone. There were some smaller explosives some people were playing with in front of us. They called it an “art shot.” Basically, you shape the explosives so they make a design in metal. As they prepared that, the leader of the event also mentioned the truck off in the distance. It had 300 pounds of ANFO, the same stuff used in the Oklahoma City Bombing (although that was around 5,000 pounds). We then got back in the buses and drove up a hill to a bunker. This bunker was half a mile away from the explosions, sunk into the hill, with a solid roof overhang and no direct view of the bomb site. Instead, we looked out a three-inch thick window out to a mirror slanted at 45 degrees. This showed us another mirror at 45 degrees, so that we had a periscope to observe the explosion with.

After another long wait, including a check to make sure everyone was accounted for and under the bunker, they let off the first explosion (the art shots). It was kinda loud, but not too much, and only kinda explode-y. I was worried that we were too far away, and that safety was going to ruin everything (as it is wont to do). I should point out that during this time I was standing next to possibly the most annoying people I have ever encountered in my life. They were punching each other, making fun of other people at the site, and generally being the sort of people I don’t like spending time with. I really should have moved, but was told the height of the periscope was slanted, and I didn’t want to go to someplace too high. (It turns out I could see out the entire periscope…)

Finally, they blew up the truck.

It started out as a flash, shooting out of the truck and quickly disappearing. Black smoke shot out almost immediately, and continued to do so for quite some time. One tire went flying in our direction before rolling around on the ground about 100 feet from the original truck. There was a shockwave that shot out from the truck, clearly disturbing the dirt down on the blast site. Maybe a second or two later, there was a loud snap, and sometime around then (I forget if it was sooner or later, and don’t feel like looking up wave propagation tables to check…it was all more or less at the same time though) there was a concussive blast that shook through the bunker. It actually knocked me back a little, and I was over half a mile away!

They made us wait around (safety…again) in case any fallout had yet to fall. Finally, we got back in the bus and SUVs, and rode back to the blast site. The people who were doing the art shot showed us the results (apparently explosives can actually be controlled to make a picture of Iron Man’s helmet…). Then, we drove to the pickup. Well, more accurately, we drove to where the pickup was. Aside from a tire and a half, there wasn’t much to show that a pickup had once been there. It was utterly destroyed.

The drive back was like the ride up. Used military equipment, bunkers, and the ever-present sight of desert. Once again, the bus driver showed some skill swerving down the mountain, and once again it felt kinda like a movie. We eventually got back, and I returned to work.

Another thing to point out about EMRTC is that they blow up a lot of stuff. So, often times, during the middle of the day, I will hear something that sounds like thunder. Looking outside, however, the sky is clear. Sometimes, the windows will even rattle. That’s EMRTC, blowing stuff up several miles away and in the muffling embrace of a mountain. Also, they were in charge of the July Fourth fireworks.

That’s the story of my trip to EMRTC. Up next, the Magdalena  Ridge Observatory!

Here are the corresponding pictures for this event, by the way: http://picasaweb.google.com/113708845568647784424/20100613VLA#

The Very Large Array (VLA), for those of you not in the know, is the reason I’m in New Mexico. Not to observe on it or to work on it, but because the Socorro facility of NRAO is in Socorro because the VLA is 50 miles away. Since large arrays need lots of open space far from sources of radio interference, the Plains were a good choice for sticking an array. And, since all the support staff and scientists need a place to live, NRAO science facilities sprung up in the nearest mildly large town, Socorro.

The VLA consists of 27 ~10 story antennas (from base to the top of the subreflector when the dish is pointing straight up). arranged in a Y shape — or, more accurately, in three lines angled 120 degrees from each other. One arm points North, and overshoots the intersection of the three arms by two antennas (it has eight antennas North of the intersection and two South). The other two arms, by doing the geometry, point Southwest and Southeast. At the time of my visit, only 26 antennas were in the array — I think one was taken from the North arm for repairs. There is also a 28th antenna at the site, allowing for technicians to always be working on one dish.

Currently, the VLA is undergoing an upgrade to the EVLA (The E stands for Expanded!). The biggest part of this (aside from design, software support, and calibration standpoints) is installing new equipment on the dishes and upgrading the calibrator (see my previous post for a simple explanation of the purpose of the calibrator). It’s kind of a big deal, and I’ve witnessed astronomers having heated arguments about how the implementation is going. Not everything is rosy in the sciences, I fear.

So, I woke up early that Sunday and walked to the AOC (where I work) in hopes of hopping a ride on the buses before the buses left for the hotels. We succeeded, and therefore had first pick at seats on the bus (boo-yah!). After sitting around for about ten minutes, we rode over to the hotels and picked up everyone else in town for the conference. Then, we headed out to the VLA.

When I said that there is stuff in Socorro because of the VLA, I don’t want to give the impression that they’re close. It takes more than an hour to get out to the VLA, and most of the scenery is pretty boring. The high point of the trip, aside from when you get close enough to see the array, is passing through the town of Magdalena (population 913, according to Wikipedia). Other than that it’s a lot of open space, mountains in the distance, and cows. So I took the enjoyable option of sleeping on the way out. Aside from a brief moment of awakeness as we passed through Magdalena when I turned off my phone (phones = Radio Frequency Interference (RFI), which you don’t want climbing all over your antennas), I slept until the sounds of people taking pictures woke me up just outside the array.

Another thing I should probably mention is that the Plains of St. Agustin are ~3,000 feet higher than Socorro. So, showing up there in the morning was actually kinda chilly, especially since I was wearing shirts. By the end of the day my decision paid off, but it was initially not the best of options. After getting out of the bus, I initially put on sunscreen and grabbed a bottle of water (that didn’t last that long). By chance I joined a tour group that was going to go up on the dishes first.

One of the perks of being an astronomer (and I assume this holds true for most fields) is getting special access. Regular people visiting the VLA can get within, oh, ~40 feet of one Antenna. They also aren’t supposed to be walking along the arms or visiting the ALMA antennas. Those of us present that day, however, were given full access. Huzzah!

Not that far up the antenna is the pit room. That’s where all the cables come down through. There’s some equipment there, but it really isn’t TOO exciting. If you’re afraid of heights, however, it’s probably about as high as you want to go. It’s maybe 10 feet off the ground. Probably ~40 feet up (these numbers I’m guesstimating as I go along…I’m bad at estimating distances, especially vertical distances. My pictures will give you the best impression.) was the elevation gear, a large, greasy gear that controls the elevation of the dish. Also, there were cryogenic coolers, whose power requirements take up over half of the operating expenses of the array alone. They look like Air Conditioning boxes (the ones you set outside, not window units).

Up another flight of stairs, over some pipes, and through a narrow passageway is the vertex room. Located directly under the dish itself, here is the front-end unit, the feed horns, and all of the other instruments used to get the data off the dish and pipe it to the correlator. It’s capable of producing a lot of RFI (electronics tend to do that, even those that don’t actively transmit), so there was a bunch of radio shielding around the electronics. After getting a ~8 minute talk about everything inside the vertex room, we walked back into the narrow corridor and climbed a ladder onto the dish itself.

Several things about the dish. First, it’s bright. They’re painted white, and they’re designed to collect all sorts of light. Also, unlike optical telescopes, they aren’t as finely polished (find your favorite optical astronomer and ask to walk over his or her mirror…I doubt they will appreciate your request.) so you still get solar reflections even if you aren’t at the solar focal point. Even with sunglasses on, it was mildly blinding at first. Second, despite the size of the dish, walking on it is a little unnerving. You can feel how thin the metal is, which is not something you want to feel ten stories above ground.  Third, the dish is parabolic, so the slope picks up a bit near the edges. Walking near the middle was easy, but, near the edges you feel like you’re going to fall over (also not the most pleasurable of feelings). Finally, they’re huge. You can probably tell in my pictures, but there is a lot of room up there.

The dishes were pointed more or less straight up, so I walked over to the edge to look around. It got tough to stay standing, so I adopted a Captain Morgan pose, leaning onto my leg further up the dish. Some of the people I was with didn’t enjoy that thought and stayed firmly in the center. After about ten minutes of pictures and gawking, we headed back down. Oh, one last thing about the antennas I should probably mention — the walkways are all metal, specifically the kind you can see through. Once again, a bad place to be if you’re afraid of heights.

After we were back on the ground, we headed over to the operations center. We took the same route into the building Jode Foster took in Contact, but we didn’t have the luxury of disappearing into the magical studio set built for the movie. (If you’ve never seen Contact and visited the VLA operations center, at one point JF runs into the building, runs through a door, and heads up to the control room. However, everything after that door was made in Hollywood because the actual control room wasn’t “hi-tech enough.” Inside, we saw the correlator, the clocking MASER, more circuit boards, and the control room. The control room has a really awesome view of the array itself, pointed more or less toward array center. There’s also a bunch of computers, but that’s to be expected with science. Perhaps best of all, they have a signed picture of Jodie Foster with Arecibo in the background (it’s in my pictures).

Once done there, we headed over the visitor’s center/gift shop, where we lingered for several minutes. Then, onto a bus to visit the Long-Wavelength Array (LWA). You need to look at my pictures to appreciate it. It’s ~200 metal things sticking out of the middle of the desert (in sight of the VLA). They are working on getting several thousand more out there, but, for the time being, it’s still a lot. The guy who talked to us about it brought his ~14 year-old son with him, who has been helping with the assembly. I guess being related to astronomers gets you almost as much access as being an astronomer. The two of them (man and son) talked about the project and all the fun they had getting things assembled (rabbits eat stuff, in case you were wondering).

Our last stop was to the Antenna Assembly Building, where the 28th Antenna was hiding (and the 27th antenna was sitting). We got to walk around inside of that for a bit, looking up at all the feed horns sitting around. They also had the “Jack of Diamonds” sitting outside, which was the rail-mounted jack they use to move the antennas. You can tell you’ve hit the big time when you need a train just to move your telescopes. Pictures, as usual, are in the album.

Finally, we went inside the old cafeteria for lunch. The cafeteria, along with the Visiting Scientist Quarters (VSQ) are not really used anymore (the VSQ is going to get demolished some time), so we had boxed lunches. I forget what exactly I had, but I do remember that, having it at 1 pm after forgetting breakfast, it was very delicious.

After lunch, I took one last stroll of the area. I really wanted to see the ALMA antennas, so I walked over. I later learned that they weren’t so keen on people doing that, but my trip over prompted a mass migration of astronomers, so I’ll take credit for being a trendsetter instead of an instigator. ALMA, for those of you not in the loop, is the Atacama (Chile) Large Millimeter Array. The millimeters are not large in Atacama, mind you — it’s a large array designed to observe at wavelengths of around a millimeter. NRAO is working hard on it. It’s a big deal, really, especially during the conference. Also, I work in the ALMA wing, so I get to hear and see a lot about it.

Having finished up the picture taking, I got back on the buses, folded my arms, and fell asleep. I woke up about ten minutes from Socorro, having had my foot fall asleep on the bus footrest and my watch imprint itself on my arm (picture!). That was, more or less, most of the non World Cup excitement for the next week or so. Next blog post : EMRTec!

What was the synthesis imaging workshop, you ask? Well, radio astronomers are an odd lot; instead of having a telescope like normal astronomers, they’ve decided to create arrays of telescopes. You see, if you have a setup of telescopes stretching 40km in extent, you have effectively made a 40km-diameter radio telescope. Thus, the VLA, VLBA, ALMA, SKA, and all the other interferometric arrays. Every unique pair of antennas (and I use antenna and telescope interchangeably in regards to radio) produces a unique baseline (eg. Ant 8 and Ant 17), and, by measuring the amplitude and phase of the incoming radiation (remember, light is a wave. Waves have three important characteristics: amplitude – how ‘tall’ the wave is, frequency/wavelength — a measure of the spacings between crests of waves, and phase – how offset a given wave is from another. Frequency is controlled by the instruments on the antenna, so we don’t worry about it at the moment). By synthesizing all these measurements along all the baselines (there are a total of (N)*(N-1) baselines, where N is the number of antennas), we can get a high resolution image of what we’re looking at.

If you need to reread that last paragraph, I don’t blame you. Synthesis Imaging is kinda tough to get your head around. The workshop, therefore, was basically a one-week introduction to synthesis imaging for grad students, postdocs, and full-time astronomers looking to get involved in radio imaging. Which meant those of us who were undergrads had a tough road laid out for us.

Generally speaking, there were two or three lectures in the morning, a 75 minute lunch break, then three or four more lectures in the evening. Lectures were between 50 and 75 minutes, before questions. It was a lot of information, and it got really technical at multiple times. That said, it was really informative, and I know so much more about synthesis imaging, radio astronomy, the previously mentioned arrays, and CASA/AIPS (computer programs/packages) than I did before hand. It was just a LOT of information. To quote an NRAO scientist, it was like ‘drinking from a fire hose.’

Along with all those lectures, there were some fun events as well. A reception on the first night, a pool party and cookout on Saturday, a hike that I skipped to,  watch the US-England game, a trip to the VLA (subject to a future post), a dinner on the second to last night, and a party all provided opportunities for us to turn off our brains for a bit. I got to meet a lot of astronomers, which was a pleasant experience.

One thing I noticed about meeting the other astronomers is that many of them are foreign, and many of them are surprised to see an American who A) cares about soccer and the World Cup, especially to wear jerseys on game days, B)knows the history of the game and watched earlier World Cups and C)played soccer for most of his life. I got to have a lot of fun conversations with English, German, Dutch, Brazilian, Chilean, and Italian fans about their teams, my teams, and soccer in general.

Other interesting happenings from the event include getting to watch the US-England game at a bar next to an Englishman (although he wasn’t quite as open to some friendly badmouthing of each others’ respective nations as I would have liked), having a chat with a British expatriate living in Chile working on ALMA who told me about what it was like during the big earthquake they just had, seeing the first floor of where I have been working, and running into someone who knew one of my friends from Case.

Another benefit to having all of these people in town was that there was a lot more to do. With the approximately 150 people who had been in Socorro no longer here, the town has once again returned to being a dusty old Southwestern town.

Going back to Memorial Day Weekend, nothing too terribly exciting happened Saturday. I had some Habitat stuff I had to take care of, and that took up much of Sunday. For memorial day itself, I decided to just be lazy, which was fun. One of the other students arrived that night, but she went to bed early due to jet lag.

The next morning, I had to move out of the guesthouse. That involved waking up early (ew), heading to the student center, and asking to get let in. They didn’t seem to be too prepared for us at that time. Also, there was a bunch of people here for some NMT REU program, which kept on getting people confused. Res Life sent us to the Registrar to get IDs.

At the Registrar, the person minting the IDs was trying to find my information in a stack of papers, but was unable to. So she went to someone else in the office where they looked me up. I proposed that this was because we were working with NRAO and NOT here for the NMT REU (which I had mentioned several times earlier), and they finally caught on. So, the two girls, who had been behind me in line, had to get pulled from line to get their information looked up. This then put them to the back of the ID line. As I said, it seemed poorly organized.

After we all had our freshly minted IDs, we headed back to Res Life and had our keys coded. Then we headed to see the new digs.

No one was around in my suite when I showed up, so I went in and checked that there was no obvious damage. Then I took two loads over from the guesthouse using an NRAO van, put all my stuff in my room, and headed out to work.

At the end of the work day, we three summer students went to the grocery store than Wal-Mart. Upon returning to the apartments, there was someone in the common room playing xbox. I talked to him for a bit. After I mentioned something about the other roommate, roommie #1 got roommie #2. We talked a little bit. Then I started unpacking everything.

It turns out there’s no wi-fi in the dorms (a strange concept to me), so I had to head back to Wal-Mart to get a 7′ ethernet cable. After I got that, everything was peachy keen. A couple things about the dorms worth noting –

• Laundry — both washing and drying — is free here.
• There is a room on the second floor with a TV in it, so I can watch Cup games on something other than my computer (I watched the Argentina game there, and I think I will be watching Holland there tomorrow).
• Lots of closet space.
• My roommates have provided pots, pans, skillets, etc for me, along with plates, cups, cutlery, et al.
• I supposedly have a fourth roommate — he has yet to check in, however. Summer school starts on Wednesday, so I assume he will be here tomorrow.
• The bed is a Twin XL. I’ve been spoiled on Fulls since last August, so this new bed is tragic.

Pictures of the guesthouse and my new room are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/113708845568647784424/LivingInSocorro#

Go Oranje!

Storm: http://picasaweb.google.com/113708845568647784424/StormInSocorro#

Socorro: http://picasaweb.google.com/113708845568647784424/MemorialDayWeekendInSocorro#

As I said on Monday, I did indeed go biking on Tuesday. It wasn’t that long of a bike ride, as it was being annoyingly difficult to go up hills. I realized later (today, actually) that I can change the gear on my bike. I didn’t notice this because the mechanism was fairly tight and difficult to move. So, yeah. It should make biking easier from here on out though!

I went running on Wednesday. It was nice out, at least at 7.30 in the morning, which I’m pretty sure is the only time I’m going to be able to run this summer. That being said, I did see someone out running in the middle of the day today. Crazy people. Also on Wednesday we had a guy talking at the AOC about gravitational waves. It involved a free lunch, which was nice, although now I’m ineligible to be stalked by Domino’s for not trying their new pizza. Verdict: still Domino’s. Later that night I walked over to Burger King. It was about a twenty minute walk each way, however, so I don’t feel too bad about it.

While I was running, I saw a cow in the brush next to the golf course. Which was kind of weird because, well, it’s a cow. On a golf course. Kinda random, you know? Then I realized there was a guy next to the cow. Then I noticed the cow was on a leash and was actually a Great Dane. Holy crap it was big. And it had patches of black and white fur. So it looked like a calf. It looked like this: http://www.pupsforsale.net/great_dane_02_puppies_for_sale.jpg. But larger, and less sickly looking. Anyway, on my walk back from Burger King I saw it A SECOND TIME!

Wednesday it was supposed to be bad outside, with a thunderstorm and hail, but none of it materialized. Thursday, however, we got a pretty big storm after work. I was trying to bike home to beat it, but it came at about seven, so I could have biked at a slower pace and been fine. Oh well. The storm was pretty nice. Lots of lightning, not too much rain. I r an outside and took some pictures of the clouds and such, then went back in when it started picking back up. However, right before sunset, I looked outside and saw this awesome cloud formation to the south, so I grabbed my camera again to take pictures. I ran to the hill behind the guesthouse, where I saw a big rainbow to the east and a phenomenal sunset to the west. I started to take a picture when I realized I had left my memory card in my computer. So, I sprinted inside, grabbed the card, and sprinted out the guesthouse to a view that would give me a slightly better angle on the sunset. I only got one shot of the rainbow before the sun had set too low, but I got some good shots of the sunset. Here’s the best (but they’re all on the Picasa link I posted at the start):

As I said, it was a really awesome sunset. Very red. It was still raining a little bit at that time too, so, after I got the pictures  I wanted, I scampered back inside.

Friday was boring until after work, when the other student already here and I went to a Chinese buffet for dinner. That’s right; I’m at the confluence of Latin American, American, and Native American cultures, in the waning days of spring, and I went to a Chinese buffet. Playing Christmas music. The food wasn’t actually that bad, and it was actually more or less cheap. Afterwards we hit up the grocery store, where I actually got some things I could refrigerate and cook.

This morning, I decided to go to all the sights I had yet to see. First stop: The Mineralogical museum. It was….meh. They had a really good collection of rocks, minerals, meteorites, and fossils, but their presentation was lackluster. They had all the rocks on little display stands, with their name and composition, but that was it. There wasn’t any guide to what you were seeing, no reasons why they form the way they do (they did have an explanation on the chirality of quartz, but only pictures showing how it was formed, not an explanation to why it was that way), and no explanations of what colors or structures mean. You know, things that would make geology exciting. Instead, it was a taxonomist’s dream. They had a room on fluorescent minerals, but it appeared to be broken. It had three black lights, but one was faintly flickering, while the other two turned on at random. Furthermore, you couldn’t read the labels because the actual light in the small subsection was off. The fossil room, which had some potential, was messy and cluttered, as if it was supposed to be a storage room. All in all, the museum has a lot of potential, but it’s largely untapped at the moment. Perhaps I will visit later in the summer to see if things have improved.

After visiting that, I decided to walk back to the guesthouse to get some lunch. On my way, I saw some stairs leading up the Fidel Center. They took me to what was effectively the roof of the second floor, and offered a pretty good view of the surrounding area. I took some pictures, which I stitched into a panorama (visible in the Picasa album). Most of it is tree tops, but you can see the Magdalena Mountains pretty well in it. After that, I walked back to the guesthouse and made some grilled cheese. I am of the opinion that grilled cheese is one of the best foods on the planet, by the way.

After lunch, I grabbed my cowboy hat and ventured to the plaza of Socorro. It’s got a gazebo, a roundabout (traffic circle, if you will),  and some heavy gun to the south. That’s about it.I lingered there on the phone for a bit before heading east across California. There, I saw a Christmas store that sold Jelly Bellies. I was excited, until I found out that they were closing up for good today. That’s cold, Socorro. I wandered around the block until I saw an amputee walking into a discount liquor store. After that, I decided to head to the San Miguel Mission, a 19th century church. Despite looking it up online before going, and seeing that there was nothing until a mass at 5, there seemed to be something going on inside, involving a priest fully dressed for mass. So I closed the door and instead walked around the outside of the building. I decided to stick it out, so I wandered over to a used video store/drive-through cigarette store to pass some time. It was depressing, with dust covering half of the videos and everything generally in a state of neglect. I wandered out and walked over to the courtyard in front of the Mission. After the three o’clock bells chimed and no one left (actually, someone wearing a suit went whistling IN), and having felt some rain, I decided to beat a hasty retreat back to the guesthouse. The rain stopped before I got back, but I saw some people playing music on the porch of the Fidel (student) center, so I stopped to listen. They were pretty good, but I really needed to drink water, so I walked back. After resting for about twenty minutes, I walked back to see the band, but they were disbanding at that point. Hopefully, they play every Saturday, because I’d like to listen to them again. I have a video of them I might post as well at some point.

Finally, I decided to clean out the communal fridge in the guesthouse, something the past year of dorm life has given me good experience with. There was a lot of expired and rotting crap, but there was also chicken and taters marked as ‘free,’ so I had dinner tonight at someone else’s expense. Huzzah to that. The wages of cleaning is free food, I suppose. Other than that, not much has been going on. I found out Star Trek VII: Generations is on Hulu. That’s always fun. It’s also the source of this post’s title. No idea what I’ll be doing for the rest of the weekend, but I did notice the town’s only theater has re-opened, so I might watch Date Night to give me something to do. Also, the pool is open (as of today), so I might go for a swim. Who knows which of these limitless possibilities I will choose!

So, my day began relatively early, as I woke up at 8 am. I showered, brushed my teeth, and trimmed my beard, then walked to work. I was going to walk with the other girl here, but her boss emailed and her and told her she didn’t need to come in until 10.30 (I was aiming for 9.30). The walk is pretty straightforward (but by no means straight), and takes about 10 minutes. I showed up, and the summer student coordinator was at the check-in desk, so she showed me around a little and took me up to my bosses’ office. They weren’t there, so we went to head back to the lobby, only to run into my bosses on the stairs. My bosses took me to get my computer set up, but the sysadmin wasn’t around. So the three of us went to my cubicle and talked about the research I will be doing. I’m not going to go into too much detail at the moment, partially because I don’t have a full grasp on it yet, and partially because I have other things to write about now. After we were done, we visited the sysadmin, who got me set up with an account.

I find that getting a new computer. reinstalling an OS, or getting an account on new machines is a fun occasion, but it’s always annoying how nothing ever works. I have, over the years (mainly the last two), developed an array of keyboard shortcuts I mindlessly enter. Open a terminal? ctrl+F12.  Pull open the wikipedia page on Mount Rushmore? ctrl+F6 w Mount Rushmore {enter}. So, I had to spend some time remaking all of those tricks on my new account, which actually proved annoying when the keyboard shortcuts page was A)difficult to find in the menu and B)not working. So that was my big frustration of the day. Also, I needed to install a program, but I only had access to the binaries, not the source code, so I had to alias a command to run it instead of linking it in $PATH. If you’re still following along, you should probably get a life.

Other than that, work was fairly smooth, with the exception of lunch. The other student currently here and I decided to go to a cafeteria we heard about. But, after about ten minutes of walking, we found out it was closed, and the coffee shop next to it wasn’t serving food. So, we walked over to Taco Bell, showing up about forty minutes after we left the office. I scarfed down  a meal, and she ate hers like a normal person, then we walked about fifteen minutes to get back to the office. So, it was a long lunch. Afterwards, we found out we could have signed out a van. Oh well.

We also got our pictures taken at the HR office and got our checks for the first two weeks of work (holler!). Plus we signed out some bikes, so we can explore the city a little quicker. After work, we used the van to go to the bank (which was closed), then to the grocery store.  When we got there, a pickup truck had blocked off traffic, and an ambulance pulled up. I realized there was no way to get through, so I started turning around when the van stalled. At this point in time, a police car drove in and blocked off the area where I had just come from. So I had to restart the van and pull next to the cop car, then find a parking spot away from the door.

Inside, we were tasked with the difficult task of finding food we could have that wouldn’t go bad without refrigeration and that didn’t need any form of  cooking. I saw some Gatorades on sale, so I grabbed some of them, plus I got a bag of Magic Stars (my absolute FAVORITE cereal, but it is no longer carried by Buehler’s) and some pop tarts. Then I got some plastic utensils and three cheap disposable tupperware things. I also grabbed some sliced bread to go with the peanut butter and jelly I brought with me from Ohio. Which left me with dinner still. So I grabbed some bread from the bakery and a bowl of crumbled Feta cheese that was on sale, and decided I would have bread and cheese for dinner. I also grabbed a diet root beer to finish the meal.

When we got back to the guesthouse, we realized there was a lounge that has a fridge, microwave, stove, and oven. D’oh!

We took the van back and rode our bikes home. I lingered around my room, eating my dinner and watching Hulu. After it was dark, I wandered over to the lounge to watch some TV. Ratatouille was on the Disney Channel, and was also the last film I saw in Cleveland. So that’s a coincidence, huh?

That’s the extent of the day’s excitement. I might try to go bicycling a little tomorrow, if the weather isn’t too unbearably hot.

We begin our journey early on the Morning of the twenty-second. The author and his chauffeur headed from Case Western to the Amtrak station at around 2.45 in the morning, neither completely sure where they were going.  Heading down Chester, it was only through my quick yelling we were able to avoid heading down the wrong path on several occasions. Still, we ended up on W 3rd St., ready to turn off onto the Shoreway and get off at the E 9th St. Exit. Which we did. We then promptly had no idea where the Amtrak station was. So, we turned down E 9th, looked around, then turned around, now heading toward the majestic Erie.  It was then that I saw someone pulling onto a previously-unseen turn we had passed while taking the 9th St. exit. So, we returned down the Shoreway back to W 3rd, and once again headed to the 9th St. exit. However, despite traveling slowly, we still missed it, although I thought I saw it. So, we waited at the 9th St. exit for several minutes (the light was taking forever), wrapped back to W 3rd, and slowly crawled down the 9th St exit. The entrance to the Amtrak station is an abrupt turn, hidden by shubbery, blocked off by white paint on the road. In other words, we had no real chance of noticing it the first time. Also, at E9th, there was a sign pointing east for Amtrak, despite the station being to the west. All the same, we arrived, I got my tickets, I checked my baggage, and I stood by the car with the chauffeur enjoying the cool night air and the ethereal presence of Cleveland abandoned for the night.  Several minutes after the train was scheduled to arrive, an announcement came on the loud speaker saying we should expect to wait another twenty minutes for the eastbound train, and the westbound would arrive afterwards. So, my chauffeur departed, and I walked into the station. There was an Amish family sitting across from me in the waiting lounge, and they had a child with them sleeping on the floor with a towel or something over his eyes. It was adorable, so I discretely took a picture of him with my cell phone. And I waited. Soon enough the eastbound train came, then my ride.  Everyone remaining filed out, where we joined the smokers who were enjoying a chance to have a cigarette before they had to return to the train.

I had my ticket checked and walked onto a dimly lit car. Mildly confused at the exact procedure, and holding out hope for finding a completely empty seat, I wandered a bit. At the end of the car, I decided to just pick a seat, so I attempted to pack my luggage into an overhead rack. There wasn’t enough room, so I turned around to try a spot a little closer to the spot where I entered the car. At that point in time, either the conductor or an assistant asked me if I had a seat. I did, except for the fact someone had just come back in from smoking and taken it while I had my back turned. I said no, so he pointed me to another seat…which someone else grabbed before I could get to it. There was an open seat behind that that was still open, so I cut someone off to take it. Then I stowed my larger piece of luggage, grabbed my pillow, and prepared to sleep. The conductor came by and asked me where I was going, I texted mom, then I went to sleep.

At this point, I would like to interrupt my story with an explanation of how Amtrak operates; if you’re familiar or uninterested, feel free to skip this paragraph. It’s useful knowledge that I didn’t find on Amtrak’s website, so it might be worth reading. Above each pair of seats, Amtrak personnel will stick a slip of paper listing your destination. So, if the seats are unoccupied, there will be no slips of paper. One slip means there is one person in it, and two means both window and aisle are taken. So, if you’re ever boarding Amtrak in the middle of the night when half the passengers are smoking, look for slips of paper to see if you can sit there. Then, if you’re getting off in the night, they will see your destination and alert you before you need to get up. It’s actually a pretty neat system.

I was awake maybe ten minutes before I the lull of the train got to me. I woke up several times for brief moments, first taking off my cowboy hat then moving my pillow to my feet while trying to get comfortable. At one point, the woman sitting next to me needed out of the seat, so I stayed up for ten minutes, figuring she would be back soon enough. She wasn’t, so I woke up perhaps half an hour later. When I finally woke up for good, we were about half an hour from Chicago.  I watched Chicago slowly form around me. When we were close enough for toolbooths to appear on the road were running along, the woman next to me, who had two bags of pretzels she had not touched for the entire trip, offered me one. I actually did kind of want some salty food, so I accepted, and ate those on the way in, finally finishing them about the time I got into Union Station. Once we arrived, I grabbed my stuff and stashed my bags in a locker, then headed outside to try and find a Metra station.

Apparently the cowboy hat I was still wearing screamed “tourist,” as two people hassled me for money before I got to the end of the block. Despite being a tourist, I’m from Cleveland, so you need to make up a better story than “I only need another dollar” or “I bought the wrong ticket” to get me to give you money. I saw a map, then walked to the Metra station, but realized that my train, the Lake Shore Limited, was late by so much that there was no way I could make it to Evanston and back in time to catch my next train. My next option was the El, so I wandered toward the Loop. At the first station I got to, I realized that getting to Evanston via the El would require several route changes as it was a weekend, and I still might not be able to make it back in time. Disheartened, I called the friend I was going to visit and broke the news that I would not actually be visiting. Instead, I wandered toward Millennium Park, which I had never actually visited before. It was okay. I don’t really see what the big deal about it is. I then crossed the Frank Gehrey designed bridge to another park, stayed unimpressed, and wandered back the way I came.

On the west side of Michigan Ave, I saw a Comics store and decided to duck in. They had a pretty good selection of comics, plus a $1.00 pack of random Magic cards (the woman working never noticed me, so I never asked what the exact deal was). But, with no room in my carry-ons, I left empty handed. I strolled around a little more, heading in the general direction of Union Station. I found a place to grab lunch that seemed nice but not too expensive.  I had a burger and a beer, and left feeling satisfied. With nothing better to do, I headed back to the station, grabbed my luggage, and headed into the waiting room. I waited, had a brief conversation with my dad on the phone, and waited some more. I finally boarded, and ended up on the top deck of the farthest back car, sitting in the window seat next to a guy heading to Kansas City. We talked a little, but not too much. He has a daughter and a wife. Used to work for Peterbilt. He’s from Texas (near Odessa), but has also lived in Michigan. Also, he was missing at least one tooth, for what it’s worth.

We ended up stopping before we even hit Naperville for about half an hour. It was frustrating. I did get to watch a bit of high school softball. At one point in time, the left fielder started creeping toward the foul line and the fence. I thought to myself “she’s guessing it’s going to go deep and wide. I wonder how she knows that. Watch, it’s going to go near and in.” It did. The outfielder dove for it, and the ball barely missed her glove. Final score: Thomas 1, batting team 3, outfielder 0. It’s a score I can live with. Soon enough, we started moving again, and I did my favorite thing to do in Illinois: slept.

I woke up to find my seatmate missing. He said he went to the lounge to have a phone call without waking me up, which was nice of him. I asked him if he saw the observation car; he didn’t know. I decided it was time to go exploring, so I headed toward the front of the train, finally ending in the lounge/observation car. It was awesome. There are windows along the walls, plus curved windows heading onto the roof. In other words, you can get a really good view of things from inside. I headed back to my seat, grabbed the journal articles I was going to read, and returned to the observation deck to read them. Eventually, it was time for dinner. I had placed a reservation for 7pm, figuring my late lunch would tide me over. It did.

I was the first person there for the 7 o’clock dinner, so I sat down, waiting for my fellow diners to join me. The first was an International Finance grad student attending school in Phoenix, and she was heading there via Flagstafff. She seemed to know what she was doing, and she was nice, but there was also something about her. Condescension, perhaps? Business? A misinterpretation on my part? I don’t know. I just felt like she would rather be somewhere else. A few minutes later a woman and her four year-old son sat across from me. They got on at Naperville and wondered how the train got to be so late. They were also on their way Kansas City to visit a graduating nephew. Conversation was light and pleasant. The first woman went to Northwestern for grad school, while the mother was originally from Ohio. She currently works in refugee resettlement. I was working on my chicken when the waiter came by to take desert orders; I postponed, both women got cheesecake, and the child got his only food, a brownie. We then crossed over the Mississippi River, letting me cross off a life goal, specifically to cross the Mississippi River at sunset eating on a dining car. Just on the far side, in Iowa, we had to wait for a freight train to pass by. At this point in time, the mother and child had to go to the bathroom and the International Finance student excused herself.

I finally ordered my dessert, a bowl of ice cream. Also, the International Finance student only ate the crust on her cheesecake, leaving behind the cheesecake itself, so I snuck that over to myself and ate the parts she hadn’t already forked (No sense in perfectly good cheese cake going to waste). Then the mother and I talked for a while. She told me about her job, and I told her about a friend of mine interested in that sort of thing. We continued talking for a while, and it was a rather interesting conversation all told. We also saw some wind power plant blades sitting out (around a hundred or so), and neither of us had fully realized how big they actually were. However, at around 8.45, they kicked us out of the dining  room, and I headed back into the observation car to finish my reading.

When I was done, I sat watching the dark country side going by, but soon decided to get some sleep. I headed back to my seat, pulled out the leg rests (like on an E-Z-Boy), reclined the seat, and grabbed my pillow. I woke up around Kansas City, where I was going to say goodbye to my seatmate, but he disappeared before I had the chance to do so. This was a fresh air break station, so I walked outside, stretched, and looked at the skyline. Kansas City is slightly bigger than I thought it was. After the conductor yelled “All Aboard,” I headed inside, reclined both seats, grabbed my pillow, and went to bed.

The night was relatively smooth. I had found out the previous night that I could pull my hood over my eyes and block out most of the light, so I only woke up when my position was too uncomfortable. That wasn’t too often, so I ended up getting a mostly relaxing night’s sleep, definitely better than if I had taken an airplane.

In the morning, I first realized that we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Actually, it seemed I had barely missed Kansas, and had woken up early into Colorado. Which was disappointingly less mountainous than I had hoped. I guess I had always figured that Colorado began with the Rockies. Misconception Eliminated! I started reading the Aeneid, first on my list of summer reading books. We got out at La Junta, where I battled with their urging of us to stay on Amtrak property with my desire to set foot in Colorado outside an Amtrak station (you see, I define visiting a state as having set foot in the state, and not in an airport or railway station. So, while I walked around on the ground outside the train, I wanted to cover my bases). So I sprinted across the street and into a park. And with that, Colorado was added to my list of visited states. (It should be noted I have a two-tiered visited state list, the first being simply being in it, and the second requiring spending the night in the state, and not on a moving object (car, train, airplane, etc.). The second is the tougher one, and eliminates several states for me (Alabama, Tennessee, and Indiana, for instance, all of which I have been in multiple times). Suffice to say, Colorado is only a Tier-I state).

After La Junta, I was going to go back to the observation room to read, but the National Parks Service had two women come in to talk about the area. And, while it may seem mean, it made me leave the observation car. The microphone kept on popping loudly, and the first woman was bad at talking about the area. It was obvious she was reading from a script, and it was also obvious she hadn’t read any of it before hand, as her annunciation rarely matched what was called for by the sentence. I headed to the first floor, into the lounge, where I got a pizza and a Gatorade. I sat there and had a brunch, which wasn’t that bad, while we loitered around Colorado. When I was done, I headed back to my seat and read some more Aeneid. Later I grabbed some donut holes from the lounge. We stopped in Raton, New Mexico, where I wandered around a little, but didn’t do anything as crazy as my La Junta run.

To be perfectly honest, with the lounge car being boring, the trip was humdrum. I saw some awesome views, and took a bunch of pictures (I will figure out the best way to attach pictures to this post, but I have yet to do so still). The train, at one point in time, made several S-turns, so I had a chance to see all but the last two or three cars, and I took pictures of the entire ordeal. I also read the first five books of the Aeneid. And gazed on the window a bit. Train travel is fun, especially if it’s to a place you’ve never been to before. Before long, it was 3.42 pm Mountain Time, and the train, despite being over an hour late to Kansas City, rolled into Albuquerque slightly early for a long break to change crews and have some maintenance performed. I headed into the Greyhound/Amtrak station, where they said to go to pick up baggage. Ten minutes later, I still was baggageless, but I saw a man holding a “Socorro / NMT / NRAO ” sign, so I caught his attention. He saw some bags outside, and sure enough, that’s where they were hiding. I grabbed my stuff, loaded them into the car, and headed south to Socorro.

Another student, who had flown in, was already in the car, but the two of us were tired, and, after crossing the Rio Grande, we both fell asleep. I woke up several miles from Socorro, and noted how we got to the NMT campus. We went to the building I will be working at, called in, and got our reservation packs with keys to get into the NRAO guest house. Then we rode over there. We weren’t really sure where to go, but it ended up being fairly easy to figure out. The two of us went into our own rooms. I left my door open while I did some small unpacking. About fifteen minutes later, she walked over and asked if I wanted to grab dinner. I did, but it had been about 55 hours since my last shower, so I asked for fifteen minutes to smell better and to change.  Ishowered, put on deodorant, grabbed a Cleveland Cavaliers shirt, and we headed toward food.

She had grabbed the map from our reservation packets, so we knew were food was, and I’m pretty damn good with directions, so I got us there. On the way we talked and got to know each other. We ended up walking for a little bit, and we sat down at Sophia’s, a mildly-sketch restaurant that serves Mexican and American food. I got Combo #1, she got nachos, and I got a beer. We talked some more, settled our check, and decided to wander down the main street in Socorro to see what else there is. Not much, as it turns out. We then headed back to where are staying, but we did so by me picking a random road to go down. It ended up being an interesting walk, especially with the sun setting over Socorro Peak. We got back to NMT campus, then strolled around a little bit looking at things, before we decided to call it a night. So, I came back, uploaded pictures, and typed this up. I’m going to read over some journal articles, then get some sleep for tomorrow.

Other things that I forgot to mention:

There was a dog in Socorro attacking a sprinkler for water. It was cute and amusing.

We had to stop in Illinois (the second train) for mechanical problems.

Socorro has a Taco Bell, Burger King, and Sonic. I’m set.