Rumney: it feels so good to be bad

Mathieu and I had our first day at Rumney this year. (Yeah, its late in the season but I was out of town and he was injured.) It was a gorgeous gorgeous day-- sunny, warm, moderate humidity, a light breeze. The forest at Rumney is incredibly lush and green right now, giving the ground and the rock a beautiful light.

I'm not as strong as I would like to be-- my back is out of shape because I haven't been doing overhangs. But it was fun to hop on a bunch of 9's, to pull on the ribbed and blocky gray schist again, to take advantage of the thousands of possibly footholds. How I missed Rumney!

Smokestack took a lot of work today. Its a crazy chimney: a three dimensional climb (complete with 360 degree rotations of the body), full of commiting moves (where a fall can result in a head injury... I was wishing I had brought my helmet) and a pumpy top with a series of lay backs to the last bolt and the anchors. It is unlike anything else at Rumney or any other route I've ever done. I did it a few times last year but nonetheless it took me two tries to lead it today. Mathieu declared that he hates it.

Anyhow, after enhausting myself on a handfull of routes, it was heaven to jump in the cold river swimming hole.




Now its back to work! I'd like to take a vote: do you think I should work in 4, 5, or 6 dimensions?

Toronto!

Luckily, the garbage union called off their strike the day before the Strings 2005 conference was scheduled to begin. As I was driving into Toronto from Michigan, I heard on the radio that the city had set aside space in public parks for residents to dump their trash. Given the disgusting heat wave that occurred there all week long, it was a true blessing that it didn’t smell as well.

Here is a ballroom full of melting string theorists. We sweated, gulped water, and pushed our food around while being entertained by speakers.

Jan, wearing the TASI shawl which doubled in size during the conference.

The conference was fun and exhausting with four full and two half days of lectures. It was nice to hear the different perspectives on current research and to meet some of the people whose papers I’ve been reading.

On Saturday, after the last set of talks, I headed to the CN tower to get an aerial view of the city. Here is a video of the elevator going down the tower.






On Sunday morning, I hopped in the car and set off for home. On the way back, seeking the bug’s forgiveness for the car-henge-incident (she holds a mean grudge), I stopped at Niagra falls.


The falls are large, loud, blue and violent. It was a hot, hot day and the walkways were loaded with distracted tourists. (check out my movie!)

Upstate New York reminded me of Iowa: cornfields, green hills, wheat. The air conditioner was broken in my car so I spent the day with the windows rolled down, the music turned loud, sweating and singing.

Getting to Massachusetts was a wonderful relief. It was a fun road trip but, in the end, it feels really good to be home!

the Blog Challenge

Despite popular opinion, I do not spend all of my time blogging. In fact, I spend very little time blogging. I spend a lot of my time working, and, when not working, (to be fair) climbing. In order to prevent rumors of laziness and distraction, I've been asking people to not make my blog public, to not link to it, and to not give out the URL indiscriminately. I even had to ask L.M. to kindly remove the link from his (very popular) blog.

Nonetheless, I was surprised at Strings when a few people (who I don't know very well and to whom I hadn't given my blog address) commented to me about my blog. I hope to someday get a good postdoc and, when I found out that professors have strong evidence of my non-stringy adventures (because I do not like to write about work), I got worried.

So I am offering to you, my readers, the following blog challenge: If you can find my blog (on google, etc, not by emailing L.M.!), then I will buy you dinner and beer.

By the way, the blog was started because I was planning to travel a lot this year and I wanted to keep my friends and family updated on my whereabouts and well-being. I am now back from my travels and don't have any plans for future trips. So my postings may be few and far between until I go somewhere again. If you, my reader, are planning to go anywhere and would like to post on this blog, please send me an email and I'll set you up.

Cheers!

women in string theory

Yesterday, after the first talk at the Strings conference, having had a lot of coffee, I headed for the women's toilet. It was a pleasant surprise. There was an incredibly long line. Normally, a women's room line is not something I am excited about. Often I find myself at the end of one after a long movie or at a sporting event. It is usually a painful wait while people take eons in the stalls (what are they doing in there?!?).

But never did I expect to run into such a large density of women at a theoretical physics conference. There are many more of us than I had thought. Seeing that there do exist successful women string theorists-- professors and post docs and other grad students-- is encouraging.

Don't get me wrong-- its still a male dominated culture. I found myself last night with a large group of guys who wanted to go to a strip club. And I still find myself in situations where people talk over me or try to dominate intellectually. (They go in for the kill: focusing on one detail that I am not sure about, completely ignoring the larger, more beautiful, and more interesting point that I am trying to make) But perhaps there is hope.

Lake Michigan

One cannot take a boat across Lake Michigan from Michigan to Canada. One can, however, take a boat to Wisconsin. I settled on just going to the beach.

A Lake Michigan beach has sand and waves and nice non-salty water. Ellie and I headed out there after we rolled out of bed this morning. We sped along, singing along to Christina the Guerilla. Check out this movie I made about Ellie’s amazing car.

The Midwestern beach population is a sight to be seen. Lots of deep golden tans, blond toddlers and bikinis—and not a single hairy back or speedo. Wow.




The Midwest is known for its friendly yet conservative people. Honking is forbidden and stranger will chat you up on the street…

Yet I’ve been honked at a few times here when I am slow through intersections.

And, while taking a photo of this building, a stranger decided to share with me that he hates the paint job. I was shocked. I am not at all accustomed to strangers talking at me on the street. The first thought through my head is whether this person is a creep.

I wonder how Midwesterners filter creeps.

Some more Grand Rapids pics…



Also, not all rock climbing hope must be lost here. I visited a decent climbing gym this afternoon. It was small but not bad.

Tomorrow I head for Toronto. Its been a blast hanging out with darling Ellie here in GR.

Grand Rapids

I had a dream last night about AdS3. This isn't too surprising: I spend the majority of the day yesterday in Kava House, working and reading papers. After the choas of TASI, it feels good to sit down and work again. Now if only I could get this calculation to work...

Last night I went to the worst rock gym ever. I've been to a lot of rock gyms but never before have I dealt with fifteen foot ceilings, concrete floors, a strong odor of paint thinner and crowds of fourteen year old boys. I realize now that things will be interesting when I try to get a job: I am not going to be able to live just anywhere.

greetings from Grand Rapids

I arrived in GR last night and am going to hang out with Ellie for a few days before heading off to Strings in Toronto.

Yesterday's drive was unexciting. Iowa's rolling green hills gave way to sad, flat fields in Illinois and Indiana. Michigan is also flat but, at least, wooded. Yesterday was a full day of NPR (I heard the Olympics story about ten times). As much as I love driving, I'm glad to be done with it for a little while. And it is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to see Ellie again.

lonely in Nebraska

Ladybird and I had an argument this morning over whether to stop at Car Henge. I used my human/driver veto power to override her. Now I regret it. Nebraska is a lonely, lonely place to drive through, especially when spatting with ones only (plush) passenger. There isn’t much to look at. Highlights of our drive were a giant truck on fire, a grid of fluffy, white clouds that looked like windswept weiner dogs and some baby cows and horses.


Western Iowa is much prettier. The corn is coming up on rolling green hills dotted with run down paint-chipped barns. In between are golden fields of baby wheat and overgrown fields with cows poking their heads through the tops. Also, Iowa has NPR.

Tomorrow we are going to try to get to Grand Rapids, Michigan to visit our darling Ellie. Ellie moved there last summer and we’ve been missing her ever since.

Pixie village in the sky

I’m staying in Breckenridge, Colorado with my Aunt Pat and Uncle Andy. Breckenridge is a little, 9600 foot high, ridiculously quaint ski town that, during the summer, has lots of wild flowers. I’m spending the weekend here recovering from TASI and getting some work done.





On a hike around Cataract Lake, we explored a cascade, aspen groves and fields of wild flowers.






It is wonderfully generous of Aunt Pat and Uncle Andy to let me crash their vacation for a few days. Thanks!

TASI Gay Porn Company

A woman at a Boulder bar noticed the group of two dozen guys (and very few women) and asked an inebriated professor who they were. That was his reply.

On my last night in Boulder, I headed out with a group to Masalaa, a vegetarian Indian restaurant that has some of the best Indian food I have ever had. (My friends who have been to India or are from southeast Asia also rave about it.) We had a fabulous dinner and a chill night hanging out in a park by the river.

We had another beautiful sky so I took some portraits.



(Paul, by the way, gets the gold star for hanging out for an hour in a yarn store while I shopped)




Here are some of Luca’s TASI pics

(When I asked him to explain the game to me, I discovered that Chetiya is a cricket fanatic. We’ve made a promise to play at some future string theory school/conference.)




And one last TASI story. Meet Ben.

At the gym last week, I told Ben that I am not capable of spotting a 250 pound barbell. Ben insisted, saying that it would be only ten pounds for me to lift. When he couldn’t make his eighth rep, he discovered that I was truly in over my head: he had to be rescued.

Learning to Fall

My stinky birks are on their way out and have proven themselves to be utterly useless when it comes to crossing rivers.

I decided it was time to pick out some new sandles. This was a difficult talk because I am picky.
1. My toes must not be separated.
2. The sandles must be adjustable.
3. The toes must be exposed.
4. The sandles must have back straps (for crossing rivers)
5. The sandles must dry quickly (same as above).
6. My entire toes must not be exposed. I am shy about my toe cleavage and it is easier to hike if I have a strap on my toe knuckles, counterpressuring my chimp-like toe grip.
I had a lot of fun explaining this to the people working at REI. But I still managed to find some shoes last week. They even had the bonus of having pretty orange flowers on them!


On Wednesday afternoon, I crammed into the car with a bunch of TASI folks and headed off to the Sport Park in Boulder Canyon. I was excited about crossing the river in my new shoes, leading hard and taking some falls. I was also exhausted from a two-beer hangover and an entire month of physics and hyper-socializing.

I hopped on the cute little 10b that Lukas and I did last week and was having a rough go. I was having trouble, with my fatigue, pulling through all the moves and I reached a point where I knew I was going to have a nice little leader fall. I was right next to the bolt (but they're pretty close together) when I fell and I didn't manage to get both feet in front of me when I hit the wall six feet below. (That sounds really terrible but it wasn't bad at all. A very casual fall, really. I was high off the ground and the fall was clean.) Anyhow, only my left foot stopped me from banging into the wall; I hit it funny and have a (very minor) sprain. If my foot were an airplane then the spain would hurt for pitch type motion.

It hurts to sidestep when I'm climbing and even going down stairs isn't very fun so I'm taking at least a week off of climbing. Since I haven't been up on the rock, for the past two days, I've been exploring Boulder a bit and hanging out.

Yesterday, on my way to lecture, I passed a group of kids painting rockets (complete with "computers and knobs") that are perfectly kid-sized.


Here is the TASI shawl in front of Mike Douglas' string theory landscape diagram.

And here is Mike Douglas holding it up after lecture.

He gave some lovely lectures on counting flux vacua.

Paul and I walked down to Pearl Street where we explored some shops full of things that we never thought existed but certainly really need. (The entire shopping district seems to be marketed to outdoorsy, hippy, yuppy scientists who drink microbrewery beer and drive Subarus. It was scary to realize that I truely am a member of a demographic.)



(no naked babies, please)
(he was a little creepy)
(yoga street performer)

And, because it never gets boring, another Boulder sky.