Flight Home

My biggest comment about the flight back is that aisle seats are really boring if on both sides of you the windows are closed.

Oh, and even though it's 15C here, I'm still freezing. I'm currently sorting through pictures, to see which ones to post. They are, indeed, rather numerous.

Day 12: Guided tour of the Whipple Observatory

Today, Ken let Skippy and I go on the official tour of the Whipple Observatory which included a bit on VERITAS, two smallish optical telescopes and the MMT. Pictures to come, probably tomorrow by the time I land. This is because as I write this, I still need to figure out how to get home some of the stuff I've got. It turns out that a poncho, survey meter and a 2 lbs. bag of M&Ms (bought as a novelty, I swear!) take up considerable amounts of space in an already full bag.

Ideally, by the time I land I shall have chosen and formatted the pictures I'm going to post (there are some 200 to choose from from just today).

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In no particular order, here are three shots I uploaded from the airport while waiting to board. The first two are the MMT and the third is myself in front of the Whipple 10m telescope. If you put yourself at twice the focal length, you'll fill the dish.

On Day 11 a Mexican offered me his sister at a good price.

Today's work was pretty simple. I removed the last of the supports on the old T1 trailer such that they could move it with forklifts (an interesting sight). Afterwards, we put some conduit around some datalink cable, and at about 2 we (the Purdue guys and myself) were given the afternoon off at which point we went to Nogales, a border town.






Mexico was interesting, I bought some Coke (the drink, not the drug), which is made with sugar not corn syrup in Mexico, a poncho (which I negotiated down from 45$ to 15) and some tequila (13 bucks!). We also watched a convoy of a dozen cars, trucks and vans bellow by armed to the teeth by law enforcers (saw one carrying a G36) in quite a hurry. After that excitement, I went back to drinking my absurdly huge margarita.





Some other things that happened or that I noticed today were:

The bolt that was bleeding huge amounts of liquid:
The donkey named George Bush I got to sit on:
And a guy who threw his shirt at some girl.

I ate a fruit burrito on Day 10.

Today's mission was pretty straight foreward. I had to take down a shade... giving... structure... which was bolted down into the ground (I guess weights weren't good enough). This involved some grinding and eventually a Snorkel-Lift to take apart the roof. Subsequently, when no one was looking I took the lift high enough to use T2 as a background.

Afterwards, a bunch of us went to this restaurant that had a giant chicken in front of it. A chicken with antlers.
And I had a really strong margarita (apparently this place is known for them), and after the meal this crazy desert, called a fruit burrito. Now I am quite full and ready for bed.

Tomorrow at 3ish, Ben, Justin and I are driving to Nogales (a city straddling the US-Mexico border).

Oh, I found my pen. It somehow made its way to the car.

We're going to supper tonight, so I will upload the days activities when I get home.

Day 9(?): Back to 35 degree range

Today I got Snorkel Lift training. If you don't know, this is a Snorkel Lift:




Apart from grabbing some pretty pictures (see below), the day was mostly comprised of some heavy hauling of the last (gods, who knows at this point) of the T1 scraps.




They also moved the new T1 trailer (T1.1) to its temporary location. Inside the equipment racks are set up and tomorrow I shall most likely be installing cooling equipment and some shelves and such.

Collaboration members watching in awe.

Oh, there was, indeed, something interesting learned today: When your cocking gun explodes, you wash off your hands using a sink that gets turned on by your leg.

In what scientists are calling "pretty gay", I can't find my space pen. Had it yesterday...

Oh, something funny I heard on the radio yesterday: 

"The mark of civilization: Flush toilets."

So, biking outside when it's 32C on an empty stomach is not a super amazing idea, although it is a good motivation to go buy groceries.

Dehydrated on Day 6

So I made it a week in before I forgot I was in a desert and that I should drink water.

We went to the Titan II museum today where I got to see the last intact Titan II missile silo (complete with nuclear missile).




This is also where they filmed Star Trek: First Contact, so I got an extra kick out of that.

Oh, by the way, watch for rattlesnakes.

Afterwards, we went to Taco Bell for lunch (why aren't there more of these in Quebec?) and then headed for the PIMA Air and Space Museum, which is essentially a jillion planes parked inside and outside for my viewing pleasure. Considering I took almost 300 pictures, I'll post the highlights.




The plane in the top right is an old NASA Vomit Comet, and the one on the top left is one of 2 B52's that were modified to launch the X-15 rocket planes. The bottom one my research supervisor suggested I take.

Tomorrow I have some free time, so I may go for a bike ride (there are bikes here). My main deterrent is that I'm the youngest person around for 20 miles in every direction, and elderly drivers are scary.

5 hours in T1 on Day 5, no joke.

So we finally, finally got all the HV cables out of T1. I spent 5 hours on the azimuth mount pulling cables there.
About 4 hours in I was freaking out.
After they were all pulled out, the tower looked like this:
Someone was moving T2, so I grabbed another beauty shot...
At which point the sky exploded soaking Bob, Ben, Skippy and I in what was described as 'monsoon weather'.
Oh, I got to sit inside the giant crane, and found a funny warning label.
At night, we drove John into Tucson (as his contract was through) and had supper at a pizza place David really likes. A tram car went by, I thought it was pretty nifty, so I spent an hour faffing about with the low light settings on my camera, before it stopped for long enough for me to get a good shot.

Tomorrow, we're going to hit up the Titan-II museum and the Air and Space museum. I have Sunday and maybe even Monday off. Too bad I'm not allowed to drive.

And then the sun came out.

With it's camera box gone, T1 looks like someone's stripped it of its valuable parts... Which isn't that far from the truth. Also, as promised, here's the video of them moving the camera box using that huge USMC surplus crane.

So at about 2PM the weather got nice enough for us to go back to work. We started pulling the last HV cables out of T1 which started off tough, but with every cable we pull it becomes easier and easier.

The mountains were really misty, too, which I'm told is strange for this time of year.

By the end of the day the sun had come out though, and tonight we were able to see some stars (though I couldn't get any on camera).

Rainy on Day 4 in the Sonoran Desert

I woke up today to the rain.
Despite this, John was up on T2 removing the post-its we'd used yesterday to ID the mirrors as we aligned them.
The movers were already hard at work pulling the camera box off T1.

Unfortunately, due to the weather, there's not much to do. At all. I took a video of the guys moving the camera box, I will post it later today.