Adieu, adios, arrivederci, I'm off to make my fortune in America

(Baltimore MD) - I've been back in the US for almost two months now and it has been a whirlwind time. I've been too busy settleing back into this American life, that I've had not much time for things like blogging... but that's OK.

After all the below traveling, I came back to Geneva and had 3 days to pack my apartment. I flew to Nashville TN, which is were I had left from 2 years ago. I picked up my car at my father's house and slept for a few hours, then drove the 14 hours to Baltimore, worked 2 days here, then visited a lab at Yale for two days, then went to a family reunion/grandfather's 90th birthday party in CT, came back and worked another day in Baltimore, then went to the beach in NC for 5ish days to visit my father at their house there, then was back in Baltimore for a few days, then visited my step father's family at THEIR family reunion for 4 days. Went to ANOTHER wedding and then came back here last week. That was a month...pheww.... I've been more or less here continually now for a month, with a few short trips to visit friends in NYC here or there. Baltimore is not Geneva, but I like it and I'm getting used to the new place. I will be here for awhile. It'll be nice to stay put for a for period of time. I feel like I've been in constant motion since I left Palo Alto five years ago.

I started this blog to chronicle my life while I was in Europe for a few years. And I more or less did that. I might have wished for more time to write in it, and I wish had updated it more. Not 10% of the amazing things I did or saw in the last 22 months made it in to it. The time I spent in Geneva were truly one of the highlights on my life and the memories and friendships I made will stay with me forever.

I originally wanted to go to Europe, because I felt like a lived in a small little world and I wanted to live in a bigger one. Now the ironic thing is, with the things I've done and seen in the last 2 years, I feel like the world has shrunk to the size of a pea. It feels tiny to me, but in a different way.

I think this is my last blog post. I thank all of you who came by to read what I might have had to say ... I really enjoyed doing writing it, and I'm happy that some of you found in interesting enough to come back more than once. Although I'm not writing here anymore, please send me an email from time to time to ask "What's up?". Keep in touch, eh?

Adieu,

P

Geneve --> Berlin --> Tallinn --> Paris --> Geneve

(Geneve, Switz.) - Life has been good recently, but busy. Too busy living, to blog about living. Among other things, I've been getting ready to - unfortunately - leave Geneva and head back stateside and so blogging has taken a back seat to a world of work before I go. But it hasn't been all work...

Got back late last Sunday night from Paris from a friends wedding. Paris was a really good time. The wedding was beautiful and Andrew and Celine are so perfect for each other so I was happy to be able to make it.

Also, got to see many many other old friends, some of whom I hadn't seen in years. It is always a disconnect seeing people who you associate with a certain time and place in one's life (SF Bay Area, mid-90s) transplanted halfway around the world to a totally different context and surroundings in the present day (Paris, now). Many of them have had amazing big lives and it was great to catch up.

And what a lot of characters! As Jack (ex-marine Recon and current financial type living in Munich) commented of the eccentric interesting eclectic mix... "Lewis is a collector... that's why there are so many freaks here." If true then I am happy to counted among the freaks.... An ex-Navigators teammate, a war correspondent from Baghdad who is about to become the Beirut bureau chief for NBC, a blind Muslim scholar, and some Stanfordites and bike racer types I hadn't seen in a long long time. Also a guy named Sam who really looked familiar and then I realized that he used to work in Helen's bikeshop in Santa Monica when I was racing for the team there. He moved to Paris about a 1.5 years ago with his girlfriend Melanie and they and my friend Andrew are friends now. Despite how it feels, the world is a tiny tiny place.

We had so much fun that the wedding went on and on with dancing and gabbing until the wee hours of the morning. We stayed out so late that we had trouble finding a taxi and so about 10 of us decided to wobble back across the city by foot to our hotel. It was quite an experience hiking across the streets of deserted beautiful predawn Paris with old and new friends. The next day was a (very) late brunch and then in honor of 'les bleus' later that night we had a football match with the wedding party in Bois de Vicennes. Even 2 days later, I was still sore. Then it was the superfast TGV train back to Geneva, where I am taking some final data and packing and sorting etc. before leaving for the states Saturday morning.

I came to Paris via Estonia where I was at for a conference for a week. Estonia is a country about the size of the Nederlands, but with 1/20 the population. And since most of the people live in the capital it leaves the countryside a wee bit ...well, country... which is where our conference was, well outside the capital city of Tallinn. I gave a talk that was well recieved and learned alot overall.

It is nice to travel to these things, but the conference really was work work work. Overall it was interesting and nicely organized but that much concentrated physics with difficult talks all day long 8 AM - 6 PM with only a one hour lunch break and nothing else to do leaves me feeling a little over/understimulated. Still, we got out into Tallinn on two occasion.

Tallinn is billed as one of the best preserved old medieval towns in Europe and it delivers on that promise. It is interesting how communism was good for many of these places in preserving the old buildings in face of the evil of 1970's modernism and international styles. I have found the same thing in Croatia and Bulgaria where there was no money to rip down the old in the quest for progress. So Tallinn is still exquisitley beautiful with its formidable city wells set off by sentry towers, striking gabled roofs, exquisitly painted tiny houses pushed into tiny spots where no house should be, meadering little streets, and cobblestones all set on a hilltop overlooking the Baltic. I am sure it was rundown 20 years ago, but now with an infusion of tourist money it is freshly painted and spic and span.

I really liked Tallinn, but it is funny to see it right now suffering the beginning throes of its awkward embrace of touristic economy capitalism. And although beautiful and striking at times the whole place seems a little contrived and a bit forced. It is hitting the the medieval town aspect in its marketing hard. So the beautiful main town square is rimmed with restaurants serving real 'medieval' food with staff outfitted in tights, leather singlet jackets, page boy haircuts and big goofy pointy elf shoes. The food is good, but this aspect is a bit silly. And they have 'knight' fights on the square on the weekends. It all ends up being a bit much, and with the picture perfect archetecture and spiraled steeples it feels a bit like Disney world. I think they are evolving though and I bet in 5 ears you'll have alot less of this stuff.

Estonia itself is an interesting mix of Slavic/Baltic influences. Imagine crossing the Czech republic with Sweden. A little bit funny, with whitewashed Danish looking houses, thatched roofs, mixed with Russian style wooded Orthodox churches etc. But I liked it. Some other very interesting personal experiences, but those might be for another blog post at another time.

We traveled to Estonia via Berlin where we were for the night of the last German WC match victory. My colleague and I had a layover (traveling discount airlines to Tallinn). After dropping off our bags at the airport hotel, we took the metro into the city center, just after the match had ended with German victory at the Olympic stadium in Berlin and the revelrly had just started. We finally got in at 3 AM, but the street parties were still going on. That was a wild time, let me tell you.

So that was it. Geneve --> Berlin --> Tallinn --> Paris --> Geneve. My life is hard you know. When I am home, I work my little fingers to the bone, but this physics stuff is not all just saltmines on bread and water.

(apologies to friends who already got some of this post as parts of emails)

If you have not read the book, I highly recommend going to ...

... see the The Da Vinci Code movie. It will only cost you about 2h 29m run time and may save you the colossal misfortune of reading the book. I haven't read it, but if the online reviews can be believed, then the movie runs pretty slapdash close to the novel and so I am happy to get out as scot-free as I did.

It is interminably long and incredibley silly. Whole scenes are devoted to long expositions from the main characters explaining minor point of Gnostic doctrine. Nobody outside of Shakespearen monologues talks like this and at least there the words drip like jewels.

The Tom Hanks protagonist performs quicking thinking riddle solving and solves complex mathematical codes at every turn with never even a hint of hesitation or mistep ... and ....AND while under the threat of chase and possible death. The acting is uneven and the director must have been asleep to allow the actors's affect to run from the bemused to the contemptuously arrogant all during the telling a 2 min. faux historical tale. Watch their faces as the old koot historian prattles on. And then the plot is just dumb. And long. And boring. Did I mention it was long?

As a BBC reviewer complained incredulously, "THE WHOLE THING GOES ON FOR HOURS AND HOURS. The plotting, which seemed endearingly silly on the page, is snortingly preposterous on screen: our heroes tumble po-faced from peril to peril with insane regularity. At one point, they get saved by a pigeon."

That bares repeating.....

They get saved by a pigeon.

Do yourself a favor. Go see it in the theatres so noone will trick you into reading the book. You won't regret it.

If you have a weak stomach, you will want to avert your eyes

Not Phiddipedes yet

(Geneva, Switz.) - Slowly, gingerly, I made my way down my stairs. My every step bringing sharp shooting pains through my legs and an ugly twisted grimace to my face. My knuckles go white clutching the bannister. The poor older couple coming up the stairs decides to wait below and give me room as I make my way slowly down past them. I am obviously sick or injured or perhaps even a little permanently crippled as evinced by my gangly stiff legged lurch from stair to stair....

...The Geneva marathon was harder than I thought it was going to be.

I'd have it in my head for some time to do a marathon. And for the last year I'd had it in my head to do the Geneva one. And I'd had it in my head for the last 6 months to really start training for it. Which brings me to 5 weeks ago, where I thought if I was going to do this thing I needed to add to my 2x per week and do a kamikaze crash training program. So I started running about 4 times a week. In retrospect I shoulda taken the whole thing more seriously, but what is done is done. I shoulda done some more long runs. Lots of 1.5 hour ones and a few 2h. ones. Instead my standard one was about 45 min.

So all things considered I think it went fine. I had an ambitious - considering my training - goal of about 3h 20m. But if I went under 3h 30m I was going to be happy. The first half was easy, almost pleasant even. I hit the halfway point and was on a 3h 16m pace. And then the wheels fell off. Breathing fine. Overall energy levels fine. Legs...oh oh. Absolute agony. In 500m I went from great to them almost not working. Weird.

I slogged through the last half in more pain then I have ever been in any other athletic even ever (except for that time when I was 11 and I ran in a puddle of blood in a 1600m with a pin from a new pair of socks stuck into a toe). I thought that if stopped too suddenly I would fall over and almost did a few times. Again everything was fine except for my legs... and oh yeah... bloody nipples. Almost 3.5 hours of constant rubbing of my chest on my running singlet caused my nipples to start to bleed, which then soaked through said singlet and left two long stigmata like streaks on the front. As I went slower and slower and realized my 3h 20m was slipping away, I watched my clock and still figured a 3h 30m was possible. At 10K I needed to just put away 5 min. 1ks and I would close but OK. Still at 5K it I needed to do 5 min. 1Ks and I would close but OK. At 2k close but OK. At 1K I thought I am going to be just under my mark to do the 42K. At at the end! 3h 30m 2 s! Arrgggghhh!!!! What happened?! The metric system had happened. A marathon is not 42k, but 42.195K and that last 195m was that minute that I thought I had in hand.

I stopped and sat down and the couldn't stand up for an hour and half. People brought me food, and looked at me weird with my red stigmata, blotchy face, and the fact that I was planted like a tree, but I actually couldn't get up. Nothing. Nada. No Mas. What a weird feeling. They just didn't work. I wasn't worried, but it was weird. Finally, finally I was able to climb up the cyclone fencing to my feet and wobble off to find my way home, but only straight legged walking. If I bend my legs, I fall - BOOM - like a sack of sacked stuff.

And now after two days I am feeling better, but as I intimated above, I am still having problems with stairs.

A great. Day. Out.

(Chamonix, France) - As I mentioned earlier, I skied off the Aiguille de Midi in Chamonix France a few weeks backs. My coworker Alexey and I drove out early AM, he telling me along the way that his wife was pregnant and that I should take good care of him. As I wrote below, for this trip a guide is recomended, but my intuition was that as long as the weather has been good and there hasnt been snow then a guide is not necessary if you have rudimentary mountain skills, an idea about glaciers, and exercise a good deal of common sense. There can be crevasses, but it since the route is so skied if you just stick to the main pathway then you can be sure than a few hundred or so have skied it on that route since that last snow fall. It ended up being on of the most magnificent days of the year to do. Not a cloud in the sky and perfect 30F at the top and 50F at the bottom.

The lift to the top is a true engineering marvel. It ascends almost 9000 ft. from the valley floor in two stages to this little spire of rock (Aiguille is needle in French). Mostly I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Click on them for a blowup.

Me at the midstation on the way to the top. Getting ready for a great day. That is the edge of the Dome de Gouter in the background. The Grand Colouir that I climbed with Nick last summer is off the backside of that.

A shot from the bridge between rock spires at the Aiguille itself. We climb down the arrete, put skis on on the plateau and then ski off to the right.

Alexey getting ready to put his skis on. We have just climbed down the arrete in the background.

Me about 30 seconds before deciding I am incredibly overdressed

The Vallee Blance. The first big valley before hitting the Mer de Glace proper. That is Mt. Blanc de Tacul in the background. To give you a sense of the immense scale ... the ant-like dots down inthe front left corner are people.

Alexey and I taking the first quick break of the day.

A look across the Valley. If you click on the shot you can get a blow up where you'll see tracks on the slope. Many people hike up the far side to get fresh snow off the far ridge.

A look back up the Mer de Glace. We came down on the right. To the left is the Geant ice falls

Another shot of the Geant ice falls

Yet another view of the Geant ice falls from above.

Looking up the glacier towards the ice falls.

The long runout towards the end. We still have about 2 miles to go.

After the glacier is about a 10 min hike up throught the snow. And then we were able to ski almost all the way back to town. The now dissappears in the last 1 k or so and we had to hike it along with our fellow day trippers.

It was a fantastic day. 9000 vertical feet in a single shot!

Sodom or bust

(Nageev desert, somewhere 40 miles east of Be'er Sheva and -500 ft. below sea level) - I feel like Hunter S. Thompson sending up a rooster tail of dust behind me as I fly through the dessert in my rental car just a touch too fast to be safe... only except that Dr. Gonzo is not beside me, I'm not jacked out on qualudes, and I'm 8000 miles east of Barstow, CA.

I'm here in Israel at the invitation of a collaborator at the Weizmann institute. I flew into Ben Gurion Monday, ran on the beach Tuesday morning from my hotel in Tel Aviv to Jaffa (where Jonah had that date with a hungry whale), and then spent the last two days in Rehovot talking to various people in the physics department there.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to bag the plan of traveling by bus for some post-work touristing and sacked up for a rental car to give me more mobiblity. I'm traveling 130km an hour on an local road through the south Israeli Nageev dessert and now loosing altitude rapidly on my way to the Dead Sea. Mountains lie in the distance and dull scrub plants are in the foreground. I could be outside Barstow. Every window is rolled down, Hebrew hip hop blasts from the radio as the hot dusty dessert wind swirls through the car and I fly past Bedouin camps, typing with one hand (and one eye) on my laptop and the other on the steering wheel and road ahead. When the muse calls it is best to listen. It's 90 degrees in the shade and only late April. My mind reels. The Dead Sea was like Oz to me. You couldn't get there from whereever I was. It wasn't a real place. In 30 minutes I'll be floating on my back on a salty lake at the lowest elevation on the planet - 1400 ft. below sea level. Then it is back on a highway through the West Bank and the night in Jerusalem's old town. I'll have a full day and evening in Jerusalem, before dumping the rental car back at Ben Gurion at 2:00 AM Saturday morning to make the 3 hour prior to flight security check in at 3:30 AM, a few hours on an airport couch and before making my 6:30 AM flight. And be back in Geneva by noon.

"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"

"I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do ... "

-Arlo Guthrie in Alice's Restaurant

Life Redux

(Geneva, Switzerland) - I've been holding off posting anything recently 'cause stuff keeps happening yet I feel like I have to update the old stuff before I can update the new stuff. It has all piled up though and I'm so paralyzed with too much to write, so I write nothing at all. Here's just a smattering offload so we can move on to other things. Shall we?

Seoul redux: I am not going to be able to do Seoul and Korea the justice they deserve ... as I wanted to a few months ago so. I noticed ...
-that Seoul is HUGE! I had no idea. There is so much here and hustle and bustle. I feel like I needed one more day to "do it" at a totally superficial level. I was there for 3 days and probably needed four.
-a sign in the Korean cultural museum describing traditional village games "Games include stick hitting game and game of slap match!" Stick hitting game was always my favorite also when I was about 5. Somethings transcend culture.
-the two finger "V"'s is flashed by every cute Korean girl when getting their picture taken in front of tourist landmarks
-mirror image swastikas with the same aspect ratio and proportions used by the Nazis on the nave of Bhuddist temples. A traditional Bhuddist symbol, but the exact correspondence (except for the 180 deg flip) was visually arresting and vaguely unsettling.
-that Seoul is huge!

Baltimore redux:
-Like something out of Alice's restaurant I got a ticket for drinking coffee on the metro between Baltimore and BWI. An overly serious young turk transit cop wrote me a $30 ticket for taking a sip of my coffee in front of him despite the 'IT IS UNLAWFUL TO EAT OR DRINK' signs. "Do you know what the word unlawful means!" he hollered at me, "wipe the smirk off your face, I will slap the cuffs on you so fast your head will spin". Unfortunately, I had a plane to catch, but I feel Officer Brown and I will get to know each other better when I have more time.
-Baltimore is cool. Spent part of a Saturday afternoon reading through the Balimore alternative weekly City Paper and then spent part of Saturday night in bar with an old friend and met half the stuff of said City Paper.

Chamonix redux: Skied off the top of the Auguille de Midi in above Chamonix and down the glacier of the Mer de Glace. My brother Alex and I wanted to do this when he was here in March, but the weather was bad then.

So, two weeks later, I skied off the top with coworker Alexey with absolutely phenomenal weather. It was almost 9000 vertical ft. descent and totally awesome. The snow on the lower southern exposed slope of the valley is totally gone, but since you come down the north exposure after the glacier we could ski almost back to town. It seems to be a traditional late season thing to do among the locals because there were lots of people saying goodbye for the year at the end of it.

It is billed as a kinda touristy thing to do because the technical ski challenges rise not much beyond usual expert level, but it was still awesome and the sheer scale of it and the mtns around (next to the Mt. Blanc) make it one of the coolest things I have ever done on a Saturday afternoon. A guide is reccomended, but my opinion is I that as long as the weather is good there hasnt been snow then it is not necessary if you have rudimentary mountain skills, an idea about glaciers, and exercise common sense. There is real danger from crevasses, but it since the route is so skiied if you just stick to the main pathway then you can be sure than a few hundred or so have skied it on that route since that last snow fall. There were probably a hundred over it before us on the day we did it alone. So it is safe... unless the weather is bad. Weird weather things can happen of course at 3800 meters, but they we did it the weather was beautiful and forcasted to be for the next 36 hours. We took a bunch of pictures and I won't miss the opportunity to post those soon.