Category Archives: United States

ICHEP – snacks and music

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Congratulations to the ICHEP2016 organisers for having a great idea, already before the actual start of the conference … why not invite people for snacks and drinks during one of the free open-air concerts of the Grant Park Music Festival at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Perfect! And just to round things off properly, add an ICHEP picnic blanket to the conference bag, to be used to sit on the lawn in front of the stage. Well done!

Deadwood, SD

Deadwood, South Dakota it is for this week. The IX International Conference on Interconnections between Particle Physics and Cosmology (PPC2015) at The Lodge at Deadwood, to be even more precise. Yesterday we had our excursion to Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse, today I gave my presentation on Dark Matter searches in ATLAS (so I’m done with the compulsory part .. hehe) and tonight we’ll have the conference dinner :)

It’s all a bit in the middle of nowhere, but it’s seemingly really beautiful landscape in the Black Hills and the Badlands. Unfortunately, I ain’t got no time to see it all, or even a small part for that sake.

Golden Gate

It’s already the second week in San Francisco now. Lot’s of things to see and do, so I did not manage to write something earlier.

First thing that caused quite some excitement was the fact that I arrived last Monday, while my baggage did not. So I actually had to waste some time on shopping. Some might not call this a waste of time, but you know me.

Besides the shopping tour, I also did quite some sightseeing and walking in SF, including a walking tour over the Golden Gate Bridge and a night tour of Alcatraz. On Wednesday I went to the SF NerdNite at Rickshaw Stop to see a couple science/tech inspired talks given by more or less known figures in the bay area.

On Friday, my baggage finally made it to town. Just in time for a little hiking weekend in Yosemite.
After a four hour drive to the park on Saturday morning, we went on a very nice 15 km hike onto the Mono Pass and the Sardine/Mono Lakes overlook. Coming back to camping ground, some grilled sausages and corn we already waiting for us (greetz Alex, Tobias, Wilko). After a nice and rich breakfast by Tenaya Lake, we made another more relaxing 8km hike, took a dive in one of the small and very cold lakes just outside the park and made us on our way back to SF.

Back in town, I had to realise that not only my first option to print my poster had failed. Also the backup failed, so I had to call and run/cycle through town to get my poster printed on Monday. It was done an hour before the session started.

Talking about the session/conference. It was nice start yesterday, not only on the physics side. In fact, the non-physics part was even more exciting. Besides a few small technical difficulties, we had a power cut interrupting the session, that apparently affected about 300k people in SF. But thanks to the diesel generators in the building the show could go on.

Now I gotta go back to the conference …

And for those that always care, don’t be jealous about the weather … it’s raining; and I’ll be uploading some pictures soon.

Weekend – NY Style

After my little ~3000 km road trip starting in Chicago I finally arrived in New York to spend the weekend here …
I started the weekend with a nice little walk from 103rd down to Battery Park passing by almost all important sights in Manhatten …
continued with a long walk through Brooklyn and some more time in Manhatten on Saturday …
and finished up with a Yankees game (I happened to pass by and luckely got one of the returned tickets, they actually lost against the team of the previous city on my trip, the Toronto Blue Jays), a Bronx walk today and dinner at 6th&53rd today …
Queens and Staten Island will have to wait until next time I guess …

But as most people would agree, it’s a nice city … even though I was not too overwhelmed after seeing Chicago and Toronto before … ;)

btw … it was just approx. 53.300 people in the Yankee arena.