Jake here, writing from Madison, WI believe it or not. Here's the scoop:
When I last saw many of you in NH in March, I decided to go to grad school at UW-Madison. Shortly after, I got offered a research job that would start early, during the summer. I didn't wanna pass it up, so I left Ecuador a month early, bought a car, and moved out to Madison. All's been going really good so far. My preconceptions of the midwest before coming out here were probably pretty similar to most of ya'lls - very flat, cold, and not particularly appetizing. Well it turns out Madison is a really cool town. It's small for a city, you can bike pretty much everywhere, its really pretty (there are 4 lakes within a 5 minute bike ride from my house - check it on google maps), good restaurants and bars aplenty (literally dozens of microbrews in the Madison area, you can get beer on tap at a coffeehouse), lots of young people (welcome change from a South American Andean stronghold), and there is even some climbing nearby! I'm living in a house with homebrewing roommates, a porch, and a backyard. So yeah, life is good. Work is really interesting - I'm working on a project called IceCube that is trying to detect neutrinos from outer space by drilling 6000 sensors in the ice at the South Pole, 2.5 km below the surface (icecube.wisc.edu). It's pretty exciting stuff, and I'm learning a lot of science and a lot about working in a big international collaboration (I have conference calls with Europe 2-3 times a week, nbd). Since I know you guys are all into the blog-savvy picture postage, figure I'll contribute a little:
Yeah, that just happened! Don't ask me what it means - in fact, those plots, which took me the last 6 weeks to make, are all wrong. All made with the wrong data. No worries though, the current plots have been churning on the computadora for the last 3 days and should be done soon. So it goes in science research...
I'm slowly making friends and settling in, have been hanging out a bunch with some other physics grad students (many of whom climb, strangely enough), people I met at the gym, and with my housemates a lot too. I've reverted to the respectable ranks of the gym rat (local climbing gym is pretty good), and have spent some solid time exploring the area and the town. Got out climbing twice, was quite fun (reminiscent of Ragged in CT), but midwesterners' idea of "terrain" is hilarious at best. I'd say comparing an Alaskan's idea of a mountain to a New Englander's idea of a mountain is about the same as comparing a New Englander's idea of a mountain to a Midwesterner's idea of a mountain, if that makes any sense.
Besides the day in-day out routine of going to work and hanging out at the terrace (read: collis porch, but ten times bigger, lakeside, and with 20 beers on tap), I had the pleasure of seeing Peter and Andrew during their speedy eastbound stop, and soon after of seeing Mike and Diana during their drive west. And, this past weekend I saw Flynn and Whitney tie the knot in California, among good company of 05s, 06s, 07s, and 08s that I hadnt seen for a while, as well as the one-and-only Andrew Palmer.
So come by and visit! I promise good cheese, good beer, and a couch to crash on. Madison is a fun town. Hope you all are doing great, and hopefully see ya around sometime? Also, I might have a few days off in mid-august if anyone's got some freedom and wanna try an adventure.
Take it easy,
Jake
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