Mitt liv som Tobin

I just dug up some photographs of when we tomsawyered the rhone, floating down the Rhone river from Geneva, Switzerland to the French border. (That's Kenny Jensen [kennyjensen] and Adam Kocoloski in most of the pictures, and me and Matt Staver [ankaerith] in one of them -- that picture is actually from a second tomsawyering.) I'd also like to note that there's a whole lot of hilarity wrapped up in that "and then we went home with the band" reference. I wish I wrote about it at the time-- but maybe I can find a photo of 15 people in the Berlingo for starters.

It is 08:32. The accelerator status message (posted 07:04) is "problem with injection kicker; expert needs tunnel access. No beam before 08:00." Sitting here in the refrigerated control room waiting for the beam... seems a pretty standard experience now! At least this is the day shift. I see that the beam was up and down all night for the night shift. Oh, updated message "no beam before 09:00." I think I will go get some breakfast.

Originally our goal was Malta, a tiny island nation in the Mediterranian, the coutnry from which we get the adjective `Maltese.' At Oscar Wilde we poured over archaic maps with strange projections; we checked ferry schedules from Italy and from Tunisia. When the summer came, though, we realized Malta would be too hot and would be at high tourist season. Instead we decided on a Swiss road trip. I picked Alex up on the German border, we rented a car, and we took off for a three day, 1200km tour through southern Switzerland.

Day 1

Our first day was one full of misadventures, a comedy of errors. There was a whole debacle of me having lost my keys but actually having had them the whole time (they were in Alex's pocket!), and getting mixed up on the bus on the way to pick up the rental car.. but eventually we were off, in our stylish Opal Astra stationwagan (``This car is a thing of beauty,'' remarked Alex), but only after finally figuring out the reverse, which required deciphering the french instruction manual (there is a small collar on the bottom of the shifter that you must pull up with your index and middle fingers in order to shift into reverse). But, yes, finally we were off, on the now-quite-familiar Swiss highway that leads around the northern shore of Lake Geneva, through Lausanne and Montreux.

Zermat proved just as touristic as anyone could have predicted, and thick clouds vielled the view of the Matterhorn, the only reason for the town's existence. Really, we didn't even know in which direction to look (``excuse me, but where is the matterhorn?'') but I'm convinced I finally saw it through the clouds for a second just as our train started down the mountain. But the trip was certainly worthwhile for the chance to duck into one of the many little restaurants there to enjoy an apple strudel topped with hot vanilla sauce, under a terrace which sheilded us from the rain. I believe that Alex awarded it Best Dessert Ever.

But the best was still to come, as we abandoned this tourist town and hit the road again, up into the alps with our sights set on the Italian metropolis of Milano. The Swiss build awesome roads, and over this mountain pass the highway is in sort of a quasi-tunnel, with waterfalls cascading above the roadway.

We crossed the Italian border sometime after dark under very bad circumstances. We crossed out of Switzerland and immediately all road markings — reflectors, lines — disappeared, and we were left to fend for ourself with the Italians, in the dark, in the rain. Is it to much to ask for a demarcation between the lanes, between traffic in opposing directions?

Switzerland is not convex, especially not when it comes to the topology of the autoroute/autostrada/autobahn, and the reason for our trip to Milano was that this city lies not too far off the shortest path from Zermat to the Italian-speaking Swiss city of Lugano. We met the Italian autostrada and sped towards Milano, 160km in tunnels nearly the entire time. They make good use of tunnels here.

The first unfortunate incident involved us being charged a toll of 23 euros. We're still not sure whether this is normal... I had fished out all my various euro notes and coins, come up with EUR 7, expected to pay not quite that much, and ended up having to fish out the Mastercard... geeze!

Let us just say that we were defeated by Milano. Sometime after midnight we were cruising North again, a shortest-path b-line to the Swiss border.

I think it was nearly three when we checked into Hotel Pestalozzi, an astonishingly friendly place (right in the middle of Lugano), where we were able to book a double room for one hundred francs that included breakfast and parking and the best of hospitality. You see, our guide book (the Rough Guide, just 'cause I thought I'd give them a chance to prove their possible superiority to LP) is only to Switzerland, and thus Milano was a complete mystery.

day 2

Lugano is supposedly an important banking center, but it's a very relaxed place, very lush, with tropical plants growing everywhere, with palms and greenery everywhere you look, with a pleasant lake, a funicular railway, and little mountains curiously reminiscent of Rio de Janeiro. It's a relaxed place, full of cafes and restaurants and with parks you can stoll through, and we sat at the cafes and strolled through the parks into the afternoon, and then it was time to go, with some sadness that it wasn't dinnertime.

One should make a point of arriving in Lugano in the early afternoon.. Take a boat on the lake, settle down for a nice multi-hour Italian meal in the warm twilight, then stay at one of the plentiful and moderately-priced hotels.

We drove up through San Bernardino pass to Chur (within ~20km of Liechtenstein), now in a totally different world than Lugano, and enjoyed a hearty alpine meal at the Three Crowns. Our lodging was the HI hostel in the nearby resort town of Valbella.

In the wintertime this town must be crawling with skiers, but in the summertime it is a ghosttown of abandoned condos. The hostel cost us each thirty-four francs, and a group of Bernese schoolkids completed its authentic Hostelling International institutionalized feel. One could doubtlessly find a nice little hotel for comparable price, or maybe just "borrow" someone's vacant condo. (-: The view from our hostel window was of a small lake:

day 3

By far our most impressive day for scenery, the sun came out and we drove high through the alps, through two high alpine passes and one subalpine pass. Not only do the Swiss build roads to these places, but there are people living up there, too, farming noless.

We were sad to discover that Ilanz is actually German-speaking, despite being in the center of a large Romansch-speaking blob; we lunched there and transported a friendly hitchhiker briefly. But we should have waited until after Ilanz for lunch, as the villages which follow are vastly more picturesque, and fully Romansch to boot.

We saw the source of the Rhine, or something near it at least. And much scenery, both awesome and idyllic.

The alpine territory was quite tempting, and I suddenly felt I should spend my weeks after CERN wandering the alps. Maybe I could really find Switzerland that way, that elusive country. And Lugano had tempted me, too, to head down through Italy into the warmer countries, town into the mediterranian again. So many places to go.

We passed mighty glaciers.

In the mountains we saw some exercises of the Swiss army, with trucks and guns and everyone in camoflage, and they had somehow gotten a tank up there, and it looked ridiculously out of place amongst the trees and the dairy cows.

We arrived back in Geneve sometime nearly midnight, in time to clean our car and get ready to take Alex and Chan to the airport at 04:30...

Yesterday my student affairs advisor back at Berkeley checked off the last item on my graduation requirements — transfer credit for EE128 `Feedback Control' based on Lunds Universitet's FRT010 `Automatic Control: Basic Course.' Rob Fearing wrote, ``Based on syllabus and reputation of Lund, I think we can give full 4 units equivalent UD credit.'' Excellent. That's 0.7 more units than originally assigned. So, my diploma is now in the mail!

Right now I am at the test beam, ``on shift'' officially for the first time, with littlepavel and two other people. There is some spare time as it takes about fifteen minutes to accumulate 50,000 pions the way things are configured now. Then we change the beam energy and do it again! You, too, can get that test-beam thrill, from the comfort of your very own home: check out the CERN accelerator status display, and read our electronic log book!