I have been to two synchrotrons in a total of 3 to 4 times. Brookhaven was closer. One time I was at X12B beamline working late past midnight. I heard my name being called in Chinese. I turned and I found the professor who taught me Protein Crystallography in colleague standing in the hallway. What a small world! He was there collecting data, too.
Another time we left Brookhaven very early in the morning to catch a ferry at Oriental Point after exhausting ourselves in the past few days at the beamline. There was still time so we went to a small family diner around the corner to grab something to eat. It was barely open. A very cute little girl asked us, "would you like some coffee?" She was probably six or seven, a little shy, but very very friendly. That was the best coffee I ever had in my life. I don't usually drink coffee, though.
One time we worked at APS in Chicago for about a week. We worked night and day and forgot to eat or didn't have time to eat. There I learned firsthand what starving-to-death really felt like.
The trip back was not uneventful, at least not for me. Those 1000 miles between Chicago and Boston took us a day and a half to drive back. We spent the night in OH, had dinner, went shopping at an outlet, and went to bed a little too late. We still got up early the next morning to start our journey home at 8am without eating breakfast. I was voted to drive the first two hours. The other labmates were all dozing off in the back. I chatted with Yi for the first half an hour and found her dozing off in the passenger’s seat, too. We were then on I80 in western PA and roadwork had reduced the interstate to one lane in the rolling hills. I felt very sleepy, too. I was driving a Ford Windstar 7-passanger minivan, with 4 other PhD candidates sleeping and liquid nitrogen dewars full of frozen crystals and some crystal trays in the back. I was really tired. I had to fight my eyelids to stay awake. In my whole driving experience I had never, and will never be, that sleepy, and I was so relieved when one of them woke up to take over from me.
Mmm, shouldn't I be reminiscing about more scientific issues?
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3 comments:
Sounds like you've had some really fun trips!
ha, i didn't know you were a crystallographer too. pesko lab?
Yes, I was. You are very close. He was the chair of my committee.
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