I stayed with Dan in Socorro for a couple of days. And wow does NMT suck. He needs to get the hell out of Dodge as quickly as possible. I played a lot of GTA3 on his PS2, and that's about it. But hanging out there was still great as it gave me a chance to chill before a hard week of work at the lab. And chillin' with Dan is always good. He's a good egg.

The week in Los Alamos was sub-par. I didn't get much done because I needed help from other people who weren't coming through for me. I still like it out there, anyway.

The major event was the decision on the part of X-division that I am to move to Los Alamos permanently as of May of this year. When I leave for the summer, I won't be returning to Boston for any significant period of time. This is an enormous change in my life, and it came rather suddenly. In a month or so, I'm gone.

My clearance papers are finally in, after 3 years of waiting... now just another 9 months of processing and I'll (hopefully) have a clearance. geeebus. Then I can work on interesting problems instead of this mickey-mouse physics they've got me doing now.

My new group is really great. They are "popular" in the division right now which means they have money, clout, and can afford to do stuff like buy me a top-of-the-line mac with a 27" flatscreen. And that can't be bad.

I had the worst rental car ever. Don't use Enterprise, they blow. And please, if you must drive, don't drive a Geo Metro. For the love of Pete.

On the way home from Los Alamos, there was a security breach at the Albuquerque airport while I was waiting for my flight. They emptied the entire terminal, including all planes currently attached to gates, and made us all wait in line outside. The line was at least a mile long. It didn't start moving for over two hours. They had to inspect the entire airport and all planes before they begin checking the employees. Only when that was complete did they start letting people back in.

Needless to say I missed my connection in Dallas. Fun and exciting night in Dallas courtesy of Delta. Met a guy from St. Paul who was returning from Japan.

When I got back, I started to see Boston in a different light. Knowing I only had a month left to live here, everything became more urgent. I started doing things that I had always put off as unimportant. I went to the science museum with Mikkel. I looked at the models in the Ocean Engineering department museum. Etcetera.

I went to a talk given by Bradford Washburn, founder of (and director of for 40 years) the Boston Museum of Science and megaexplorer guy. This guy was an ariel photographer for natioal geographic and a wicked crazy mountain climber. He's been up Mt. Mckinley several times, once bringing his wife to make her the first woman to summit the highest peak in North America. He's climbed Everest. He's climbed the Matterhorn. He is the man. He's over 90 years old now, but still sharp as a nail and really funny. He lived a life of excitement and contributed to the understanding of others in a very tangible way. I hope my life can be half as meaningful to myself and to others.

Mikkel introduced me to the idea of Orienteering last weekend. I had never heard of it and had no concept of what it was like. But off I went. They give you a map and a compass, and you have to get from the starting position to a series of control points in order then to the finish line as quickly as possible. No trails or anything. It's all about off-trail running and quick-thinking. It was so fun. I loved it. I'm going to go again tomorrow. It turns out it's really big around here. I'm going to go as often as I can before I leave because A) it'll get me in shape and B) no one seems to do it in Los Alamos.

I went to EMS and unloaded my bank account on backpacking gear. The idea being that I'm about to leave all my friends behind here in Boston, so I'm going to need something to fill my free time up in Los Alamos. And I've decided that that thing will be backpacking.

My goals for the summer are to summit Truchas Peak (13,102') and to highpoint New Mexico via Wheeler Peak (13,161'). Both of these are significant adventures involving a lot more gear than I had. Now I have a ton of stuff. Stove, summit pack, cooking gear, etc. I'm going to have a blast this summer and the coming year. I won't settle for anything less.

It'll be the only way I can bear having lost all of the great stuff I have going here in Boston. Here is an abbreviated list of the projects I'm working on that will be postponed indefinitely:

It's not a total wash, though. Its looking like Mike will be living in Los Alamos for the summer, and there's a strong probability of he and I living together for a few months. Nina will be coming to Albuquerque for the summer as well. And when the summer is over, Dan will still be stuck down in Socorro and he and I will be utilizing the same launch facilties for our rockets, which will give me a monthly opportunity to hang with the Milkman.

So on the one side I'm getting a bit nostalgic on my four years of living at MIT and in Boston and what a fantastic time I've had here. These have been the best four years of my life. Every year of my past 8 has been the best one yet. And that's a great thing to be able to say.

However, despite having to leave it all behind, I have no reason to believe that this trend won't continue. I fully expect to have a blast in Los Alamos. It will be a huge change in my life. A new era, so to speak. But I forsee only exciting challenges on all fronts. I'll finally be done with the triviana of classwork, and be into the thick of thesis research. Maybe that doesn't sound like something amazing to you, but it's going to be intellectually stimulating. Intensely so. I will be among the best in my field and over the course of two years I'll become the best at what I do. I've set myself up to do amazing things and I can't wait to get on it. I'll finally be able to become an outdoors person on a full-time basis. Living in Los Alamos year-round will expose me to more frequent and more exotic expedition opportunities for things like winter camping, ice climbing, etc. I'll learn to trad climb. I'll go kyaking in the Rio. I'll walk through a slot-canyon. I'll summit a Colorado Fourteener. I'll explore a cave with a 200' vertical drop for an entrance. I'll sleep under the stars in a desert of white sand and count shooting stars. It's going to be great.

I can't tell you how excited I am to be thrust into the situation of having weekends of extreme physical challenge and beauty separated by work weeks of stimulating thought and cutting-edge physics theory. Great. Great, I tell you!