
So picture this: You park your car under a tree, and overnight it snows. A huge branch gets more snow than it can handle, and falls, smashing in the back window of said car. Bummer. It continues to snow, filling up the back of your car with snow. People like me walk past one their way home and go, “man that sucks.”
(0)So the coolest thing about snowboarding in places that aren’t New Zealand is trees. I just spent three days snowboarding through trees at Sugarbush resort in Vermont. Some times they were spaced nicer than others, but there was generally a ton of powder on the way through… it’s times like those that there just isn’t time to take photos, and I can’t be bothered carrying my camera, so you’ll just have to picture me cruising through silky powder in beautiful birch and pine glades…
The storm from the other day was amazing. Being a walker it didn’t affect anything I did, unless you count stomping through knee deep powder in Cambridge Common to take photos…
I took a bunch more photos, which are here.
There were wisps of snow as I walked to school this morning… and I’ve just taken delivery of my new snowboard!
Today it’s actually snowing…
Spring has come on quickly here. Just over a month ago there was a snowstorm, and now the trees are leafing up and there is grass. This is the view out my bedroom window. I’ll take one every few days and make a year round montage like the one I did for the construction of the AITC at Mt Stromlo.
The grass has been encouraged heavily, the harvard gardeners are evidently under strict instruction to re-sow the lawns as soon as possible to keep the tourists who come to touch John Harvard’s foot happy. If only they knew what the students did to it…
So I imagine people wondering, what is a typical day at Harvard-CfA like for Grant? Here is my ‘typical’ day…
So after wandering down to school through a crisp morning with patches of snow, I find there are some people I know passing through. I go and meet Anna who lives in Texas, and also see Martin and Ken from Australia. I then go to a talk by a guy from Caltech who does cool theoretical planet work, and later to a talk by another guy who does cool observational planet work. Finally I go out to dinner with more people who do things I’m interested in. And the best thing: dinner was free, thanks ITC!
Meeting three or four people in a day who do research directly related to what I do is very cool, and hasn’t even come close to happening in two years in Australia.
Of course some days I just sit at my desk at play with my computer…
Today it snowed. A lot. In fact it’s still snowing outside right now. There is a nice little snow bank building up next to the fence and there’s a weird light outside as if the sun didn’t quite go all the way down.
I left school a bit after 2pm and watched the second innings of NZ vs. England live from the Caribbean in a reasonably warm bar with cold beer. I can now say I’ve trekked through snow to watch cricket…
This is Halvar outside after the game. He’s doing thumbs up because we beat the poms.
Last week it snowed, today it’s 34 degrees and there’s a total fire ban. Nice