Tuesday – The kettle whistles with an unfamiliar voice, and I crawl back out of bed to return to the kitchen to switch it off. As I walk to the kitchen, I mumble “liar” under my breath, and then get to the kettle, switch it off and make some tea. I turn to return to bed, sipping the tea as I go. I stop dead in my tracks from the taste of liquid chalkdust. Yes, the tea tastes awful, and so I’m in Aspen, Colorado.
We’re at something like 7908 ft up here, and so water feels the need to boil well before it is at boiling, if you know what I mean. That’s why I accused the kettle of lying. As a result of this annoying bit of physics, you can make your cup of tea while not looking, since spilling the water on you from the freshly “boiled” kettle will hardly bother you, and so the tea tastes awful. It is a ski resort, but I am not here for the skiiing. (I’ve never even physically touched a ski in my life – and it’s Summer anyway.) I’m here for the physics. There is a physics center here (the Aspen Center for Physics), and several physicists come here every year and have workshops on various topics in physics. When not doing that we wander around town trying to fit in with the locals.
It does not work. In fact, it fails to work spectacularly since the locals actually mostly aren’t here. You’ll really mostly meet three types of people here: (1) the other people here for “summer camp”, which could be other physicists, people on holiday, or people here for the music school and festival; (2) a whole bunch of people from England, New Zealand, or Australia who seem to be the bulk of the wait staff here. They’re flown-in for this. The first thing that strikes you about Aspen, in fact, if you’ve been in Amercia for a decent length of time, is that the people in the service industry are not those people in the third category, which leads me to (3) spanish-speaking people of colour. These folks are mostly hidden away and are doing all the behind the scenes stuff that you don’t see. By some roll of the dice (which we’ll be generous and say is accidental), these folks seldom ever seem to be up front in the restaurants and other establishments like they are most other places.
So where are the “locals”? The people who own the property here, I mean. God knows, but the point is that they are mostly all millionaires (or close enough, from my point of view), and they don’t really mix with us mortals much. You might get the impression that they’re mostly not here, but my suspicion is that we occupy the same space, but are largely invisible to each other, leading completely different lives. There are probably several good people from that category getting on quietly with their lives, eating in the nicer restaurants regularly -ordinary people probably only go into those very ocassionally- and driving back up to their houses up on the mountainsides. You occasionaly run into these others and notice them for what they are only when they are behaving badly. This usually involves shouting at some member of “the help”, behind a counter or at the airport. Being someone who likes to assume the best of everyone first and foremost, I like to think that they are not representative of the typeical wealthy locals; these are just the ones we see. I really don’t know for sure. The thing to do is not worry about that stuff, not rush to judgement and live and let live, since I don’t know all the details. We can all enjoy the town together.
I’m always excited to be here even though I’ve been here several times. Basically, I usually can get a ton of quality thinking done here. Either sitting in my office, wandering over with my notepad and listening to a rehearsal of the orchestra in the giant music tent nearby, going for several long walks in the immediate surrounds of the center, or going for a hike in several of the easily accessible mountains here.
Another reason I’m excited is because this year I brought my bike! It is the most fun thing to ride, and yesterday I spent an awful lot of energy in LA jsut before leaving for my flight, trying to 
find the right hard-sided suitcase for transporting it. Suitcase? Yes, in 15 seconds, the bike fits into a suitcase rather nicely, for the same reason you can pick it up and hop on the subway or the bus: it folds -really fast. With the longest dimension being only 24 in when folded up, it’s the most compact folding bike on the planet (called a “Brompton”: British engineering, of course!) and I really don’t know why more people don’t use these beauties. Take a look. There it is just out of the box when I got it some time ago, and there it is on the pier at Venice beach. 
I was so excited when I got it I unpacked it, and went straight into the city and took it onto the bus (yes, they have buses in LA; I promise more on this later) to Venice to cycle about a bit! Sweet. Anyway, as the bike is the best way to get around here (between town and the physics center, and also when shopping for groceries), and because I arrived a day late here and so won’t get one of the good bikes of the physics center bikes that they lend you, on a first-come-first-served basis, for your stay, I thought I’d bring my trusty British racing green steed to ride while here.
Physics. The workshop I’m attending is called “Supercosmology”. There are some of the more “thinking out of the box” cosmologists here, some of them having more than a passing acquaintance with supersymmetry and string theory. Should be fun. I will try to let you know what we’re up to in a bit more detail over the three weeks I’m here.
The sun is rising now. Time for another cup of liquid chalkdust.
-cvj
P.S. Actually, the above phrase (“thinking out of the box”) to describe at least one of the kinds of cosmologist that would be at this workshop is funnier than I intended.
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:59 am
1/ Your posts are in reverse chronological order, which is a no-no.
2/ Aspen sounds like hell, you should come visit mid-Michigan.
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:01 am
Sweet Ride! Hope the workshop goes well and that the quality of tea improves.
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:18 am
I deliberately did the no-no. Bad me. Bad Bad Bad! Will try to be good. -cvj
P.S. I thought it would be ok since they were right next to each other. Did not want to do a ginormous post by concatenating them.
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:26 am
JMC, I brought with me from Durham some of the finest Yorkshire tea from Taylor’s of Harrogate. The tea will not get better unless I find a way of increasing the water temperature. I could buy a pressure cooker, but that might be getting a bit silly. I’ll get used to it. Its only for three weeks. And I do drink coffee, which is better made at lower temperatures anyway. -cvj
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:45 am
I love it that the guy whose garden is one huge Rube Goldberg machine, and who folds up his bike in a hard case that he frantically scoured LA for just before leaving, thinks that buying a pressure cooker to make tea might be “getting a bit silly”
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:58 am
Clifford! I’ve been lusting after one of these bikes for a while, under the deluded notion that I would commute with it (4 mile bike ride + 15 min metra ride + 5 min bike ride), although the metra just started allowing regular bikes, so maybe it’s not necessary. I didn’t know anyone who had one, so it seemed a little crazy. But it looks great, and 15 seconds to fold, really? How heavy is it? What model? Uh-oh, you’ve triggered my gagdet obsession…
August 2nd, 2005 at 1:25 pm
Pressure cookers are useful devices, and the modern ones are much safer than the pressure cookers of yore. I’d say go get one.
August 2nd, 2005 at 2:14 pm
Risa! For what you want, the Brompton is the Only Way To Go. 15 seconds was including putting it in the case. It is more like 10. You arrive at the bus or subway stop, fold the thing and you’re ready. Only drawback is the applauding public who watched you do this, and the endless silly questions: ” Is that a unicycle?”, etc. I just don’t know why more people aren’t using them (with the exception of London, where it is now the most popular bike model of any sort seen on the commute – I’m told).
I can tell you a ton more about it, and point you to great USA sources. For example, how heavy depends upon what features you want on it. But how heavy is a read herring entirely: You can unfold it so quickly and ride it that you never really carry it very far. But if you have money to burn, then get one of the new titanium models, but that’s too rich for my blood. My regular mostly steel and aluminium one is about 25 pounds all in.
More later. I’m planning a post on public transport and commuting some time. -cvj
August 2nd, 2005 at 2:28 pm
Mark: Rube Goldberg machines perform simple tasks in a complicated way. I try to perform simple tasks using simple solutions. An electronically timed drip irrigation system is a fantastic way of delivering just the right amount of water direclty to the roots of the plants. Contrast with sprinklers, which spray water droplets into the air, on the sidewalk, on the leaves and stems, etc. A ton of it gets evaporated away, and the rest runs into the gutter. While travelling, without the electronic timing, I’d have to do the watering some other way. Perhaps by sending a message over the web or by mobile phone to my computer, which would then arm and release the valves…..Hmmm, interesing…. And I’ll wax more lyrical about the non-Rube-Goldbergness of the bike some other time.
But I do like your point about the pressure cooker to make tea all the same. :- ) -cvj
August 2nd, 2005 at 2:51 pm
OK, fair enough. We’ll call such devices “Clifford Machines” from now on. Have fun in Aspen.
August 3rd, 2005 at 1:14 am
[...] So what’s with the title? Well, it riffs on a joke I inadvertently made in an earlier post. The kind of cosmology being discussed here focuses on models that try to build our universe by starting outside of it, in some sense. The thing we usually think of as the universe is embedded within the larger dynamics of string theory or M-theory that is “outside the box” that is the universe we normally think about. [...]
August 4th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
[...] Just got my beautiful Brompton wet in a sudden downpour on the way home. Yes, I dried it off, and now I’m sitting here with a cup of warm wet-chalkdust-tasting tea listening to the rain and waiting for last night’s chicken pilaf to warm up. It’s always even better the day after I make it! (Some of the things mentioned above will mean nothing to you if you did not read this earlier post.) [...]
August 10th, 2005 at 12:20 am
[...] You may recall me mentioning that bike I commute with? The one I folded up in 10 seconds and popped into a suitcase and brought on the plane with me to Aspen, and that I think is so wonderful? The Brompton? Well, there was a nice article in the Observer about its inventor this Sunday. It’s a very well known type of story: The obsessive and eccentric British inventor, unable to sell his wonderful design and idea. Gets his friends and family to fund his tinkerings with the prototype in the bedroom….We’ve all been there! [...]
September 21st, 2005 at 4:18 pm
[...] Yesterday, while on foot to a lunch meeting on campus, guess what I saw…. Another Brompton! You’ve no idea how exciting that is. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you most likely don’t, see my earlier posts here, and here.) Sure, it’s nice to be maybe the only bike of its sort in the city, and while tiring to have to explain what it is all the time, sure, it’s nice to get the rounds of applause and requests for autographs every time I fold or unfold it in public. But frankly, I really prefer the thought that people are waking up to the idea that this is the way to go. Cycling more, and using public transport in combination with that. As I’ve said before on this blog, LA is an ideal city for cycling (mostly flat, perfect weather most of the time) and the best way to take advantage of the bus, rail and subway system (sigh…yes, they exist, but there are gaps) is to connect them up with a bike. And a folding bike is ideal. A beautifully engineered, comfortable, and compact, really fast folding one is even more ideal. [...]
November 30th, 2005 at 1:26 am
[...] So I’ve spoken here about my frustrations about the myths about Los Angeles, and the fact that so much is missed by many because they’re in their cars. In particular I’ve spoken about public transport (such as the fact that it exists but almost nobody uses it), and I’ve spoken about walking, and cycling. But it must seem all so abstract. So in a fit of frustration at not being able to bring you all along with me and just show you, I decided the day after I did this post that I’d take you with me on one of those mornings when I decide on the way to the bus stop that I’m not going to stop for the bus….. I’m going to go all the way to work on the bike. Yes….the cute little Brompton that everyone living in a city should have to displace their car activity. (I dream, I know.) (See for example here, and here.) [...]
February 25th, 2006 at 4:24 am
[...] After an extraordinarily exhausting week, Friday evening came and I jumped on the Brompton and cycled up Figueroa the 37 blocks to the heart of downtown, where you can find the music centre, and the wonderful Disney Hall. My errand was to somehow obtain tickets for an extremely popular concert. The box office, once I got there, had only a few returned ones, at $120 and $90 each. I could not bring myself to pay that much without exploring other avenues (I’ve several expenditures to worry about) and so I thought I would wait in case anyone turned in orchestra seats (those are more like $35), or to see if the price would drop nearer the concert start, or (my main hope) to see if someone showed up with an extra ticket (maybe a friend could not make it) and would just sell it to me right there near the box office. So I stood there for an hour, watching the world go by, most of it looking curiously at my bike in half-fold position. It dawned on me at some point that I’d no really reliable way of discovering who might have tickets to sell or not. This became especially clear after a group of people who came well after me and were hanging around managed to get a ticket in this manner. So after a while I began to learn who had “the look” of maybe having a ticket to sell, and with about ten minutes to go before the concert (and after a long conversation about the bike which made me miss at least one more sale) I managed to negotiate an $82 ticket down to $50 (I could have done better, but it seemed fair), folded up and popped my bike off in the coat check area and emerged for an evening of a bit of relaxing to some Mozart. [...]
April 18th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
[...] (3) (Ok. Three things of note.) He seems to have forgotten what must have been the weirdest thing of all. As we were walking along wheeling my bike (the ever-wonderful Brompton) two British visitors cycled by and one of them was riding a Brompton. Of course, they shouted out, pulled over and we chatted for a while, and together shook our heads in lamentation of the lack of other such bikes in the region, etc. They were on a conference visit, and had popped their folders into a suitcase and flown over, just as I described in an earlier post. They were then able to appreciate LA properly by cycling around. Needless to say, I was over the moon about this, and enthused about it for a while. [...]
May 18th, 2006 at 12:26 am
[...] Ahhh….London. All of a sudden, here I am in South London. It is early in the morning, and everyone is still asleep. I’m sitting here with an excellent cup of tea (title of this posst refers to this other post) and a plate of Jacob’s cream crackers (since I’m desperately hungry and it was the only thing I could find without disturbing my host’s kitchen cupboards) and looking at lovely cloud patterns through the window, and some beautiful shafts of morning sunlight from time to time. And I’m listening to the birds…. and some seriously loud snoring from upstairs. [...]