The shape of things to come

Things are settling down in the Wild West. My most basic needs (money, food, shelter, coffee) are finally all in place - the cash was touch-and-go for a while - and I've been diving into my new life as a grad student. Being a creature of habit, I find having a routine pretty soothing. I've established a fairly good one now, I feel. Work at the lab (occasionally interrupted by classes) all day long, eat free food here and there, go climbing at the gym two times a week, read journal papers and/or biochem book in the evening, leave town for The Great Outdoors during the weekend. This is a considerable improvement in many ways on my average day in London.

Especially health-wise -- I'm losing weight like crazy, here, despite being fed greasy pizza and cheese-drenched Mexican food a few times a week. Cutting down on the booze worked real well too, although after about five minutes of uphill hiking (or just biking to work in the morning) I'm still huffing and puffing. I guess I can still blame the altitude, but that excuse is only good for another month of so. On the upside, I'm going to have more red blood cells than the most EPO-infused Tour de France sprinter before long.

And I seem to have promised some pictures. And now, after getting that long-lost power adapter (thanks, mom and dad!), I can deliver. First, I get up in the morning and wander aimlessly around my shiny new apartment:



Take a look out the window - the weather is usually good, but afternoon thunderstorms hit at the drop of a hat:



Anyway, time to be off. The lab is there waiting for me:



I admit, the lack of windows is a bit depressing... But it's not like I'm staring at anything except the computer screen anyway. The research is going, well, forward. There's a certain amount of grunt work involved in generating a dataset, irrespective of how you do it (lab bench or database search), but I should be hitting the "now, what does it all mean?" stage pretty soon.

But if it's a suitable day, you can always bugger off to the climbing wall to refresh yourself. If the day is especially suitable, you might even go to a comp. And should you by some miracle be the best competitor in your class (because e.g. the hardmen aren't there), you can be a genuine, certified bouldering champion:



That T-shirt right there pretty much tops any previous athletic achievement for me. I have way more awards, diplomas and medals from running track, but none of those actually say that I won something. Ah, America, the land of oppurtunity...

Soon enough, hunger drives me home again. I continually thank God that I have a kitchen of my own, because the alternative is fast food (argh) or eating at the Washakie Dining Hall. According to those unfortunate souls who live in the residence halls (the tallest buildings in Wyoming, by the way, at all of 11 floors) the options over there aren't exactly enchanting. And really, are they gonna cook me up some nice Thai food? I think not.
On the way home, you might happen to see the sun go down over the Snowy Range:



Ah, man, I love living here already. In London, there was no way to see the sun go down because three million buildings were in the way. And of course, clear skies weren't particularly frequent. Here, I can usually enjoy the view of snow-covered peaks as I bike to the lab, and catch the last rays turning Pilot Point over on the Laramie Range a lovely shade of pink as I make my way home. Truly, I seem to have hit the right spot.

The work week, intensive as it is (take a look at "Piled higher and Deeper" (what's the acronym? Think about it...) if you don't believe me), eventually ends, and then you can get the heck out of Dodge! There's nothing to do inside Laramie, except possibly drinking, and I've had plenty of that during the last couple of years. I try to spend as much time outdoors as I can, and one very good place to do it is Vedauwoo:



Not twenty minutes from home (in a car, of course), I have an entirely mountain range's worth of forest, hills and huge piles of granite. Could it possibly get better? This place pretty much outstrips the entire Västerbottens län for climbable rock, and them routes are mighty tasty, too. My bizarre fetish for cracks that are wide enough to swallow your entire leg is working to my advantage, as Vedauwoo is famed all over the climbing world for its variety of wide cracks. Unfortunately, it's also quite renowned as a place that will eat your flesh and drink your blood if you don't wrap your entire body in tape:



Those stories of flesh-eating cracks are slightly embellished (as all good stories are!), but not that much. They bit me good today, and although I didn't leave much blood behind, it certainly hurt pretty bad. As compensation, the rock treated me to some really excellent climbing, and in three days I've done an entire season's worth of classics. I'll admit this place doesn't quite have Offerhällans grandeur, or Ringkallen's sweeping vistas, but for sheer quantity and quality it beats the pants off either. Woo-hoo!

Of course you can't go climbing without some good buddies to hold the other end of the rope, and yell/encourage you when the going gets tough and you think you're going to fall to your death. This weekend, I've been out with Dan and Karin (sadly, no Swedish connection there), Laramie's only color-coordinated climbing couple:



Who knew that married people could be so much fun? Ooh, bit of a preconception creeping up on me there...

If you want to see some more pretty pictures, including some halfway decent shots of my co-workers in the lab and on the rock, take a look at my Flickr page. You can also look at just the climbing shots, if you want to.

High Plains drifter

Yes, I'm still alive. Uncharacteristically, I haven't updated in what, over two weeks? It's a wonder I didn't just drop dead on the spot from withdrawal...

The reason that I've been out of touch is simple: to put it mildly, I've been busy. To tell you the truth, it's been stressful as all hell. I spent my last week in Sweden saying goodbye (or more frequently "See you in six months!") to friends and relatives, only narrowly missing a pseudo-reunion with some people from high school. It turned out to be possible to fly out on Friday rather than Sunday, which turned out to be A Good Thing. So since Thursday night, I've been in a more or less total communications blackout due to two things: travel and... Wyoming. The state is not, ah, littered with high-speed Internet connections.

So, now I've changed countries again. A bit like a global game of Musical Chairs ("Hela Havet Stormar" for those of you playing at home), this: I come, I sit for a while, I bugger off again. Uprooting my entire life has become both easier and harder with each move. The logistics are getting more and more predictable, and hence less of an issue: for instance, I now know that the very first things that need to be bought are toilet paper and bed sheets. Without these items, one tends to get distinctly uncomfortable. On the other hand, it becomes harder and harder to leave all friends, stability and sanity behind each time I do it. Partially because of age, I guess, but also because I know it's going to suck outrageously for a while before my life starts rolling again. But it always seems to right itself again, somehow, and knowing that is the real benefit of experience.

Consequently, I've been running around like a headless chicken during the last week, signing forms left and right (I've certified that I am not a rapist, among other things), attending lectures/lunches/meeetings that welcome me to the University of Wyoming, trying to have conversations with people whose English leaves something to be desired, and so on. The typical hysterics, but moderated by some degree of knowledge about this place. I won't go deeper into the US vs. Britain vs. Sweden cultural debate right here (that'll be my next post!), but suffice to say that there were a great many things that I'd forgotten over the last several years, and even more that I had no experience with at all from last time. Charlotta will no doubt be absolutely delighted to hear that I've had not just one but several Words Of The Day all week long, ranging from "correspondent bank" (who knew there were banks too small to do international wires?) through "bath coordinates" (if anyone knows the difference between that and "bath accessories", please tell me!) to "tax treaty" (an unpleasant surprise if I ever got one).

But today is Saturday, the traditional Swedish day of rest... no, what am I saying? Saturday is reserved for sleeping in, making last-minute trips to Systembolaget for booze and then the consumption of said libations. However, since I've been getting up before sunrise for a straight week, due to jetlag as well as a busy schedule, I opted out of that scheme and decided to do some exploration instead. Walmart has graciously provided me with a bicycle that was most certainly manufactured by sweat-shop slaves somewhere in China (the cost was roughly 1/5 of the Swedish equivalent), and I figured I'd field test both it and my lungs today. The bike held up fairly well, but I seem to have acquired the excellent physical performance of the average octagenerian. The blame doesn't rest solely on my slothfulness in Britain, but rather with the altitude: we're up at 2,200 meters here, and it is taking a serious toll on the oxygenation of my blood. The ride was awesome, though, and I'm happy I went. It doesn't take me more than about ten minutes to totally leave the city (such as it is) behind and head out into the grasslands. It is Big Sky Country out here, with sagebrush and hardy grasses ekeing a miserable living out of the red dirt. The nearby mountain ranges seem deceptively close, since you can see hundreds of miles in every direction, but are in fact a long-ass way away if you're on a bicycle. The overall feel is quite like Australia, but without the constant threat of death from all flora, fauna and geological features that mar that country (sorry, Cass, but it's true!). I saw a family of antelope bounding across the plain, scared up grasshoppers by the dozen (they sounds just like tiny machine guns when they fly), and encountered wild cactus for the first time in my life. As icing on the cake, I ran across a limestone canyon and some opportunities for really shitty climbing. In fact, the canyon as a site was far and away better than the climbing, which alternated between painful enough to cause blackouts and crummy enough that I accidentally kicked holes in the wall. But no matter, because the scenery just goes on forever around here. Looking west is especially pleasant, as the Snowy Range provides a lovely frame for the surprisingly green siloutte of Laramie. I'd show you some pictures, but due to a slight fuck-up from Yours Truly the camera is powerless, as are all of my other electric appliances.

And since I must've typed a thousand words already, I'll stop there. I have some fine buffalo meat that's thawing out as we speak, and I need to get home to cook up some Sauce Bolognese a la Ouest Sauvage. I'll post again when I get some more time on my hands, or some nice pictures. There will be some directions on how to get e-mail updates when I post something, too, as soon as I figure it out. Those of you who are more technically inclined can just subscribe to the Atom feed for now.