Happy Halloween!

Yes, it's that time of the year again, when pumpkins are mercilessly mutilated and children all over the country chuck up their candy-colored stomach contents. What the ancient Celts would've thought of this is anyone's guess - the Sidhe were probably scarier than six-year-olds wearing plastic fangs and and capes.

Of course, back in the Old Country, Halloween is not traditionally celebrated. Note that I say "traditionally", because it's slowly been creeping up on Sweden over the last five years or so. I went to a few Halloween parties in my undergrad days, and I have actually been trick-or-treating. Probably surprised the hell out of people opening doors, too, since I was a good two feet taller than the average customer, and about three times older. Sadly, no-one brought a camera for that one.

Since October 31st falls on a Wednesday this year, the student population of Laramie unanimously decided that the preceding Saturday would be the best time to dress up and party. I'm not sure exactly how that was organized (a hive mind of some sort?), but when Joe called me up and said he had beer, a spectacularly ugly costume and girls at his house, I decided to go with the flow. After substantial work with make-up, wigs and garter belts, we were ready to hit the town:

My choice of custome kind of back-fired, though. While I thought I was cleverly representing all that was wrong with the 80's, I failed to take into account that most of the party-goers never experienced the days of yuppies and shoulder pads. I didn't catch more than the second half of the decade myself, and for someone born in 1988 words like "perestroika", "MC Hammer" and "hair spray" have precious little meaning. I got guesses ranging from Billy Ray Cyrus to Joe Dirt. Kids these days...

Most of the girls had invested a lot of time and work in their costumes, and it generally worked out very, very well. Joe had mentioned that this was a "perfect excuse to skank it up", and as usual he was spot on. I don't think I've seen people so scantily dressed outside of the Red Light District before, and I'd bet anything that this would actually be illegal in Utah. Every stereotype was in attendance: Sexy Cop, Short-Skirt Nurse, Skanky Squaw, Catwoman, Tinkerbell, etc. etc. My personal favorite was Slutty Nun - brought me right back to Catholic school, that. And since American women typically don't do the typical pre-diabetes weight gain until after college, the contents of the packaging weren't half bad either. Halloween comes highly recommended.

I've also been out climbing, of course. The winter seems to come in bursts around here, and we're in a sunshiny period right now:

Granted, Rand doesn't look dileriously happy about it, but he's a fun guy to go climbing with. We always seem to get up to some fun/sketchy/stupid shit when we go out -- probably due to a propensity to just "climb what looks good". Yesterday that habit found us sitting atop a small spire of rock, without any clear idea of how to get off. After some thinking, we just tossed the rope down below us, and Rand kind of slid down the incline, holding onto one of my feet while I gave him a "belay" consisting of me basically sitting up real straight and hoping he wouldn't fall very far. The dense fog in the morning didn't help the route-finding either:

On an entirely different note, I had a "Word of the Day" episode recently. I can usually navigate an English-speaking society without any major problems, but sometimes "liten tuva stjälper stort lass". During my attempts to make kladdkaka I learned the difference between "baking soda" (pure sodium bicarbonate) and "baking powder" (much diluted with something acidic and some starch). The former is about 100 times as potent a rising agent as the latter, and you can imagine my surprise when the cake suddenly just started boiling. After saving what I could, and spending almost two hours cleaning the other half of the kladdkaka from the oven floor, I ended up with something that looked semi-okay but had awful taste and texture:

Note to self: stick to yeast in the future. You never know what effects outgassing can have at altitude...

I'll leave you with some pictures of my fellow international grad students. From left to right that's me, Jatinder (India), Shu (China), nameless cutie (Turkmenistan, I think), Anton (Uzbekistan) and Lada (Russia). Note especially that Jeet is wearing his "winter clothing" indoors, which speaks volumes about how well it'll hold up when the mercury really drops around here. For some people, winter will come as a harsh surprise...

A culture of convenience

After some comments from the peanut gallery, I realize I might've gone a bit overboard with the climbing narrative lately. While I find it fun to write about, I appreciate that the majority of the readership might not share my fascination with the subject. Unfortunately, not too many exciting things happen in my life that are not tied into climbing -- my existence outside of the sport isn't particularly interesting even if you're into bioinformatics. And since I don't comment on my job or co-workers, that leaves precious little to write about. Except, of course, my other major topic when I'm abroad: those crazy foreigners. Today, we'll re-visit American (and specifically Wyoming) culture.

There are many aspects of American life that are fairly puzzling to the non-native. The most pronounced one is the basic lassitude that seems to underlie almost all day-to-day decisions. It seems the watchword is "convenient", and since the other major idea is "more! of everything!", this tends to be taken way beyond the point where it stops being sane. As Joe (a Wyoming native) recently put it: "[My roommate] is an example of all that's wrong with the country. She's all 'I want it, and I want it now!'" Some examples will indubitably underscore his point:

• Driving everywhere. I know people who drive the two-block distance between the dorms and my church, and my landlord doesn't hesitate to get into the car when going to her office... which is across the street. The sidewalks are as empty as a bar in Salt Lake City, and I may just possibly be the only person (aside from a Dutch student) in Laramie who bikes through snow/wind/rain. As soon as the distance you're going becomes longer than about ten feet, or if the weather is any worse than it is indoors, any red-blooded American will immediately reach for the car keys. Needless to say, I find this as amusing as it is pitiful.

• Pre-processed food. In Sweden, this is known as "helfabrikat", and while it may have been fashionable in the fifties, it isn't exactly considered to be good for you these days. Tell people here that you baked something from scratch (i.e. from eggs, flour and fat, as opposed to "German cake mix") and they look at you with a mix of awe and disbelief. I live about one block from not less than eight drive-through fast-food places, although I seldom frequent them. The more advanced forms of this phenomenon are just plain startling when you discover them: the first time I bought "rolls in a can", I almost jumped out of my skin when I broke open the can and four breakfast rolls just about exploded out of it, ready for the oven. I continually thank God for the fact that I have a kitchen of my own and know how to use it.

• Shopping malls -- or in smaller cities like Laramie, Walmart. The tendency is to put all the stores or goods you can possibly think of under one roof, so you don't have to go anywhere else. And when I say "all", I mean absolutely everything. I just came back from Walmart, where I got a haircut, picked up some fresh milk and grabbed Swiss chocolate on the way out. If I'd been hungry, I could've had lunch in the in-store Subway. Or cured a headache at the Walmart pharmacy. Had I been feeling lonely, I could've picked up a pet -- or if I felt belligerent, bought a gun. A squeaky brake on your car can be lubed up, and if you need a pair of pants or a cellphone, those are available too. I could go on and on, but you get the idea: this leaves all similar European manifestations in the dust. Of course, you drive to the mall, and most of the food there is heavily pre-processed, so it all ties in neatly.

I also find American advertising fairly bizarre. Back home, ads tend more toward the sober or understated, or very frequently funny (Swedish TV ads may be the most entertaining in the world). US adverts are substantially more direct: huge letters, loud colors, messages for the naive consumer: "BUY NOW! GOING OUT OF STOCK! SALE! SALE! SALE!". Really, guys, all you have to do is tell me what you sell, how much you sell it for, and where I can find you. I am not five years old, nor "un peu lent", so just yelling "BUY THIS STUFF, IT'S THE BEST EVER!" at me will probably not work. This may just be an outgrowth of intellectual snobbery on my part, but the shit I get in my mailbox every day makes more angry than interested.

Wyoming culture, as opposed to American behavior in general, is of course a chapter unto itself. I can't claim to understand much of it yet, since I don't see many Wyomingites on a daily basis, but I can provide some anecdotes. For instance, the cowboys. While the man with the ten-gallon hat, flannel shirt and trusty steed might be confined to Western movies in Europe (and much of the US), he is alive and well in Wyoming. Ranching cattle (or sheep) is still a major occupation in this state, and the people who do it don't seem to have changed a lot in the last 100 years. I regularly see guys in class who're just back from driving the cows home, and the waxed mustache is as ubiquitous a fashion accessory with them as the hooded sweatshirt is with the other college kids.

Related to the cowboy is the saloon. If you look after cows for a living, what else do you do with your spare time but kick back and drink beer? Probably not much. The most typical "saloon" in Laramie is "The Buckhorn Bar". I swung by on Friday night, and, well, let's say it's not anything like one of the "nations" back in Uppsala. Imagine, if you will, the typical Western saloon you see in the movies. There's a sign with very distinctive lettering over the door, and when you come in a long bar with a mirror and plenty of whiskey bottles greets you. The mirror is cracked and warped, because a large bullet hole decorates its center. Some guy is playing steel guitar in the background, and most of the clientele looks like they came there to kick ass and drink beer (and are fast running out of beer). If Clint Eastwood came in and announced he was looking for a certain outlaw, you wouldn't be surprised for a second. Now fast-forward a century, put up some neon Budweiser signs and badly done murals of cows, and you've got the Buckhorn, complete with shot-up mirror (dating back to sometime in the seventies). This is where the less polished half of Laramie drinks, and if you want to strike up a conversation on the relative merits of the horse and the ATV for moving a herd of Black Angus, you've come to the right spot. Just the fact that Bob Scarpelli, formerly Laramie's best climber and worst drunk, used to hang out here six days a week speaks volumes. I wish I'd brought my camera, but you'll have to make do with the links.

In light of all this, I could embark on a lengthy and over-intellectualized analysis on what the effects are on Americans in general (mainly diabetes) and why all this came to be. But I won't. Partially because I just don't get it -- how did they go from the Puritan work ethic ("Idle hands do the Devil's work!") to sitting around in La-Z-Boys and eating donuts? Is this some sort of over-compensation for the presumably harsh conditions in Europe that many of their ancestors fled from? Where did it all change (or go wrong, depending on your point of view)? Cleverer people than I have wrestled with that question, and I can't claim to provide an answer. Things are the way they are, for now, and they are not likely to change because I disapprove. And I certainly don't hate every aspect of life here; quite the opposite. I think that the Americans are among the friendliest and most generous people in the world, and have an admirable self-confidence and a healthy competitive attitude. I moved back here because I enjoyed it the last time around. But as the old saw states, although you can take a swede out of Sweden, you can never take Sweden out of a swede. Even if I live out the rest of my natural life here, I will still bitch about transparent coffee, lack of public transport and the sickening amounts of sugar that permeates every foodstuff. Now, where did I put that can of surströmming? It was just getting lagom smelly...

Monday the 13th

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There is no such thing as "the Fall season"

Okay, that's it, it's winter. Just like the temperature oscillates wildly between night and day here in the desert (50 degrees is not uncommon), so it fluctuates between seasons. "Fall" around here is considered prime skiing season, and the aspen turned a brilliant yellow almost overnight last weekend. The natives tell me that the wind will claim the leaves in a matter of weeks, and then it's winter. Note to self: time to buy outrageously warm down jacket. And pants. And gloves. And better get a new hat, too. And gaiters, crampons, snow shoes... Not that my assistantship salary is enough for that kind of shopping.

Knowing that the season was drawing to a close, I wanted to get a nice summit hike in before the snow started for real. One of my fellow grad students, Stan, turned out to be a dedicated hiker and outdoorsman, and he thought it sounded like a great idea. He suggested we go to Medicine Bow Peak, which has some great views.

(Now, before anyone says anything: yes, I had a "date" this Sunday with a man. In Wyoming. To go up a mountain and "enjoy the great outdoors". And yes, I have seen Brokeback Mountain. At least there weren't any sheep involved. Now get your mind out of the gutter and enjoy the narrative)

The forecast was 60-70 degrees, sunny skies, but with about three inches of snowfall the previous night. No biggie, I thought, a dusting of snow is nothing I can't handle. I put on enough layers for a pleasant Fall hike, grabbed my hat as an afterthought, and we set off. Unfortunately, "forecast" and "actual conditions" are not always the same. We got an early start to avoid afternoon thunderstorms (people are killed regularly by lightning strike on Medicine Bow Peak), but that landed us smack dab in the middle of the remnants of last night's storm. And as we ascended the range in Stan's trusty Toyota, the sun turned to cloud, the cloud turned to rain, and finally the rain turned into snow. When we reached the parking lot at the trail head, it was so full of snow that the car couldn't make it in, and conditions quickly worsened:


After getting out of the car and being hit by a blast of frigid air, a friendly guy driving a snow plough came by and advised us a bit. It took him all of 30 seconds to figure out that we were grad students, out-of-towners, and completely clueless about local conditions. In the most respectful way possible, he suggested that we at least switch to another parking lot higher up. By the time we got there, it was a complete whiteout, and the weather wasn't going to get friendlier up on top of the mountain. We decided that today wasn't a good day to die, tucked our tails between our legs, and sped down the road to sunnier climes. A few thousand feet further down, we found them:


The short hike around Libby Creek was lovely (and very reminiscent of home), but its absolutely best feature was one we didn't actually get to see: Swastika Lake. Yes, I shit you not, a few miles into the woods, there's a good-size lake by name of... Swastika. We laughed for a few minutes about that, and vowed to come back with Nordic skis later in the season and explore what was obviously Nazi High Country. Really, what were they thinking?
Also, Stan stumbled upon what looked like a good place to go fishing (plenty of trout, even now):


Say what you want, but they don't make the scenery ugly around here.

We stopped in Centennial for lunch on the way back. An ex-logging/mining town, it would barely qualify as a minor village back home. It seems driven by tourism these days:


And of course, by that time the skies had cleared, and the promised beautiful weather materialized. The fall colors are vivid, although short-lived:


In my bid to climb/hike/bike up the side of as many things as I can, I spent most of last weekend in Vedauwoo. In a fit of hubris, I decided to have a go at the real wide crack climbs around here, having been lulled into false security by the amount of tape the locals use. However, you can't tape your whole body:


The rock beat the living crap out of me, both Saturday and Sunday, but I did have a lot of fun along the way. Climbing is a bit masochistic even at the best of times, but climbs like this really highlight that aspect of the sport. But since I'm not slight of build, tall of stature or an endurance monster, I figure this is where I can make my mark. These cracks basically require (in addition to awkward technique) a lot of brute strength, relatively big hands and a willingness to suffer. All these attributes I got. Horn's Mother, here I come!

Harboring further delusions of grandeur, I also went biking with one of the international students, Irene from the Chezch Republic:


She plays basketball for a living (or, well, for a scholarship), and in addition to athleticism brought a lot of youthful exuberance to the enterprise. That was a damn good thing, because it was looking like a long ride:


We set our sights for Pilot Hill, which my good buddy Joe claimed to be "not more than an hour of of town". I knew something was fishy about that advice, since he's coaching the cycling team. That hill also happens to be visible for miles around, which means it's fairly tall. Nevertheless, we biked toward it. We picked up the standard trail after about an hour - that should give you an indication of how good Joe's advice was. The trail went on seemingly forever, always at an infuriating angle: steep enough to suck the life out of your legs, but not steep enough to excuse getting off to walk. Since both me and Irene are flatlanders, we were huffing and puffing like badly treated locomotives all the way. My legs actually cramped out on the final hill, but I tried not to let on. Really, I'm more humble than I once was, but I'll be old and gray before I give up on anything in front of a pretty girl. As luck would have it, we did finally summit:


Was it worth it? Yeah, kinda. You forget the pain soon enough, and it was a damn fine view. The ride down was pretty exciting, too, since it was five miles of fairly steep biking. My shitty Walmart bike was rattling as if it was going to explode at any minute, and the noise scared up a big herd of antelope. Their flight behavior is interesting: typically the does go off first, and then the buck only comes out and checks it out once he's satisfied that the situation is under control. Yeah, real brave...

And work? Oh, it's progressing. My week days are pretty much spent in the lab and in class. When I finally make it home, it's time to eat something and then read journal papers until I go to bed. Which reminds me, I have a big-ass stack of things to go through before tomorrow. Time get to it. Catch you later.

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.