Summer 2015
After finishing my 2nd year of grad school, Elisha and I moved to Coeur D'Alene, Idaho for the summer. It was nice to be back in the mountains where I could again mountain bike and hike. It was a good summer with mtn biking (I won the mtn bike series 5 in July, a small local series between CDA and Sandpoint), hanging out with friends, some lake time, and even some good travel. Elisha and I ended up visiting Boise and doing a roadtrip through Colorado including stops in Crested Butte to see my brother, the telluride bluegrass fest, a stop in Montrose to see Carleen and Glen, and skiing in RMNP. We visited Glacier NP twice first visiting the West side while staying with Elisha's aunt in Kalispell and then visiting the East side camping at St. Mary Campground. One of the days while there we even headed up to Waterton, Canada where the Canadian border patrol was quite leery that I had been to Russia, Finland, and Czech republic. He wanted to know why I wanted to visit Canada and it took everything I had not to say "I'm here to scout talent for the Colorado Avalanche hockey team" since those are all countries with good hockey talent. On my way back to Gainesville I stopped again in Boise to go on a yurt trip with Lucas (for his brother Jordan's bachelor party) in Sun Valley.
Sept 3 2015
I was supposed to be leaving today to Brisol, UK where I will be attending an Ecological Networks conference and then staying on for 6 weeks to get help on my project from Kath Baldock. But my flight was cancelled due to weather in Atlanta, so it was back to the ever so helpful, friendly, and fun Montgomerys for the night
9/4
Flew from Jax to bristol via atlanta and amsterdam. I had originally scheduled a 9 hour layover in amsterdam so I could explore the city on bicycle for the day. But no such luck with change in flight. I sat with a nice couple on the airplane who got a kick out of me. They were really sweet and gave me all their extra food for me to have on the rest of my journey.
9/5
Arrived into Bristol and Kath picked me up. She took me out for coffee cake and then made me tea at her place. She drove me to the place I'm renting, where I met Elizabeth my land lady. I went out for a quick stroll of the neighborhood and had a nap and then Elizabeth cooked me a nice dinner. I met Laurin who is also staying here for a bit. She's from Oakland originally and will be staying here until the 19th. She's actually illegal right now in the UK b/c she's been here so long. She's been staying in the UK by wwoofing and doing HelpX. She's getting free room and board here by working in Elizabeth's large allotment (community garden)
Elizabeth is super nice as is my place. I really lucked out!! She had my room all nice and my bed all made and towels all set up and everything. She also had a little American flag in one of her flower pots upon my arrival.
I have my own room with a queen bed, desk, walk-in closet and tv. I also have my own bathroom. The place is 1 minute walk from the river which has a nice greenbelt bike path and 3 minute walk from the harbor. It's also really close to a main shopping district for food, groceries and such things. My area is called Southville and everyone says it's a great place. It's 2 miles from the University and 1.1 miles to the city center. But Elizabeth is just super nice. I needed to get my poster printed and was having a hard time (cool thing: in England, even in a city everything is closed on the weekend, so I couldn't print over the weekend). I finally found a place (Elizabeth didn't know this) and this morning when I went bright and early to a place near to where the conference was, the guy asked "Are you Travis?" "Your land lady just called to ask about printing for you". She also hooked me up with several maps including the super helpful A to Zed city map book. And today she gave me a list of all the places she had called that sell used bikes.
9/6
It was a glorious sunny day in Bristol and I explored around. I walked a bit on the green belt along the river, went to the harbor, and then up one of the hills to the observatory and then walked across their famous giant suspension bridge (People liken Bristol to San Francisco just with smaller hills). I then went past some of the "Posh" neighborhoods and onto Clifton Down (a HUGE park). I then made my way to the botanical gardens where Kath was running a booth for the pollination festival there. I visited some of the booths, went to a talk, explored the gardens and then headed down to check out the city center and the University before meeting Kath and her lab for dinner.
9/7
Attended my first real conference as a presenter (I'd been to several as a sapidyne rep). I'm presenting a poster. Some funny stories related to Todd. Jane, the head of Kath's lab and one of the premier network ecologists told me she doesn't know Todd but remembers a talk he gave 6 years ago at a conference. She said it was a brilliant talk and it's the only one she remembers from that long ago. But something about the look in her eye told me she may be aided in her memory by more than just Todd's eloquent speaking, but maybe his dashing good looks. I also met a gal from Ireland who had applied to be a post-doc for Todd. She didn't get the job, but she said maybe it was a good thing b/c "I don't know what I'd do with myself with a boss that good looking". One of my favorite talks was actually given by the only other American at the conference (it's a highly international conference). He is from Emory University in Atlanta but does his field work at RMBL in Crested Butte. He of course knows Todd, but he does some cool manipulative experiments, like me, and he showed some nice pictures of Gothic and CB. He had a gorgeous picture up at the end of his talk and made a plea that we network ecologists should do more manipulative and empirical studies (which is what I do) and less network modeling and theory (which is what goes over my head) so that made me feel good and then he said he was looking for more grad students and post-docs and as I looked at Gothic Mtn on the screen, I almost thought for a second I could be his PhD student...
The conference has a lot of talks but also they want to encourage lots of chatting and networking (go figure at a network conference, haha). This is something that makes me nervous and stressed out. To do small talk with people I don't know and talk science with the experts in the field. But I think I did okay and made some friends. After the conference in the evening they hosted an open wine bar on top of the building (sky lounge) which had amazing views of the city since the building is quite tall and sits on top of a hill as well. They were very generous with the wine and had people constantly walking around to fill you up again. So a nice wine buzz definitely helped me with my chatting abilities.
After the sunset, we went to a very fancy all-you-can-eat buffet. They had sushi, thai, indian, chinese, american, fresh fish, grilled steaks, italian, you name it! And good quality. After that we headed for the pubs to have some pints. I left early b/c I'm still feeling a bit jet-lagged and don't want to spend all my money on pints! at least not in the first week
After finishing my 2nd year of grad school, Elisha and I moved to Coeur D'Alene, Idaho for the summer. It was nice to be back in the mountains where I could again mountain bike and hike. It was a good summer with mtn biking (I won the mtn bike series 5 in July, a small local series between CDA and Sandpoint), hanging out with friends, some lake time, and even some good travel. Elisha and I ended up visiting Boise and doing a roadtrip through Colorado including stops in Crested Butte to see my brother, the telluride bluegrass fest, a stop in Montrose to see Carleen and Glen, and skiing in RMNP. We visited Glacier NP twice first visiting the West side while staying with Elisha's aunt in Kalispell and then visiting the East side camping at St. Mary Campground. One of the days while there we even headed up to Waterton, Canada where the Canadian border patrol was quite leery that I had been to Russia, Finland, and Czech republic. He wanted to know why I wanted to visit Canada and it took everything I had not to say "I'm here to scout talent for the Colorado Avalanche hockey team" since those are all countries with good hockey talent. On my way back to Gainesville I stopped again in Boise to go on a yurt trip with Lucas (for his brother Jordan's bachelor party) in Sun Valley.
Sept 3 2015
I was supposed to be leaving today to Brisol, UK where I will be attending an Ecological Networks conference and then staying on for 6 weeks to get help on my project from Kath Baldock. But my flight was cancelled due to weather in Atlanta, so it was back to the ever so helpful, friendly, and fun Montgomerys for the night
9/4
Flew from Jax to bristol via atlanta and amsterdam. I had originally scheduled a 9 hour layover in amsterdam so I could explore the city on bicycle for the day. But no such luck with change in flight. I sat with a nice couple on the airplane who got a kick out of me. They were really sweet and gave me all their extra food for me to have on the rest of my journey.
9/5
Arrived into Bristol and Kath picked me up. She took me out for coffee cake and then made me tea at her place. She drove me to the place I'm renting, where I met Elizabeth my land lady. I went out for a quick stroll of the neighborhood and had a nap and then Elizabeth cooked me a nice dinner. I met Laurin who is also staying here for a bit. She's from Oakland originally and will be staying here until the 19th. She's actually illegal right now in the UK b/c she's been here so long. She's been staying in the UK by wwoofing and doing HelpX. She's getting free room and board here by working in Elizabeth's large allotment (community garden)
Elizabeth is super nice as is my place. I really lucked out!! She had my room all nice and my bed all made and towels all set up and everything. She also had a little American flag in one of her flower pots upon my arrival.
I have my own room with a queen bed, desk, walk-in closet and tv. I also have my own bathroom. The place is 1 minute walk from the river which has a nice greenbelt bike path and 3 minute walk from the harbor. It's also really close to a main shopping district for food, groceries and such things. My area is called Southville and everyone says it's a great place. It's 2 miles from the University and 1.1 miles to the city center. But Elizabeth is just super nice. I needed to get my poster printed and was having a hard time (cool thing: in England, even in a city everything is closed on the weekend, so I couldn't print over the weekend). I finally found a place (Elizabeth didn't know this) and this morning when I went bright and early to a place near to where the conference was, the guy asked "Are you Travis?" "Your land lady just called to ask about printing for you". She also hooked me up with several maps including the super helpful A to Zed city map book. And today she gave me a list of all the places she had called that sell used bikes.
9/6
It was a glorious sunny day in Bristol and I explored around. I walked a bit on the green belt along the river, went to the harbor, and then up one of the hills to the observatory and then walked across their famous giant suspension bridge (People liken Bristol to San Francisco just with smaller hills). I then went past some of the "Posh" neighborhoods and onto Clifton Down (a HUGE park). I then made my way to the botanical gardens where Kath was running a booth for the pollination festival there. I visited some of the booths, went to a talk, explored the gardens and then headed down to check out the city center and the University before meeting Kath and her lab for dinner.
9/7
Attended my first real conference as a presenter (I'd been to several as a sapidyne rep). I'm presenting a poster. Some funny stories related to Todd. Jane, the head of Kath's lab and one of the premier network ecologists told me she doesn't know Todd but remembers a talk he gave 6 years ago at a conference. She said it was a brilliant talk and it's the only one she remembers from that long ago. But something about the look in her eye told me she may be aided in her memory by more than just Todd's eloquent speaking, but maybe his dashing good looks. I also met a gal from Ireland who had applied to be a post-doc for Todd. She didn't get the job, but she said maybe it was a good thing b/c "I don't know what I'd do with myself with a boss that good looking". One of my favorite talks was actually given by the only other American at the conference (it's a highly international conference). He is from Emory University in Atlanta but does his field work at RMBL in Crested Butte. He of course knows Todd, but he does some cool manipulative experiments, like me, and he showed some nice pictures of Gothic and CB. He had a gorgeous picture up at the end of his talk and made a plea that we network ecologists should do more manipulative and empirical studies (which is what I do) and less network modeling and theory (which is what goes over my head) so that made me feel good and then he said he was looking for more grad students and post-docs and as I looked at Gothic Mtn on the screen, I almost thought for a second I could be his PhD student...
The conference has a lot of talks but also they want to encourage lots of chatting and networking (go figure at a network conference, haha). This is something that makes me nervous and stressed out. To do small talk with people I don't know and talk science with the experts in the field. But I think I did okay and made some friends. After the conference in the evening they hosted an open wine bar on top of the building (sky lounge) which had amazing views of the city since the building is quite tall and sits on top of a hill as well. They were very generous with the wine and had people constantly walking around to fill you up again. So a nice wine buzz definitely helped me with my chatting abilities.
After the sunset, we went to a very fancy all-you-can-eat buffet. They had sushi, thai, indian, chinese, american, fresh fish, grilled steaks, italian, you name it! And good quality. After that we headed for the pubs to have some pints. I left early b/c I'm still feeling a bit jet-lagged and don't want to spend all my money on pints! at least not in the first week
2 comments:
Sounds like it is better than expected!
now if only you were here!
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