In 1998, I took my first plane trip. My advisor, a graduate student, and I left Yale and drove to Bradley Airport in Hartford. I was an undergraduate, entering senior year, and I got to go to Fermilab for a CDF collaboration meeting. I remember very little from the meetings themselves, but that trip left a huge impression on me. I was already excited about physics, but this was my first introduction to the wider collider physics community. The meetings themselves are all a blur to me now. I remember sitting in the main auditorium in Wilson Hall, listening to people give plenary presentations. I remember milling about in the lobby of the auditorium, sipping coffee and eating snacks. I remember my advisor introducing me to people. I remember him suggesting that the graduate student and I park at O’Hare and take the train into Chicago; I remember seeing the Sears tower and the lake front. I remember a blistering hot day walking around the touristy parts of downtown.
I remember getting off the plane, and my advisor turning to the two of us and saying, with a grin, “OK, now we say our mantra: ‘Yet again, we have cheated death.'” I remember walking around Fermilab, seeing a building with a roof made from halves of huge storage drum barrels, seeing power lines on vast towers stretching off into the distance, and seeing a spectrum of orange-to-blue painted tanks lining the accelerator road. I remember over-air-conditioned trailers and people stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder, buzzing over the preparations for Run II.
These were formative experiences for me as a physicist, to see the living collaboration and the world they inhabited. Coming to Cincinnati for this BaBar Physics Jamboree, and having my own undergraduate researchers with me, has brought me back to that first trip. My first trip on a plane. My first physics meeting. My first time at a national laboratory.
This first day was a day of travel and meetings. We arrived on time to the airport outside of Cincinnati, from crummy weather in Dallas to crummier weather in Ohio. But it was cooler (although grayer and rainier), and the drive to the University of Cincinnati was pleasant. The campus seems even more marvelous than the last time I was here, back in 2008. I’ve been introducing my students to friends and colleagues, and the first few sessions today were all plenary presentations of “hot item” analyses. An overwhelming alphabet soup of jargon and acronyms, Landon and Matthew asked lots of questions (Matthew even asked a question of one of the speakers) and though overwhelmed seemed to weather the experience well.
Dinner was a small affair at a nearby Indian restaurant, joined by a few of my friends from the collaboration. We discussed many things [1], and everyone seemed to have a pretty good time over samosas and curry, tea and nan.
Tomorrow, we have to finish our talks (for Sunday) and there are a lot of parallel sessions throughout the day. It will be dense and busy.
[1] http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23bpj
