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Jul. 20th, 2013 10:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogMy girlfriend ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
danaeris has been so indulgent of her boyfriend's photographic mania today. *grins* I feel like this entry should start with that note.
Today, she and I drove down to Lemont, Illinois so I could photograph the arrival of the barge carrying the Muon G-2 ring at the end of the waterborne portion of it's trip from Brookhaven National Lab in New York state. It was supposed to arrive at noon.
We got there about 10:30 because I wanted to be sure I had a good vantage point in case there were crowds of people. At first, though, I couldn't tell whether there were crowds of people because we weren't quite sure where the barge was going to tie up and where other people would be waiting. After crossing the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal once and then going back again, we stopped at a spot where lots of bicyclists were parking their vehicles and getting onto a bike trail that paralleled the canal for a way. I asked someone in a nearby stopped vehicle if he knew anything about the ring's arrival, and he pointed us down a bumpy road that led eastward along the canal, saying one of the companies down there would probably be receiving it.
So off we went down the sketchy looking road, which became more and more sketchy as we passed a few freight handling businesses and finally found ourselves right under the 355 canal overpass. We tried driving further down the road, but it rapidly deteriorated. Since the road we'd already driven down seemed unsuitable for moving the ring, we decided this definitely was the wrong way and turned around. Danae found an article that mentioned unloading the ring at the Ozninga company, and getting back to the east end of the road, I decided that I'd park and walk into the Ozinga grounds and ask somebody there. Slightly nervous about the very large cement trucks and front end loaders scurrying about, I made my way past the open chain-link gate, down the sun-baked grave driveway, and up to an air-conditioned construction office. The guy inside was very helpful and told me that the barge would be tying up on the Ozinga property, probably somewhere to the west, and that I could drive on back and look around. He was, unfortunately, wrong, but very helpful.
So I drove Danae and I further into the Ozinga yards, past more construction vehicles and large piles of aggregate and sand. When I saw some folks standing by the canal, I stopped and approached them to ask about the barge. One of the guys was kind of in charge of the docks it sounded like; he told me that it would really be arriving back near the point we'd kind of been exploring from to begin with; the gravelly parking lot area where all the bicyclists were parking their vehicles.
So we went back there and found that Andre Salles, Fermilab's media and community relations officer, was at the site! As people slowly trickled in for the event, he was trying to coordinate with the Lemont police to establish an official viewing area. Danae decided to drive out to find lunch for us. While she was gone, of course, it was decided that people would be watching from the pedestrian path alongside the Lemont Bridge. I was worried, as everyone drove away and back across the canal, that I was going to miss out on the good locations; an especially frustrating prospect when I'd planned to be there so early. I'd just started walking toward the north end of the bridge path when Danae arrived with Subway: great timing! I got in the car and we drove over to park at the Metra station lot where folks had been directed.
When we got there, I dashed off to try to catch up with the group. As I neared the bridge though, a police officer asked whether I was one of the official photographers. I said that I was a hobbyist there for myself. He suggested that, instead of going up the bridge, there was a good site I could check out at the end of a nearby road that was right up against the side of the canal where the barge would be docking. That sounded much better to me since the walking path was actually on the wrong side of the bridge to see the approach! So Danae and I got back in our car and drove over to this alternate area. A short walk down a dirt path brought us down to the area in question, which I immediately concluded was a far better position. Though I wouldn't be able to look down on the ring from above, I'd be able to see most of the action much better.
At this point, I was worried about time since the ring was supposed to arrive at noon and it was past 12:30. But there were few enough people around that there was no trouble setting up a camera and tripod. Even better, there was a vertical piece of aluminum truss, about four feet tall, that I could easily climb up and stand on top of. I immediately did so, and we settled in to wait.
We waited and waited and waited some more. The tugboat Miss Katie and the barge with the ring seemed to have been delayed. As an hour and more passed, one of the audience, a water reclamation district staff member, said that he could look up the number of the lock tender at Lockport if someone wanted to call him up and ask for a status update. I volunteered, and ended up talking to a very jovial man who seemed rather amused that people were calling him for news on this. The barge hadn't made it to Lockport yet, or even to the lock and dam prior. Half-laughing, he said "you better get some good beer and some women to dance for you" 'cause we'd be waiting a while!
With confirmation from Andre and Fermilab that it would be several more hours, Danae and I went off to do a couple of errands. She picked up a corset that she'd commissioned from its maker who was in the area. Then we jaunted over to Ikea, where I got some water, hit the restrooms, and left her on her own to wander through collapsible Swedish furniture while I drove back to Lemont, only ten minutes' drive away.
When I returned, most of the watchers had left, though they slowly started filtering back after my arrival. Apparently I'd gotten there just in time for the party. Andre came back, and a couple of local journalists were there. The lead scientist on the ring project as well as a few other Fermilab staff appeared, along with other interested parties, all waiting for the barge.
And wait we did. Things were going slowly downriver it seems. Finally, Reidar Hahn, Fermilab's Visual Media Services Head and primary photographer, called Andre from his vantage point on a bridge a few miles down the river to say that he'd seen the ring. Finally it was nearby! And then, there was more waiting. Did I mention the sun? It was bad. The temperature was better than the rest of the week, but the sun was beating down mercilessly. I acquired some sunblock from a kind fellow-onlooker, but I failed at applying it. I forgot about my legs 'cause they almost never get sunburned, and I didn't manage to adequately cover my ears or neck. And to be fair, I probably got rather burned in the hours before I finally applied the sunblock I should have put on in the morning. Someday I'll learn. On top of that, I forgot my hat when I left the house. I'd come to regret my sun-preparedness-fail later. Meanwhile, I was distracted by photographing the occasional shipping traffic on the canal and the beautiful nearby late-19th-century railroad swing-bridge.
So finally we heard that Reidar was on his way to the very site we were at. I had hope that the long-awaited Muon G-2 Ring would finally arrive! I climbed back up to my truss-top perch and prepared to photgraph. And there, coming down the canal, was the Miss Katie, pushing a great steel barge along with a shrink-wrapped piece of equipment proudly carrying a Fermilab and Brookhaven banner on the front. Yay! I gleefully snapped photos of tug, barge, ring, dock, workers, and everything else there was to see. I'll download, sort, edit, and post them once I'm back home at my desktop PC again and have some time. It was a neat thing to say, and despite it having eaten way more of day than I expected and my failure to prepare for environmental conditions (I really should know better), it was a good experience.
I took a few last photographs and climbed down to talk to Reidar a bit. He remembered me from having met when Danae was working at Fermi. I thanked him for some advice he'd given me about marketing photos, and talked a bit about how things have been going. I feel a sort of ineffable attachment to Fermilab, and it was nice to see folks from there and feel like I made a positive impression.
Finally, I left the site at around 5:30 and joined the patiently-waiting Danae for dinner at Ikea and we headed home. The ring is being unloaded from the barge by crane at 10:00 tomorrow morning. I've been debating whether I want to take another three or four hours tomorrow to photograph that process as well, but I've decided that I do. I don't have anything really critical I should be doing instead, and seeing, photographing, and feeling connected to major material culture of the scientific community makes me really happy. I think I'd regret it if i didn't go.
I promise I'll use more sunscreen tomorrow and bring my hat. I may wear long pants too; I don't want to expose my sunburned legs to any more UV than necessary at this point. Danae helped me get aloe vera lotion on all my burned parts, but they're still feeling tingly and uncomfortable.
Waiting for Big Science! - Pic-a-day 20 July 2013
Copyright 2013
danaeris has been so indulgent of her boyfriend's photographic mania today. *grins* I feel like this entry should start with that note.Today, she and I drove down to Lemont, Illinois so I could photograph the arrival of the barge carrying the Muon G-2 ring at the end of the waterborne portion of it's trip from Brookhaven National Lab in New York state. It was supposed to arrive at noon.
We got there about 10:30 because I wanted to be sure I had a good vantage point in case there were crowds of people. At first, though, I couldn't tell whether there were crowds of people because we weren't quite sure where the barge was going to tie up and where other people would be waiting. After crossing the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal once and then going back again, we stopped at a spot where lots of bicyclists were parking their vehicles and getting onto a bike trail that paralleled the canal for a way. I asked someone in a nearby stopped vehicle if he knew anything about the ring's arrival, and he pointed us down a bumpy road that led eastward along the canal, saying one of the companies down there would probably be receiving it.
So off we went down the sketchy looking road, which became more and more sketchy as we passed a few freight handling businesses and finally found ourselves right under the 355 canal overpass. We tried driving further down the road, but it rapidly deteriorated. Since the road we'd already driven down seemed unsuitable for moving the ring, we decided this definitely was the wrong way and turned around. Danae found an article that mentioned unloading the ring at the Ozninga company, and getting back to the east end of the road, I decided that I'd park and walk into the Ozinga grounds and ask somebody there. Slightly nervous about the very large cement trucks and front end loaders scurrying about, I made my way past the open chain-link gate, down the sun-baked grave driveway, and up to an air-conditioned construction office. The guy inside was very helpful and told me that the barge would be tying up on the Ozinga property, probably somewhere to the west, and that I could drive on back and look around. He was, unfortunately, wrong, but very helpful.
So I drove Danae and I further into the Ozinga yards, past more construction vehicles and large piles of aggregate and sand. When I saw some folks standing by the canal, I stopped and approached them to ask about the barge. One of the guys was kind of in charge of the docks it sounded like; he told me that it would really be arriving back near the point we'd kind of been exploring from to begin with; the gravelly parking lot area where all the bicyclists were parking their vehicles.
So we went back there and found that Andre Salles, Fermilab's media and community relations officer, was at the site! As people slowly trickled in for the event, he was trying to coordinate with the Lemont police to establish an official viewing area. Danae decided to drive out to find lunch for us. While she was gone, of course, it was decided that people would be watching from the pedestrian path alongside the Lemont Bridge. I was worried, as everyone drove away and back across the canal, that I was going to miss out on the good locations; an especially frustrating prospect when I'd planned to be there so early. I'd just started walking toward the north end of the bridge path when Danae arrived with Subway: great timing! I got in the car and we drove over to park at the Metra station lot where folks had been directed.
When we got there, I dashed off to try to catch up with the group. As I neared the bridge though, a police officer asked whether I was one of the official photographers. I said that I was a hobbyist there for myself. He suggested that, instead of going up the bridge, there was a good site I could check out at the end of a nearby road that was right up against the side of the canal where the barge would be docking. That sounded much better to me since the walking path was actually on the wrong side of the bridge to see the approach! So Danae and I got back in our car and drove over to this alternate area. A short walk down a dirt path brought us down to the area in question, which I immediately concluded was a far better position. Though I wouldn't be able to look down on the ring from above, I'd be able to see most of the action much better.
At this point, I was worried about time since the ring was supposed to arrive at noon and it was past 12:30. But there were few enough people around that there was no trouble setting up a camera and tripod. Even better, there was a vertical piece of aluminum truss, about four feet tall, that I could easily climb up and stand on top of. I immediately did so, and we settled in to wait.
We waited and waited and waited some more. The tugboat Miss Katie and the barge with the ring seemed to have been delayed. As an hour and more passed, one of the audience, a water reclamation district staff member, said that he could look up the number of the lock tender at Lockport if someone wanted to call him up and ask for a status update. I volunteered, and ended up talking to a very jovial man who seemed rather amused that people were calling him for news on this. The barge hadn't made it to Lockport yet, or even to the lock and dam prior. Half-laughing, he said "you better get some good beer and some women to dance for you" 'cause we'd be waiting a while!
With confirmation from Andre and Fermilab that it would be several more hours, Danae and I went off to do a couple of errands. She picked up a corset that she'd commissioned from its maker who was in the area. Then we jaunted over to Ikea, where I got some water, hit the restrooms, and left her on her own to wander through collapsible Swedish furniture while I drove back to Lemont, only ten minutes' drive away.
When I returned, most of the watchers had left, though they slowly started filtering back after my arrival. Apparently I'd gotten there just in time for the party. Andre came back, and a couple of local journalists were there. The lead scientist on the ring project as well as a few other Fermilab staff appeared, along with other interested parties, all waiting for the barge.
And wait we did. Things were going slowly downriver it seems. Finally, Reidar Hahn, Fermilab's Visual Media Services Head and primary photographer, called Andre from his vantage point on a bridge a few miles down the river to say that he'd seen the ring. Finally it was nearby! And then, there was more waiting. Did I mention the sun? It was bad. The temperature was better than the rest of the week, but the sun was beating down mercilessly. I acquired some sunblock from a kind fellow-onlooker, but I failed at applying it. I forgot about my legs 'cause they almost never get sunburned, and I didn't manage to adequately cover my ears or neck. And to be fair, I probably got rather burned in the hours before I finally applied the sunblock I should have put on in the morning. Someday I'll learn. On top of that, I forgot my hat when I left the house. I'd come to regret my sun-preparedness-fail later. Meanwhile, I was distracted by photographing the occasional shipping traffic on the canal and the beautiful nearby late-19th-century railroad swing-bridge.
So finally we heard that Reidar was on his way to the very site we were at. I had hope that the long-awaited Muon G-2 Ring would finally arrive! I climbed back up to my truss-top perch and prepared to photgraph. And there, coming down the canal, was the Miss Katie, pushing a great steel barge along with a shrink-wrapped piece of equipment proudly carrying a Fermilab and Brookhaven banner on the front. Yay! I gleefully snapped photos of tug, barge, ring, dock, workers, and everything else there was to see. I'll download, sort, edit, and post them once I'm back home at my desktop PC again and have some time. It was a neat thing to say, and despite it having eaten way more of day than I expected and my failure to prepare for environmental conditions (I really should know better), it was a good experience.
I took a few last photographs and climbed down to talk to Reidar a bit. He remembered me from having met when Danae was working at Fermi. I thanked him for some advice he'd given me about marketing photos, and talked a bit about how things have been going. I feel a sort of ineffable attachment to Fermilab, and it was nice to see folks from there and feel like I made a positive impression.
Finally, I left the site at around 5:30 and joined the patiently-waiting Danae for dinner at Ikea and we headed home. The ring is being unloaded from the barge by crane at 10:00 tomorrow morning. I've been debating whether I want to take another three or four hours tomorrow to photograph that process as well, but I've decided that I do. I don't have anything really critical I should be doing instead, and seeing, photographing, and feeling connected to major material culture of the scientific community makes me really happy. I think I'd regret it if i didn't go.
I promise I'll use more sunscreen tomorrow and bring my hat. I may wear long pants too; I don't want to expose my sunburned legs to any more UV than necessary at this point. Danae helped me get aloe vera lotion on all my burned parts, but they're still feeling tingly and uncomfortable.
Waiting for Big Science! - Pic-a-day 20 July 2013
Copyright 2013
