I have finally managed to get all the photographs that I took at the Gordon Conference off the floppy disks and onto my computer, so now I will endeavor to talk about the whole trip!
The journey from Virginia to Maine by car is fairly long, about 14 or 15 hours. We did the trip up in an easy two days of driving so that we would arrive at the conference a little early.
As we went through one part of a Pennsylvania, we could see a storm moving toward us. It looked very cool!
Our rooms were typical college dorm rooms, except that I had not brought enough stuff along to make a complete mess of the room with. 
I guess that college dorm rooms are pretty much the same where ever one goes, since this one looked uncannily like my dorm room at MSU. Here's a photograph of Vince trying to figure out where we are supposed to be heading next while I frittered away time taking photographs. 
And yes, that is my lovely teddy bear and my little otter on my bed. :)
The campus of Bates College is really lovely. Since Vince and I had arrived a bit early, we decided to wander around a bit and explore. 
There was a lovely pond right behind our dormitory, complete with very friendly and vocal ducks, and surrounded by large granite boulders perfect for perching on and reading some physics papers in the shade (guess what I did one afternoon?). 
I was really taken by the curved expanse of windows on one building, which turned out to be the building where all the talks were held and where the poster session was. The posters were actually displayed in the atrium with the curved glass, which allowed for a nice view of the pond.
Two things on the campus really caught my attention and thus the attention of my camera: the chapel and the beagle. Vince and I discovered a delightful little beagle statue in a corner by a building. Having had an enchanting little beagle companion myself, I decided that the statue was an excellent representation of these wonderful dogs. The sculptor even managed to capture the way that a hound's ears flap when the dog is in mid-stride.
The other really cool building that I photographed was the chapel. The interior of the chapel was beautiful, with lots of carved wood and stained glass. The chapel also had a cool-looking large organ, as well as a small one in the front.
Maybe I will have the opportunity to play the organ some when I head home for my vacation in three weeks. I love playing a full pipe organ, since you not only have keyboards for your hands, but also for your feet.
While we were there, I had Vince take a picture of me in that peaceful setting.
Okay, enough sight-seeing for the moment. That evening the talks began, and many of them were very interesting and had cool stuff in them. 
The Gordon Conferences are designed to be a place to show new and preliminary results, so in that spirit, participants are not allowed to talk about the stuff outside of the conference. However, I will say that some of the talks were very good. I even took a couple of pictures of Peter Steinberg while he gave his talk. :) It was fun to finally have the chance to meet him in person!
I was somewhat disappointed at the low numbers of graduate students (especially female ones) at the conference. I had expected a larger group of them attending the conference. Things got better in that regard as the conference went on and I found the other students and post-docs who were there, like my friends Brad and Vitaliy. They were a lot of fun to hang out with! :D
The poster session was really good too. Like the one for the Jlab Users Group Meeting, I was kept busy the whole time and did not have the opportunity to ask any questions of the other poster presenters. Brad and I had set up our posters next to one another's, so we did have the opportunity to poke fun at each other occasionally.
There were a couple of planned outings as part of the activities for the conference, so Vince and went on both of them. The first outing was to the Maine Maritime Museum, which was a nice museum and an old Maine shipyard where they built wooden sailing vessels in the 1800's. 
It was really cool to wander around the ship yard and see how they built those masted ships in years past. 
The museum has all the tools set up in the shop overlooking the yard, including the massive saws and planes, as well as all the outbuildings like the painter's and caulking sheds. Here is a photograph of the shipyard from the upstairs window of the main lumber shop.
The museum also had a schooner named the Sherman Zwicker that we explored while we were there. There was this really cool guy working on the ship that seemed to know everything about the maritime history of Maine. He was really fun to talk to. Vince and I went all through the ship and learned all about the fishing industry in Maine.
The riggings for these ships seem pretty complex, let alone for the much larger ones. I don't know how the sailors in the "good old days" ever managed, especially in the rough waters of the New England coast. I guess that is where that whole thing about training and experience comes in...
While we were there, we saw some happy and plump woodchucks that had made their home near the caulker's shed on the shipyard grounds. :)
It was very peaceful there. I wonder what it was like when there were teams of men working around the clock to build those great masted ships more than a century ago?
The poor old bus we were traveling in was loud and sounded like it was on its last legs...
The second outing was to a little beach (called The Great Outdoors) on a lake the next afternoon. Vince and I canoed around the lake for a while with everyone else, and then had fun paddling around in the lake. I also had the opportunity to hang out on a swing set with my friend Florentin, who is also from Jefferson Lab. However, the real adventure started when we tried to leave. 
The bus would not start! And no one seemed to be able to get any cell phone reception! This was a crisis, because while we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, the other conference members were enjoying a lobster bake back at the college that we would miss if we did not get going soon! Since we were all physicists, everyone climbed out to take a look at the engine. After a while, Steve and Larry determined that the fuel pump was dead, which meant we could not just figure out some way of patching it up. So, we were really stuck, in the middle of nowhere, and with our lobster dinner at stake to boot. A vote was quickly taken to see who we would eat first if help did not come (the consensus was the bus driver). As we were milling around outside, Vince discovered that he had cell phone reception after all! The excitement at this discovery quickly evaporated though as we all realized that no one knew the phone number of the Gordon Conference Office. Then I remembered that I had not taken my notebook out of my bookbag before coming, and upon examination, I found that I had the phone number. So Vince called, and the organizers promised to save our lobsters for us and to send help in some form. Feeling much better about life now, some of the people started a game of Frisbee, and the rest of us perched in an enormous chair that was there. The chair was so big that several of us could fit in it at once; when I get a photograph of us in it from Vince, I will post it. After a while, I joined in the Frisbee game, even though I had never really thrown one before. Paul showed me how to do it, and it was quite fun. Finally, the new bus arrived and rescued us!
When we arrived back, we hurriedly enjoyed our lobsters and then attended the last session of the conference. A surprise awaited me at the session: I had won second prize at the poster competition! My friend Brad won first prize! It was very cool! We both received bottles of wine, mine from California, his from Long Island.
Sadly, it was all over the next morning. Vince and I said our goodbyes to Brad and Vitaliy and headed out on our long drive back to Virginia. The city in the photograph is when we passed through Hartford, Connecticut. This time, we did the entire trip in one day.
So, I am back at work at Jefferson Lab, back to work as usual. I had a great time at the conference, but I am pretty tired now. However, I will be on vacation in about three weeks, which will be really fun. I am looking forward to it!
