Dinner and Stress!
Going out to eat near CERN is a strange experience -- well, strange for me. I'm used to going into the center of a large-ish town, picking one of several places that are open, walking in and eating. Unless you want to go into downtown Geneva (close, but very $$) that isn't what you do around here. Rather, you drive 15-20 minutes into one of the surrounding villages and find a small restaurant. Typically there are only one or two in each village -- so you have to commit long before you get there. And these are the Swiss (or French, depending which side of the border you are on) equivalent of the country-style checked-table cloth American mid-west place. They are fantastic, and have very much a community feel. For example, another couple was having some car trouble, so one of the women working there drove them home!
Great food, but the conversation wasn't so good. It was one of those discussions -- with lots of wine and the haze of jet-lag -- that seemed fine at the time. But then I woke up at 5am and I couldn't think of anything but. It is the usual question. The HEP world is slowly moving from one lab -- the Tevatron -- to another -- the LHC. And during this transition period we basically have to work on both. But we don't have extra resources (time, people, travel $$, etc.) to do this. On the other hand, if we don't get going on the LHC experiments, then we will be left at the door when first data arrives. And on the other hand if we walk out on the Tevatron we'll miss a mountain of data! Sigh. :-)
What is going to happen to all the left over equipment at CDF and DZero when you are finished a few years from now?
Posted by: Bob Pease | April 28, 2005 at 03:47 PM
Excellent question. The short answer is scrap metal! But it depends. I'll make a blog entry about it in a few days.
Posted by: Gordon Watts | May 01, 2005 at 05:11 AM