From the air

The United States from New York to the Southern States look quite barren from the air; uniformly dun-coloured with everything set out on grid lines, nothing at all like the pretty quilt of lush green English fields. And then halfway between Houston and Albequerque, the fields started to form a wonderful pattern of interlocking circles in different shades of reddish brown and dry green. It was a very impressive sight. I found out later that this effect comes from irrigation.

The sky was bright blue with little fluffy sheep-like clouds as we neared our destination, until the plane started to descend, and I realised how huge and bounce-inducing each of those little clouds is...

Escalatorrr!

With some time to kill in Albequerque airport, a few of us astronomers had a meal in a Mexican restaurant, and afterwards made our way back to where the Summer School guys were kindly watching our luggage. It was empty in the airport at that time of night, and I looked longingly at the rank of escalators and said something about always wanting to go the wrong way up one. Andre said that I should, and when I looked dubious, he said that we'd each take one. It was great fun, though I slipped over right at the top and sort of fell off it... but I think that's still quite good going since I had been awake for around 24 hours at that point and was feeling quite wobbly on my pins.