A Letter from Dan

Welcome Home DAN! Dan was gone for two weeks, so boy did Orion and I miss him. Here's a letter he wrote home during his travels:

After catching up on email, I spent yesterday walking around
Vancouver. It's a beautiful city, surrounded by mountains and the
ocean. The cloud cover changes constantly, and it rains frequently.
It's not too cold (light jacket weather), a nice change from
Homestake, where I was last week [and at home there was snow! see previous post]. There is a large variety of languages being spoken all around, and every kind of restaurant you
can think of.

The famous anthropology museum was closed for renovation, so instead I
visited the aquarium, located in a large park just north of the
harbor. The aquarium is one of the best I have seen, rivaling Chicago
and Monterrey. Some highlights: a big exhibit on frogs, lots of
jellyfish, humungous fish from the Amazon, a big but surprisingly
lively tortoise, an enormous sea turtle who shared his (her?) tank
with sharks, four white-sided dolphins who did lots of tricks, and 3
beluga whales. As usual, the belugas were my favorite, especially
since one of them was a 6-month-old baby beluga who followed its mama
all around the tank. It was grey instead of white and already knew how
to beg for fish. Adorable. [Of course, he must have been missing us as well. I would have liked the frogs and jellyfish and sea horses, myself.]

Then I walked a couple of miles back to the hotel, did some online
research on local restaurants, and walked down to the Gastown
neighborhood (the oldest part of town). I saw the statue of Gassy
Jack, a portly fellow standing on a whiskey keg, known as the founder
of Vancouver. The story is that he showed up at a mill where
Vancouver is today, with a minimum of belongings and a large keg of
whiskey. He offered the mill workers as much whiskey as they could
drink, if they would help build him a tavern. The town then grew
around the tavern, later spurred in growth when the Canadian Pacific
railroad was completed. I also saw a steam-powered water clock, which
played a tune when the clock struck 7, spewing lots of steam in the
process. I ended up eating at a nouveau-cuisine Latin American place,
called Cobre. I had cornbread, fish tacos, and a set of three tamales
(pork, clam, and cheese), all gussied up with various sophisticated
ingredients.

Today I spent the morning in phone meetings, and the conference has
begun, with first a few talks on the cosmic microwave background. I
don't know many people in this crowd, since it is a real astrophysics
meeting. Two of my Yale colleagues are here, so perhaps they can
introduce me around; one of my main goals is to meet people and
network. My talk on dark matter detection isn't until Friday, but I
better get writing it!

[the talk was widely acclaimed I'm sure! Dan can write talks faster than anyone in my field for sure.]