despite the lack of photon bombing to detect highly volatile, explosive materials (and slabs of roast beef) carried by shady terrorists in support of jihad, america west flew us into chicago with no problems at all.	exiting chicago airport. hey! they have deep deep pizzas here! mmmmmmm . . .	we weren't part of the gold club, and thus we rode in the back of the bus. isn't there an amendment banning this sort of thing? i received a fine public high school education, as you can see.
mike feldmann knows all about quantum monte carlo. ask him to eat an entire gino's east deep dish pizza and monster nachos with extra cheese sometime.	don king's cousin. this surprisingly unshady character hooked us up with some wheels during the globus tutorials. he did not, however, provide us with any good recommendations on where to find the ever-so-elusive deep dish pizza!	someday, with years of hard work, i hope to be able to purchase one of these fine automobiles. can you imagine me rolling in a firetruck red pontiac firebird? i can! wheeeeee!
as part of a broad cost-cutting exercise, america west decided not to feed us during our flight. guess they had to find some way to pay their flight attendants without adversely affecting their stock price. hence, the search for food on this user-unfriendly kiosk.	a cookie cutter hunk of metal and rubber produced by the disgruntled, underpaid employees of the err... {ford,chevy,dodge,...} corporation.	rolling in our ride through the streets of chicago. here, we get a glimpse of the wild and crazy chicago nightlife near "the loop". (we had no idea where anything fun was. *sigh* where was rednofive!?!?)
arguably the most famous deep dish pizza in the entire world: gino's east.	$7.00 for valet parking to eat an $11.00 pizza. someone has to pay to power that glowing, las vegas style neon sign!	famous people such as bruce springstein, martha stewart, and yours truly eat here. :) unfortunately, the place had just closed when we arrived. we made sure to leave our drool all over their glass doors.
so instead, we dragged our lifeless bodies down a few blocks over to pizzeria ora. (un)useful (unverified) "fact": chicago has the highest density of deep dish pizza restaurants on the entire planet.	feldmann, preparing to devour this plate of nachos like a famished lion out in the savannah grasslands of eastern africa in pursuit of a herd of wounded antelope.	with 20 full pounds of grade a butter embedded in its crust, this deep dish pizza pushed the limits of my body's metabolic processes.
i cannot escape! $50 parking ticket during a no parking during 6pm-6am zone. unbelievable.	one of the myriad useless stops on various chicago freeways. here, traffic slows to a grinding halt as the city of chicago collects a whopping 40 cents per car.	at the hotel, an array of rental cars evoking imagery of incredibly cheesy late night commercials and sleazy car salesmen.
it's not the ritz carlton, but hey what did you expect from a national laboratory?	resistance is futile.	platform computing hosted an event at joe's bebop cafe in downtown chicago near the pier. i think the strippers probably offended some of the women attending the event.
expensive drinks. thanks, caltech! jk. :)	more inside.	various alchoholic beverages.
some building in downtown chicago.	a snippet of the chicago skyline taken by my crummy digital camera.	more of that.
two cans of pure barbeque death to drench your next 50 meals in.	some people might get the wrong idea when seeing this.	a sign leading to overpriced parking ($10 for our two hour stay). chicago is almost as bad as san francisco when it comes to parking.
and so we returned.	people are allowed to write on the walls here. our server, however, seemed intent on not letting us leave our mark (no pens or crayons for us!). feldmann was disappointed he couldn't paint their walls with various stochastic differential equations written in hot pink.	weston and kenya have some serious time on their hands.
so goes this guy.	and here we have it: the gino's east deep dish chicago pizza with pepporoni, cheese, italian sausage, and garlic swimming in a pool of chunky tomato sauce on their signature crust. better than pizzeria ora? not really.	two pounds of mozarella cheese was not enough. oh, and so is the world.
the aftermath.	36 degrees? no problem.	yet another useless toll booth. this time, 15 cents! absolutely ridiculous!
we were thinking of plowing right through the gates.	but that would present less photo opportunities.	after growing up in 80 degree weather all my life, it finally came to this.
the view from my hotel room.	it's unbelievable how much snow can accumulate on the ground over such a short period of time.	something you don't see in berkeley or pasadena.
the view around one of the buildings at argonne.	dirty snow.	i expected to see some tauntauns cruising around.
footprints in the ice.	after a long day, what could possibly be more relaxing than catching an episode of nerd tv!	there is no escape.
eep.	have mercy!	pure torture.
does he feel like a star? i hope not.	so by actually conserving water (and associated electricity and other resources), you get the stocky old witch with the protruding nose and belly visiting your hotel room. no thanks!	snowballs are always fun to throw at people during talks. "and here we see ... **mrphfh**!!! *who threw that!?!?"
i'd like to import and release some polar bears on the argonne campus one day. that would be fun!	on my final day, i declined the bus specifically so i could take these pictures on my walk back! 25 degree temperatures combined with the wind in my face was not fun.	another view of my journey back.
over a dollar a minute for a long distance call! $11.85 for a six minute phone call to pasadena. insane.	me taking a picture with a softball team from japan. too bad i was in such a rush that i didn't have time to get the name of their team or a link to their web page. if you know who they are, please email me!
	index

image capture by kodak dc240, transfer and thumbnails by gphoto.
last modified: sat feb 2 13:05:36 pst 2002
bnc, pgp public key