Our time in Vancouver is wrapping up and coming to an end. Now, as I write this, Chris and I have just a little more than a day left in BC. In the past ten days our schedule has really been topsy-turvy. We started the early morning shift with Carlos, and so we had to wake up at 5 o’clock AM every morning and bike in to TRIUMF. It is actually rather pleasant, riding in the morning light, since the area is very quiet and there are few cars. Unfortunately, sometimes we would come in and the beam would be down for repairs. During times like those Chris and I would sit in the counting room, reading papers and discussing µSR with Carlos, among other things. We received access to the lecture slides of Prof. Uemura’s solid state physics class, so we were progressively making our way through them.
However, when the beam was up and running Chris and I were proactively doing things in the counting room. We ran the software, changing fields and regulating temperatures, which was very convenient for Carlos, who previously had to do everything by himself for six hours on end. I think Chris and I were better at reducing standard deviation than most of the grad students, but then again it would be old hat for them. Everything in µSR is based off of statistics and probability anyway. There is no way to guarantee that on muon will imbed itself in the sample, precess, and then decay in the manner it is supposed too. Muons, however, in the millions, will on average behave a certain way, which is why these experiments take so long to run: you need to let millions of muons go through one at a time. Only a few adjustments need to be made during this entire process, mostly to prepare for a different sample anyway. Jeremy showed how to do most of these, and explained the mechanics of what was going on. We changed samples and turned on or off the transverse or longitudinal fields when it was necessary.
Later on, however, we switched to the night shift, running from midnight to six in the morning. Suddenly we were waking up at around 2 PM instead of 5 AM; the switch was a little jarring. One thing is for sure: it feels a lot better to ride in to TRIUMF in the day and leave at night than the other way around. But we weren’t working/sleeping all of the time. In the past 10 days we really got an opportunity to look around Vancouver. Chris and I did some things on our own, such as visiting the UBC Museum of Anthropology. They have a fantastic collection of native masks and artwork. We also went up and down the beaches, exploring the local tails. One evening we bumped into a UBC student in the lobby of Gage Towers by the name of Johannes. Johannes is a raising senior at UBC and a prominent member of the student government. He also seems to know everyone and anyone worth knowing on campus. After a long conversation we got to know him and he took us on a great tour of campus. He showed us some of the stranger and more unexpected areas of the UBC campus: interesting architecture, art, and hidden rooms. One of the coolest things he showed us was in the UBC botanical garden. In the center of the garden is a door that leads to a rope ladder that rises into the sky. If you follow that sequence of rope ladders you eventually end up to a tree top observatory, which has a wonderful view.



Together we went to Richmond and explored the Chinese community there. Johannes showed us this unassuming Chinese place that looked like a Denny’s, but was packed with Chinese locals. There you could have a massive and very, let’s say, “cost effective” meal as well as interesting drinks such as hot Coca-Cola with ginger and lemon. Johannes joined us for one of Chris’s favorite New York pastimes: parkour. For the uninitiated, parkour is the practice of moving from point a to point b as quickly, efficiently, and elegantly as possible.



I am pretty rubbish at it, but Chris has a decent grasp of the basics: breaking falls, rolls, wall jumps, and so on. You do it a bit roughed up though; a few scrapes and bruises come with the territory. All in all the UBC campus is a veritable playground for parkour enthusiasts. The architecture is varied and allows for lots of interesting movement. Johannes and I were not as intense as Chris, but we did climb on some buildings, a tradition among UBC students.



While the beam was down we had a bit of spare time. We explored the down town area, the Vancouver library and the trendy Granville avenue. When Johannes heard we had some time he invited us to join him and his friend Mark to “do the Grind”. The Grind is a hiking trail up one of the mountains surrounding Vancouver. It is famous for being entirely and unrelentingly steep and uphill. Some locals do the Grind as a sort of athletic challenge, keeping a track of their times and trying to out do themselves. We learned first hand that the Grind is no Sunday afternoon hike, and without the shorts that Mark lent us we probably both would have had heatstroke. However, with shorts we completed the Grind in under an hour, fast enough to qualify for the competitive hiking club at UBC. I finished in 53 minutes, Chris finished in 56 minutes with Johannes, but we were nowhere close to Mark who finished in 42 minutes. And even still, the fastest time of this season for men was around 24 minutes, which is practically sprinting up the mountain. At the top there are a few touristy places, a ski lift, and a giant windmill that would have made Don Quixote think twice. When we went back town we met up with another of Johannes’s friends and went to a cool vegetarian restaurant, a healthy way to wrap up a healthy day. There’s just no rest for diligent undergrads, is there?

We spent the last day and a half packing and preparing for our flights. It was a little bit hectic getting everything ready, but once we dropped off our bags with Dr. Ning we had a bit more room to breathe. So, in that time we had a farewell dinner with Johannes, our guide to Vancouver and newfound friend. Goodbyes were said and then we turned in our room keys and biked off to TRIUMF one last time in the dark.