Truth to be told, I'm not a gigantic fan of traveling. It can be entertaining and enriching sometimes, but too much travel all at once leaves me pining for home....
At the beginning of April, I went on a 3-day trip to the University of Missouri at Rolla, where I gave a Shapley lecture. Then, for 10 days, I made a trip to CTIO in Chile for a 7-day observing run. (It takes 10 days because of the travel time involved.) Currently, I'm in Greenville, NC, where I'm giving another Shapley lecture (including talks to three high schools, a departmental colloquium, and a public talk). I get back, and then in the middle of next week I leave for Tucson, AZ, for the meeting of the NOAO Time Allocation Committee.
Whew!
Don't get me wrong, the Shapley lectures can be very rewarding, and I had a good run in Chile (5/7 clear nights, lots of should-be-good data). I've always gotten a particular charge out of giving public lectures, which is why I jumped at the opportunity of becoming a Shapley lecturer when it was offered to me. However, I feel like I've barely been home in April, and after a while it starts to wear one out. Indeed, even before all of it started, I was busy making sure all my ducks were in a row getting ready for all of the travel.
Hopefully, come May, I'll be keeping up a somewhat more regular blogging schedule!
While you're in Tuscon I highly recommend spending a few hours at the PIMA Air and Space museum or the Titan Missile Museum. http://pimaair.org
Shapeley lecture?
'Too much travel' is exactly what I thought when I read about the recently discovered extra-solar planet with earth-like lower bound on mass. (I think first of its sort found around a main sequence star).
I've been to the Titan Missile Museum before -- years ago, even before "Star Trek: First Contact" came out. This was when the AAS meeting was in Tucson -- summer 1995 or thereabouts.
Mollishka: nothing I do is shapely :) The Shapley lectures are described here:
http://www.aas.org/shapley/
-Rob
That sounds like a fantastic idea.
As much as I like to travel, you have my sympathies on this point. I just got home from a conference (in Puerto Rico, which was fun, but very wet), and I'm on a plane on Saturday for another trip. It gets to be a bit much after a while.