Denmark - Day 2

Woke up around 9am thinking I had to hurry to catch up to the rest of group. After my quick shower I came to find that they were still struggling to get up. After some quick pieces of toast I went down to an ATM to help the lost luggage victim try to get some money out of an ATM. To no avail I gave him a loan until his family could wire money from the U.S. We came back to the guest house, grabbed a taxi and went to a bike rental place. I saw this interesting elevator on the way.


Here is a photo of us renting the bikes.

My boss is the tall one in the blue shirt, and our host Kurt has his hands in his pockets.
Another photo of the very large dog keeping an eye out for thieves (and small tasty Americans -- see the lower left).

Actually, this dog was extremely unfriendly.
We rented the bikes for 450Kr for about 1 month, that translates to about $82 U.S. Hopefully we find they're a convenient way to get about the city. So far they have proven useful and fun. We toured the campus and the labs for a short bit and then made our way to a mall to see if we could straighten out Western Union for our baggage-less companion and get calling cards for everyone else. Worked out okay.
We came back, sat around for only a few minutes, then took a cab to dinner. Great meal at what seemed like a very expensive place. I delivered a toast to our host and my boss for making the trip possible, and we all enjoyed the conversation (and house wine). :) Yes, Mom, I delivered a toast. Everyone said it was nice which left me satisfied. After dinner we walked to a bar and then had a few drinks with some grad students from our hosts' lab. We stayed about an hour, grabbed a cab back home, and here we are. Here I am anyway, blogging. I am off to bed. Good night!

Denmark!

We left on Sunday, July 30 at around 3pm (after delays). We arrived on Monday, July 31 at around 1:30pm (again after delays). Four flights, a few of them long, several weather delays, and some lost baggage (not mine), and a couple airline meals later I am sitting in my apartment in Aarhus blogging about my trip. I did my best to stitch up a panorama of my room.

We got here, got settled in for a little bit. I took a shower, some of the others tried to track down their lost baggage, then I hit the store across the street for some jelly and bread for PBJs. We went for a walk a short while later and stumbled upon some very old boats in the harbor. A local told us it was a club for old wooden sailing ships. He offered to take us out sailing on a day when there would be better weather, so I think we're planning on trying to take him up on it. I took a picture of a jellyfish floating in the water. I saw 4-5 jellyfish in a 30yd radius.

We wandered around town for about 30 minutes looking for a place that might be tourist friendly and stumbled on a bar called Peder Wasser. Thinking it might serve some kind of fried bar food we walked in to a Danish cheers episode. You know the kind, where everyone knows your name (cuz it's either Jorgen or Jan). They looked at us like we were from another planet (which, of course, we were) and so we strolled out the way we came in. It wasn't really that bad, but they did drink and smoke heavily, with no sign of a kitchen so we did the next best thing. We went to Ziggy's Cafe. I got a chicken sandwich. It came with a side of peeled, fried, potates. Good tasting. After dinner we made our way back to the guest housing. I wandered for a few minutes trying to find a payphone but finally gave up. Came back, tried to read a book for a few minutes but instead passed out with all my clothes on and lights on.

posting update

Sorry I haven't posted lately, I am working on trying to get my project rolling before we take off to Denmark. It would be nice to have something new to work on over there rather than troubleshoot existing problems. I'll keep you updated soon.

Pennsylvania Wedding

We're going to drive nine hours to a wedding in Pennsylvania. I managed to arrange a stop in either Hershey, PA, or Niagra Falls, NY. Cooperstown (the Baseball Hall of Fame) was too far away. Pictures from that trip coming soon. The wedding is on July 14th, Bastille Day.

Visit to Bennet Place

We stopped by Bennet place, a little farm in Durham, North Carolina. It was the site of the largest troop surrender in the civil war. Sherman and Johnston met there 3 times to hammer out the details of the Carolina's surrender to the Union. It spared North Carolina from the fate that Sherman delivered to Georgia and South Carolina. No pictures, we forgot the camera. Here's one from the web.

Day Hike around Yosemite

Nathan took several pictures on a day hike we took around Yosemite valley. We left from G&G's house and drove the 45 minutes necessary to get to the valley. The first photo is a picture (taken from the back of Nate and Cindy's Subaru) of one of the falls, I can't remember the name, there are so many.

The second photo is a picture of Bob Carter's slab poured the day before the photo was taken. He's building a house in the same neighborhood of G&G's house.

This next photo is a picture of Half Dome, taken from Nathan's camera.

Another half dome picture, you can't have too many of these. They make an average blog slightly above average. :)

This next photo is of all the hikers that day, Nate, Cindy, and Dr. Carter. :)

In this photo we can see Nathan has mastered the aim the camera, start the timer, make the run to the rest of the group, and wait for the flash to go off. We didn't set the camera on a level resting point,but everything else worked perfectly.

I can't even remember this falls name, but it requires a lot of stairs to get to the top.

Lastly, a photo of the smartest Carter on paper and his brother Nathan.

Weekend at Granny and Gramps'

After the ceremony we caravanned (is that a word? I am supposed to know this because I am a doctor) down to Granny and Gramps' house. I took some photos of the trip. Here are two grumpy people taken about 2 seconds after they woke up from their TV nap. It was supposed to be a photo of them napping, but they woke up in the process of documenting their nap.

Here is a group photo, Mom, Sis, Marcia (she goes by many names), is sitting behind Gramps in this photo and Bob is off with Brad doing something with his house I think.

Graduation in Davis!

You can call me Dr. Carter. My brother, Nathan, likes to call me the smartest person in the family, on paper. That's a title I can live with, at least it is a title I can use in public. I think it is an upgrade from what the two brothers used to call me, poosky facesky. I have lots of pictures from this trip.
The first is with Tuffer and Sarah, some longtime friends of mine from Davis. We got to know each other through soccer.

This next photo is me and Nathan. Two handsome guys, nuff said.

This next photo is lucky me posing with three lovely ladies, Dr. Werner, Dr. Porter, and Dr. Robins from left to right.

And of course, I have to have photographic proof of my graduation. Here it is for all you non-believers. :)

Best Dissertation Award

I won an award! My old department awarded me with best dissertation and they offered to fly me back to Davis to give a seminar. I took a couple of red-eye flights to get back there and back, but I gave a successful talk by most accounts. I'd really like to become the kind of speaker people flock to go see. You either have to be really good, or really famous to be one of these, but that's my goal. The crowd in the audience had about 50 people maybe, probably the largest crowd I've ever spoken in front of but most of them were there to either accept their own award or because they were my friends. While I was there I took a picture of Scorpio with her baby, a good looking duo if I do say so myself.

Flowers from Grandma's 90th Birthday

Those flowers turned out to be clovers. They peaked at the photos I showed you earlier. Bummer. I guess I'll have togo out and buy some of my own flowers to plant in there because a bunch of three leaf clovers don't do me much good. :)