My Life as told by Rock Climbing Shoes (Part II)

The next three pairs of rock climbing shoes I owned take me through a particularly crazy phase in my life. These shoes not only took me to interesting and fun places to climb, but also carried my feet through a particularly tough relationship, new people and new times, and ultimately to the women I am going to marry. So while this entry is about shoes, it is also about use, which is of course correlated to what is going on in my life at this time.

The first pair I am talking about is a yellow pair of Mad Rock Phoenix. Now don't get me wrong, these shoes were ugly. Yellow is a funny color to put on your feet and looked particularly weird on me...but these were really durable and tough shoes. I bought them through the gym I was climbing at A&M and they were very low in cost. They had no real toe to speak of and weren't that great for edging, but they did last and took me outside all around Texas and even overseas to visit and climb in Stockholm, Sweden...which was awesome.

I think the only reason I have anything negative to say about these Mad Rocks was because my climbing was improving. I was able to start to use small feet and wanted something more dynamic out of my shoes. Therefore I went back to trying Evolv's and tried this grey and black lace up pair. This was a time when I was climbing more outdoors than I'd ever had before in addition to getting a lot of practice in the gym.

I really liked these shoes and actually still keep them around despite having blown a hole in the toe. To their defense they managed to last almost 7 months of pretty intense climbing before giving out on some pink granite at Enchanted Rock in Texas. That rock is really hard, sharp, tiny crystals that you are balancing on as you inch up some steep climbs. It is a really great place to climb and these shoes served me very well with a nice toe and some relative stiffness that was refreshing.

It was about this time that I got the nod from my advisor to move up to Fermilab near Chicago and the women of my dreams got to come with me. Funny enough this was also my favorite pair of shoes ever came into my life. The La Sportiva Nago's have carried me through over a year of climbing and are still going. To the other shoes credit the first 4 months of my ownership they didn't see a lot of action. Between the move and the life at the lab I was climbing only about 4 times a month.

But after life got settled the climbing took off. They went with me on my first Midwest climb up to Devil's Lake in Wisconsin and managed very well on the slick graphite rock and were great for wedging into some very difficult cracks. Then a normal amount of climbing at our new indoor gym (Vertical Endeavors) went up to twice a week and the shoes were still holding out.

Finally, to La Sportiva's credit, I not only got a job as a rock wall instructor in Oak Park, Il which meant I was living in these shoes 4 hours a day / 3 days a week, in addition to normal climbing at VE...but then came the climbing trip of a lifetime.

Two friends of mine were teaching in Thailand and my fiancée and I had the opportunity to go visit them for 10 days or so...and of course go climb on the limestone bluffs overlooking the ocean. IT WAS AMAZING!!! We climbed and hiked 6-8 hours every day for 5 days in a row and my shoes held out and made the climbing so much fun.

I still keep these Nago's around as my casual shoes and they are only now starting to wear through. These are the first pair of shoes I've ever considered getting resoled and would recommend them to anyone.

The Amazing Tevatron!!!

So the other day I saw a status update come across my news feed on Facebook from my good friend The Tevatron that read:

Cap'n Tevatron: Store 7247 terminated intentionally after delivering 6900 nb^-1. Pacific Ocean earthquakes caused observable magnet motion.

This made my jaw drop!!! To understand what this means the average reader will need a little bit of background.

What is a Tevatron?

The Tevatron is the name given to the 4 mile long circular particle accelerator located at Fermi National Labs in Batavia, Il and is currently (as of 10/12/09)  the worlds highest energy particle collider. What the Tevatron does is create proton and anti-proton beams that circulate in opposite directions at speeds of ~99.99% the speed of light (2 TeV center of mass energy) and cause them to collilde at two different detectors located around the ring.

If it wasn't amazing enough to take things smaller than an atom and trap them into a space less then a millimeter across and then collide speed them up to near the speed of light (186,000 miles/hour) and then collide them to within a few centimeters of the center of TWO three story detectors...imagine doing all of this with magnets that are 8 times more powerful than the entire Earth's magnetic field requiring a power supply of a small town!!! No small task.

Magnets at the Tevatron

Now, how do we see an earthquake that happens on the other side of the world using these magnets. Well the piece of information you need to know to understand this is that these giant magnets we use at the Tevatron have to be cooled to really cold temperatures in order to allow them to reach the power we need to create the magnetic fields of the right strength. How cold is that...around -450 degrees Fahrenheit. When you are dealing with spaces smaller than a millimeter and temperatures that cold...any and all vibrations matter! So how do you detect and control these vibrations...how else, you put a level on whatever it is you built and measure and try to correct for these vibrations.


Ok, now it is a little more complicated than that...but not too much more detailed. So on each of these magnets to measure the vibrations and losses due to this is a level-of-sorts. This is what they use to detect the earthquakes. Basically, the control room notices that they are losing some protons or anti-protons because the magnets are moving changing the orbit of the particles. They check their levels, compare with any known earthquakes that may have happened on the earth...do a little physics and math...and compare to see if the observed motion matches where and when the earthquake occurs. Amazingly they do and this isn't the first time they've observed this...in 2006 (see plot below) they observed the same thing 

Obviously, they try to correct when the orbit starts to stray...but the time frame that the earthquake wave passes is very small and the correction software must adjust at some regular time interval. So even though it is rare to see these earthquakes...taking them into account and correcting for them is important.

Needless to say...THIS IS INCREDIBLE THAT WE CAN DO THIS!

The Future Mrs. Asaadi

Here she is! It is time to announce on my own blog that which everyone in my life already knows. Simply put, I am going to marry the most wonderful and beautiful girl I have ever known. Heather is the love of my life and is deserving of all sorts of praise that there is no way this one blog will ever contain.

First of all our wedding is going to occur on May 1st 2010 and you can find out the thoughts and plans that we have discussed all at Heather's blog. As I'm sure you will see by browsing this blog this will be a fun and interesting event. The time and thought that she is giving to making this day the most special event of our young lives speaks volumes to why I love this women so much.
Don't get me wrong, I love a good party and will go (and have gone) to great lengths throughout my time in the Neighborhood and at Fermilab to plan fun and complicated events. But this holds nothing to the love and care that Heather is giving our wedding and giving to me. SHE IS THINKING ABOUT EVERYTHING!

Unlike many "typical" women planning the wedding day the thoughts she lays out are broader then "What will make this my special day?" If that was all there was to this girl we wouldn't be getting married....no, she is planning a day for me, for her parents, for my parents, for our friends, for our lives. When she talks about the day it isn't just that day...it is about a tone for our life. Sustainable, sensible, beautiful, fun, frugal, visible, important, down-to-earth, and most of all memorable.

In many of the upcoming blog posts I hope to be able to share in little stories the events that have lead us to the sharing of our lives. Our meeting, what she does, how she helps my life, and basically all the things we share. But for now the official internet announcement of our lives...Mrs. Heather Asaadi is on her way to the rest of the world and bringing this lucky bum along for the ride!