Train strike musings if you need a laugh

The good news is the bus I took from Thonon to Bellegarde was ten minutes early. I arrived at my platform to catch my train well ahead of schedule.  The bad news is I decided to stand on the wrong end of the platform. My train to Lyon was five minutes late which seemed a minor inconvenience and nothing more. I met a nice lady that explained the delay as she understood the French announcement over the intercom. When the train finally arrived it was really long; I'm guessing 15 cars. My ticket was for first class and as the train drove past me, my new-found friend and I realized there was only one 1st class car at the very front of the train. So off we ran some 300 m to catch up. 1st class = better be able to run fast. So we ran and ran and we ran some more, and we got on board. I was able to get my heavy luggage stowed in the overhead bin just as the train started to move towards Lyon.  I'm getting too old to sprint 300 m pulling behind heavy luggage. Ok. I'm still on schedule.

So I arrive at Lyon Part Dieu on time. I had what I thought would be a 1.5 hour wait, but the "Strike Gods" have struck again and my train to Paris is running 30 minutes behind. So here I sit now resting against a concrete pillar. It is not exactly comfortable on the floor, but I cannot change the circumstances I find myself in. I gave a beggar two euros. He came back a second time and I told him, "no".  If all goes as "planned" I will only need to sit here 45 more minutes. I brought with me some 5 carrots so I ate three. So I started to have a sore seat so I decided to stand in front of the departure monitors to kill time. The beggar tried a third time and I pretended I did not hear him. Eventually it was revealed that my train would depart from platform letter I so I went in the direction of platform I (sweet irony that I could use "I" so many times in one sentence). I became confused because there were two trains leaving from the same gate at the exact same time. How can this be? There was a picture of a train on a monitor so I thought that I was to be in cars 11 to 18 to get to Charles de Gaulle airport. I asked a guy if I was right, but he did not speak any English, but he asked his friend. The second guy said train 18 was right so I got on. Ok, to back up, this morning I had an assigned seat on a train heading to Paris from Lyon. Then, because of the strike, my first train out of Thonon was cancelled and I was assigned new trains that were traveling to Paris sooner. That sounded good at the time, but I never was assigned seat numbers. I asked a lady who works for SNCF at Lyon about the lack of a seat assignment, and she said that was because the train was probably full. She suggested I get on the train, look for a seat, and stand for two hours if I could not find one. I thought to myself, "Great advice, but not very helpful." So when I boarded up in Lyon, I just went down the isle of train 18 hoping I would find an empty seat. No such luck. I eventually found a place to sit in 2nd class on car 18. I'm more a less the only one in this part of the car. The train conductor came and asked for my ticket, and he was a bit mad at me because I'm not on the train that my ticket reads. I'm on the one an hour ahead of my original ticket because of the change. I tried to explain my situation in English twice, and both times he pointed to my ticket showing a 2000. hour departure from Lyon. It is true. In the end he tore up my ticket (I thought - oh great) and he walked away no doubt thinking I'm a stupid American. This is also true, but at least, I think, I'm headed for Paris. So if I was to arrive at 2102. hours and the train left 40 minutes or so late, I hope to arrive at the Paris airport by 2142. hours. The conductor guy was cold to me so I didn't have the courage to ask when we would arrive. The sun is to my left so I'm heading north (assuming that during train strikes the sun still sets in the west) so I consider this fact somewhat reassuring. The train, I must say, is traveling at a very fast pace. I think the beggar stayed in Lyon.

A girl walked towards 2nd class and through the grey glass she looked exactly like my daughter. Same height, similar weight, identical haircut. It was not my daughter. She's in Belgium right now. I'm losing it. At 2045. hours a guy with me in second class, who had stowed his suitcase above him in an overhead bin, had said suitcase fall on his head. He and his laptop are o.k. Not good.  I decided to eat a carrot. Make it two carrots. I'm out of carrots.

The trained started to slow at 2115. I think there may be one stop before the airport. I'm expecting it to happen. We sped up again. I do not want to end up in Brussels. The sun has set so I've lost my sense of direction. We slow again. We are stopping, but only one guy in car 18 is leaving. We are at Marne La vallee-Chessy. This must be the stop I remembered. A new guy got on and I asked if the next stop was Charles de Gaulle? He said, "Of course. In 10 minutes." I said, "Thank you." He said, "You're welcome." We move again.

Once arriving at the Paris airport, things went rather smoothly. I followed signs to airport shuttles. I found a board which told me to take the "black" bus. Just as I got to the buses the black bus was about to depart. 15 minutes later I was at my hotel. 10 minutes later and I got into my room. Hoorah!

Last day at Thonon lab

My last day in Thonon was very busy. I ate breakfast and then I had to finish cleaning my apartment. I walked to the lab and spent some time on a PowerPoint talk that I gave at the lab about preliminary findings of our research. Before my talk, I visited the office of Eric and Valentine. They have an amazing collection of unique artifacts in their office. For example, they attached baskets to legs of a doll  so they could pass back and forth a tennis ball. The legs of the ball are the handles. They call it "doll ball". They had several strange items and each one had a funny story. Crazy PhD candidates. They envision a website where people with strange offices could share pictures and stories. It is a good idea.

 My talk was at 11 am. It was so wonderful for the students to have attended my talk in such big numbers. Almost everyone was there. Several people said I did a good job. After the talk we gathered for a group photo. Can you find Dan? I look like Waldo. Thanks for taking the photo Agnes. Also missing is Severine. So later a photo of just the two of us was taken. Severine was missing from the group photo because she had to go to the rail station to change my tickets for the trip to Paris because the train workers have been striking.

 It is strange because some trains continue to run, but the one I was scheduled to use was cancelled. So now I'm writing as I ride a bus to Bellegarde. The rest of my trains are supposed to run. I hope so. I want to get to my Paris hotel without incident. Friday I fly back to the USA.

 The students play a very cool ping-pong game that was new to me. It is a game of round robin elimination. It starts with 8-10 or 4-5 per table side. The ball is served and people move around the table returning the volley when it is their turn. There is actually a fair amount of strategy, but explaining all the complicated nuances could take days. Suffice is the to say, if you screw up your turn, you must exit. The others play on until only two are left. The round championship is decided by a quick game to three points. Then the 6-8 players join in for a second game. It is truly a ton of fun. Normally I am quickly eliminated, but in the video I lasted longer than I normally do. I think the students were trying to give me my first win, but I messed it up. I had so much fun with the students. It's a great group of young adults. So I hope my travel to Paris is uneventful. That is the best kind of travel.

Flottins

When I first visited Evian in 2012, I found it to be an amazing place because 1) it is so beautiful, & 2) so much of the economy is based on the selling of water. This time I got another surprise when I saw the Flottins. They are mystical creatures created from driftwood. Each winter thousands of visitors flock to see the new creatures that artists create. I understand it is a real family event with stories about the Flottins told to children. I found them interesting and a bit amazing. Some are huge spanning meters high by meters tall by meters deep. I decided I really like to Flottins. Evian never ceases to amaze me.

An elf?

A strange creature?

A rhino?

A big bad wolf!

Great trip to Brest France

On Tuesday we traveled from Thonon to Lyon to Brest to meet with Ann - an expert in using multiple frequency acoustics for fish and zooplankton assessment. I prepared a talk of our preliminary results and she did a great job of answering my questions and offering ideas for analyses to better interpret our data. She provided me a list of papers that I should read to become more proficient at multiple frequency acoustic applications. Still, I think she was impressed by our nice data and preliminary results. Thanks for your help Ann! Thanks Jean for coordinating the meeting and our adventure to Brest.

She took Jean and I to a crepe restaurant for dinner. Her husband & son joined us. You are served a buckwheat pancake made with water and salt. They are very large in diameter (say 35 cm) and thin (2 mm high). They pour over the top sauces with meat. I had two pancakes. One with scallops and leaks; the other with mussels and shrimp. The pancake is folded over the sauce and meat so you're presented with more or less a square. This is a dish that is served in Brittany (in French Bretagne). It is fantastic!! I never would have thought to combine pancakes with seafood in this way. You can select a variety of types with a variety of meats and sauces (not just seafood). If you get to Brest, you should check out L'Auberge de la Crepe. Awesome. We drank ice cold apple cider (hard cider) with our meal. If you have a crepe in Brest you must be careful because I believe them to be highly addictive. Eat too many and you will need to relocate to Brest. For dessert I had a sugar pancake with apple and ice cream. Perfect! The new flavors I encounter in France always make me smile. Happy Dan!

On Wednesday we went back to Thonon. It is now time for me to pack for home and clean the apartment where I lived the last five weeks.

Small acoustic targets in Lake Geneva

I mentioned in an earlier post the acoustic detection of some very small targets. We saw them in early April and found it curious, but their numbers were low and we did not think too much about it other than to consider how we might mask them to prevent our measurements of zooplankton back scatter from becoming biased high. Over the course of April their numbers increased dramatically, almost exponentially so. We decided that we needed to make an effort to try and capture these creatures so we could explain the backscatter when we publish our data. Scientists must thing well in advance to defend their work. So we rigged a larval fish trawl (1.5 m x 1.0 m mouth with 1000 micron mesh) so it could fish the pelagic zone (open water) at depths of 5 to 15 m below the surface where the bulk of the small scatterers reside (see video of the trawl being retrieved. Be patient.). So we did that and caught zooplankton and some plant debris, but we also caught chironomid pupae and what we believe to be newly hatched flies (see photos). They are also known as midges or non-biting mosquitoes.  They are about a one centimeter long.  I thought we might be detecting larval fish, but I was proven wrong with this important sampling. Thanks JC and Jean for making it happen, and Phillippe for helping us trawl and his expertise in the pressure probe we used to understand the depths fished.

When we got off the water, I did a quick internet search and found a paper written by my friend Jean Kubecka in 2000 describing the acoustic target strengths of chironomids he had sampled in some European reservoirs. He reported they had target strengths of -75 to -64 decibels, just a twitch bigger than the targets we were seeing (-80 to -68). Apparently we can detect them because they carry air in their exoskeletons or because the exoskeleton has a different density than the water. Whatever the reason, I'm convinced that is what we've been detecting in Lake Geneva. Jan's description of their position in the water column is exactly what we observed. He described them as sedentary in the water and that is what we saw. Apparently they are in Loch Ness and Jan concluded his paper by saying that the Lake's monster as seen on acoustic echograms may in fact be midges.

Thanks Ann for helping me take the microscope photos of the chironomids.

Taking the platform and transducers off the research boat.

Our experiments on Lake Geneva are over so it was time to take out the platform and transducers. We went to a local marina where we could use a crane. Jean-Christophe had a plan and he executed it like a master. Here is the crane.

Here the platform has been removed and is hanging in the water.

Here the platform and transducers and safe on the dock.

The system was struck (taken apart), thoroughly cleaned (Thanks JC) and boxed for return shipment. I'm now headed to Brest, France, for a meeting.

Evian and Annecy continued.

The shops in Annecy are amazing. Here are photos of the store fronts of a bakery and a meat market. The food is presented to make it appealing. It all must take time, but the people of France take great pride in their work. It is an amazing country for so many positive reasons.

The rain let up in the afternoon and our spirits improved. We shared a lot of laughs. Thank you Jean for giving me your Saturday. You've been an amazing host.