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This PI is done

A couple of important field details.  I was on "Team Randle".  We got off to a slow start due to yet another flat, a slow leak turned fast while heading north on I5.  Then, some slow-drying cement (all that was available near the field base) meant we built lots of piers the first day but no running stations; we decided it was worth sending someone on a 1 1/2 hr drive to the nearest home depot for quicrete the next day.  And, some incomplete permitting had to be dealt with.

  Another blow was that 6/25 was the last day of the "full" Randle team.  Zach and I headed home early the next morning, and Dylan had to get back the next afternoon.  All this decimated Randle's action plan to at best 2 active teams.  Reinforcements arrived today from the S, or maybe tomorrow.

  Given all that, we got a ton done -- I have lost track but the 3-ish teams running out of Randle always built at least 3 and sometimes 5-6 vaults, and got a couple stations installed.  Virtually all of the equipment is working (so far, one bad horizontal channel out of the 30-ish stations), and once we had gotten to a sites things were built pretty fast. There are an impressive bunch of grad students and interns here, working tremendously hard, leaving the hotel at 7:30am and often not getting back until 9-10pm. Some challenges remain but overall this is going very smoothly!

Cheers, Geoff