Gravity isn't Real
It's June in Geneva, and I can't stop sneezing somebody help me please.
I don't actually need help, but the pollen is killing me.
Roland Garros
I was incredibly lucky to be able to go to the French open this weekend in Paris.
It would have been an amazing experience regardless, but to make it better, I got to see Roger Federer play.
Here is a great essay called Roger Federer as Religious Experience (← click).
If you like tennis at all, you should read it. If you aren't a tennis player, or if you can't read, then at least look at this quote by David Foster Wallace:
Genius is not replicable. Inspiration, though, is contagious, and multiform — and even just to see, close up, power and aggression made vulnerable to beauty is to feel inspired and (in a fleeting, mortal way) reconciled.
Juicy, and accurate.
Oh, and Rafael Nadal was playing too.
This was a bucket list day for me.
Nadal has won the French Open 11 times, and shows no signs of slowing. In the second to last game, Nadal got a time violation warning because he was waiting for the crowd to be quiet. He immediately followed it with an ace, because that's what champions do.
I'll be sad to see these two retire, but if you love tennis, like I do, you don't only love it because of one or two players.
Towards the end of the evening they open up the stadiums to fill vacant seats.
Will and I made a beeline for the front row of the Nishikori/Paire match. It was incredible to be this close, and Paire is French, so the crowd was unreal.
We could almost reach out and high-five them.
This is something that I definitely will not forget.
Paris for the second time
Paris is huge. Way too much to take in for just one weekend, or even two, or three.
This time, 7 of us rented a van and drove overnight to arrive in Paris in the morning.
I think we all reached a new combined level of tired that morning.
On Saturday we looked at art in various locations, because that's what you do.
Despite the exhaustion, it was awesome.
Driving through the night to and from Paris was an adventure to say the least, and one that I am happy to have had once.
In case you were wondering how fast I am:
It's 26.
Here is some spillover content from Cannes and Nice that didn't make it in last week's post. If you haven't read last weeks post, click here.
They gave out blankets at the beach screening -- very cozy.
We hiked up a hill in Nice, and it turned out to be the ruins of the castle of Nice that was demolished in the 1800s.
The picture of me taking a picture is me taking the picture of Apollo.
Say that three times fast.
The tram driver wasn't very happy with me.
In miscellaneous news, I'm growing an avocado and Graeme had his last ever day of elementary school on Friday.
And Lauren graduated from high school on Monday.
My goodness, look at her!
Lauren is going to Furman University next year, where she will continue to do great things.
Every Friday night, bike gang assembles. The entirety of Geneva's youth gets on bikes and takes over the streets. It's impressive that they organize and execute it so well. I wish I was cool enough to be in bike gang.
Click this if you think science is boring.
Here's a cool video on the discussion around the Future Circular Collider, which is intended to surpass, in the future, the Large Hadron Collider. You can see the part that I'm working on, the 200 MHz cavities, a couple of times in the beginning/middle of the video.
"Hatred?" Astonishment; dumbfoundment. "Hatred of what? Of the stars and the wind? Of the sky and the sun? Of liberty?"
