1000 miles

Today I reached a rather satisfying milestone... 1k on the trusty Jamis Satellite.  I've been rather neglectful of my faithful steed, and with the combination of the great damage inflicted on it by careless shipping companies with the look of disapproval by the repair guys when they saw the state of the (uninjured) chain I have recently pledged to treat it with more respect and coddling.  The chain is, and will forevermore appear, silver.

The magical 1k appeared only a few miles out from home on the Capital Crescent trail, as I dodged powerwalking grannies and little kids weaving about on their Christmas presents for the first time.  The *perfect* weather we've been having seems to funnel everyone into the public park-y places, but slowing down for joggers also meant slowing down to enjoy the day.  I ended up on a 30+ mile jaunt to Alexandria, where a nice fellow cyclist named Johnny (big burly guy in baby blue lycra) watched my bike while I purchased some much needed Starbucks refreshments.  I almost called us "bikers."  Can I call us that?  So badass in our matching spandex outfits with diaper padding in the shorts and shoes that make us waddle like penguins.

The trail I rode passes by National Airport, and I joined a bunch of really excitable kids and their parents in watching the planes come in to land directly over our heads.  Planes are really cool.  The ride mostly followed the Potomac all the way from Bethesda, so I had some other splendid vistas of the mall monuments, the Pentagon, the cathedral, and other classics.  The last 8 miles are a gentle uphill incline, so I managed to arrive at home feeling nice and tired... and since my body clock insists that I am in a time-zone in the middle of the Atlantic, I really felt that I could go to bed around 7pm.  I baked muffins and resisted the urge to pass out, but now it is a very reasonable 10:15pm and I think I shall call it a day.  A thousand miles.  And I only *almost fell off my bike in the SPD shoes once!  I think I can say I'm a cyclist now?

Last thoughts from visit to Ox

It's been a few days since my return to America, and despite my jetlag telling me that 10:20pm is a perfectly good time to go to bed, I did promise a few more comments about my Oxford visit:

The most random and wonderful addition to the trip was a semi-spontaneous house dinner fueled by a central theme of "red."  When all three females realized we were in posession of red dresses, and the men admitted to owning red bowties and cummerbunds, someone offhandendly suggested we hold a formal "red tie" dinner at the flat where all the food was red.  With normal people, in normal places, this would just be a comment, soon to be forgotten.  But with my friends, in very eveningwear-friendly Oxford, we proceeded to do exactly what was proposed.  Four courses, with several red cocktails and copious amounts of red wine, and very impractical couture, provided the most memorable night of my trip :)  [Note: Dave did *not* actually find his red bowtie and was forced to wear a blinking red bike light in its place]

Following a charming tea and cake session with the ladies (Clive, Laura, Lara, YoursTruly) and a brief eyeglasses modeling show at the neighboring Boots, Lara and I attacked the covered market with a shopping list in hand... Lara to the butchers, Molly to the fishmongers.  I was busy batting my eyelashes at the fishy mongerer, insisting that I would much prefer to have enough bits removed from the red mullet to have it impossible to determine if the animal ever had fins or scales or eyes or was ever alive, when I receive a desperate message from Lara... oh dear, what part of the leg is a haunch exactly?  Rush over to the butchers, decide that the hunk labeled "haunch" would do nicely, and after a few more seconds of eyelash batting we purchase the kilo of meat and even get some suggestions on cooking.  A quick stop at the veggie-monger (is that a term?) and we're bound for home.  The soup is the first order of business, roasting red peppers.  The tiniest of Nick's chili tree chilis went in, and it was plenty!  The risotto was still made with white wine, but some red pesto (and red food coloring) made the final presentation ridiculous enough for our menu theme.  Red mullet, preivously red venison, a beetroot puree and some braised red cabbage left the diners slightly woozy with overstuffing.  A short pause and we were back for the red velvet cake!

Also, an important victory, we did not spill anything from the feast onto the very beige carpet!

I met with my lab supervisor briefly, and actually had two hours of his time devoted to me.  It's amazing, I think I can sum up my secret hopes for meetings like that as "I really just want us to stand in front of a white board together"  and my wishes were finally realized!  He had some very good suggestions for what to try with my unruly, temperamental data, and I am feeling a bit more calm about the thesis writing after what we talked about.

Dave and I had an amazing Slovakian dinner in St. Clements... for being a quasi vegetarian for most of my life, I have certainly taken to a meat-dumpling-sauerkraut cuisine.  Dave was very happy with his giant knuckle of pork, and I nibbled my pheasant between gulps of very elegant cocktails, before we bolted at the end of the meal to make it in time for our evening engagement at the nearby pub: a few colleagues from lab came out to have a few pints since I wasn't able to really chat with them at work, and the banter was very satisfactory (no shop talk!  amazing!).

I took the weekend slowly, mainly staying tucked up on the couch with Dave reading the newspaper or watching episodes of Lewis on tv.  It feels slightly odd to admit it, but domesticity can be bliss when done right.

I took a midday flight back to DC, watching some quality Oscar-winning cinema between snippets of naps, and even managed to swing a ride home to my apartment after bumping into another guy from my program on the same flight.  I feel very chic, my jetsetting lifestyle making it commonplace to know other travelers on transatlantic flights :-p

One month until I return, and next visit will be a whole two weeks and involve orchestras and more trips up to lab.  Only a month?  It is* getting easier to be far away the more I practice, and it definitely helps to have an exact date that I am counting down to.... 29 days and counting?!

Photo Album: Almost spring in Oxford

Molly's visit to Oxford, March 2010, initial photos

I always wanted to be Queen...

Tuesday I ventured to a part of England I have never been before... google "croyden face-lift" for some lovely derogatory remarks about the surrounding environs.  The Royal Marsden Hospital has a site in Sutton, about 40 minutes out of Victoria station, which is far enough away from metropolitan London to have unmanned train stations where nothing checks that you have a ticket.  (I obviously had proper tickets, my time in Berlin has me very paranoid about traveling "schwartz.")  The hospital looks like a miserable construction of greenish corrugated metal, but is apparently immensely respected for its cancer research and treatments.  Inside is chaotic, and as someone told me "they try to keep the atmosphere very upbeat seeing as it is a cancer hospital."  It succeeds at the bubbly optimism, but it still feels structurally like an old elementary school.

I was making the journey to meet with a highly established researcher that I spoke with just prior to leaving Oxford in December.  She is referred to as the "Queen of HIFU."  Awesome.  My college tutor had arranged a coffee meeting for us all, thinking that we might get along and I might do well to move into this area of research.  Yes, despite not being the typical "old boy" in the Oxford world, the old boys club has been taking care of me of late.

At that meeting, we talked in very vague generalities... "I think I might want to do X" and "Y is very interesting to me" and "I like how P and Q would utilize good parts of the research I do now."  I liked her, and the way she was very straightforward and open to my opinions and interests.  It was a no-brainer to ask to meet her again on this visit, and after sending a very over-thought three-paragraph email I had a nearly instant two sentence reply: "OK, great!  The 9th or 10th would be best for me."  Life lesson: don't fret too much about subtle wording in letters to busy academics.

This meeting was different, as I came in with slightly more knowledge and soul-searching under my belt.  I had read several review papers from the last few years describing the broad field of research as it currently stands as well as the promising directions for the future.  The area I am very strongly leaning towards throwing myself at would incorporate focused ultrasound (her domain) and neuro-MRI (apparently where my skills come into play).  A big problem of delivering drugs is that the blood vessels are kept very well encased, preventing most molecules you pump into the bloodstream from ever being absorbed by the tissue cells that you want to be treated.  Focused ultrasound is normally used with enough power to heat up cells in the focal point, usually bad cells in tumors etc, until they die.  BUT, if you use slightly lower power, you don't cause any damage to the cells but instead can disrupt the "blood brain barrier" for a little while.  So, a little bit of ultrasound can reversibly open up little pockets in the blood vessel walls in a very localized and controlled bit of tissue... if you inject some drugs at this point, the drugs will be kept nice and tidy in the blood vessels everywhere but the disrupted area.  You can deliver toxic drugs in much lower doses than currently being used, and actually get MORE drugs at the place you want them.  Yay!

So where does MRI come in?  Well, MRI is exceptionally good at making pretty anatomical pictures, which would be immensely helpful in figuring out where we want to direct the focused ultrasound.  Plus, if you mix in some MRI contrast agent with the drug you want to deliver, you can observe where the mixture is "leaking" into the cells successfully.  Of course, I really want to do all this in the brain, and there is a small problem... the skull causes massive distortions in the ultrasound waves, and requires really clever arrays of many ultrasound transducers all working together in an intelligent way to overcome this itty bitty gigantic problem.

This stuff has all been done by a few groups around the world.  It appears to work AND be safe in small animals.  I love the idea that with this method I could have a career working on hundreds of different medical conditions and problems.  And I would be doing a bit more physics, while still dragging in the work I already have done.  I would probably have to do animal research now, which I *think I am okay with but will need to think about.

So, I very carefully told the HIFU (high intensity focused ultrasound) guru that I "know she isn't working in this area but this is where my interest is."  And she replied that she has been wanting to get into this kind of work for a long time now.  Let's apply for a four year project grant, with me as one of the named post-docs (whoa), in a joint venture with Oxford and the Royal Marsden.  I wouldn't reinvent the wheel, but rather go to Paris, or Zurich, to learn about the magical arrays of ultrasound transducers needed to get around the skull problem, and then I would come back to the UK and implement it.

Right, so we talked a lot more, and all the details will likely bore those of you who have actually read this far down (sorry!  Is it obvious that I'm thinking about this all the time?!).  Ultimately, it is an amazing offer.  I would be in something from the baby stages, which is hard work but would make me a total expert in a field that I expect to be getting huge in the next 10 years.  It's a little overwhelming, knowing I have to write a big giant grant whilst writing a thesis, even if she says she'll helps lots.  And what if the money isn't there, just due to the way money is these days...

So I need backup plans.  But, in general, I really like this area of research.  For the first time in a long time I am very enthusiastic about science.  We shall see how this plays out...

(!)

The return to Oxford (aka growing pains)

Right, so after three months I've gone back to England.  It has been a bizarre mix of not remembering what side of the road cars are coming from but having the timing of traffic lights taken into account when I plan efficient routes into town.  I planned to get to Oxford just in time for the Philharmonia concert, with Dave conducting and friends performing, and me sitting (unusually) in the audience.  It was definitely odd, being peripheral to an orchestra I used to be a part of.  That feeling stayed with me a few days in various guises, but by the weekend I was settling in a bit better.  The trick, I think, is to pick one of two options: 1) pretend you haven't left and just slip back into everyone's normal life or 2) collapse into a slightly soggy emotional confusion until people around you are coerced into spending more time and being more patient than they expected needing to.  I obviously ended up in the second category, and people have been lovely at mopping me up.  Maybe I'll learn to go the first route in future visits.  The middle ground is far too healthy and progressive to be in the cards, I expect.

I've actually had a very busy schedule.  Day two was a general jetlag/hangover recovery day, that finished with a splendid night out with all four flatmates in pretty dresses and tuxedos.  The weekend got Dave and I down to the Thames/Isis river to see lots of proper-Oxford-types out rowing in the Hilary term bumps race.  Oxford and Cambridge are really the only places in the world where rowing becomes a contact sport.  Our flatmate Nick was coaching a girls boat, and we watched in a mixture of pain and awe and eye-rolling head-shaking deep-sighing chagrin as Nick completely stacked it trying to douse the crew with champagne following the girls' final race: the nosedive into concrete lead to a minor finger dislocation and not permanent brain damage (or is the jury still out?) so a happy ending.  It is a bit chaotic by the river, with long boats being hoisted and spun and equipped with blades, over and through crowds of tipsy camera-wielding spectators, and being dodged by cyclists with far too much faith in their ability to predict pedestrian spontaneity.  That night, while Nick and countless hoards of Oxford people donned black tie and slurred incoherently over awful cocktails in public places, Dave and I stayed home and made jamaican jerk vegetable and chicken goop on rice (which was fantastic, and was hot enough to make Dave's face sweat) and watched episodes of Spooks.  Our night was better :)

Sunday brought University College evensong, formal hall, and after-dinner drinks... Monday I went to my own (Green Templeton) college to collect mail and meet with my tutor for coffee.  I will sheepishly admit that I got lost in my own college--I clearly haven't spent a lot of time there lately.

The big events came Tuesday, as I braved 7 hours of England's finest transportation services to go to Sutton Royal Marsden Hospital to meet with the "Queen of HIFU" to talk about maybe working for her after my DPhil... but that shall be another post :)

Lots of love from England!