Bad Ideas Part One

Our lab at SJTU is roughly twice the size of the one in Tallahassee and is fitted with door seals and airlocks. The equipment we are assembling is roughly similar with the key electron gun components packed and shipped over from the Magnet Lab itself. We'll be installing the actual last-gen gun that was built at FSU in 2002 of course the detector and the cathode will be rebuilt to modern specs.
What this means is that pieces are coming from everywhere. Shipments from America, Shenzhen and Beijing have all been trundling through the locks for the past week to await assembly once they all arrive. One major part of the detection system is the microchannel plate which amplifies the signal from the gun to be recorded by the camera. This, along with the stainless steel housing for the electron gun, were manufactured far to the west of here. However there was a large concern that these parts could not be packed and shipped properly.
With neither complaint nor regret Zhang took it upon himself to make the fifteen hour journey to Xi'an not far from the earthquake zone where aftershocks have been felt as recently as last Monday. He stayed only as long as necessary to load the boxes onto the sleeper car of the Shanghai-Lhasa line. Yes, *that* Lhasa.



I awoke around 7:30 on Sunday morning to my phone buzzing with Zhu's text message. I hadn't known the details of the trip but we would have to leave from Minhang fairly early to meet Zhang at the train station. It wasn't until ten though that we rode our bikes to the metro and when we did reach the station at the north edge of the city we discovered that the train was forty minutes late. All the consequences of this, the nifty pictures I took and conversations that Zhu and I had were interesting but I only mean to supply this as a backdrop for what happened when the three of us finally returned to Jinchuan station back in Minhang.

The box with the steel case wasn't that heavy but it was over three feet long by a foot and a half wide and took two of us to carry it through the metro crowds. The MCP was a tiny thing but bundled up snugly in a glass desiccator so that was a box that would be handy for hiding a cat or two. It was nearly two o'clock when we began hailing taxis to take us to campus a mile away... and none of them would drive us because it wasn't far enough. I wasn't sure what I could threaten the taxi drivers with although airstrikes came immediately to mind. Maybe if I had just shouted continuously at one of them he would've relented. None of us had eaten lunch and I'd only had a bite six hours ago and was approaching delirium.

Zhang and Zhu discussed something for a moment then turned to me. "We'll take the bikes," Zhang said.
"You are shitting me," I cried. While seeing people and packages on rear bike shelves was common enough, this was a horse of a different color in my eyes. Three of us, a forty pound steel case and a delicately fabricated semiconductor amplifier were not appropriate cargo for two bicycles.

Now there are essentially three ways the narrative can branch at this point. I could go along with their scheme and add a new ability to my repertoire. I could attempt this circus act and fail catastrophically along with weeks of fabrication that cost many thousands of dollars. Or I could convince my coworkers to see reason and lead them back to the campus on foot. Well here's the way I'm going to tell it.

In Zhang's first few attempts to balance on the back of my bike I kept teetering and couldn't steer straight until he jumped off. He decided that we should switch places but no one had ever shown me the trick of sitting down on the shelf just as the bike starts to move. The third time I nearly fell down and he suggested I ride full saddle instead.

It turns out there is no conceivable position to do that without getting one's keister chewed up. I grimaced and considered offhand that this would be a fine time to meditate through the pain. I held the MCP box against my thigh while steadying myself with my right hand hooked under the bicycle seat. Meanwhile Zhu was riding around us chortling with the e-gun case sticking far out to each side from his shelf, pinned down only by his right hand as he steered with his left. We set off and I threatened Zhang with terrible disfigurement if he went over any bumps.

He was very careful but even still by the time we were halfway there I started whimpering. It was hellish but the only thing I needed to do was not let my feet touch the ground. I tried singing a song to myself. "Oh my rear is raw and my thighs are skinned/This MCP stays against my shin/"
"What's that?" Zhang asked.
"Nothing keep driving!!"
When we arrived finally I curled into a ball and rolled around howling on the grass. Zhu leaned over me. "So you don't like being Zhang's girlfriend?" he asked.
"Your women's asses stack so well I could stuff them in a Pez dispenser!" I wasn't sure why that came to mind.