While my Stockholm trip to attend CPS Week has gone well until today, I suddenly find that my travels are far from over.  Thanks to the ash cloud ransacking the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia, Sweden may become my new home for awhile.  I really seem to be a marked man when it comes to air travel.

Day 1: Saturday 4/10/2010

When I arrived in Norfolk, there was a mix up at the ticket counter – the web check-in boarding pass I printed the day before was invalid and it took some work for the ticket agent to print a new one.  When we arrived in Chicago that afternoon, it was a very long trip from the B concourse island to the international terminal.  We had to go under the ramp, into the main terminal, and take a train to the international terminal, a good 15 or 20 minutes.  Fortunately, the terminal was not busy and we were able to check in at the SAS counter without any issues.

The TSA agent checking my boarding pass at the O’Hare International Terminal commented about me being from Virginia; she said she had never been there.  When I travel to other parts of the country, I always get interesting comments from the locals about me being from Virginia.  In Palo Alto, a waitress commented that it was cold in Virginia, when at the time I remember it was really much warmer at home than in Silicon Valley.  When in Gloucester visiting an old roommate, I got a comment from his neighbor that I was from “Virginny.”  I’ve also heard another Massachusetts resident (who attends school at William and Mary) refer to “Virginny,” as well.  Hollywood always portrays Virginians with thick backcountry accents when the reality is nothing of the sort.  Some have the Tidewater accent, but it’s unnoticeable to the untrained ear.

Also, there were no restaurants in the O’Hare International terminal: 8 bucks for a pre-made sandwich.  Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long until the Stockholm flight departed.  I noticed that nearly everyone waiting was Swedish, for there were no blue American passports that I could see.  Once on the plane, I realized we lucked out on the seat assignments and got extra legroom since we were just behind the premium economy section.

On the flights, my adviser and I talked about the direction of my career in school and afterwards.  Placement at a faculty job would probably require more time in school, perhaps up to another year, while a research lab may require less.  It’s all about gaining enough experience to do what you want to do.  It was interesting to talk to him about the possibilities since he has experience in both industry and academia.  Both have benefits and drawbacks and there is no way I want to close the door on any particular track just yet.  Just this week I talked with some other students in our department about the time required to complete a Ph.D., and those Master’s students involved in the discussion were wary of spending years in school to graduate.  I would not be opposed to spending another two years in school as long as I worked hard enough to get some good papers published in the hope that I could get a good faculty position at a research university.  From the looks of it, I have plenty of time to think about it and decide.

Day 2: Sunday 4/11/2010

As usual, I didn’t sleep much on the plane, only short bouts of 10 or 20 minutes.  The sun came up quickly and the clouds parted, giving us a view of jagged mountains and snow and little sign of life.  Before landing, the ground was covered up again by thick fog, which we soon descended into.

Though it was 7:30 in the morning, the airport was almost completely deserted.  Immigration and customs was a breeze considering we were the only flight arriving at the time.  A high speed train took us from the airport to the Stockholm Central terminal; a speedometer read well over 200kph as trees and buildings flew by.  I doubt any train at home travels anywhere near that fast.  From the train terminal, we took a subway two stops until we were near the hotel.   One thing I found odd was that the subway tickets had to be purchased from one of several convenience stores surrounding the subway entrance.  In the subway terminal, there were no ticket machines or windows and no signs indicating where tickets could be bought.  Instead, we had to ask someone at the entrance looking for freeriders where we could purchase tickets.

The city was mostly deserted, though it was a Sunday.  Stores were closed and nearly nobody was on the subway or walking around on the streets.  Even the school where the conference was to be held was nearly empty of students with the library closed.  Weatherwise, the day started out cloudy but later the sun came out, with temperatures in the lower 40s – pretty much a December or January day at home.  It’s a good thing I brought my heavy coat.

The hotel had a room available as soon as we arrived, which was surprising since it was only 9 in the morning.  My adviser and I slept for a few hours and then headed out in the afternoon, exploring Gamla stan and the area around the conference.  We walked by the parliament building and the Stockholm Palace, taking a ton of pictures.

To me, it seemed as if everyone was pretending that the weather was nice.  People at coffee shops sat outside at tables, wearing winter coats while being punished by the wind.  Others stood in lines at ice cream stands, despite the 40 degree weather.  Plenty more were out running and biking.  I suppose weather can be much worse in Stockholm.

The crowds picked up some in the afternoon, but there were few restaurants around our hotel so we settled on a Mongolian BBQ place.  I’ve been to similar places at home, but in the brief time I’ve been here there wasn’t anything interesting that caught my eye.  Just the usual McDonald’s and a few other places labeled “American Grill,” or “Steakhouse.”  I travel thousands of miles to get away from American food, among other things, but it seems I can’t escape it.

Day 3: Monday 4/12/2010

Though sleep was better than the previous night, I still had trouble.  I almost never sleep well on trips since it’s always hard for me to adjust to new environments.  I got up before 7AM and went out for a run beyond the university where the conference was, noticing there was a large park I could check out, so I headed that way and was surprised.  City blocks now packed with commuter traffic and sidewalks packed with people suddenly gave way to a vast forest with tons of dirt trails.  Plenty of other people were out running and biking.

I tooled around on the trails for awhile and headed back.  I was surprised that traffic would stop even if it looked like I was about to cross the street.   In addition to the trails, there were large paved paths with marked lanes for bikes and pedestrians.  Sweden seems to have solved the bike path problem so prevalent in the United States.  By making the paths wider and by separating pedestrians and cyclists, cyclists can cruise the bike paths without having to dodge pedestrians.  In the city, sections of curb separated bike lanes from vehicle traffic, also decreasing the chance of a bicycle accident.

On Monday, there were a handful of workshops; I attended one on “Cooperating Objects,” which appears to be a new buzzword in the embedded/sensor networks community.  A few people spoke about event detection and machine learning, with ideas similar to my research.  There were easily several hundred people, much more than at previous conferences I attended, people from all over the world.

At the reception Monday evening, I met Alexandra from Romania, who attended school in Slovenia.  It was interesting talking to her, considering that we are from very different and faraway places, yet we work in the same field.  We hung out quite a bit between breaks throughout much of the conference and through her I was introduced to a few others from Eastern Europe.  At school, it can feel very insular with few people to share your work and ideas with, but at a place like this, everybody is doing the same thing, and they come from everywhere.

Day 4: Tuesday 4/13/2010

Tuesday was a long one.  I was up at 6:30 to run, with plenty of daylight.  I explored a different part of the park than before, but ended up by a factory.  I’m still surprised at the number of trails in the city.

The plenary speaker seemed to be more of a biologist, speaking about human and animal brains as a control system.  There were quite a few talks in IPSN about machine learning and/or event detection so it was interesting to see others’ approaches to similar problems.  Later on, there was a poster and demo session which lasted until nearly 7:30 at night.

During the poster/demo session, I met a guy from the University of Utah which had concocted a sort of “x-ray” vision with 802.15.4 radios – I remember reading about this on the internet a few months ago.  Link quality between radios would change due to people moving about in the room, and with enough links, the moving people could be localized.  Apparently, his paper based on this was rejected mostly because nobody believed it.

Day 4: Wednesday 4/14/2010

On Wednesday, I hit the motherlode for trails when out on my run.  On previous runs I seemed to hit dead ends – running into roads, office buildings, or even factories, but today I found a trail that took me out to the rest of the park.  There were plenty more trails and open space by the time I had to turn around.  It was also sunny right from the start instead of morning fog.

The IPSN tracks were pretty interesting, again with a few on event detection and machine learning.   One group took a twist with a technique I used in my paper that I hadn’t thought of.  I also went to the CPS conference sensor network track, but didn’t really see too much differences compared with the typical sensor network research.

Day 5: Thursday 4/15/2010

I ran again in the morning, out to all the new trails I found the day before.  Unfortunately, the clouds returned.  At the conference, my adviser’s adviser, Jack Stankovic, was the plenary speaker.  During his talk, he used the example of a storm in Chicago as a reference to real time job scheduling.  The next day, I was supposed to return home via Chicago – hearing about any airline problem in Chicago was the last thing I wanted to think about.   This example eerily foreshadowed the problems to come for my return flights (through Chicago).

There were a few other sessions in the IPSN track that were interesting – at least one other event detection paper that was related to my work.  Then, in the afternoon, it was time for my presentation.  Since I was in the sensor networks track of RTAS, most people were in the concurrent IPSN track, so I didn’t get a huge audience.

Just before the presentation, I found out about the ash cloud coming from Iceland.  One of the other people in the room mentioned about flying back through Chicago the next day, as were my adviser and I.  He then mentioned something about maybe not getting back, and that’s when I found out about the ash cloud causing a huge mess in the UK and northern Europe.  It was headed to Sweden next.

With this on my mind, it was my turn to present.  I thought I did reasonably well and finished on time, except that I rearranged my slides just before the presentation and wound up having a backup slide placed ahead of my last slide, causing me to skip through it.

Following my presentation, my adviser and I locked ourselves in a discussion room in the university library and proceeded to call the airline reservation number to get a new booking.  The earliest we could get was the following Tuesday, over four days away.  Weather reports stated that the cloud might stay for days or weeks.  I walked back to the hotel and extended the hotel reservation until Tuesday while in the lobby other conference attendees scrambled to adjust their plans.

At the very least, I’ll get to see more of Stockholm and Sweden, though the weather isn’t supposed to hold up.  Fortunately for this week it has been fairly warm and sunny.  We’ll have to take it day by day to see if the ash cloud will dissipate enough to allow us to go home.  If Tuesday comes and goes and there’s no sign of the cloud letting up, it might be worth a try to head south via train or bus through Denmark to somewhere where I can fly out.