05-11-2015, 04:43 PM
Many years ago I had the pleasure of supporting a group of twelve on the mountain. This wasn't a tour but a visiting instrument team. It was chaos. As well as the team there was the telescope operator and myself, so 14 people all wandering all over the place including outside the dome.
One evening a big storm hit and the road started icing up immediately. We had about ten minutes to evacuate before the road became dangerous, but could I find everyone? Even when I did round up most of them, one of them would always say "I forgot something!" and head off back into the dome. Jeez, we came close to being stranded that night.
Then there was the observing run, again a some years ago, that used the most complicated set up of our most complicated instrument. Seven Japanese astronomers and only one could speak English, and only barely. The weird thing was, although they didn't understand me, they understood our telescope operator. He was from India and had the thickest accent ever, I rarely understood a word he said. But as long as I passed my instructions through him, then I could communicate with the Japanese group!
I'm not sure about handling a group of 50 to 60.[
]
PS. Why ruin a good bacon sandwich with all that other rubbish?
One evening a big storm hit and the road started icing up immediately. We had about ten minutes to evacuate before the road became dangerous, but could I find everyone? Even when I did round up most of them, one of them would always say "I forgot something!" and head off back into the dome. Jeez, we came close to being stranded that night.
Then there was the observing run, again a some years ago, that used the most complicated set up of our most complicated instrument. Seven Japanese astronomers and only one could speak English, and only barely. The weird thing was, although they didn't understand me, they understood our telescope operator. He was from India and had the thickest accent ever, I rarely understood a word he said. But as long as I passed my instructions through him, then I could communicate with the Japanese group!
I'm not sure about handling a group of 50 to 60.[
]PS. Why ruin a good bacon sandwich with all that other rubbish?