Here we are. High on a mountain in the Sierra Nevada.
Few things to say about the trip, I’ll try to post pictures and let them explain.
But here few words, just to be unnecessarily rhetorical

We left early this morning, with a mini van; ten people among astronomers and telescope operators, three rows of seats in the car and three conversations in three different languages!
Spanish in the front,  where the driver tried to kill us (here another similarity with my trip in Mexico! – others next time. Observatory drivers seem to like overtaken other cars at high velocity, just on bends along steep mountains roads… mam, do not read this, I am fine!)
An english conversation about work in the second row.
And something in German in the third, the wrong one I choose! Or was that the right one, just to practice my Deutsch? There is no way out, i am surrounded by Germans here too, actually more than in Munich!
(yep, the telescope is operated half by the Max Plank Society, so…)

So we started driving up and up, first by car.
We are in the middle of Sierra Nevada Mountains, declared National Park; sometimes I imagine that the need of having a telescope at high altitude, far from civilization, in an amazing landscape is just an excuse astronomers have found to make these trips something .. metaphysical besides physical. You see the land changing, the snow starts to appear; you have the full overview on the valley below, and you start smelling the cold pure icy air, mixed with the  smell of just-backed bread …

- C’mon, it’s not my fault if the driver stopped at a bakery to fill a bag with bread. I didn’t ask for that just to make this story better  -

And you see the antenna up there, you are suddenly arrived. You take a cable-car, and in few minutes you are climbing with your I-come-from-a-city trolley luggage over a Snowcat. You compress with the others inside, and while bouncing one against the other you start smiling.. you try to behave, not to look too childish, with that increasing smile over your face. But when you are almost succeeded in going back serious, yo turn and see The Telescope.. and there is no way again!