This week was rough. We've got another assignment (additionally to problems described in Jakub Pekárek's page). It is about interactive cooperative protocols. We call it AGAR (Associative Groups, Antonovskyi-Robertson) problem. We are making progress with this, but it's mainly because we devote the most time to it.
We were working at our usual speed, all went well, but on Wednesday, we got a letter. In the letter there was Radim's right hand, it started with: "So, you think you can handle the situation...". After we had seen this, we discarded the letter. We don't want to read any bad puns involving hands if we are solving our AGAR problem. The next day we thought about it. We don't want to read the letter, but Radim can be useful, he can give us a helping hand. So we tried to figure out who had sent it. We knew only that the man was tall, with a wooden leg, had a hook instead of his left hand, patch over his eye, and was saying: "Ho, ho, ho"! Yeah, that was what we were afraid of. He was a hipster! So we postponed the investigation to the next week.
On weekends, Rutgers U is a dangerous place. So we decided to play a little trick on all paper stealers. We left two expandables (yes, Matěj was one of them, he always is) at Silvers. We went hiking on the Appalachian trail with all proofs and unpublished papers. We hoped that no stealer will suspect that.
On the way there, we stopped in New York (dangerous place, too many people, too hot, our papers almost self-ignited) and then to Garrison. Our plan was to sleep in a shelter near the railroad. We planned it carefully. Then we hit reality. Our place to sleep was actually a gazebo for endings of romantic movies my mom watches, mainly weddings. But it was dark, we didn't have another place to sleep, so we settled there (And I suspect that Vašek was glad, I think that he wants to marry Jardáč anyway). The structure had like five meters (3.3422 × 10-11 AU if you need your crazy American units) from Hudson River, so during night, it got colder. It was freezing. Also, trains were not helping to create perfect sleeping conditions. Every hour there was a train for each of the directions (two). And every train reported itself with a loud TOOT. Yeah, that was a perfect place. Nobody would suspect us to be there.
After a good night's sleep (if you count lying awake freezing in your sleeping bag as sleep), we hit the trail. At first, the day went well. We visited Anthony's Nose and then remnants of the Fort Montgomery. This is a famous place of American defeat. They tried to impress us, but we weren't impressed at all. In the Czech Republic, almost every hill or valley is a famous place of Czech defeat, so try as you want, you will not defeat us (in the number of defeats).
After Fort Montgomery, we climbed Bear Mountains (no bear seen). And then we, sometimes happy, sometimes exhausted, continued to Fingerboard Shelter (next to Lake Tioraki). We don't know where, but we made a mistake. Thankfully, this was not fatal. Probably, we were talking in Czech, and then somebody heard us and reported to Rutgers Intelligence. Not knowing that, we went to sleep peacefully, only a bit afraid of bears (no bear seen). Jardáč was the most frightened, but after I told him that by the bears, they only mean koala bears, he calmed a little bit.
It started at night. Lazaros Gallos came. It was him, we are sure, we think that he was only making sure that we have some results worth publishing. But we cannot tell him. Ever. Stealers would torture him for our proofs.
He was dressed in a bear costume. First, he checked if Štěpán is sleeping well. He wasn't, since he was afraid that our papers could be stolen. Then he found our bags. He ripped some of them and ate our breakfast (we hope that there will be pizza soon), but he didn't find the results, so he left. (one Lazaros Gallos seen, but there is a slight chance that this was actually a bear)
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. Only Štěpán was hungry and tired, but we were in a hurry. We left him at some random train station. Thankfully, he will starve and die soon, so we are not worried that our results will get to the wrong hands.
