This happened a few months ago but I am only getting around to documenting it now. Actually it all started a year ago. My roommate Kris and I sat around discussing the crazy things molecular gastronomists do with food. We watched Ferran Adria make his sodium alginate caviar, and we wondered what scientific implement we could make use of to outdo him. A centrifuge was our final answer. Little did we know there are many others already making use of centrifuges but anyway...
After some research, it was discovered that centrifuges could often be found for sale at the University of Washington Surplus Auction. And off we went. (A year later.) We woke up early on a saturday morning and headed down to the auction site. Our information gathering told us that there were about a dozen centrifuges up for auction, a bunch of tiny ones, a slew of tabletop medium sized ones, and the apples of our eyes: two washing machine-sized ultracentrifuges, capable of 22,000 rpms while holding the large capacities we demand! I'd never been to an auction, and I waited patiently for the right lot. When the crier started the auction for the first ultracentrifuge, we put in a bid for $50. then $100. Then $200. And when our opponent went to $400, we let him have it. Next up, the second ultracentrifuge: we put in a bid for $25. Got out bid at $50. We bid $60. Going once, going twice, we win. An ultracentrifuge for $60. What value!
A week later, I was at Bed Bath and Beyond, picking up cleaning supplies. Kris called me to see if I wanted to get lunch. I said, aren't we getting the centrifuge today? He said, are we? I said, sure, no problem. Tell Aaron to rent us a zip truck, and we'll go pick it up. Kris was skeptical. That thing is heavy, I couldn't tip that thing on its edge, he said. I said: there's two of us, no problem, just get the zip truck. We meet and drive over to pick up the 'fuge.
I walk over to the centrifuge and push at it. It doesn't budge; definitely heavier than a washing machine. The guy there gets a forklift and starts moving it to the truck. I say to him, Is there a built-in scale on that forklift? I'm curious how heavy it is. He says, no the forklift doesn't have a built-in scale, but we do have a scale right over there. Actually I'm pretty curious how heavy it is as well. So he drives it over and places it on the scale. 597 pounds. 597 pounds he says. Ah, 597 pounds I say. The forklift seems to struggle as it lifts the centrifuge onto the truck. The man drives away. The centrifuge has castors at the bottom. These castors fall right into the grooves that are on the bed of the truck. As a result, the whole thing slides back and forth on the truck, which will simply not do. We look around to see if we can find anything to create a blockade. We see some wooden planks from part of a different sale, so I steal one and put it in the truck, trying to create some sort of wedge. As Kris is holding another one, the forklift operator returns with a friend. We just wanted to check out how you guys are doing, he says. Kris quickly throws the stolen plank into the driver's seat. Oh you know, we just don't want this thing sliding around. I fiddle with the wooden plank. The guy says, if only you had another one of those, you might be able to do something... The new guy, he says, I'm always curious, people buy these things and we help get them on a truck, but how do they get it off? I don't know, I said. Well good luck, and they walk off. We grab the two planks but are unable to fashion something useful. Kris says, let's drive to the wood shop. I know the guy there, he's smart and might have some ideas. So we drive to the wood shop at one mile an hour, across campus while there are tours being led, dozens of kids running across the street suddenly, and the centrifuge sliding back and forth on the bed of the truck. Every now and again, it bangs against the back window and freaks me out. Finally we get to the wood shop. The wood shop guy comes out. Mr Smart Man has no ideas. He does regale us with a tale of a girl who the week before was getting an anvil out of a truck and somehow managed to strip her right hand of all its skin. He also says: you should be careful with the tailgate, I doubt it can support all that weight when you are unloading it off. Then he walks back into sanctuary of his wood shop. Kris and I look at the great centrifuge. I say we can't possibly drive home like this. Kris agrees. I said, hey try to lift up the edge just a little and I'll slide the wooden planks underneath so that it isn't on its wheels. Kris uses his big muscles and is able to lift the centrifuge up an inch, and I slide the wooden planks in. It seems secure so we get back in the truck. We are circling out of the little parking lot of the wood shop and Kris says what we need are like metal poles or something, so that we can slide the centrifuge down them. We come to a stop sign before getting on the main road that comes out of campus. Kris looks left and right at the traffic, then looks straight and exclaims, "like those metal poles!" And across the street by a dumpster, by some miracle, there are four metal poles propped against a brick building. They are aluminum poles that were probably used for making a fence. We park the car and grab them and throw them into the truck. Then we embark on our three mile trek home. We get stuck behind ridiculous traffic because a draw bridge is raised, and Kris says I don't know what the fuck you're thinking. Why did you possibly think we can get this home? We should have hired movers. I said I don't know, I didn't believe you when you said it was really heavy. We continue to wait for traffic and I am starting to panic. Even with metal poles, there is no plan, and the minutes tick by and we have to return the zip truck in thirty minutes, at 4pm. I say, maybe I should try to extend the reservation on my phone, and amazingly enough, zipcar has a mobile interface that works with my really shitty windows mobile phone. So I extend our reservation for an hour. Finally we maneuver the whole contraption to the street in front of our house, and we get Aaron out of the house. He sees the thing and he starts to laugh, and then he starts to cry, and he says, I don't want that ridiculous thing in our house. The three of us stand around and observe the centrifuge in awe. Aaron flips down the tailgate and says this tailgate can't handle this kind of weight. Kris stands atop it and jumps up and down and we watch it bounce and rattle. If only we could take it off he says. I go over there and fiddle with it and off it goes. Wow, that was easy. Why were we unable to do that before? We all shrug, though we all looked at it and played with it previously to no avail. Well of course it comes off, it makes no sense that it wouldn't. But none of us had touched a truck before so we had no idea. Now what? Aaron says. Well we have these poles... I grab one of the poles and examine it. By some miracle, the diameter of the pole is exactly the same as the thickness of the tailgate, and so the poles fit right into the concave edge of the back of the truck bed. We stuck the four of them in and create a ramp to the ground. Aaron, who has suddenly become a better physicist than me, says, these poles can't support that weight, they will bend and break. And anyway, the second there's weight on them, they're going to shoot out and the whole thing will fall to the floor. We think about it. We have a cooler by our front door that people deposit beer in when we have a party. I grab it. By some miracle, it wedges perfectly right in between the back of the truck and the middle of the poles, supporting the poles while stopped against something solid. I grab the wooden block and put it flush against the bottom of the metal poles on the ground. I stand on top of them. Kris says, are you sure you want to stand there? I say, sure, whatever. The whole thing looks something like this:
__________| || | A| | N| | D|CENTRIFUGE| Y---------------- _truck bed ( ( ` . L(__`_._ `. I----------------| `.P`. N/ \ | | `.O`.| | | | `.L`. __\__/ |______| `.E`. |__| <--- wooden blockwheel cooler
Epilogue:
Five months later, the centrifuge is still pushed up against our house covered in tarp. We haven't brought in into our house, nor have we figured out if the thing works or not, nor if we can even turn it on with the plug from our dryer. The centrifuge runs on a 250V 30A current and we've spent $250 to buy a bevy of extension cords and plug converters to attempt to turn it on, but we've yet to do the hacking and soldering necessary. We are not totally lazy, though. We now have two more centrifuges for a grand total of three. The two newer ones are mere 150 pound, non-ultra, desktop models. They spin up and work and we make strange foods.
