I first met Gene in the spring of 2002, and to say that our first meeting was less than favorable would be an extraordinarily charitable interpretation. The plan, as told to me at least, was to meet Gene at Tucson airport, drive up to Kitt Peak and do a longish observing run. Initially this plan went well; I met Gene at the airport and we drove up to the telescopes together. The plan sort of evaporated though when, approximately eighteen seconds after getting to the telescopes he said bye-bye, turned around and scampered back to the airport, leaving me up a cold mountain in the middle of the Arizona desert for six nights with Glenn Morrison, and a telescope operator whose sole topics of conversation were lovingly talking about his gun collection, and bitterly talking about how his wife sat around watching TV all day and refusing to clean his gun collection. Needless to say, after that initial encounter, I had this curious urge to attack him with a machete, chop him into tiny pieces, and post those pieces to a sewage farm in the Ukraine. When I started work at Caltech in October 2002, I ended up sharing an office with Gene. My initial animosity towards him over the Kitt Peak disaster cooled somewhat when I realised that (a) he really was an immensely likeable guy, and (b) anyone in his position without the combined patience of the entire nun population of the Vatican would have done exactly the same thing. He was the ideal officemate, mainly as he spent a lot of time down in San Diego, leaving me a spacious office to myself most of the week. On the occasions he was up at Caltech though he proved very entertaining company. We soon discovered shared interests in classical music, having long conversations about traditional things like Mozart operas, and more 'avant-garde' stuff like Ligeti, and in coffee so strong that it stood up in the coffee pot and waved hello, though Genes passion for quad shot lattes was a step too far even for me. Possibly my fondest memories of Gene come from all things to do with horses. Having ridden since I was a child, I was very excited to discover that Gene and Carol and their children all rode, and even more excited to discover that they owned their own horses. We soon ended up going on trail rides at a place near Palmdale together, which always proved to be immense fun. Gene was the perfect companion to go riding with; very easygoing, happy to accept whatever came along, and a complete daredevil. I would occasionally go down to visit Gene and Carol in Encinitas, ostensibly for work purposes (at least that was what the expense claim said, anyone here from JPL accounting? No? Good.) but in reality to ride with them. Gene and I would go for rides on the trails around Encinitas, weaving through little streets and along trails between houses and across small fields. These trails were often not clearly marked, and twisted and turned so much that they became difficult to follow. As a result, our Encinitas rides often ended up taking substantially longer than originally intended. Both of us wanted to explore, and neither of us cared about getting hideously lost. A sample coversation on these rides might run like this: "Hey Gene, what's that thing over there?" "No idea, shall we go look?" "Sure!" And off we'd trot. A little later: "Gene, I have no idea where we are. Do you?" "Yes, I know exactly where we are." "Where?" "On horses." "I meant more generally." "Oh. In that case I have no idea." "Hmm. Is this bad?" "Probably." "Which way shall we go?" "How about thataway?" "Why thataway?" "Because the sunset is pretty thataway." "Good enough for me." And we'd bounce off again. Our equine adventures continued when we all went off on ranch vacations for a week at a time. These vacations consist of going to some ranch deep in the wilderness, being gven a horse, and going on assorted rides every day. Complete bliss, in other words. One of these ranch vacations stands out particularly in my mind, as Gene and I were given horses that were, given our respective riding styles, guaranteed to cause mayhem. I had asked for a 'difficult' ride, and the ranch duly obliged by giving me a horse called Wasper, who no other guest had ever ridden and half the staff hadn't ridden as they were too scared of him. But it was with Gene that the ranch pulled out all the stops. Gene, being a little larger than the average, usually got given quite big horses, and usually asked for a straightforward but fast horse. On this occasion the ranch rose substantially beyond the call of duty. When we went down to the paddock on a misty morning to meet our gallant steeds, Gene was confronted by a gargantuan behemoth of a horse, a horse so huge that it would routinely crush small cities beneath one hoof. This horse was called Tinkerbell, possibly the most unsuitable name since Attila the Huns mother contemplated calling her son 'Buttercup'. The staff at the ranch assured Gene, over and over again and with worryingly big smiles, that Tinkerbell was 'just big boned' but liked going fast and was a nice easy ride, and the rumors that the staff had an over/under of $40 on Gene making it through the first ride alive were 'absolute nonsense'. Well, some of this turned out to be true. Tinkerbell was indeed fast, and most of the time was pretty easy to ride. There were however two small problems. First, when Tinkerbell went fast she got it into her head that she was in the Kentucky derby, and second, she thought she was about half as wide as she actually was, and went for gaps in the undergrowth accordingly. Couple this with Genes daredevil attitude towards all things equine, and you had a recipe for disaster. We had some... interesting rides together on this vacation. On one occasion we were cantering slowly through a forest. I was at the front (Wasper would have it no other way), and happened to turn around to watch the rest of the ride. Tinkerbell was doing her best impression of a bulldozer with a smiling Gene on board enjoying every minute of it. We cae up to one section where there were two ways forward; take a longish way around or squeeze through a narrow gap between two young trees. I went through the narrow gap, as did a few others, with most people taking the long way around. Tinkerbell, snorting and blowing wildly, decided that she wanted to go through the narrow gap (which was about two thirds as wide as she was), and took off towards it like an oil tanker sized bullet. I couldn't bear to watch and covered my eyes, and shortly afterwards heard a CRAA-AA-CK, followed by assorted gasps from the others. Looking up, I saw a smiling but bemused looking Gene, a still snorting Tinkerbell, and two small broken trees. We all stayed firmly out of Genes way for the rest of that ride. Another occasion involved the rodeo the staff organized for the guests at the end of the week. This was a series of events designed to both give some confidence to those guests who had never ridden before, and to give some challenge to those guests who had. Gene and I, being the competitive souls that we were, soon got into an ever escalating war of words over who was going to triumph in these rodeo events. One of these events was of particular interest. It is called a pole bending race, the aim being to weave your horse in and out of a series of narrowly placed poles in as short a time as possible. The first batch of guests to do this event performed quite variedly; all completed the course in a variety of times, with the majority knocking down at least one or two of the six poles. When Gene came up to the start line though I looked at these narrowly spaced poles, looked at Tinkerbell, who was pawing the ground and snorting fire in her excitement to be off, and thought that utter destruction and carnage was about to ensue. I fully expected Tinkerbell to catapult forward, crush all the poles beneath her, smash through the fence at the end of the corral and disappear over the hill, never to be seen again. To my utter astonishment, Gene succeeded in getting Tinkerbell to dance gracefully between the poles without knocking over a single one, in one of the fastest times yet seen. The two of them really seemed to have clicked, and the staff were hugely impressed that Gene had managed such a feat on such an elephant of a horse. I have many many other fond memories of Gene. He was fantastic to work with, always providing stimulating and useful input on a huge range of topics. He arranged for me to give a formal seminar at UCSD, a great honour for a person who'd only just finished their PhD. We went out for numerous very enjoyable dinners at nice restaurants. I would occasionally receive parcels of CDs in the post from him, as he'd gone through his collection and discovered duplicates that he thought I would like. And many many others, which I could easily ramble on about all day. Instead, I will conclude by saying what is obvious from all that I've written above; that I had the greatest respect for Gene, and regarded him as a very good friend, and that I will miss him immensely.