I can count the number of deep conversations I had with Los Alamos residents on the fingers of one hand. My wife and I just built a house in Santa Fe. You couldn't pay us to live up here in Los Alamos. On one of my summer mountain bike excursions, I stopped to talk with a woman who lived in White Rock, a satellite town of 8,000 that makes Los Alamos look positively cosmopolitan. Oh, we moved here a couple of years ago because we like the outdoors and the West.
White Rock is great.
Not everyone adapts so well. These guys drink half a bottle of whiskey every night at a bar, then get up at 7 am and bike 30 miles up a mountain before coming into work. Marital problems are conspicuous in such a small community. One local woman married her first Lab employee at age 19 and then married three more in succession, each time moving up the organization chart. She's 45 now and divorced from a deputy director.