Lick Brook Falls (part 2)

[Part 1]

Standing next to the stream, we can’t tell how the other hikers made it across; there are a few rocks sticking up out of the water, but most are submerged under several inches of water – the very thing that has brought us to the falls (high water) is making it extra difficult to get to them. My hiking boots are waterproof, but only up to my laces. If the water’s higher than that, my feet will find themselves bathed in a swampy mixture of muddy water and sweat.

Eventually, we decide that the best way to cross the stream is to climb out onto a tree root that extends half a foot over the stream and leap to the bank on the other side. Yes, really. Once that’s accomplished, we (finally) find ourselves on the Lick Brook Falls trail. From there, it’s a leisurely stroll through sunlit forests as butterflies flutter through the flowers steep. Very steep. We pick our way up the incline and are rewarded by several waterfalls. The last part of the hike finally levels out a bit and we get to walk next to undeveloped gorge.

The Big One

At the end of the trail, we sign the trail register, letting future hikers know of our enviable pathfinding skills. Then we have to get back to Treman, so back down the slope we go. We each slip (no one falls) a couple times on the way down, and I can’t tell if it’s because of loose rock, decaying leaves, or just mud underfoot. Near the stream, we decide we have a little time to look for another waterfall, but don’t end up finding it. We see a snake near the Lick Brook Falls parking lot and my roommate stops to take pictures.

Smaller falls in the gorge

All of that becomes important, because back at Treman, I look at my watch. It’s getting very close to when the bus is supposed to pick us up, so we run back to the playground where the bus dropped us off. As we round the corner, we see the bus pull up to the stop. We start running faster. About thirty feet from the bus, we pause to get out our IDs to board. The bus pulls away from the stop.

My roommate and I look at each other. We contemplate calling someone to pick us up. We decide to walk the four miles to Wegmans, because after all, we still need groceries. Fortunately, route 13 has a nice wide shoulder, but it’s still not very pleasant, and we’re glad when we make it to the shopping area. Since we’re out there anyway, we stop by the Salvation Army store to see if they have any good jigsaw puzzles. We forget the Salvation Army store is closed on Sundays.

Continuing on our way to Wegmans, we pass an abandoned McDonald’s. It looks like something out of The Walking Dead. So does the railroad we passed earlier, actually. A little over an hour after being left by the bus at Treman, we walk into the Wegmans parking lot. The last bus from Wegman’s has left about ten minutes ago.

After our shopping is complete, we shoulder our bags for the next leg of our trip and walk to the Commons. We wait at the Green Street bus station for any buses heading to campus. I eat a peanut butter and jam sandwich. Finally, the 51 shows up. Its final destination is listed via Collegetown. When we make it back to Collegetown, I ask my roommate if she wants to take the stairs up to our apartment. She says no. We take the elevator and lie on the living room floor before peeling ourselves off to make dinner. Our other roommate later vacuums up the mud from the living room floor. I wouldn’t change a thing about our trip.

Lick Brook Falls (part 1)

This is a story that will be told out of order because if at all possible, it needs to be told in person. In the unlikely case that someone who needs to be told in person reads this blog, I waited to post about it. Here is the story, in its full glory, now.

If you’re like most students at Cornell who don’t have a car, you have one other thing in common: you have a TCAT fail story. One of the popular ones is taking the bus to Ithaca College instead of Cornell. Another is running up to the bus stop, making eye contact with the bus driver, and watching the bus pull away from the curb before your very eyes. Due to some stellar schedule reading, one of my friends got himself and a friend stuck at the mall one night. They had to call another friend to pick them up. A couple of my other friends ended up at the airport instead of the mall. They checked the schedule, figured out which bus they needed to take to get back en route, and waited. And waited, and waited. Finally, a bus pulled up. Wrong route number. The bus driver stopped and asked if they’d like to get on. They assured her that they’re waiting for another bus. The bus pulled away, and promptly changed its route number to the bus they’d been waiting for. They decided to walk (on the highway) to the mall. I contend that my (newest) story stands above the rest.

It starts on a Friday night in the apartment.

I’m in my room on the internet; from my desk I can see my roommate on her computer at the kitchen table. We’ve both been checking weather reports to decide what our adventure of the weekend is going to be. It’s going to rain all of Saturday, so we opt to go to the Museum of the Earth. Then my roommate mentions that the rain will clear up by Sunday. Lick Brook Falls is said to be best visited right after rain. Why don’t we go to Lick Brook on Sunday afternoon? Sure, I think. I’ve never been there before, and more waterfalls = more fun.

On Sunday, since we’ve spent Saturday at the Museum of the Earth and still need to get groceries for the upcoming week, we devise a bus schedule that will allow us to take the bus to Treman State Park, walk to and hike Lick Brook, catch the bus at Treman back to the Commons, walk from the Commons to Wegmans, and take the last bus from Wegmans back to Collegetown. A bit complicated, but doable.

No diving? . . . Aw . . .

The first part of the schedule goes according to plan and we take the 22 to Treman. We check out the falls by the swimming area, and water is thundering through. The swimming area is, understandably, closed. We sprint across the highway to walk over to the Lick Brook parking area and start the hike. The first part of the hike crosses a recently-flooded field and we follow a very muddy track. There’s one part where we cross a railway bridge, which is pretty cool.

How far to Terminus?

After the mud pits, we reach a wooded area and locate blazes going up a very steep hill. A couple of other hikers who look like they know what they’re doing are going in a different direction, but we decide to try the very steep hill. At the top, we can’t find any more blazes. Now we have to get down the very steep hill. Instead of falling hiking down the same way we came up, we bushwhack for awhile and make it back to the bottom, where we’re met by a stream. To be continued . . .

Blueberries

At the end of the summer, after a sad roommate-less week, my roommate for the school year moved in. Before she began her ten-meeting-a-day schedule, we went blueberry picking. Armed with various containers, we drove out to Grisamore Farms where we found that we were close to the only people there. Which was fine with me.

Soon after arrival, I made the discovery that farm blueberries are different from wild blueberries. I’ve picked wild blueberries in Maine before, and the bushes are short and low to the ground while the fruit itself is rather tiny – around 0.5 cm in diameter. Farm blueberries, on the other hand, are about twice that diameter (so volume scales up by 8) and the bushes are slightly taller than I am. Also, compared to the wild blueberries I picked, the berries we picked grew much denser on the bush. We stayed for about an hour and I picked between two and three pounds of blueberries in that time.

I ate my way through a good portion of the berries before I got around to baking with them. They were delicious, and now that we’re transitioning from pre-winter to winter in the northeast, I miss fruits that aren’t apples, pears, bananas, or oranges. (On the other hand, winter means cranberries, which means cranberry bread, which is also delicious.)

Anyway, I made the pie crust recipe that I usually use for apple pies and consulted Google to find a blueberry pie filling recipe, and made mini blueberry pies. Yes, also delicious, and yes, I like sweet food. Sometimes I eat dinner solely as the necessary precursor to dessert. I am currently accepting baked goods and quantities of small, unmarked bills at- Just kidding. Points to take away from this post: I went blueberry picking. I ate blueberries. I made blueberry pie. I ate blueberry pie. Send me baked goods.

Lab of Ornithology

Abandoned by my roommate who chose to go home to see her family rather than stay in Ithaca with me* while I finished research (and started grad school applications . . . what happened to cause that is a whole other story), I had to come up with my own trouble to get into. After some thought, I decided on biking to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, only 4.5 miles from Collegetown. Pocket change for any semi-serious halfway-competent biker, a significant distance for a culture that fights for the parking lots closest to the grocery store, just right for me.

Of course, being Ithaca, the way there was almost entirely uphill. There were enough flat spots along the way to make it bearable, but just barely. First I had to bike up a hill from Collegetown to get to campus. On campus, I had to bike up a hill from the engineering quad to North campus. From North campus, I had to bike up a hill to get off campus. After biking through a golf course, I turned left and had to bike up another hill. That hill led to another hill, which led to the last hill, and then I was at the Lab of Ornithology. I don’t think the overall grade was too bad, but you try biking uphill for forty minutes straight and tell me how your legs like it.

Biking was a very popular option this morning

I wasn’t really at the Lab of Ornithology to go birdwatching, because I can recognize maybe a half dozen different birds, but I wanted to take a look around at their trails and if I saw any birds, great. If not, I got a bike ride and a walk/hike for my troubles. I picked up a map and headed out on the paths. I planned to walk a couple loops that would take me around two sections of Sapsucker Woods and let me walk part of each trail.

In the end, I spent a couple hours wandering around the woods. It was pretty quiet, and not many other people were there, which was probably a good thing for birdwatching. I did end up seeing a few birds – a couple woodpeckers, some ducks, a robin, and the most rare find of all, shown below.

A rare find: the chinstrap penguin outside of its natural habitat

I also heard a lot of different birds, none of which I could identify by their calls. It was still a worthwhile experience, though I would like to go back for a birdwatching walk hosted by the Lab of Ornithology. They’re on the weekends, which isn’t a problem, but they start at 7:30 am, which might be . . .

*That was probably a good choice.

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, part 3 of 3

We now pause in my summer posts (just a few more to go) for me to express my thankfulness for the people who had to deal with me during the last school year. This should have been posted early last summer but I didn’t write it until the end of the summer, and by that point I thought I’d delay it until Thanksgiving and save myself the trouble of writing another post about being thankful. Because let’s face it; that probably wouldn’t have gotten done until Valentine’s Day or so.

This Last year (junior year), thanks goes to the following (you might be able to tell I spent the year sleeping, eating, and ChemE-ing, with occasional trips to the band room and the rock wall):

- the Big Red Pep Band, where it’s all about that bass (and treble)

- Hans Bethe House, for being the best house on West campus, and the inhabitants of suite 585 who had to live with me, and particularly my roommate, who had the pleasure(?) of sharing a room with me and still wanted to stay with me over the summer. Definitely my most favorite College of Engineering Environmental Engineering roommate ever.

- Cornell Outdoor Education, and in particular rock staff and any fellow climbers I’ve met who have offered belays, encouragement, or advice, for getting – and keeping – me hooked on scaling tall objects

The penguins contemplate their next move from their perilous perch at Lindseth

- the ChemE professors, for providing schooling in all things ChemE, from designing reactors and separation units to using obscure ChemE programs to understanding the kinetics behind slope day behavior

- the TAs who put in the effort to keep us from floundering (too much) in our classes

- the ChemE class of 2017, who had to put up with my TA’ing. Saury for any times I led you astray; I promise I didn’t mean to.

- the ChemE class of 2016. Catch you in the fall for more mutual suffering. And when you find yourself in the deep dark trenches of problem sets, just keep swimming.

- other miscellaneous family and friends, for dealing with my warped sense of humor, affinity for mosquitoes and fully experiencing mud, insistence on taking stairs and longcuts, and ability to complain about absolutely anything. It was a reel fun year, made better by the people who shared it with me.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Six Mile Creek

After hiking the Six Mile Creek area, my (former) roommate and I have hiked pretty much everything there is to hike in Ithaca and seen all the waterfalls listed in guidebooks. In the summer of 2015 alone, we went to Treman, Buttermilk, Taughannock, the Plantations and Fall Creek (via the Cayuga Trail), Lick Brook, and finally, Six Mile Creek. I had forgotten that I had visited the Six Mile Creek area with my hiking class a couple falls ago, but on our summer adventure there, I extended my hiking experience by travelling both farther up and downstream.

We started out about midmorning and located the area where we were supposed to be able to find a trail pretty easily. Then as we walked along, we pretty quickly lost the path and ended up wandering in the woods right behind some peoples’ backyards (sorry). It turned out that the path was much closer to the creek edge, and we had a pleasant walk to Businessman’s Lunch falls. What’s unique about these falls is that they’re right next to an abandoned mill. Six Mile Creek was formerly used as a power source, and the mill and some hundred year old pipes are still hanging around as evidence.

Businessman's Lunch falls, with mill beside

From the falls, we walked up to the road and crossed the street to the Mulholland Wildflower Preserve for the next stage of our adventure. There are several waterfalls created by dams along the trail, all of which are pretty cool. After the early parts of the trail, the path became somewhere . . . less well defined. Still easy to follow, but it was pretty obvious that it was less travelled, sometimes muddy, and often close to rather steep inclines. It was never dangerous, as long as you were aware of the fact that you were indeed hiking, as opposed to lounging on your couch, and weren’t fooling around.

Double waterfalls early along the Six Mile Creek trail system

Ithaca has a good mix of walking options, ranging from paved paths to single track, steep, muddy, rock-strewn, lesser trekked trails. The number of people you encounter is roughly inversely proportional to how developed the trail is. For example, the Gorge Trail at Taughannock, which is flat enough for strollers, tends to be swarming with people. Similarly, on the heavily advertised gorge trails at Treman and Buttermilk, you can’t turn a corner without running into someone*. If you hike the Rim Trail at Taughannock or around Lake Treman at Buttermilk, however, it’s much quieter, but still on state park lands, so the trails are maintained, with steps and fences on the steep parts.

If that’s still too established for you, the Cayuga Trail, Six Mile Creek, and Lick Brook offer a more natural experience, though the Cayuga Trail has an interesting mix of wandering through random forest and suddenly appearing on a road. Lick Brook is undeveloped, and has the longest steep section of anything I’ve hiked around Ithaca. I’ve already mentioned what the trail at Six Mile was like. In our hours of hiking these three trails, we saw maybe a few dozen people, which is what you’d see just at the trailhead of a popular state park trail.

Back to our Six Mile Creek hike – we continued along the trail until we came to a lake/reservoir. At that point, we turned back and retraced our path to return to the apartment, completing what was to be our last great adventure of the summer.

If you keep going almost to the end of the trail, you'll be rewarded by these falls

*Exception: Hike early in the morning. My roommate and I started out before 10:30** at Treman and had a quiet hike on the way out. By the time we headed back the trail was getting pretty crowded.

**Apparently tourists sleep in on Saturdays? 10:30 is mid to late morning for me.

13.1

This one was my idea. I’d been on the Cayuga Trail a few times, but always around the same area. Naturally, the way to remedy that was to hike the entire trail in one day. It’s 8.5 miles one way, but moderately-fit backpackers with full loads can pretty easily hike 20 miles in a day, so at most 17 miles with light loads sounded very doable. As usual, my partner in crime adventure was my long-suffering junior year/summer roommate, who thought that hiking the Cayuga Trail in a day was a great idea.

We set out early on a Saturday morning just in case it turned out to be harder than we thought and we needed to hike into late afternoon/evening. We arrived at the trailhead by 9, at which point my roommate discovered that she had forgotten the memory card for her camera. I was really surprised because my roommate is a mature and responsible adult who’s on top of things. Except that time she forgot her ID card to go to the dining hall, and the time she had her ID card holder but not her ID card at intramural soccer, and that other time she left her ID in the suite when we went to breakfast, and – never mind.

The first part of the Cayuga Trail goes through campus, so the Cayuga Trails Club had to get a little creative with the blazes:

Later on the trail, but same idea.
It’s hard to tell from the picture, but that is indeed duct tape.

From campus, we continued on to the Plantations, making it to the visitors’ center before it was open for the day. Then through the wildflower garden by a very circuitous route, up Arboretum Road, and to the suspension bridge. From the bridge, the trail goes through a wooded area for some time. When we entered the forest, we were joined by some friends. Lots of friends, who wanted to get to know us by sucking our blood. In other words, vampires mosquitoes. (I finished the day with a mosquito kill count of 14 and a dozen mosquito bites on my right arm alone. Other highlowlights included the bite on my ear and the one on my palm.)

Suspension bridge

Most of the trail isn’t very scenic if you’re looking for waterfalls or overlooks, but there’s a section with some bluffs/cliffs. The trail’s actually been rerouted farther away from the edge because of erosion, but you can get a bit of a view from there.

Awhile after that, we found the trail register, signed it, and headed on our way. A couple hours and several thousand trees later, we emerged from the woods, crossed Fall Creek on the shoulder of the bridge shown above, and shortly found ourselves walking along a former railway. The rails weren’t there anymore, but it was a very clear and straight path running directly behind peoples’ houses, so that was a little strange. It would be convenient and easy if you wanted to get onto the Cayuga Trail, but you’d also have random people passing right by your backyard all the time.

About a mile later, we found ourselves in the woods again, on a part of the trail that was even less frequented than the previous six miles or so. Many parts of the trail hadn’t been very wide, and we’d walked through some very large Jurassic-looking plants and enough poison ivy to make a small town very uncomfortable, but here we found ourselves burrowing through a tunnel of undergrowth and tree branches. Emerging from the last of the foliage, we spotted the triple blazes on a tree that signifies the end of a trail. We’d made it. One way.

Our next decision was whether to take the Cayuga Trail back or to find an old railroad, take that partway back, walk along the road for a bit, connect to the East Ithaca Recreation Trail, and walk the remaining mile or so back to Collegetown. In the spirit of adventure, we chose to venture out into the unknown and search for the railroad. So, no . . . we didn’t really know where we were going.

We found the railroad without too much trouble, then had to navigate through a field we weren’t expecting and ended up on a different road than we had planned. It was fine though, because we knew where we were. When we reached the East Ithaca Recreation Way, we finally decided to stop for lunch. The bench we found was too hot so we sat on the grass to eat. About two minutes later, we felt a raindrop. Within fifteen seconds, it had turned into many raindrops. Naturally, we pulled out a raincoat (me) and backpack cover (my roommate) and continued to sit there eating our sandwiches.

After another three minutes, we decided it would be a good idea to go stand under a tree to finish lunch, so we did. From there, it was an easy couple miles back to Collegetown, where we passed out on the living room floor for awhile. We were gone about six hours and our total mileage for the day ended up being right around a half marathon – 13.1 miles.

Cars are Fast

Not having a car in Ithaca forces you to plan well and be creative. Sometimes you also have to be willing to expend some energy and walk farther than thirty feet in the un-air-conditioned outdoors with the sun beating down on your back. Oh, the horrors. I’ve done my share of bus riding – to Wegmans almost every week this past summer and to all three state parks the bus goes to during the summer, but I’ve also branched out into using my bike as transportation instead of just recreation.

It started because I didn’t have a ride to church in the summer. I next found out the church I attend during the school year was closer than I thought (only about 4 miles from Cornell). Thanks to Google maps, I then discovered a way to get there that only had me biking on the highway for about a mile. I decided to test bike the route on the Friday of the Fourth of July weekend because I took the afternoon off from work and didn’t have anything else to do.

It turned out that although the way to church is almost entirely uphill, because most of it isn’t on busy roads, it’s very bikeable, even with my questionable biking ability. For most of the summer, I biked to church every two or three weeks, and besides burning some energy, it was nice being able to leave as late or as early after service as I wanted to.

Arrival at Treman

My next biking destination was Treman State Park, with my roommate. The fellowship I’m in has a lot of people staying in the same apartment building and there was an end of summer picnic planned for a Saturday at the beginning of August. My roommate and I, hearing that the Gorge Trail was finally open, wanted to hike at Treman, and we didn’t have a ride, so we decided to bike. It was about six miles, with a couple miles on a highway (with a very wide shoulder). After biking six miles, we immediately hiked up steep steps, which my legs and lungs absolutely loved. A note about biking to Treman: if you’re looking for the bike rack, it’s by the changing rooms for the swimming area, not by the ranger station, the parking lot, or the bathrooms by the trailhead. Why . . .?

Got a little help from a friend on the way to the Lab of Ornithology

Having gained experience biking to places, my last biking exploit of the summer was to the Lab of Ornithology (4.5 miles). There is something extremely satisfying about reaching your destination and knowing that you made it there under your own power, even as you gasp for breath and your legs want to hurt your brain for putting them through physical activity. There had better be, because it takes two or three times as much time to get anywhere, because cars are fast.

A Midsummer Evening’s Play

Although there were plenty of free events to attend in Ithaca during the summer, I can, every couple months or so, be persuaded to use actual real money to buy things. On this occasion, my roommate and I went to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by the Ithaca Shakespeare Company at the Plantations. Our other choice of production was Henry IV, and as much as I love history (I don’t), I thought I’d rather see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We went on a midsummer Thursday night, which was five dollars cheaper than a Friday or weekend. On top of that, students received a five dollar discount, so our tickets were only five dollars.

I packed dinner and made the trek out to the Plantations on foot after work. When I got there and met my roommate, there was already a decent sized crowd camped out in front of the stage. We paid our five dollars and found a spot near the back/middle of the audience where we could see. Having brought neither a blanket nor chairs, we sat on the grass. Having brought neither wine nor a fancy home-cooked dinner, I settled in to eat my oatmeal. At least I fared better in the dinner department than my roommate, who forgot her dinner in the fridge at work.

Once the show started, I will say it really helped to have read A Midsummer Night’s Dream before, even if it was in eighth grade. I remembered the basic storyline of the play, which was enough for me to follow what was happening onstage. They kept the set simple, but it was still effective. The sound was the only disappointing part of the performance. The sound effects were nice, and not obnoxious or intrusive, but the basic mike/speaker system was not working well. During the first act or so, it mainly seemed to pick up the actors’ footsteps(. . . ?) rather than voices, though it improved later. If it had been the first showing, I could have understood sound problems, but this was at least the second week of performances. (It was outdoors and also the first show of the weekend, but I would have hoped they’d worked things out after a full weekend of performances.)

Right after the play ended, with everyone packing up to leave

Even with sound problems, I could still hear most of the lines, and the play was overall highly entertaining. I’m glad I went, and I would recommend it, with the addition that it would be helpful to read the play beforehand.

Mostly Alive

So in the last two months, I started classes, committed to applying to grad school, took the GRE, wrote lab reports, did problem sets, went to a conference, graded, played with the pep band at field hockey, sprint football, volleyball, hockey, and a wedding, ate peanut butter and jam sandwiches, went rock climbing, and spent many happy moments long arduous nights in the Olin lounge. My state of being can best be summed up as “mostly alive,” and if anyone’s seen my brain, please send it my way.

In the midst of all the craziness, the wireless adaptor/card on my laptop decided to go ahead and die, so for awhile I could only connect to the internet in my apartment using an Ethernet cable. At least it wasn’t dial up. For now, I’m using a new (cheap) laptop. Besides its lack of processor power, nonexistent memory, horrendously dysfunctional touchpad, and low quality audio, I like the computer. It works, and it has a touchscreen.

I actually still have half a dozen or so posts about what I did this summer that I’ve just never gotten around to editing and posting. As the northeast sinks into six months of winter, expect these posts of sunshine and carefree days reminding you of everything you’re missing by not living in California. But at least we have water.

One of the other effects of having to switch computers suddenly is that I don’t have any of my most recent pictures on the flash drive I’m working off of. So instead, here’s a two-year-old picture from my favorite vacation spot, Acadia National Park:

Hopefully will get the rest of my summer posts out “soon.”

Christmas in July?

Billed as Christmas in July and The Best Thing that will Happen to you this Summer (not really; I made that up), the pep band made a one weekend only appearance at two hockey games in July. Cornell alumni, former NHL players, Olympic medalists, current hockey coaches, and other minor celebrities made their way to Lynah Rink on two warm summer evenings, and so did the pep band.

The band had a surprisingly good turnout, with several dozen people showing up both nights. Friday night was the alumni game, featuring former Cornell hockey players from decades past. Lynah hadn’t advertised the game at all, whether to encourage people to attend the game on Saturday or to keep the rink a little much quieter than usual I don’t know. Either way, I’m not sure if anyone not related to a hockey player or in the band attended.

The game was casual, with no penalties, checking, or violence in general. The final score was something like 10 to 9, which sounds more like the score at one of my high school football team’s games than a hockey match. But the really strange thing was leaving Lynah and 1) having it be warmer outside than inside and 2) having the sun still out. I packed up my clarinet and music and walked into the sunset back to my apartment in shorts after a men’s hockey game.

Cornell vs. Cornell

On Saturday night, the game was a charity match for the Racker Center. Several past NHL players and Olympians came back and were joined by current hockey coaches and players. The rink was reasonably full, for summer, and the game was refereed closer to an actual competition, though there was still minimal contact. I think the only penalty called was on the current men’s hockey coach for a pretty blatant trip. Unfortunately, they didn’t go make him sit in the penalty box but awarded a penalty shot to the other team.

Again, the final score was in the realm of 10-12, and at the end there was a penalty shootout, just for fun. One of the players scored during his turn using a lacrosse stick. Another highlight (I can’t remember from which night) was a player coming out for warm-ups wearing a Viking helmet. Definitely appropriate head protection.

We didn’t play as much as usual, but we got a decent number of songs in, and people seemed to like having the band there. I had fun, anyway.

Free is my Favorite Price

Before the end of July and the conclusion of Cornell’s summer series events, I attended three more events: two Tuesday night performances at Schwartz and one Friday night arts quad concert.

The first performance at Schwartz was a violinist and a pianist. The first half of their concert featured Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61. After a brief intermission, they played a half dozen shorter pieces that were more “fun.” They each performed a solo piece, then played a series of pieces with names like “Jane Shakes her Hair” and “Jim Jives” (I’m not kidding . . . this time). At the low end, a ticket to a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert costs over thirty dollars. This was free. Granted, the BSO is slightly more involved than two musicians, but this was a good substitute for the moment.

The second Schwartz performance was also an instrumental group, but of a slightly different style. They played klezmer music. Klezmer is a Jewish music genre from eastern Europe, originally played mainly at weddings and other celebrations. In terms of instrumentation, a klezmer group feels a little like the rejects from jazz band. Klez Project, the group that performed, featured a clarinet*, violin, tuba, drums, accordion, piano, and lute.

*There are jazz clarinetists, but typically featured as soloists, and many clarinets switch to saxophone for jazz band.

The surprise of the night came after the group finished their first couple of songs and the clarinetist was introducing the band members. I had thought one of the members looked vaguely familiar, but I think a lot of people look vaguely familiar. Then when he was introduced, I wasn’t listening very carefully, but I thought the clarinetist might have said a name I recognized, so I looked in the program, which I apparently hadn’t read very thoroughly. The percussionist was one of my p-chem professors.

That aside, the concert was fun, and the music was lively. The friends I went with and I were considerably younger than most of the audience, but that just means everyone my age missed out. Going to the bar takes money; running total for my night activities = $0.00.

As for the Friday night concert, Mutron Warriors held the distinction of being the only non folk band to perform this summer. Like at the Rockwood Ferry concert, my roommate and I went armed with a Frisbee and staked out a spot to throw the Frisbee around and listen to music. Another fun night in Ithaca for the grand total of zero dollars and zero cents. I can live with that.

Moral of the story: if it’s free and I’m free, I can probably be persuaded to go to it, whatever it is.

Far Above Cayuga’s Waters

During their first semester at Cornell, all the engineers are enrolled in a class that everyone just calls 1050 (ten fifty). It groups people together who have indicated an interest in similar engineering majors and tries to pair them with a professor and/or peer advisors (sophomore through senior volunteers) in that major. The class meets once a week and usually features such fascinating presentations as “Reduce Stress: Eat and Sleep” and “Plagiarism is Bad.” (Actually, the engineering ethics presentation is pretty interesting. But seriously – I’m tired because I didn’t sleep? I had no idea. Tell me more.)

One of the fun 1050 sessions we had was a tour of the clock tower. A chimesmaster showed us the practice room, the chimes museum, and finally, after climbing 161 steps (the number behind the 161 Things), the chimes themselves. At the end, after enjoying the view from the top of the clock tower, a few of us who had remained behind were allowed to play the hour bells. It was unhypothetically exciting.

Before this summer, I’d been back up to the chimes once or twice (for sure at least once to a morning concert back before I started doing problem sets at 1 in the morning). This summer, my roommates and I have been to a couple of the special Saturday night concerts. The first one featured music by pop divas (their words, not mine) and the second Disney songs. The concerts are supposed to be around sunset, and both times we’ve gotten some sunset colors, but nothing spectacular because of clouds.

Still, you get views in every direction from the clock tower: the arts quad to the north, Cayuga Lake to the northwest, West campus and Ithaca to the west, and to the south, Collegetown, and, last but not least, Olin Hall.

Aerial view of Olin.

The first concert was well-attended, but not crowded. The second concert, on the other hand, was packed. I suspect someone told the summer college students, because there were whole groups of them recording things on their iDevices and taking selfies everywhere. Kids these days. I’m hoping to go back for another morning concert, because those start at 7:45 am and it’s pretty likely you’ll get a private concert. If I time it right, I might be able to see sunrise from the clock tower. If only I can crawl out of bed on time . . .

Sunset-ish colors over Cayuga Lake

Here be Dinosaurs (and Trilobites)

Since the sun only chooses to exist in Ithaca during the summer, we’ve been trying to do a lot of outdoor activities on the weekends. However, some weeks ago it rained all day on a Saturday, so my roommate and I decided to pay a visit to the Museum of the Earth. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, besides something to do with rocks and the Earth, but it turned out to be fossils. Lots and lots of fossils.

Their website isn’t great about what to expect when you get there, but once you do show up, the exhibits are very well designed and organized. The main attraction is titled A Journey Through Time and as long as you enter from the correct end, it takes you chronologically through the geological eras. Each era/time period has an introductory sign giving an overview of dominant species, temperature, sea level, and major events. Then there are lots of fossils, and most of the time periods also have a short video.

A fun part of the museum is in one of the back corners. Besides coloring sheets, they have buckets of rocks. If you take the time to go through these rocks and happen to find a fossil, you will be allowed to take the fossil home with you. So I now have a bivalve fossil on my desk.

Near to the end, they have some dinosaur models (including a stegosaurus that’s in the process of being reassembled after being cut up to be moved to the museum) and a mastodon skeleton. The last section of the museum has you walk into an ice tunnel with descriptions of research being done now (some of it by Cornell scientists) about glaciers and global warming. As you walk out of the hallway, you find yourself back where you started.

For a few hours of entertainment and education, the price was reasonable, plus we got a student discount. It was just the right size for a half day excursion. We pretty much saw everything at a relaxed pace. There were also a good number of people in the museum. Not so many that it was crowded and we were constantly bumping into people or waiting to see things, but not so few that it felt like we were wandering through an abandoned building. It was just right, and it made for another successful adventure out to experience Ithaca.

Rockwood Ferry

Another series of events the School for Continuing Education puts on is Friday night concerts on the arts quad. Being Ithaca, the five groups performing this year – Rockwood Ferry, Not From Wisconsin, Joe Crookston, Mutron Warriors, and the Ruddy Well Band – are described as progressive chamber folk, chamber folk, folk, Afro-funk, and Americana/folk. Good thing I like folk music.

I made it to the first performance of the summer by Rockwood Ferry, and it wasn’t bad. It was free, so I really didn’t have anything to lose except some time and inner ear hair cell functionality. But my time is worth about minimum wage (you can make more money working in the dining hall than being a TA) and the sound was kept to a very reasonable level, so I came out ahead on both counts.

Friday after work, my roommate and I packed dinner and a Frisbee and headed over to the arts quad. When we arrived, a decent sized crowd had gathered to enjoy Rockwood Ferry’s progressive chamber folk songs. There were plenty of families who live in Ithaca, and children running around. We found a spot near the back of the crowd to sit down, enjoy the music, and eat dinner, which in my case consisted of the highly nutritious combination of a peanut butter and jam sandwich and a Boston kreme donut. A Dunkin Donuts just opened up in Collegetown, and as a New Englander, it was my duty to go get a donut. They’re not the best donuts I’ve ever had – that honor would have to go to freshly made apple cider donuts from a cider mill in Vermont – but . . . it’s a donut. I like donuts.

(Stage is behind the tree)

After dinner, we listened to a bit more music then broke out the Frisbee. We found a mostly clear patch where we played for awhile, but we were between two trees and on opposite sides of a sidewalk. We moved to a spot farther away but with much more clear space. The night’s festivities featured throws under the leg, t-rex Frisbee, stand-in-one-place Frisbee, left-handed Frisbee, one-handed Frisbee, and heave-the-Frisbee-as-far-as-possible Frisbee.

When the concert ended, it was getting a little dark to see the Frisbee, so we called it a night and went to do a bit of sunset chasing:

All around, it was a great end to the week and start to what would turn out to be a very busy weekend.

Over the Gorges and Through the Woods

In an effort to do all the summer things while 1) I have time and 2) the sun temporarily gets lost in Ithaca on its way to the Caribbean or Hawaii, my roommates and I spent a couple weekends in June hiking at Buttermilk Falls and Taughannock Falls. I’ve been to both multiple times, but I’ve never been one to pass up the opportunity to slog through mud, get bug bites, risk poison ivy, and sweat from places other than my palms and soles, all at the same time. During the summer, TCAT (the bus service) runs a route (the 22) that goes to some of the parks and state parks in and around Ithaca. This puts you at the mercy of the bus schedule, but I would rather have infrequent buses than no buses at all.

That said, for both trips we opted to catch the 22 at the Commons instead of taking a bus from Collegetown and transferring, partly because the weather’s too nice to not walk, and partly because last time I used Trip Planner to figure out a trip, they gave me one whole minute to transfer. Needless to say, the first bus was fifteen minutes late and the second bus was long gone by the time we finally made it to the transfer stop. So we took the bus and arrived unscathed at the state parks – and an extra perk: you don’t have to pay the vehicle entrance fee if the vehicle you’re entering the park on is the TCAT.

Buttermilk was pretty crowded, but worth it, unless you were looking for peace and quiet in nature, in which case, don’t go to a state park in the Finger Lakes region. Anywhere that’s hard to get to by car is a better choice. We had a rainy June (7.85 inches of rain; average is 5.06 inches), so the waterfalls actually had water falling down them, and the gorge was . . . gorges. After reaching the end of the Gorge Trail, we continued on the Bear Trail, had a snack, and went to see Lake Treman before heading back. We ended up being able to get a ride back to Collegetown, so we hung around the playground to play Frisbee (and try out some of the playground equipment . . . it wasn’t that crowded, we did not terrorize any children, and I am the size of an average 12 year old).

Overall, it was a nice (relatively) easy hike, even including the initial incline. Note that you are talking to the person who voluntarily takes seven flights of stairs at once to get to the top floor of Olin Library and walks to Wegmans for fun. I would still consider it a hike due to the elevation change and the dirt and stone path.

What I would not consider a hike is the Gorge Trail at Taughannock. If any random person can unload a stroller from the back of their SUV and casually roll their child down the path, I refuse to call that hiking. Because we were looking for something a little longer than the Gorge Trail, we took the Rim Trail at Taughannock. Besides being an actual hike, it’s also a lot less crowded than the Gorge Trail. You get some nice views you wouldn’t otherwise get, though one viewpoint is at a parking lot (but it’s scientifically proven that the view is 300% better if you walk there yourself).

We were doing a bit of a speedrun at Taughannock because we needed to get back into Ithaca by early afternoon so some of our group could go watch Inside Out, so after reaching the top of the trail, we looped around the other side of the gorge and returned to our starting point with fifteen minutes to spare before the bus. We went to see the lower falls, waited around a bit, and then the TCAT arrived to whisk us away back to the Commons. Operation Hike Ithaca, parts 1 and 2: success.

Princess Ida

Since I had previously enjoyed plays at Schwartz (all two of them), when a couple of my roommates* brought up going to see Princess Ida, I decided to go with them.  The event was part of Cornell’s School of Continuing Education’s summer series, in which performances, lectures, and concerts are offered (for free!) for six weeks in the summer.

Princess Ida is a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera about a prince and a princess who have been pledged to be married to each other since childhood.  However, when it comes time to marry, the prince finds out that his bride to be is at a women’s college.  No men allowed, but he has to go get her, doesn’t he?

The group that performed Princess Ida, Savoyards Musical Theatre, had adapted the opera to be set in Western New York.  The fathers of the bride and groom are from Buffalo and Syracuse, and the women’s college is in Aurora (on Cayuga Lake).  I can imagine Princess Ida must have been at least mildly amusing** in its original form, but being set right where we were made it that much better.

Although it was longer than I was expecting, I thoroughly enjoyed the opera.  The plot and characters were somewhat ridiculous, but that’s what made it so funny.  The music was provided by a single pianist.  It was nothing too difficult, but that almost makes it worse, because you can hear all the mistakes.  If someone’s playing a seven note chord with thirty-second notes over it and he/she misses a note, no one’s going to be able to tell unless they have perfect pitch or know the piece very, very well.  If someone’s playing a relatively simple piece and hits the wrong accidental, everyone and their dog will hear it.  So props*** to the pianist, and to all the actors and actresses for a job well done and an entertaining evening.

Completely unrelated picture from the Plantations one evening.

*From here on out, I will be using the term roommate for anyone I share living quarters with – my apartment, suite, room, bed, the basement of Olin, etc.

**In its initial showings, Princess Ida was not very well received, and remains one of the lesser performed Gilbert and Sullivan operas today.

***All the puns intended.

Kayaking (v2.0)

I went home for two and a half weeks after finals and ate, slept, read, sat around the house, and went kayaking four times.  Twice on lakes near my house, and twice on the Charles River.

The first lake we went to was pretty small, and quiet since most (all?) access is from private residences.  We just happen to have connections in the right places.  One of my mother’s friends very kindly let us borrow kayaks, paddles, and life vests and launch from her house.  We kayaked out to one end of the lake, then on the way back, we encountered some of the strongest wind I’ve kayaked into.  It was consistently creating waves, which, due to the power of relative velocity, made you feel like you were travelling twice as fast, especially if you paddled in sync with the waves.  And then you would look up at the shoreline and wonder how you could expend that much energy to travel backwards.

Lake number one, with fancy lake houses on the shore.

The second lake was larger, and had lots of little islands.  Along the shore side of the islands, the water was absolutely calm:

We went kayaking in the afternoon of a weekday, so we didn’t see any other boats at all until we were leaving closer to evening.  On our way back to the parking lot, we saw a couple boats fishing, and a canoe.  Then just as we were paddling into the little cove/inlet where the launching ramp was, a whole group of motorboats came speeding roaring motoring out.  Good timing.

As for the Charles River, I’ve kayaked on it before, but always further upstream.  These times, we launched near to Cambridge and had to share the river with motorboats, crew shells, and boat tours.  Still a good experience, but I prefer it when the river is quieter.

Saw these guys on the first trip.

Saw this the second time.  Just like this.  Really.*

*Not really.  I know, you want my Photoshop skillz.

The No-Longer-Hypothetical List of Exciting Things That Have Happened to me at Cornell, Spring 2015 edition

I’m finally writing my semester wrap up posts. I’m not going to say that I’m catching up on writing, because that would be to admit I’m behind. At the very least, though, I do want to write about my rock climbing trip to the Gunks. It was extremely exciting. Anyway, here’s the list:

1. Road tripping with the pep band: I had the opportunity to travel with the band for my first overnight trip. The stars finally aligned, allowing me to leave Olin for more than 24 hours, and I spent lots of hours on a bus travelling to Harvard and Dartmouth. It was during the time New England was buried under two or three miles of snow, and we were asked to bring blankets . . . just in case we were in New England longer than expected.

2. Outdoor rock climbing: Two years after I started climbing semi-regularly, I climbed outside for the first time. And not just anywhere, but in the Gunks (Shawangunks), which are considered by many to be world class climbing. I learned how to lead belay, remove and manage gear, and rappel, all while having a great time. And unlike during my sailing class, we had amazing weather.

View from the top of the Gunks.

3. Grading marathon(s): I’m not sure I would really consider this exciting, but it was quite an experience. After hundreds of hours at office hours, I found myself on the opposite side of the table for once. No matter how well you think you understand the homework problems (which we were required to fully work out before holding office hours), someone will ask something that hasn’t even crossed your mind. Or even better, it did cross your mind, but you promptly decided it wasn’t important. Anyway, the undergrad TAs were in charge of grading the fluids prelims and final, which was preferably done in a group in one long grading session. Seven hours staring at the same problem? So much fun. Except not.

4. APT puzzle challenge: One of the things I miss about high school is math team. Yes, really. There’s something about staring at a problem that looks ridiculous, then all of a sudden seeing exactly how to get the answer. One Saturday, a couple other ChemEs and I (yes, we hang out even when we’re not forced to in class) spent a few hours problem solving. We weren’t horribly great at it, but we weren’t awful either. Problems were similar to those found here.

5. The Glass Menagerie: One of the 161 Things is to see a play at the Schwartz Center. So I did, and it was very good. It was actually the same day that I graded the first fluids prelim. I’m sure I had plenty of problem sets to work on, but I gave myself the rest of the night off after grading for seven hours. Besides the actors’ excellent work, I liked seeing the props that I had a part in making being used.

Next semester will surely be exciting, because after three years of learning about running distillation columns and separators in theory, we'll be running them for real.  Hopefully we don't break anything too expensive.

Semester in Review [Spring 2015]

Half of four score and twenty days ago, our administrators brought forth on this university, the end of another semester, after many finals, in dedication to the pursuit of education. And only now will I be writing about it.

In addition to taking five academic classes requiring actual work, I had three one credit classes of varying time commitment, and I was a TA for (ChemE) Fluid Mechanics. Which may not have been the best idea, but the only thing I regret is not taking my liberal studies class pass/fail.

Environmental History – This was my second 2000-level liberal studies class. The material was interesting enough, but I didn’t find the course as a whole coherent. Although the professor lectured somewhat chronologically, in the end the class felt like a collection of related facts instead of topics that built on each other (unlike, say, an engineering class). If I were to recommend a history class, I liked History of Science in Europe much better*. I will say that the books and readings for the class were well chosen and generally interesting or of historical significance.

*With the caveat that the enjoyment of liberal studies classes – more so than technical classes – depends very much on the professor or teacher.

Intro to Process Dynamics and Control – Required ChemE class number one. This class focused on mathematically modeling systems to predict transient behavior (non-steady state, so the time derivative can’t be assumed to be zero, which just makes everything that much more difficult). In the second half of the class, we used the model to develop control systems.

Process Control Strategies – Not the same as the class directly above. I’m planning to use this as one my ChemE electives. In this class, the professor tried very hard to convince us that in the real world, no one uses mathematical models to control processes; people just use trial and error. While taking the class, I didn’t like the professor’s teaching strategy at all, but after getting through the class, I have to admit I learned ChemE things. The midterm and final were good exercises in process control, though frustrating at times – the TAs, on multiple occasions, gave us different answers to the same question asked minutes apart. That’s totally not confusing at all.

Chemical Kinetics and Reactor Design – Required ChemE class number two. It’s kind of like two mini classes – one on kinetics followed by one on reactors (though kinetics plays a part in designing reactors). Taught by the same professor who taught me Intro to ChemE, and just as well organized. We had competitions every week in recitation ranging from matching chemical reactions and rate equations to figuring out fun facts about our fellow ChemEs.

Analysis of Separation Processes – Required ChemE class number three. Another lecture style I was not a big fan of: annotating handouts on PowerPoint and drawing arrows all over everything. I didn’t need to read my notes anyway. Material was exciting enough, and relevant – separation units and reactors are both major parts of process design.

Career Perspectives – Required ChemE class number four. To go with the academic classes, we had a seminar every week given by a former ChemE who spoke about his or her current job. Definitely a good thing to see how (or not) their ChemE knowledge was used after graduation.

Production Lab – A couple times a week, I worked in the scene shop at the Schwartz Center. I used the screw guns and saws, painted, cut rope, and tied flowers, among other things, for two plays – The Glass Menagerie and Blood Wedding.

Shawangunks Rock Climbing – Another PE class just for fun. After a couple introductory/preparatory classes at Lindseth, we went climbing in the Gunks for a weekend. It was fantastic. I don’t know if I can say it was my favorite PE class ever, because b-rock was every week for over two months (vs. just a weekend), and in high school I got to try cross country skiing/go hiking/do the ropes course in PE, but it might be my favorite PE class ever.

If you made it to the end of this long post about classes which you probably don’t care about, congratulations. Here’s a picture of a waterfall as a reward:

April

Things happened in April, I think, but I’m not quite sure what they were. According to my records, here’s what happened:

[April] 1: Hiked the Cayuga Trail for an environmental history environment and just because I wanted to walk 5+ miles, because why not?

2: Got taken to dinner at Istanbul Turkish Kitchen (in the direction of the farmer’s market/the Sciencenter).

3: Baked mini apple pies in my muffin tin.

4: Wrote my soon-to-be-award-winning-(not-really)-children’s picture book See H about hydrocarbons and hydrocarbon derivatives.

5: Started writing my environmental history essay early. Shocking, I know.

6: Returned to classes.

7: Tied fake flowers to beds in production lab for the Schwartz Center’s performance of Blood Wedding.

8: Watched a documentary on Rachel Carson in environmental history.

9: Held office hours for fluids.

10: Cut rope for two hours in production lab (also to decorate the beds in Blood Wedding).

11: Went to a lacrosse doubleheader with the pep band in 40 degree weather. It snowed.

12: Played intramural coed indoor soccer in the Noyes gym.

13: Woke up unnecessarily early for fall 2015 pre-enroll (and didn’t pre-enroll in my only required ChemE class)

14: Took the second kinetics prelim.

15: Went to process dynamics office hours immediately followed by separations office hours.

16: Learned about emergency shutdown in process control strategies.

17: Spent Friday night partying grading fluids problem sets.

18: Participated in the APT puzzle challenge.

19: Ran the spotlight at Bailey for the Rhythms of China show.

20: Had pep band rehearsal.

21: Took the second separations prelim.

22: Got rained on during an Earth Day walk in environmental history.

23: Went to four hours of classes followed by four hours of office hours.

24: Saw Blood Wedding.

25: Watched the chorus, glee club, and orchestra perform at the charter weekend concert.

26: Had the first meeting for my outdoor rock climbing class.

27: Ate oatmeal with raisins and craisins for breakfast, just like every single other weekday. (On weekends the dining halls only serve cold breakfast, so I have muffins.)

28: Took the second process dynamics prelim.

29: Had the second meeting for my outdoor rock climbing class (and experienced a hanging belay at Lindseth).

30: Held office hours for the last fluids problem set.

Road Tripping: Havahd, a Not-Love Story

After we got to the hotel, we checked in and found our rooms on the eleventh floor of the hotel (the executive level). Although most of the rooms had four people assigned to them, I only ended up sharing a room with the other female clarinetist on the trip.

In the morning, we woken up by one of the previous inhabitants of the room who had set an alarm for 6 am. We heard the alarm go off, didn't know where the sound was coming from, couldn't see anything, and hit buttons on the clock and phone until the noise stopped. A few hours later, when we actually woke up, we found out that the hotel did not provide breakfast, but there was a Dunkin Donuts across the street. Welcome to New England.

After a lazy morning, and being asked by housekeeping twice(?) if we were checking out yet, we collected our things and returned to the bus. We then drove to Downtown Crossing where we were performing. I had told my parents it would be too cold for us to play outside, but apparently not. We put on layers, and gloves, except for the clarinets, which is the only open holed pep band instrument and thus the only one that you physically cannot play with gloves on.

I have fingerless gloves, but even with those on, my fingers were freezing within three songs. Plus, the pin on my B natural over the break (B4) freezes up when it’s cold. I should probably get my clarinet tuned up two years ago soon, but I also shouldn't be playing outside in twenty degree weather.

When the concert was over and I could feel my fingers again, I met my parents and they took me for lunch (chicken rice and noodles – it was very good). To try and get us and the hockey team back in Ithaca before a(nother) storm hit Boston, the game had been moved up to 4, so right after lunch I returned to the bus for the drive to Harvard’s rink.

We hit traffic (and almost a road sign) on the way over, but we made it into the rink with two minutes to spare before the team came out onto the ice. Attendance at this game was higher (3,095) but still not at Lynah levels, and only because of the number of Cornell fans at the game. Harvard’s band came as well.

If you look closely, you might be able to see that the conductor is conducting with a baton.
At a hockey game.
You know what that is/
Pretentiousness.

And so, after travelling hundreds of miles, we came to the Bright-Landry Hockey Center to watch the dance cam during the period breaks. Instead of playing our instruments, which is kind of the point of having a pep band there. We did get to play some, but at Lynah, besides a few announcements, the pep band provides all the entertainment. We play during warmups (Harvard has “warmup music”),  we play the anthems, they don’t do contests during the breaks, and we play at stoppages.

One thing I will say for Harvard’s rink is that they have a digital scoreboard that can show replays. Lynah’s scoreboard is up against one end of the rink and they don’t even keep track of shots in real time. I wouldn't want Lynah to have something exactly like Harvard's scoreboard because it wouldn't fit with the wooden seats and beams, but it was nice to get to see goals and plays you missed.

The game ended in a 3-3 tie, which was better than we might have expected but not as good as it could have been. Cornell opened the scoring but Harvard came back and midway through the third period scored on a badly marked play to make it 3-2 in their favor. Fortunately, Cornell answered with the last goal of the game.

We left Boston after overtime around 7:30 and drove for seven and a half hours (with a half hour stop in the middle) to return to Ithaca at 3 o’clock in the morning. So after two days, sixteen hours on the bus, sleep and nutrition of questionable quality, and two hockey games, we departed from New England with one point out of a possible four. Would I have liked to see Cornell win a game? Well, yeah. But the trip was still a lot of fun, and if I have the opportunity to travel for another hockey weekend, I’d do it.

Moth Hairs

Pippin: Merry, I've got it this time – Happy Moth Hairs Day!

Merry: Pip, you smoke too much.  That doesn't sound right at all.

Gimli: What are you two going on about?

Merry: Pippin thinks there’s some sort of occasion going on today.

Pippin: Yes, it’s Moth Hairs Day, just like last year.

Legolas: Mother’s Day, young master hobbit.

Gimli: Ah, a day celebrating dwarf women.  You know, some say that there are no dwarf women, and dwarves come up out of the ground.

Pippin: I – I don’t understand.

Merry: You don’t understand a lot of things, Pip. . . . Are there any dwarf women?

Gimli: Of course.  My very own mother.  Ask Frodo’s uncle, Bilbo; he’s seen a picture of her.

Gandalf: Yes, yes he has.  And how did we come at this topic?

Merry: Pippin was wishing everyone a Happy Moth Hairs Day, but he’d had it all wrong, it’s-

Pippin: Wait, I want to say it.

Merry: Go ahead, then.

Pippin: Happy Mother’s Day!

Road Tripping: Big Red visits the Big Green

In my two and a half years in the pep band, I had not gone on an overnight trip with the band until a few months ago. There were a variety of factors that led me to this decision. One, I’d never been on an overnight trip before and it would overlap with February break so I’d have time after the trip to relax. Two, I would only be missing two lectures (and production lab) instead of three or four lectures and a recitation. Three, it was the Harvard-Dartmouth trip. Four, I would be able to meet my parents in Boston in the middle of the trip. And five, I wanted to go.

I signed up and got on the trip and so I found myself hauling myself, Hezekiah, and a blanket, among other things, up the slope at 8:15 on Friday morning. The blanket was in case we got stuck in Boston after the Harvard game on Saturday night, which should give you an idea of how bad the weather in the northeast was this past winter.

We left Ithaca by nine and stopped for lunch at noon, kicking off two days of minimal nutrition healthy foods like pizza, burgers, and donuts. I had a sandwich and returned to the bus to finish reading Walden for environmental history. We watched Dodgeball and pulled into Hanover around five. Based on the minimal time I got to spend in Hanover, it seems like a nice town. It feels New England-ish.

From dinner, we walked back to the rink, where we arrived not only in time to play for the team as they came out of the locker room but also before the Dartmouth band. As far as the rink itself, it’s pretty nice, though I was doing some research on Thompson Arena and I have a couple points from Dartmouth Athletics’ official website to refute. For one, their statement that “Crowds of more than 4,000 regularly attend Dartmouth men's hockey games and the atmosphere can be electric . . .” The box score reports attendance at the game as 2,673, and this was on a Friday night in the midst of a six-game win streak for Dartmouth. Also, on our way out, we were informed that the 25+ people with the pep band outcheered the other 2,640 Dartmouth fans in the arena. Second, “One of the toughest arenas for visiting teams in all of college hockey, Thompson Arena’s design has been replicated by other schools trying to the create a similar feel.” First of all, good job proofreading. I’m interested in how other schools try to the create a similar feel. Next, Lynah is older; its first game was played in 1957 compared to 1975 for Thompson Arena.

You know what those things are at the back?  Empty seats.

As for the game itself, the first period saw Dartmouth jump out to a two goal lead only to be matched by Cornell. The second period was scoreless, and we thought we were heading into overtime . . . when Dartmouth scored with eight minutes left in the third period. Cornell couldn't come up with another goal, and so we left Hanover with the loss. On our way over to Harvard, we watched Love Story, and arrived at the hotel around midnight.

Reviews From the Road

When the pep band goes on away trips, we spend a lot of time on the bus. Instead of being productive To make the bus ride less monotonous, we watch movies (or anything on DVD; when we went to Madison Square Garden last semester we watched two and a half hours straight of Community).

Over February break (six weeks ago . . .), on my first overnight trip with the pep band, we ended up watching three movies, one on the way to Dartmouth, one between Dartmouth and Harvard, and one on the way back to Ithaca. After our lunch stop on the first day of the trip, we put in Dodgeball.

There are some movies that you watch for their story, animation, cinematography, character development, or thought-provoking ideas. Dodgeball is not one of them. The entirety of the movie was slightly totally ridiculous. That doesn't mean I disliked the movie; in fact I enjoyed it, but if you do watch it, be warned that there is very little substance to the movie. A group of guys joins a dodgeball tournament to try and win the prize money that will save their gym from closure, and that’s about all there is to the movie.

Then after the Dartmouth game on our way to Harvard, we watched Love Story (spoilers ahead). There are only two scenes that the pep band likes – the beginning, where Cornell beats Harvard in hockey, and the end, where Jenny dies. During this trip, however, we watched the whole movie, which contained a contrived plot, terrible dialogue, and seven thousand renditions of the Love Story theme. It was somehow nominated for both Academy Awards and Golden Globe Awards and spawned a sequel, which was universally acknowledged as being awful. I thought Love Story was so bad that I liked it. Time to find the sequel.

The last movie of the trip was Django Unchained, which would not have been my film of choice. We were warned that it was a violent movie before it started. That was a very accurate statement. The beginning has some violence, and there’s some scattered throughout the middle, but things really pick up in the ending sequence. Up until that point, the violence had been excessive, but in the last scenes it’s so utterly unnecessary it’s absurd. The movie’s about a freed slave who becomes a bounty hunter, so you know there’s going to be some shooting, and then the last half hour happens, and it’s a little more than some shooting. I’m not sure I’d watch it again, and if I did, it wouldn’t be soon. The movie was well done, but the violence is somewhat off-putting.

Overall, it was an interesting mix of movies on this trip. Nothing fantastic, but nothing I regret watching either, though my brain cells might beg to differ about Dodgeball.

3.14.15(926535897932384626)

In honor of the pi day of the century, I decided to come up with some trivia questions to celebrate.

Don McLean song with the lyrics “’Cause the players tried to take the field/The marching band refused to yield/Do you recall what was revealed/The day the music died?”

Fill in the blank: As American as _________

TV trope with origins in slapstick comedy

Maine’s state dessert

Circular chart used in statistics in which arc length is proportional to quantity or percentage

Book featuring a lifeboat and a tiger

Type of detective who can be hired to interview people, search records, and conduct surveillance, among other things

Black and white movie about a paranoid mathematician

Police drama featuring a retired police officer who also runs a restaurant

Type of hopes an ant might have

Ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter

Leave your answers in the comments; correct answers win a virtual high five. And no, I did not get any pie today.

Thirsty Thursday

Merry: Pip, look at this.

Pippin: What are they?

Merry: I heard they’re called shots.

Pippin: They look even bigger than pints.

Merry: Do you think so?

Pippin: How do we get some?

From left to right: Virgin piña colada, nonalcoholic wine, soft cider, and 0 proof vodka

$9.03

In an effort to apply the knowledge gained in my two introductory economics classes avoid giving the Cornell Store any of my parents’ hard-earned money, I bought all my books for this semester on Amazon or from Ithaca’s only cooperatively owned bookstore (Buffalo Street Books). Due to the Cornell Cartel’s Store’s manufacturer-suggested pricing, with added contribution to the Buy the Dean a Drink fund, I got all the textbooks I needed for my ChemE classes for less than the Cornell Store was charging to rent a used copy of the book.

The liberal studies class I signed up for mainly because it fit in my schedule didn't have any books listed with the Cornell Store, but when I went to the first lecture, it turned out that we did indeed require books. Nine of them, in fact. We had the option of buying the books online from the bookstore and having them delivered to class, buying them from another source, or using the books on reserve at the library. I prefer to have my own copy of the texts, so that meant the bookstore or Amazon.

Because I obviously have nothing better to do with my time, I found all the books on Amazon and cataloged their titles, prices, and ISBNs. Then I compared the prices on Amazon to the bookstore prices. The bookstore sold the whole course pack at list prices for $137 while the books on Amazon cost about $115 (16% cheaper). However, Amazon would charge tax (about 8%) while the bookstore did not, and the bookstore would deliver to the lecture in time for me to do the first book reading, compared to five to eight days for an Amazon delivery. Furthermore, the books on Amazon were not uniformly 16% cheaper but ranged from list price to over 20% cheaper.

Naturally, what I ended up doing was buying the first four books we needed from the bookstore because they were all either list price or 15 cents cheaper on Amazon. I ordered the last five books from Amazon a few days later. I saved $9.03.