Beer, bowling, and Boeing 747s*

In other words, another grad school visit. This week, the destination was Ann Arbor to visit the University of Michigan. I left at the more sane hour of 10 am after paying a quick visit to Olin to check in on our design presentation. Without having to wait for things like the computers to warm up and the deicer, I reached my first stop, Philadelphia, in plenty of time to catch my connecting flight to Detroit. The joke of this trip was that Detroit is one of the three places you can fly directly to from Ithaca but the flight was full by the time I booked my tickets.

The flight to Detroit landed early, of all things, but we had to wait for a few other flights and ended up standing around the baggage claim for an hour before getting stuck in Ann Arbor traffic for another hour. By the time we got to the hotel, we had just enough time to check in, get our information packets for the weekend, and head back out for dinner. We were taken to a bar for burgers and beer (both good) to meet professors and grad students. After dinner at the bar, we were taken out for drinks at another bar. Only in college. It was a good first night.

Friday was our serious business day. We had the department overview presentation before walking over to the North Campus Research Complex (NCRC) for the rest of the festivities. NCRC was bought from Pfizer by the medical college but the engineering school rents some of the space. Most of the ChemE faculty and labs have moved to NCRC. It’s a nice building.

We had a poster presentation and lunch followed by the faculty meetings, then we got a short break at the hotel before dinner. All fifty of the prospective students, plus current grad students, plus professors, were hosted at the house of one of the professors. We had a catered dinner (with open bar) and I talked to more of the grad students. After dinner options included returning to the hotel (tempting, but boring), a bar crawl (also tempting, but I would probably have passed out after approximately one bar), and bowling (which I went to).

I bowled a game that would have looked better on a golf scorecard before realizing that the line on the floor was too far back for my child-sized legs. Once I stood in front of the line to begin my approach, I immediately bowled strikes for the rest of the game slightly fewer gutterballs. We got back to the hotel after midnight but I got up early the next day for ice skating, because I couldn’t give up the opportunity to skate at Yost Ice Arena. Fun fact: according to Wikipedia, a weekend series against Cornell in 1991 holds the record for largest crowd in Yost.

Ice skating at Yost

I continued my athletic prowess by falling all over the ice. I did, however, avoid giving myself any blisters. We returned to the hotel for brunch, which was followed by a driving tour, whirlyball, and a grad student panel. Our last events for the weekend were dinner in smaller groups with a few professors and grad students, then a house party. By the time we made it to the house party, everyone was pretty tired, including the grad students. We were driven to the house party, I had an unknown quantity of the punch, then one of the students said she would be leaving to drive people back to the hotel. A few of us moved toward the foyer to leave, where we were met by another student who was thrilled to discover that two cars were needed and he could leave too.

Back at the hotel, I packed for the following morning, when I would, once again, be at the airport for an early morning flight. At 4:30 am the next day, I met with the other unfortunate students who were leaving Ann Arbor before sunrise. Unlike in Ithaca, there was already a line, though not a very long one, for security. I got through pretty quickly, then settled down at my gate to write a memo for senior design. That’s ChemE life for you.

Like the previous week, the flights home went smoothly. I got to Philadelphia with more than an hour before my connecting flight, so I thought I’d take my time getting to my next gate. About five minutes later, coming out of the end of terminal A, I noticed a set of doors to my right leading to a convenient shuttle to terminal F, where I was headed. Another sign warned me that terminal F was a fifteen minute walk. I chose to walk since I had time, plus I’d just been sitting for an hour. Well, the sign wasn’t wrong. The Philadelphia airport is shaped kind of like a giant insect. I had landed by the tail; my next plane was taking off from the tip of the antenna.

When I made it to the end of terminal F, I found out why I was taking off from there. I was surrounded by people going to places like Bangor, Buffalo, and Sheboygan – other small-ish towns more or less in the middle of nowhere. Our small fleet of turboprop planes was relegated to this end of the airport, probably so they wouldn’t accidentally get run over by a 747. I met another Cornell ChemE (it was peak grad school visiting time). We flew back to Ithaca, took the TCAT back to Cornell, and I promptly began studying for my wines prelim and finalizing process conditions for design.

*Note that all the aircraft I rode were much too small to be Boeing 747s. I did get to fly on the trusty DeHavilland Dash 8 turboprop again though.