dy/dx Day

For the first time since my matriculation at Cornell, I went to Slope Day as a willing participant. Part of the reason was that I figured I should go to Slope Day at least once, but the bigger part was that for the first time in four years, the main guest was not a rapper. I will listen to almost any kind of music, including country, folk, and techno Christmas music, but excluding rap and heavy metal. Anyway, the main feature was Walk the Moon, who does “Shut Up and Dance,” which is in the pep band folder, so I had to at least go for that song.

I started my day out by volunteering to help set up Slopefest, the carnival type event that takes place on Ho Plaza. The previous year, there had been games and food, but this year they decided to focus on the food to help keep people from drinking on an empty stomach. (Reasons for the switch – Budget cuts? Too many drunk beanbag tossers? A cornhole boycott?) Most of the food they were offering was sugar-laden, which I’m not sure is the best thing to eat with large quantities of alcohol, but I wasn’t in charge of the event.

After my shift carrying tables, setting up tents, and scooping five gallons of chocolate frosting, I returned to my apartment for a lunch featuring Fritos, a banana, and yogurt. Later that afternoon, I went back to the slope to see Walk the Moon. The plaza was significantly more crowded than when I had been there at 8:30 in the morning, and the best way to describe the slope was insane. I met a couple friends, then retreated to the far reaches of the slope where 1) I could hear things that weren’t extremely amped electric guitar or screaming, 2) I wouldn’t be trampled by drunk people, and 3) I couldn’t feel the bass.

View from the top of the slope

It was a nice hot sunny day for the middle of May in Ithaca so I spent over an hour on the slope listening to Walk the Moon. Funny story about the weather. The year before, the forecast predicted a major thunderstorm on Slope Day, right up until the night before the event. The Slope Day committee started to panic and make contingency plans for Slope Day to be held in Barton, which would have been terrible because Barton is a fraction of the size of the slope, and the amount of people and alcohol packed in there would have been awful. But they plan just in case. Then the day of Slope Day dawns. It’s a beautiful sunny day. Not a drop of rain falls all day.

This year, this was the weather forecast:

Weather forecast for Ithaca the week of Slope Day

It happened pretty close to what they predicted, but what makes it so amusing to me is that on Saturday (5/7), AAIV had our field day outside at Treman State Park. On Monday (5/9), the pep band had our last rehearsal of the year, which is always a series of outdoor concerts around campus. Thursday (5/12) was Slope Day. In between every one of these outdoor events, it rained. So thanks, weather machine. But no thanks for what happened at graduation. That would be coming up in just a couple short weeks.

There and Back Again on the Cayuga Trail

After our summer adventure on the Cayuga Trail, my roommate (the one also known as my partner in crime adventure) and I thought about it, and decided that a great follow up would be to hike the Cayuga Trail both ways in a single day. Seventeen miles is totally doable for a day hike. As the days and weeks of spring semester passed, we needed to pick a date if we were going to complete our epic hike before graduation. We decided on some time during spring break, watched the temperature and chance of rain, and finally selected Wednesday, March 30^th, for our feat.

We set out early, arriving at the trailhead shortly after eight. It was cool, an awkward temperature that was a little chilly for standing around but too warm for layers once we started walking. It was one-and-a-half jacket temperature. We had experienced the first half of the hike in the summer, in much warmer and more mosquito-ridden conditions, and so made our way across campus, through the botanical garden and arboretum, to the bluffs and Monkey Run, without incident. The trail was surprisingly wet, considering all the snow on campus had been melted for awhile, we hadn’t gotten much rain recently, and we were often on steep hillsides that shouldn’t have retained so much moisture.

The bluffs.  Compare to the picture from summer's post, which is much greener.

Like in the summer, we didn’t see many other people, just a couple around the plantations and a few more at the Monkey Run section of the trail. I wasn’t complaining; if Taughannock in the summer is Disney World, the Cayuga Trail is a random ichthyology museum, and maybe I happen to like fish a lot.

We hiked to the end of the trail before having our sandwiches and fruit picnic lunch on the grass. After eating, halfway done with our task, we headed back toward Cornell through Monkey Run, which actually has some cool trees. Yes, trees. It’s not one tree in particular, but all of them together – they’re all very straight and tall and don’t have branches until pretty high up. It’s more impressive in person, but here’s a picture.

The Monkey Run trees

Following the exciting trees, we returned to the creek and meandered our way back to Cornell. Weird sighting of the day: baby in a shoe. I’m not kidding.

Baby in a shoe

Finally, as afternoon turned into evening, we arrived back at the start of the trail. Not where we had started. That was another mile away. We took some celebratory pictures, then dragged ourselves back to campus. From there, I returned to my apartment, put on a cleaner shirt and washed some of the grime out from under my fingernails, met my partner in crime adventure and another friend, and we walked (yes, walked, on our moderately grumpy feet) another mile to the Commons to eat giant burgers. We did take the bus back up the hill to campus.

All told, we walked the seventeen miles of the Cayuga Trail, out and back, in about eight and a half hours. According to the time stamps on my photos, we hiked the “back” portion about an hour faster than the “out” part. Adding the miles I had to walk to and from the trailhead and to the Commons, I covered more than twenty miles by foot, my current record for a single day. So the Cayuga Trail both ways in a day is one item that can be struck off my to-be-hiked list; other hikes of interest include the rim to rim at the Grand Canyon, Katahdin, and the 4000 footers in the White Mountains. Guess it’s time to start planning. . . .

There . . . (East end of the trail)

. . . And back again (West end)