Big Red Hockey

For the first time since graduation, I saw my favorite hockey team play live. It started when I got the Michigan athletics email offering staff discounts on select (i.e. out of conference, not popular) Michigan hockey games. That made me think about Cornell hockey, so I went to look up the team and see what they would be up to this season. In the back of my mind, I was wondering if any of the games in New England would be near when I was going home for Christmas, or if there was any way I could structure my break to see a Cornell hockey game. Instead, what I found out was that Cornell men’s hockey was coming to East Lansing, Michigan, to play Michigan State. East Lansing is a mere hour’s drive from Ann Arbor. 

One of my friends, a fellow Cornell graduate, didn’t take any convincing to agree that we should go to the game. I bought the tickets, we dragged along another friend (who had never seen a hockey game before), and headed out for Lansing on a Friday evening. Munn Ice Arena is the sixth hockey arena I’ve been to, after Lynah Rink (Cornell), Madison Square Garden, Thompson Arena (Dartmouth), the Bright-Landry Hockey Center (aka Lynah east) (Harvard), and Yost Ice Arena (Michigan). It was a lot like most of the other rinks I’ve visited – lots of plastic and metal, video screen, weird prize games during the period breaks. The band was pretty good though. They at least looked like they were having more fun than the Michigan hockey band, and I strongly approve of their second period break set – “Everybody’s Everything” (Santana, 1971), and “Sell Out” (Reel Big Fish, 2010). Nothing like some classic rock and ska to go with your hockey. And I played both of those songs regularly with the Cornell pep band, so I was happy to hear them.

Cornell hockey!

I was also happy with the final score. Based on the rankings, odds were that Cornell would probably win, but they were on the road for their first weekend of NCAA-counted play, versus MSU’s second or third. The rankings carrying over from the previous season also sometimes don’t mean that much, depending on the amount of team turnover from graduation. All of that is to say that Cornell started very shakily. The whole team kept giving up the puck directly in front of their own goal, they couldn’t pass out of their own half, and when they were in MSU’s half, they weren’t getting shots off.

End of game.  Final score: Cornell 3, MSU 2.

Shortly after the start of the game, MSU went on the power play, and before Cornell could get organized, scored. They got a goal back, also on the power play, to go into the first period break tied. In the second period, Cornell started looking a little better, but their penalty kill unit still looked questionable, and MSU scored on a 4-on-3 power play. Again, they managed to tie the game, this time by a lot of hacking and bashing in front of the net that somehow ended with the puck sneaking over the line. The next goal of the game came on another Cornell power play near the end of the second period. With that, Cornell went into the third period up a goal and had twenty minutes to either hold on to their lead or extend it. They didn’t score again that night, but neither did MSU, so they got the 3-2 win. During the rematch the next night, they picked up the scoring (final score, 6-2), leaving Michigan with a pair of wins and an encouraging start to the season. I can’t say Cornell ever looked great at their game Friday night, but they looked better as the night went on. The defense got themselves sorted out and the offence started to string passes together. Their goals were of the “puck is in the net” variety rather than the “great play/shot” kind, but in the end what matters is the number of goals, not the quality. They got the job done, and I got to see them do it. Until next time. Let’s go red.

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, part 4 of 3

It’s the last day of November. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, here’s my annual post.

After four long, crazy, adventure-filled, fun, and busy years at Cornell, I graduated at the end of May. That’s four years of dining hall breakfasts, morning classes in Olin, afternoon recitations in Olin, before-dinner bouldering, evenings at Lynah, nights back in Olin, midnight snacks, and late nights with only a roommate and a P-chem book for company. I couldn’t have done it – not so well or with so much enjoyment – without a lot of people.

So thank you to the following people, listed in alphabetical order by height:

The Cornell Big Red Pep Band, and in particular the clarinet section. There’s no other group I’d rather watch sprint football, lacrosse, field hockey, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball, wrestling, tennis, or hockey with.

AAIV (Asian American InterVarsity) and SCF (Summer Christian Fellowship), for Wednesday night barbeque, Thursday and Friday night large group, and prayers and lessons every day. Even if no event, whether big of small, ever started on time, which drove might have driven me slightly crazy. Also thanks to my GUPpie for advice and encouragement over meals for three years and email after that.

Bethel Grove Bible Church, my home-away-from-home church, for hymns, sermons, bagels and apple juice, and the people I met and got to know during my time there.

Cornell Outdoor Education, for four great PE classes and many hours at Lindseth and Noyes. Keep calm and climb on.

The Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, including the office and building staff who kept Olin running smoothly, the grad students who shared our space and TA’d us, and the professors who taught us everything we never wanted to know.

The ChemE class of 2016. After more hours in Olin than we could count, three-hour-long prelim marathons, beating Aspen into submission, and surviving Unit Ops lab and senior design, I just have one thing to say: We did it.

The 4D Ricktatorship. Rick, for keeping us all in line and sharing wine. Coral, for late night kitchen table homework sessions/snacks and mutual understanding over lab woes. Sasha, for being the sane one in the apartment. Daryl, for 7-11 ice cream, robots, and being our housecat. And T Dawg, for Wegmans runs, planning AAIV events, and being my roommate. (And Michonne, for completing the roommate triangle and for mutual enjoyment of The Walking Dead, beer, random rambling, Sherlock, “Hardware Store,” and unnecessarily long hikes.)

And finally, all the other friends and family who had meals, embarked on adventures, and suffered through classes with me, listened to me rant, paid my tuition, and generally put up with me.

To everyone: Thank you very much for all the fish.

Class of 2016

The previous post about brings us to graduation, minus a few things I might go back and write about later if I feel like it. First things first: I graduated. It was not without much ceremony, pomp, and circumstances beyond our control, because what would be a graduation from Cornell without getting sunburned at Convocation and being caught in the middle of a thunderstorm at Commencement? Yeah, that happened.

My family arrived on Friday evening, after getting a first-ever flat tire within an hour of leaving the house. Maybe that should have been a clue it was going to be an interesting weekend. Saturday morning, we joined thousands of other families and students at Schoellkopf Field to hear performances by the band and chorus, a bunch of random people’s speeches, and James Franco, after which everyone left. My family stayed until the bitter, salty¹ end. Yes, it was hot, but the last guy, whoever he was, deserved to be heard too.

Convocation at Schoellkopf

I spent the last of my BRB’s at Trillium for special graduation weekend lunches, then we went to Watkins Glen. The gorge trail was insanely busy, with people doing such things as pushing strollers, letting hoards of children run/stop as they pleased, and leisurely strolling down the path two by two. I generally don’t mind how people choose to walk/hike at state parks unless it’s dangerous, but you probably shouldn’t, out of general courtesy, center your stroller in the middle of the trail or block the entire path when it’s that busy.

Falls at Watkins Glen.
The people density is crazy high for a hike.

Anyway, the hike was still nice, especially at the end where the crowds thinned out a lot. We ended the day with burgers at the Glenwood Pines. Nothing fancy, but they make solid burgers. I generally refuse to eat fast food burgers, so if I’ll eat it, it has to have some minimum quality. With that resounding endorsement², I returned to my apartment for my last night(!) there.

The next morning was humid and overcast, but Cornell made the decision to go ahead with outdoor Commencement, so all six thousand or so of us lined up on the arts quad to make the trek over to the stadium. The weather held . . . for about half an hour, when the engineering school was getting seated. We sat in the pouring rain while the remaining students entered, sat through speeches while thunder rumbled in the distance, and got more soaked. Finally, after several cycles of kind of clearing but not really, the ceremony was cut short, all six thousand degrees were conferred at once, and we were dismissed to our department ceremonies. Ours was, naturally, in Olin. Where else?

We were split up by design group, because Olin doesn’t have a lecture hall large enough for all ninety-six of us plus families. The design professors were tasked with saying something nice about every student, we were presented with a fake diploma, and with that, we were done.

We hung around for snacks and pictures, but after four years, 130+ credits, and countless hours in Olin, we had our Chemical Engineering degrees. It felt . . . good. And strange, with a side of weird thrown in. But mostly good.

¹From all the sweat. It was ninety degrees with full sun.
²I really do like their burgers. And they have a fun hidden object placemat.

Some People Are Worth Freezing For

In this special Valentine’s Day edition of things to do when it’s zero degrees out, my roommate and I put on four layers of clothing, hats, gloves, and boots, and go for a walk. We were hanging around Cornell for February break and my friend got the idea to take a walk. She invited another of our friends, who declined the invitation (I have no idea why. I only lost feeling in my face as soon as I stepped out of my apartment.), so the two of us set out for the arboretum by ourselves.

Part of the reason for our trip was so that we could go sledding. The arboretum is one of the places the Cornell police department encourages people to sled, and there’s a decent sledding hill, which feels more than decent when you’re biking it, at the end of the entrance road. We joined the few others sledding at the top and prepared to send ourselves hurtling down on a piece of plastic. The snow was pretty dry and packed down so it was a fast ride. I managed to not injure myself, which is always a good thing. After a few runs we continued on our journey.

View from the Newman Overlook

We looped around to the overlook, took some pictures, then began the long trek back to West Campus. By this time, my feet finally started to warm up, which I appreciated, and I could still feel my fingers, so the coldest part of me was my face. I’d still say I was feeling better than the time I was going back to North Campus after pep band and my toes got so cold it took a good fifteen minutes to warm them up. Or the other time I was walking back to West Campus after hockey and the air temperature was below zero with windchill bringing it down near to negative forty. Hockey is worth it.

We arrived back at the top of the slope just in time to see the sunset around three pm five. After ending our journey walking romantically into the sunset, we parted ways to go thaw out. The next day, we participated in more appropriate February activities with our other friends (dinner and Sherlock - the BBC series). And six weeks later when Ithaca was mostly unfrozen, we hiked the Cayuga Trail (again).

Sunset over West Campus

Rafting and Wine Tasting (Not at the Same Time)

In between Slope Day and graduation, I had a couple finals, a presentation, and Senior Days. Some schools have commencement the day after the last final, but Cornell leaves half a week between the last scheduled final and graduation. During those days, there are events ranging from whitewater rafting and laser tag to wine tasting and fancy lunches. From the title of this post, you may have been able to surmise that I went rafting and to the wine tasting.

I usually kayak flatwater a few times during the summer when I’m home, but I had never been whitewater boating of any kind. To find appropriate river conditions, we were bussed a couple hours away from Ithaca. Having recently completed the last round of finals and presentations of our undergrad careers, many of us spent the trip over sleeping, watching the cornfields roll past the windows, or staring blankly into space.

When we arrived at the boating company, we were outfitted with oars, helmets, rubber boots, water-resistant jackets, and life vests, loaded back onto the bus, and driven to the launching point. Before touching the water, we were given the safety spiel and paddle commands. We helped to haul our raft into the river, practiced paddling in calm water, then floated off on our way down the river. There were about half a dozen rapids on our journey, a portage in the middle to get past a dam, and a portage at the end to get back to the bus.

The rapids were class III and IV, which meant that we saw some large-ish waves, eddies, and a couple decent drops. I never felt like I was going to fall out of the raft – we had our feet wedged in – and I didn’t even get too wet. It was definitely different paddling to maneuver through rocks or get into position for a drop rather than primarily as a means of propelling the boat like on flatwater. Overall, we had a really nice sunny day, and I had a lot of fun trying something new. The wine tasting a couple days later was a different kind of fun.

The tasting was held in the Statler, and featured appetizer-like food and wines from six countries, a red wine and a white wine from each country. Especially at the beginning, the room was extremely crowded and there weren’t enough places for people to get out of the way of the food/wine lines, but I think it was the first time holding the event or the first time in Statler, so I’ll cut the event organizers some slack. Plus the buffalo chicken dip was delicious. Buffalo chicken dip can totally be a meal by itself, right? I’ve picked my meal for next week, but there’s the week after that. . . .

Besides the dip, I also had a couple really good wines, a couple average wines, and a couple not so great wines. My least favorite wine of the day was a Malbec from Argentina, which was also the only red wine I tried. I keep trying red wines in the hope that I’ll find the magic red wine that doesn’t taste like tar or metal or make my tongue feel like tannins. Hasn’t happened yet. The average wines included the white wines from the United States (I actually don’t remember the varietal, but it was probably a Chardonnay. It tasted very white wine-ish.) and France. My favorite wines of the afternoon were a Pinot Grigio from Italy and an Australian Moscato. I don’t have tasting notes but I believe the Pinot Grigio was a well-balanced wine that wasn’t too sweet or acidic and had enough fruit-ness and body to not taste like grape water. The Moscato was sweet. And good.

And now I want wine. But I wouldn’t drink a bottle fast enough to finish it before the wine oxidized, so I might have to settle for hard cider. A friend recommended cinnamon hard cider. Time for a special trip to the grocery store.

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)

Four Hundred Seventy-Something

After four years of the Alma Mater, Davy, heckling, fouls, penalties, goals, 80s ska punk (“Take on Me”), and 80s rock (the rest of the music), I finished my time with the Cornell Big Red Pep Band with somewhere around 470 points, short of the 500 point mark, but a lot of pep band nonetheless. If my record keeping is accurate, I attended more than 250 events, almost 200 of which were rehearsals and hockey games. The remaining sixty events include field hockey, tennis, basketball, baseball, softball, wrestling, lacrosse, sprint football, volleyball, and a wedding reception.

As I mentioned in a previous post, besides ChemE, pep band was really the only other thing I did week in and week out all four years. There were some great moments, and stories to tell from the times that weren’t so great. Some that come to mind –

– The time we were at sprint football and it had been drizzling on and off but the manager finally decided to move us to a covered part of the stands. As we were moving, it started to pour, and continued to pour for the rest of the game. Good decision.

– The time we went to volleyball and the team lost the first two sets, then won the next two, so we had to stay for a full five-set match, then they lost the last set.

– The time the men’s basketball team clawed their way back from a pretty bad points deficit to tie the game in the final seconds, making us stay for overtime, then lost in overtime.

– The year the women’s hockey team kept scoring last-minute goals to advance through the playoffs.

– The men’s hockey game where two of the refs’ last names were Kitchen and Drain and it made the band’s night. Also telling Colgate (the school) that Crest (the toothpaste) is better, reminding Princeton they’re in New Jersey, and bringing up grade inflation and cheating scandals against Harvard whenever possible (actually winning against them is an additional bonus).

– Trying to figure out wrestling.

– My only overnight away trip with the band to Dartmouth and Harvard the year Boston got buried in snow and watching “Love Story” on the bus.

So I saw a lot of sports, and played a lot of music and had a lot of fun. If anyone’s interested, here’s a table with events listed per sport and year.

Pep band events charted by year and sport.  Not shown - 3 red/white hockey games,
which kick off the hockey season and involve both the men's and women's hockey teams.

Last pep band rehearsal.  Picture taken from somewhere on Facebook.

Trockenbeerenauslese

My favorite word from the wines class I took during my last semester at Cornell is trockenbeerenauslese. It’s the designation for the wine with the highest sugar content in Germany, where classifications are based on ripeness of the grapes when they’re picked. Yes, Cornell has a class all about wine, and yes, we drank in class.

It wasn’t all drinking all the time though. We learned about classification systems, labeling laws, signature varietals, characteristics of wine, and how to open a bottle of champagne, among other things. Most weeks we sampled an average of six wines by region, except for champagne/sparkling wine, which was saved for the last week of class. It was a good fitting end to the last class of my undergrad career.

Having sampled several dozen wines over the course of the semester, I learned about my taste in wine without having to commit to buying any full bottle of wine. Because I don’t like spending real money. Here non-real money mostly refers to BRB’s*, which are purchased with real money, but that’s beside the point. Anyway, I found out that I dislike the majority of red wines. Interestingly, the red wines I liked best were from Washington and Oregon. Their taste is said to be between the minerality of French reds and the fruitiness of California reds, both of which I didn’t care for. I also didn’t like the aged red wine that we tried. (Port cherry sundaes, however, are delicious.)

So it’s white wines for me. Thanks specifically to this wines class, Cornell produces a disproportionate number of Riesling drinkers. Riesling is the signature German white varietal, and is mainly known for being too sweet for “serious wine connoisseurs,” but it’s also grown in the Finger Lakes, and dry or sweet, I like it. I also enjoy Gewurztraminer (another German varietal and another great word) and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, known for its notes of gooseberry. Chardonnay is also more than drinkable, though its main taste is usually white wine. (Except it’s apparently the thing to complain about over-oaked California Chardonnays.)

And that’s the story of how I came to drink white wine and become a Riesling fan. Send wine to Actually, the grocery store closest to me has a wine and beer license so I can just go buy my own wine. Actually, I don’t drink that much; I have part of a pack of beer that’s been sitting in my closet untouched for about a month now. Actually, my beer drinking is a whole other story. Maybe some other time.

*Cornell meal plan money that can be spent at a la carte dining places around campus. People like to try and pay for anything they can in BRB’s. Examples: Collegetown restaurants, groceries, parking tickets, Amazon orders.

Things I Learned at Cornell: Ice is Hard

In some of the many classes I attended in Cornell’s lecture halls, we learned about water. We saw how the density of water decreases when it freezes on its phase diagram, then were reintroduced to that phase diagram in thermodynamics. Turns out there are over ten types of ice. We calculated hydrostatic forces and surface tension and drew McCabe-Thiele diagrams for the distillation of water and methanol. There are, however, some things that can only be learned through real life experience. And through firsthand experience, I learned all about how ice is hard. Plus cold.

Before attending Cornell, I could follow along with any of the commonly played sports but really only cared about soccer (and in particular the hapless New England Revolution). Then I arrived at Cornell, joined the pep band, and went to 94 hockey games in four years. For all the skating (and shooting, passing, name calling, body checking, and fighting) I watched, it took until the end of fall semester of my junior year to get me out onto the ice in skates. The event was a skate night with the hockey teams, and many of the pep band members went. So I went too, and did something vaguely reminiscent of skating. I had fun, and and wouldn’t you know it, every time I fell the ice provided a nice, hard, unyielding cushion to land on.

Open skate at Lynah

Another year passed, and senior year was well underway when I returned to Lynah to skate for the second time in my life. A few friends and I had talked about having fun during the year since it would be our last chance to do a lot of things at Cornell. Apparently falling half a dozen times, slide tackling the boards on skates, and a blister that took weeks to heal weren’t enough to deter me from skating, because ice skating was on my list of things to do before graduating and leaving Ithaca.

I met one of my former roommates at Lynah on a Sunday night for open skate and fell slightly less. Something else I got from that night is perhaps the only picture of said roommate and I where we both look fairly normal. I also saw several fellow ChemEs taking a break from Olin, because sometimes you have to forgo perfect reactor dimensions and separation purities for your sanity’s sake and go glide in circles for a couple hours.

A couple weeks later I got the chance to skate at Yost Arena at the University of Michigan while I was there for the engineering grad school visit weekend. The day I returned to Ithaca, I skated at Lynah for the last time as an undergrad. And I didn’t fall once. But not to worry, I fully remember my lesson: ice is hard.

Off Belay

[Part 3 of 3 of my Gunks trip.  Part 1 here and Part 2 here.]

After another cold night, we again awoke at six in the morning. Everything covered by my sleeping bag had been warm enough, but keeping your face comfortable consists of alternating between warmth and oxygen. I changed into a relatively clean outfit and packed my things. My tent partner and I managed to be the first to take down our tent and have it packed away.

We had another breakfast of oatmeal, made more sandwiches for lunch (peanut butter and jam for me this time), rechecked our packs, loaded the van, and drove off from our campsite for the second and last time. Our second day at the Gunks, we climbed at a different part of the cliffs, accessed this time from a very steep, very long series of stone steps. I actually like stairs, but stairs with an unwieldy blue beast strapped to me? Not as fun. With the departure of another of the class members for a wedding, we were down to four students and four instructors. I was climbing with a different instructor, and we set up at the bottom of High Corner, our route for the morning.

The Gunks are popular enough that there are often climbers waiting for routes, but of the five multi-pitch routes I climbed that weekend, I didn’t have to wait for any of them, partly because of how early we got to the cliffs both mornings. Even though it was barely May, the weather was absolutely beautiful. Sunshine, clear blue skies – it almost got too hot, though that had approximately no effect on my chalk use. My hands can sweat in forty degree Lindseth just by thinking about climbing.

I ascended High Corner, sorting out a tangled rope on the way up, and was on top of the cliffs for the fourth time. There’s something about looking down a vertical face and thinking, I climbed that. We met up with another climbing pair and took part in a four person, two rope rappel involving the European death knot. A break for lunch, and then I climbed my last pitch on Jackie. It was a fun climb; at one point I was under an overhang, and the shorter you are, the more you find yourself hanging upside down as you try to swing yourself up and over. I’m pretty short. I eventually hauled myself up to the anchor, did my last rappel, belayed my instructor down, coiled the rope, and took off my shoes to sit in the sun and watch the other groups climb their last climbs.

The van ride back to Cornell was long. We stopped to eat a pizza dinner in a bug infested field next to the highway. When we returned to COE, we had to sort through every single piece of equipment we’d taken on our trip. But even before we pulled up to the curb at Bartels, I wanted to go back to the Gunks. It was exhausting, hanging off the rock, clipping and unclipping, letting rope out and gathering it back in, but it was also a challenge to be accepted, exciting in a way that only being a hundred feet off the ground with nothing below your feet could be, and just plain fun. I don’t know if I’ll get to go back, but I sure want to. Because when you reach up for the next hold to pull yourself upward, always upward, and nail the move, it doesn’t matter how bruised your knees are or how scraped and cut your knuckles and palms are. It feels good.

Climb On

[Part 2 of 3 of my Gunks trip.  Go back here for Part 1 and here for Part 3]

My alarm went off at six in the morning. We ate oatmeal for breakfast before transforming the table into our lunch making station. On the menu for the day were sandwiches, brownies, and apples. I packed my backpack with my lunch, water, one hundred feet of rope, climbing shoes, chalk bag, helmet, and harness with belay device, locking carabiners, nut tool, cordelettes, slings, and the climbing guide book neatly clipped to its gear loops. When I wrangled everything into the day pack, it resembled a small child in size and weight, but with less whining and kicking.

After everyone had eaten, made lunch, filled water bottles, and loaded packs, we piled into the van to drive the final miles to the Gunks. There was a COE top roping class camped further down the road, and as we rolled past them, their campsite was quiet and still. “I’m not saying we’re better than them,” one of our instructors said later, “but we’re better than them.” He had a point. We’d driven all the way out here to climb, so we were going to climb every minute we could. Plus, they were top roping, which you can do at Lindseth. We were going trad climbing. Multi-pitch trad climbing, which is why we needed so much gear.

In the parking lot, each instructor collected his or her students. Due to the small size of the class, the instructors, except one, had only a single student each. After a final gear check, we shouldered our packs and walked to the cliffs. Most of the Gunks can be accessed by a convenient carriage road that runs below the cliffs. To get to the start of a climb, you just have to walk from the carriage road to the base of the cliff instead of bushwhacking three miles into the middle of nowhere. My instructor and I located our first climb of the day, I reviewed the climbing commands, then we set our packs down and got ready to climb. We put harnesses and climbing shoes on, and I laid the rope out (known as flaking) and set up my belay device.

The instructor had the nuts and cams that would secure us to the rock. She asked if she was on belay, I applied in the affirmative, and she started climbing. I watched as she disappeared up the rock face, the rope snaking up behind her. Occasionally I could hear the clink of metal or the rope hissing against the rock, friction fighting against a change in direction. Mostly I watched the rope, waiting when it stayed still and feeding it through my belay device before it threatened to pull taut. Then the call came that my instructor had reached the first anchor. I felt the rope pull against my harness, and it was my turn to climb. There are some instant differences to climbing indoors – outside, you’re allowed to use whatever you want for your hand and footholds, and there’s more dirt. If you’re trad climbing, you also have to remove gear as you climb. When you reach a cam or a nut, you have to find a stance that gives you enough free hand to remove the gear and transfer it to your harness. As you ascend, you steadily gain weight, and depending on the length of the pitch and amount of protection, you arrive at the anchor with your harness weighted down and crowded.

It took all morning for my first three pitch climb. At the top of the cliff, I sat in the grass and looked out across the expanse of trees and forest below. I had made it. We rappelled down and took a break for lunch. My turkey and cheese sandwich, grimy with dirt and warm from sitting in my pack, was the best sandwich I’ve ever had. I followed the sandwich with a brownie and lukewarm water, but saved the apple for a snack later. Despite, or perhaps because of, the dirt that must have transferred from my hands to the fruit, the apple was delicious as well.

View from the top of the Gunks

We climbed two more routes in the afternoon. My muscles ached, my knees were bruised purple, and I was incredibly tired and happy. Before returning to the campsite, we met up with the rest of the class to do a couple of top roping routes. I climbed one Gunks 5.7 and tried another, but kept falling. It was a good thing I was wearing my helmet the whole time, because I managed to fall between the wall and a boulder and bump into it hard enough to be grateful for head protection. Finally, after most of the class had tried the route and the sun was sinking below the trees, we headed back to camp for dinner.

We had pesto pasta with tomatoes and mozzarella followed by banana boats (or just bananas) around a campfire. Then we headed off to bed, smudged with sweat and dirt, sore with bruises and scrapes, but full and satisfied, for another early start the next morning.

[In case anyone’s familiar with the Gunks and interested, I climbed Beginner’s Delight, Minty, Blueberry Ledges, and Laurel and attempted Ken’s Crack.]

On Belay

[Throwback Thursday on a Tuesday? My blog, my rules. I wrote this well after I went on the trip and I’m posting it well after writing it.  This is Part 1 of 3.  Here are Parts 2 and 3.]

On a Friday night at the very beginning of May in the year 2015, I set out from Cornell Outdoor Education (COE) for my next great adventure. It really started during the spring of my freshman year, when I satisfied a longtime desire to go rock climbing by enrolling in and successfully completing COE’s Beginning Rock Climbing class. Except I didn’t stop there. I went home for the summer, returned to Cornell with chalk and climbing shoes, and kept climbing through sophomore year. That summer, I stayed in Ithaca and bouldered, then dragged my friend out to the wall to belay me as soon as she got back to Cornell. Throughout the next year, I gradually began to conquer the easier routes at Lindseth, and at spring pre-enroll, decided to try out outdoor rock climbing. I signed up for a weekend class at the Shawangunks (known as the Gunks).

We had a couple of classes before our weekend trip, to familiarize ourselves with the equipment and learn to lead belay. Then on the last weekend of the semester, we loaded up one of the red COE vans and drove out of Ithaca to the Gunks.

After a dinner stop, we arrived at our campsite. I couldn’t find my borrowed day pack with my also borrowed headlamp, so I set up the tent with the only other female student on the trip mostly in the dark. The class has space for at most, eight students, which is two to an instructor. We had started with seven enrolled. One didn’t show up to the classes before the trip, which brought us down to six. My friend, who enrolled in the class and showed up to the initial classes, got infected by my roommate and decided it would be better for her to stay in Ithaca. Five. Who would be next?

Those of us remaining pitched the tents in the woods. The tent I was sharing had the weirdest pole structure I’ve had to set up. If I remember right, there were two not straight poles and one or two more poles that were neither straight nor the same length. Eventually we got the tent set up and dumped our things inside. We had arrived at the campsite rather late, so by the time we had the tent standing, we set up our sleeping bags, put on extra layers for the night, and went to sleep. We had an early start planned for the next day, because it would be time to climb.

The No-Longer-Hypothetical List of Exciting Things That Have Happened to me at Cornell, Spring 2016 Edition

1. Grad school visits – Besides partaking in fun activities and alcohol, I met professors and grad students and found out about the places that could be my new home for the next five years. Highlights at Carnegie Mellon include walking around Schenley Park and a night visit to PNC Park, while at Michigan I worked on my bowling skills and went ice skating. In my travels I also got to take eight plane rides and visit five airports.

2. Cayuga Trail – Ever since one of my roommates and I hiked the whole Cayuga Trail in a day but returned to Cornell a different way, we wanted to hike the whole Cayuga Trail, out and back, in a day. Over spring break, we finally did it. We met a little after eight in the morning and ten hours later we were at the Commons eating burgers. We did walk down to the Commons but we rode the bus back to my apartment. My final mile count for the day was somewhere around 20 miles.

3. Fancy dress day – Weekly presentations for Senior Design require business formal dress. Fancy dress day involves almost everything except business formal. The best costume award went to the group dressed like Pac-Man and ghosts, but other costumes involved everything from balloons to animal footie pajamas to full body blue paint to a lightsaber. The lightsaber was mine. I gave my group’s presentation in penguin pajama pants, socks, and an American flag bow tie using my lightsaber as a pointer. It was actually the best pointer I’ve used. The rationale behind fancy dress day is that if you can present dressed like a hippo or half naked or whatever, you can certainly present to a few industry representatives. I think that argument has some merit, but honestly, but that point in the semester, everyone in Olin Hall could just use a laugh.

4. Pep band al fresco – This was my very last pep band event. As always, for the last rehearsal of the spring semester, we took the band outside to play around campus. We played a variety of perennial band favorites, ending on the slope with the Alma Mater, one last time. Besides ChemE, pep band was really the only other thing I did week in and week out for all four years at Cornell. I’d like to go back to concert band in grad school, but I’ll miss playing the Canadian and American national anthems, Davy times ten thousand, the Alma Mater at every single game, movies on bus rides, Lynah traditions, the band room, nonsensical heckling (e.g. “Princeton’s in New Jersey”), and all the other ridiculous things that happen in a student-run band for whom the name of the game (and their actual name) is pep.

5. Graduating – Well, it happened. Finally. We had unfortunate weather on Saturday for Convocation and different unfortunate weather on Sunday for Commencement. We then returned to our home away from home, Olin Hall, for the ChemE ceremony and reception. The diplomas were mailed and received, and just like that, we were done.

Schoellkopf Stadium during Convocation

Semester in Review, Spring 2016

This was it. My last semester at Cornell. I took the capstone ChemE class, a ChemE related elective, a non-ChemE related elective, and research.

Chemical Process Design – This is the capstone design class for Cornell Chemical Engineers. Each team of four is given a design problem, in my case increasing the value of a mixed hydrocarbon stream by reacting and separating it. We were then tasked with choosing the processes, equipment, operating conditions, and controls needed to achieve our goal. We also determined the economic feasibility of the project, but I was not our group’s money person. Every week, we reported our progress on the week’s assigned topics to our manager (professor) and supervisor (TA) at either a less formal round table meeting or a formal presentation. At the end of the semester, we made a final presentation to our professor, TA, and industry professionals. A worthwhile experience, though I’m not sure I can say I really enjoyed it . . . except for fancy dress day and finishing our last presentation.

Aerosols and Colloids – I needed a class to fulfill an elective slot and chose this class because apparently I couldn’t go an entire semester without a ChemE academic intensive class. [Senior design really focuses on being able to present information and defend the rationale behind your decisions.] I was interested in the material but I might have benefited from another semester of fluids, which, not coincidentally, I’ll be getting in the fall.

Research – In the fall, I started research late in the semester so I decided not to do it for credit. This spring, I took credit and used it as an elective. I mainly worked on chemical synthesis and perfecting my NMR technique, and it was a good complement to the research I had done over the summer. During the summer, I worked on programming and read lots of fun abstract papers about computational rheology. Then in the fall and spring, I returned to the lab and got more hands on experience.

Introduction to Wines – Unlike every other (non-PE) class I took at Cornell, I did not need these credits to graduate, however, I couldn’t miss out on this Cornell classic and senior favorite. Every week, with a few exceptions, all 700-plus of the students in the class met in the Statler auditorium to learn about a different wine region and taste five to seven wines. We were educated on the climate, geography, wine laws, history, and major varietals of France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, and regions of the United States. I also learned that wine is made from grapes if I want tannins (found in red wines) I’d rather just eat grapes. In addition, we were introduced to the Finger Lakes specialty that is dry Riesling. This ranks as one of my favorite Cornell classes through all four years.

And with passing grades in each of the above classes, I finished everything I needed to graduate. Next semester I’ll be at another university in another state in a building that is not called Olin Hall.

Apples, Chowder, and Chili

What do these three foods have in common? They can all be found on the Ithaca Commons at various times of the year – there's Applefest in the fall, the Chowder Cook-off before winter break, and the Chili Cook-off in February. And yes, I went to all three this year, because senior year.

I went to Applefest with my roommate and an honorary apartment member. We got there a couple hours after it opened for the day so it was already crazy crowded. The line for apple cider donuts was slightly insane, so we skipped it. Besides, I’ve had fresh apple cider donuts made at a cider mill, and while I wouldn’t turn down a donut if offered, I wasn’t about to stand in line for an hour for one. Besides, there was so much other food.

Applefest on the Commons (and adjoining roads)

I got some peanut butter fudge and an apple bread but also got to taste some apple dumpling and apple crisp that my friends bought. And now I want more apple baked goods.

A couple months later, I returned to the Commons for the Ithaca Ice Festival and Chowder Cook-off. This was mere days before my grad school applications were due but I thought I would be okay timewise since I had already written my personal statement and started filling out the other sections with my name, current address, home address, cell phone number, home phone number, recent lucky numbers from fortune cookies, and other things like that. I was partly wrong*, but I’m more glad to have gone to the Ice Festival than I would have been to finish my applications a couple hours earlier.

I went with a former roommate to see the ice sculptures and eat chowder. Of course, on the one winter day it needed to be cold, it was in the forties and sunny. It made all the ice sculptures look very shiny though. At least before they melted. We ended up trying clam chowder, vegetarian chowder, seafood chowder, jambalaya, corn chowder, and haddock and bacon chowder. The only chowder that I was unsatisfied with was the “New England” clam chowder. I’m from New England; don’t mess with my clam chowder. Though it could have been worse. It could have been Manhattan clam chowder.

Sea horse ice sculpture on the Commons

After winter break, I made my most recent trip to the Commons for the Chili Cook-off, this time accompanied by my current roommate, a former roommate, and a former suitemate, among others. Again, we tried a variety of the foods being offered. There was sweet chili, spicy chili, tomato-y chili, chili with lots of vegetables, and meat chili. And then there were chili calzones and chocolate chili. And hard cider.

I guess that brings it full circle – back to apples. I’m definitely glad I went to all the food events on the Commons this past school year. That’s one piece of advice I would give people – check out local events whenever you can. Sometimes you don’t have to go far or spend much money to have a whole lot of fun. And eat some good food.

*I finished all my applications on time, and didn’t feel seriously rushed for any of them, but I ended up submitting my last application at 9 pm on the day it was due.

Coming Home Weekend

Time to catch up fall semester. After an epic summer in Ithaca, I started classes and was immediately sucked into the spinning vortex of terror ChemE. I did make a point to go to the homecoming football game, like I have for the past couple of years.

It did not rain, and it was not negative ten degrees without wind chill, so people actually showed up. I stayed until halftime to see the marching band show, then had to leave to go grocery shopping. Such is my exciting life. The marching band played a show featuring music by The Who and at one point spelled out “WHO” on the field, but it took me a good minute to figure out what they were spelling because the percussion behind them made the H look like an A.

People!  At a football game!

When I left Cornell was tied with Bucknell 7-7 in a display of offensive excellence and output*. The game, however, ended 19-14 in favor of Bucknell due to a late touchdown. The football team’s season ended 1-9, with the sole win coming in a 3-0 home game against Columbia. Yes, 3-0.

Later that weekend, my parents visited and after church and lunch (Saigon Kitchen, would recommend), we went hiking at Treman (again). Then we went to Wegmans for dinner and I went back to the hotel to work on practice GRE tests. Again, I know I have an extremely exciting life.

Gorge Trail at Treman

The next day, Monday, was GRE day. If I had actually planned well, instead of putting it off all summer, I would either have taken the GRE at the beginning of the summer when I was home or at the end of the summer when my roommate with a car kind of occasionally had time to drive me. I had been looking into bus options but in the end, since I likely wasn’t going home for fall break, my parents came to visit instead – and to drive me to Binghamton to take the GRE.

After signing in, which included copying a lengthy (okay, not really) passage in cursive, I was put through another elaborate procedure in which I was photographed, searched, given pencils and scratch paper, and finally walked to a computer in a room with surveillance cameras above every terminal. Four and a half hours later, I walked away from my computer in the room with surveillance cameras above every terminal, returned my pencils, collected my belongings that had been exiled to locked storage in the waiting room, and went outside to taste freedom fresh air.

I got my results a couple weeks later, and I’m happy with them, especially considering the amount of studying I did. I got one GRE practice book and went through the chapters and practice problems over the summer/a couple weeks before the test. The week before the test, I worked through two or three full length tests, though not all at once. That turned out to be enough for me, even with the GRE being my first real multiple choice/standardized test since high school.

With the GRE over, I could turn to the next part of the grad school application process – the applications themselves. Or I could wait until the week before the applications were due to really get working on them. You know, good life choices.

*To be fair, I guess the Cornell defense had a good game, according to the game report.

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

I spent most of the semester running between the band room, the rock wall, the lab, and the basement of Olin. Even amidst the craziness, I managed to have some exciting times.

1. Wedding – I attended my first wedding. Well, kind of. I stood outside Sage Chapel with the pep band until the wedding ceremony was over and after that we played a couple of sets. Besides the Alma Mater, they also requested “I Want You Back” by the Jackson 5 and the theme from the Muppets. Not exactly wedding fare, but then again, I’ve never been to a wedding before.

2. Happy hour – Before Thanksgiving break, most of my lab group plus another friend and I decided that after the ChemE semester we’d been having, we needed to go to happy hour. For four dollars each, we got a half price pitcher of beer and an order of fries. We ate, we drank, and we talked about ChemE, because what else do we have to talk about? Okay, we also talked about other things. Like grad school.

3. Climbing – For my PE class, I took performance rock climbing (p-rock). Somehow, over the course of the semester, I found myself able to actually climb routes at Liindseth. And not just routes, but routes that weren’t the absolute easiest routes that I could find. Routes that other competent looking climbers worked on and sometimes struggled with. In other words, I was not the worst climber at Lindseth anymore. I also got to put up my own bouldering route.

4. Continuous distillation – After learning about distillation columns for three years, we finally got to run one, in our very own unit operations laboratory. It was a bit of a race to see whether we’d reach the distillation column lab first or if the construction crew would have the column reconstructed, but in the end the column was put back together in time (if just barely) for us to do the lab. ChemE lab may not be about mixing chemicals or building circuits, but after you do data analysis and find that it matches up – usually not perfectly, but sometimes really well – with what you expect, that’s still pretty cool.

5. ChemE holiday party – And we ended the semester (almost; there were still a few finals after, but for all intents and purposes, we ended the semester) with the annual ChemE holiday party. We did not have the party in Olin, but in Statler, and there was lots of good food, skits and gifts, and alcohol before, during, and for some people, after dinner. It was a lot of fun, and directly after I had to finish up my grad school applications and study for my last final.

Semester in Review [Fall 2015]

After every semester, I finish my finals and think, “That was a crazy semester.” And then the next semester, it’s even worse. I don’t know how ChemE does it, but even when you have a deceptively easy course load of one lab class, two ChemE electives, and a PE class for fun, hypothetically you might still live in the Olin basement, never get to sleep, and miss more meals in a week than you usually miss in a semester. Hypothetical you might also fulfill the ChemE graduation requirement of eating a meal consisting entirely of items from the vending machine in the basement.

Real me took three classes, a PE class, TA’d for Intro to ChemE, started in a new research lab, and applied to grad schools. Real me might also have lived in the Olin basement, didn’t sleep, missed too many meals, and eaten a meal from the basement vending machine.

My main class was ChemE 4320: Chemical Engineering Laboratory, also known as UO Lab, which stands for Unit Operations Lab; this was our capstone lab class. Every week, we would go into the recently renovated, shiny new Unit Ops lab where we ran apparatuses ranging from the fluidized bed to the heat exchanger, and finally the distillation column. The thing about ChemE lab is that there’s not that much to physically observe. You turn valves and switches and things happen that you only know about if you have pressure gauges and thermocouples and rotameters to read. Still, with a lab report due every week drawing concepts from most of our previous ChemE classes, we learned a lot. I was our group’s data analysis person, and seeing how our collected data correlated with equations and concepts we’d learned in separations or heat and mass transfer really connected everything together. Our last lab report, on running the distillation column continuously, was the peak of the ChemE lab experience. We’d learned about distillation columns since the first semester of freshman year, and not only running the column, but getting it to work, was more than a little exciting.

I also took Bioprocess Engineering as an elective, and this class was my least favorite of the semester. I enrolled in the class because I don’t like straight up bio, but I don’t mind applying bio to engineering problems. We didn’t end up learning much in the class, never mind anything about engineering bioprocesses. The professor was often travelling, and when he was present, we were rarely taught 1) new material or 2) anything we needed to know for the homework. Which would have been okay if the textbook was a good resource, but our kinetics textbook, written by someone whose first language wasn’t English, was a better read. When the professor wasn’t in Ithaca, he often had guest lecturers, which was fine, but meant that we had very little continuity in the class. I need to know how things connect to really understand them, and I just couldn’t piece together a totally coherent story between lectures, guest lectures, the textbook, and the homework problems. On top of all that, we had a group project. Groups were a mixture of MEng/masters students and ChemE undergrads, and the difficulty of coordinating between the grads and undergrads led to fairly significant discrepancies in work distribution. Overall, this class was a disappointment since I took it because I was actually interested in the material.

My last main class was Microchemical and Microfluidic Systems. I took the class because I’d heard it was an easy elective. I ended up liking the material. It was a different perspective on ChemE, focusing a lot on manufacturing devices, especially in the first part of the course. Good elective, would recommend.

My PE class was (yet another) rock climbing class, this time Performance Rock Climbing. We climbed more advanced problems, and I was surprised to find that just by trying harder problems and climbing more, I got better at climbing. Another worthwhile class from COE.

If I had just had classes, I would have been fine. But I also TA’d, which was a very different experience from TA’ing fluids. And did research, which was also a good experience, one that will play a part in what I decide to do in grad school. And that’s it, another crazy semester for the books. Up next: Senior Design.

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.”