Taste of Home

One week, faced with eggs that needed to be used up, half an onion leftover from making beef soup, and pineapple leftover from pineapple chicken, I made fried rice. I cooked up rice and chicken, added frozen vegetables and all my leftovers, and it was almost like a meal from home. To be completely like a home-cooked meal, the chicken would have had to be leftover too. But it was enough to remind me of home. It’s funny, how the smallest things can remind you of other things, and how certain smells, tastes, or sounds are inextricably linked to particular times or places.

The Lindseth climbing wall at Cornell, before it was renovated, smelled of an unmistakable mix of chalk, sweat, damp climbing shoe leather, and a hint of wet concrete. There’s nothing like that smell and I have yet to conduct very scientific experiments at other climbing walls to verify that statement.

Last day at Lindseth before renovation

When you’re the first to walk into Lynah Rink before a hockey game, you can still smell the fresh ice. It’s different from middle-of-the-game fresh ice and open-skate fresh ice. Really.

Almost empty Lynah pre-hockey game

After fourteen years in various bands, a lot of other things remind me of band. Snickers (the candy) because the pep band always got them at men’s hockey games. 3 Musketeers (also the candy) because I would buy them from the band parents during our lunch breaks at music festival in high school. Hearing the vibraslap always reminds me of playing “Caribbean Rondo” in ninth grade. (The vibraslap is an important part of the ending.)

Catalpa trees – my seventh grade leaf project, in which I also identified different species of elm, oak, maple, and sumac, among others. Plus I learned that ginkgo is spelled with two g’s. Chickadees – one particular bird that sang what sounded like four notes of “The Star Spangled Banner” at absurd hours of the morning at our campground in Bar Harbor, Maine. Orange slices – halftime of soccer games. Hoodsie cups (with the wooden spoon) – elementary school birthday parties. Tuna sandwiches – picnic lunches on road trips. Also vital to road trips: at least one playthrough of our 1980s John Denver CD.

I could probably come up with absurd connections for dozens of other things, because that’s how my mind works. I’ll end with this obscure one: the color red and a particular university located in Ithaca, NY.

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, 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.

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.

Seven Blisters and A Cut

To start this post off, I would like to say that I do not have anywhere close to seven blisters at the moment, nor did I have seven blisters when I got the idea for this post. However, several days after coming up with the title for the post, I went bouldering at Noyes and got no less than four blisters, two on each hand. Yes, that happened.

All of this is an indication that I have returned to rock climbing and other outdoor activities. Adventure is out there. But so is danger. Even with that in mind, a couple weeks ago was not a great week in terms of avoiding personal injury. It started on Saturday during hiking, when I volunteered to help with food prep for lunch. Apparently I cut myself while I was slicing green peppers. It was, however, so minor that 1) there was no blood, and 2) I didn't notice I had a cut on my finger until four or so hours later. That was right after I let a match burn down a little too close to my fingers while we were working on fire building. No harm done, but wouldn't you know it, fire is hot.

A few days later, I went bouldering at Noyes before house dinner (more on that later, because house dinner deserves a post of its own). Besides being completely overhung, the holds on the wall are on the rough side. After traversing the wall a couple times, falling off half a dozen times, and getting a little work done on the Spiderman route, my hands were a little sore, but that’s normal. What wasn't normal were the four blisters that appeared a little later under calluses I already had. Not cool. They healed up really nicely, though, in just a couple days.

To end the week, I peeled some of my skin off when I was peeling a peach for my fruit of the day. Again, no blood, unlike the time I scraped the tip of my knuckle off while peeling an apple to make applesauce in my sixth grade home economics class.

Just to show that even normal, everyday life isn't safe for me, at house dinner two weeks ago, I smashed a fingernail against a plate while I was trying to slice something. How that happened, I don’t even know. But for awhile, I was cut, blistered, and bruised. College is fun!

To end on a more pleasant note for those concerned for my physical safety, here’s a picture of a waterfall at Treman State Park a few miles from Cornell:

[I’m fine, really. My knees aren't even constantly bruised from rock climbing anymore. It’s been over half a year since I last wrote about the perils of climbing, and I've moved on to different forms of injury.]

Short Stories

Blue Suede Shoes:
Sometime soon after arriving at Cornell, I wore a hole through the bottom of my right sandal . . . only my right sandal. I got a new pair a little while ago. The sandals are grey and green and made of rubber and various synthetic materials. So they’re not blue, not suede, and they’re not even shoes. I was going for parallelism. . . . I should just stick to engineering. Anyway, while sandal shopping, I would go over to the women’s section and look for the “casual” section. I’m just going to say that the last time I saw someone casually wear gold sparkly 6-inch heels to the beach was – let me think – never? I am aware that I’m on the let’s-go-walk-through-a-mud-puddle end of casual, not the cocktail-party-in-a-lounge side, but I wasn't aware that you didn't actually have to be able to walk in sandals anymore. Maybe it’s just me. I mean, I did almost mange to trip off a stage during a band concert once. Wearing flats.

Spam and Eggs (actually, just spam):
What’s almost as amusing as receiving audition notices for all-male a cappella groups is when Cornell mail goes to spam. Case in point: sometime around one of three days of spring in Ithaca, for the second time, Cornell sent me an email about Big Red Shipping and Storage. (They’re a company managed by Cornell students that will store the contents of your dorm room for the summer if you can’t or don’t want to take them home with you.) The email went straight to spam. Both times.

Best Day Ever:
After my last final of my freshman year, I had an entire afternoon with absolutely nothing to do for the first time in weeks. A friend and I went to get lunch, walked back to north campus, and then decided to walk back to west campus to go bouldering at Noyes. It was just as tiring as I remembered, but I got farther on the Spiderman route and did a couple other easy routes. We had the bouldering wall to ourselves, so we got to climb continuously and get super tired. At that point, we took a quick detour by the library to check out A. D. White’s library (also known as the Harry Potter library), then camped out on the arts quad. It was an absolutely perfect day, the kind of day Cornell puts on their admissions brochures. And it’s gotten me to thinking, what would be my best day ever? How exactly do you combine hiking, clarinets, and math and science without psychedelic drugs and/or a time turner? I guess I’d settle for a good long hike up some mountains in the middle of nowhere. Acadia National Park would be good. Acadia is currently my favorite vacation destination and the answer to 11-down in a crossword puzzle I was doing recently.

The No-Longer-Hypothetical List of Exciting Things that Have Happened to me at Cornell, Spring 2013 edition

The last time I wrote this list, it was about a semester that happened mostly before I started blogging. This semester, I've already written about most of the exciting things that have happened, so going forward, these lists will probably highlight some of my favorite/most thrilling posts from the semester.

1. Field trip – If anyone ever tells you they’d like to go on a day trip with you from Ithaca to Maryland, laugh hysterically (the 6-hour drive one way is stretching the definition of “day trip”), then accept and make them drive. Proceed to sleep for the first four hours of the trip that take place before the sun rises, and enjoy the approximately three hours you’ll have in Maryland. My first away trip with the pep band, scheduling resulted in it being – guess – a day trip to Maryland. It was, however, for the NCAA men’s lacrosse tournament, and we did have a great time.

2. Rock climbing – I don’t think I can narrow this down to one particular moment, but I will say that the time we went to the bouldering wall at Noyes was the most exhausted the class ever was.

Notice that the entire wall is overhung.

3. HEC weekend – Initiation by fire at its finest. For my second event working for Cornell Productions, I worked over fourteen hours in three days and learned the basics of wiring and lighting large spaces for fancy events. Note: involves vast amounts of extension cords and gaff tape. Plus, we were fed ridiculously well.

4. AAIV dessert night – Something I haven’t written about yet. Basically, instead of trying to put together an entire meal (face it; I could probably burn water), everyone brings a dessert to share. So rather than scraping charcoal out of a pot, a friend and I made cookies to contribute to the month’s worth of sugar already being consumed. Since the theme was Color Explosion (I’m not going to go into what the original name of the event was. . . . If you're curious, it had to do with the spelling of "explosion."), Red 40, Yellow 5, and Blue 1 also featured prominently. Naturally, I dressed for the theme by wearing all black. And neon yellow socks. Other than the food and the clothing, it was a fun night of testimonies, musical performances, and a skit of the story of Joseph by the juniors.

5. And finally, the strangely popular inside look into my life – the minifridge edition.

Overall, another good semester, but it seems that this one didn't have as many single exciting events as fall semester. Maybe something to do with the fact that Cornell was frozen into a giant ice cube for three months of “spring” semester. It was more about recurring activities like pep band, climbing, and work, and if I wasn't studying in advance for exams doing homework due the next day in a few hours, I was probably at the band room/Schoellkopf field, the climbing wall, or backstage at Bailey Hall.

Next semester, I get started on physical chemistry, which I’ll be taking at the same time as Mass and Energy Balances and linear algebra. I can barely contain the excitement. No, really.

On the Other End of Spring Semester

After suffering through putting a lot of effort into Intro to ChemE, multivariable calculus, and Honors General Chemistry fall semester, I found spring semester more relaxed, especially since I only ended up taking two engineering classes.  I dropped engineering stats a couple weeks into the semester for multiple reasons, one being that it was in a somewhat inconvenient time slot.  This way I got to eat lunch on Mondays.

Out of my remaining classes, one was Intro to Microeconomics, which didn't require a whole lot of outside work, and another was my writing seminar, which I just didn't care about mainly involved reading.  That left differential equations and my intro to computing class – I took MATLAB.  I wouldn't say either class was easy, but compared to Schrodinger’s equation and triple integrals in spherical coordinates, spring semester on the engineering front was definitely less ridiculous mind bending.

Here’s the rundown:

Introduction to Microeconomics: Since I had AP physics credit and didn't need to struggle through force diagrams and circuits again, I decided to get started on fulfilling my liberal studies requirements. The way this class was run spring semester, instead of problem sets we had to do online quizzes; that combined with the fact that I’d taken half a year of economics during my senior year of high school meant that this class wasn't too high on my I’m-going-to-fail-this-class-if-I-don’t-start-studying-yesterday list.  The material was interesting, and I did still learn some things, especially about consumer/firm theory and market structures.

American Voices: Monumental America: My second and last first year writing seminar.  I liked the discussions and content of this writing seminar better than the one I took fall semester.  However, my last writing seminar probably did more to improve my literary analysis in my writing.  But I’m an engineer, and among other things, I've been told to write entirely in passive voice before.

Differential Equations for Engineers: From what I can tell, a large difference between engineering math classes and math classes for other people is the proofs.  In over eighty math lectures, the closest thing I saw to a proof was a “proof.”  It went something like this: “So this leads to this, which we’re going to assume is true, and then you should believe this because I say it’s true, which means that this is the answer we’re looking for.  Now let’s do an example.”  Not much else to say about this class except that I now know how to separate variables and the professor I had takes some getting used to (including his inability to actually press down hard enough with the chalk on the chalkboard to make visible lines).

Introduction to Computing with MATLAB: or something like that. Everyone just calls it MATLAB. Definitely an intro class, since I did fine without having coded a single program before taking the class. My favorite projects were the ones with graphics (including a MATLAB valentine and several fractals), but MATLAB blackjack was pretty amusing as well.

And lastly,

Basic Rock Climbing: I've said it before, but this is the best PE class I've taken. I technically don’t have to take any more PE classes to graduate, but I've already jumped into cold bodies of water and climbed out of windows. A little more exercise couldn't hurt. Right?  So I enrolled in hiking for next semester.

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, part 1 of 3

In acknowledgement of the fact that I have now survived my freshman year of college (been home for a week), there are some people I should recognize who made my year as fantastic as it was.

At Cornell (I'll see most of you in the fall; congratulations to the class of 2013):

The professors who were truly enthusiastic about teaching hoards of clueless freshmen. Any demonstrations were an added bonus and were appreciated by me at least, especially if they involved fire and/or explosions.

The TAs who endured endless questioning, complaining, whining and confusion while trying to help us understand homework/labs/lecture/the meaning of life.

All the engineers who suffered through classes with me. There’s nothing like bonding over Green’s Theorem and Avogadro’s Law.
My fellow ChemEs. To the class of 2016: Here’s to three more years to come. To W8: Thanks again, guys (even if one of us might be having a problem choosing his/her major).

5-3 (my unit in the dorm I was living in) and our perfectly normal late-night middle-of-the-hallway conversations.

The staff and climbers at Cornell Outdoor Education/Lindseth/my rock climbing class for 1) teaching me the basics of rock climbing, 2) belaying me, and 3) just being a fun group of people.

AAIV, for friendship, fellowship, sailing ships, and challenging me to grow in my faith.

Cornell Productions for hiring me at the best job I've ever had. When they said no experience necessary, I guess they meant it.

The big red pep band, especially the clarinet section. #LGR

At home:

The attendees of my home church, who were always ready to welcome me home.

My friends from high school, because they’re that cool.

And lastly, my family, since they’re the ones paying for my education, supporting me through this college thing, transporting me to and from Ithaca . . . you know, small things like that.

These are a Few of my Favorite Things

Some of my favorite things, unrelated to Cornell:
- Color: orange, but I own a lot of lime green clothing.  At least I’m easy to spot in a crowd.
- Planet: Pluto, which is a planet
- Sports team: New England Revolution*
- TV show: Jeopardy! (though I was recently introduced to Star Trek)
- Movie: Lord of the Rings. The entire trilogy.
- Quotes*: Don’t panic.
Nobody tosses a dwarf.
Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.
It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to.
- Movement of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto: 3rd.
- Scientific calculator: Casio fx-300ES. Don’t get me started on what I think of TI scientific calculators. (And yes, I was in math team in high school. For four years.)

And now my favorite things about Cornell:
- the Big Red Pep Band: It’s big, it’s red, but no, it’s not a dog. It does, however, show up to dozens of sporting events at Cornell including, but not limited to, sprint football, volleyball, basketball, wrestling, lacrosse, and of course, hockey. There’s just something about freezing at Schoellkopf stadium while the lacrosse team scores over fifteen goals and we get to play variations on Davy (our fight song) or being in Lynah rink and watching the hockey team score a game winning goal with one second left. We’re finishing up the spring season with lacrosse, but don’t worry, we’ll be back next fall.

- Cornell Outdoor Education: They offer not only climbing, but also hiking, and skiing, and all sorts of my other favorite activities featuring dirt and sweat. Taking PE classes with COE does cost money, but it’s completely worth it. As in, rock climbing is one of my new favorite activities and I go to the wall when I should be doing homework at least a couple times a week.

- the clock tower and chimes concerts: I like music, and I like walking, so naturally I like getting to hear live music as I’m walking to class. One of my favorite things I've heard is still “Under the Sea” during Hurricane Sandy.

- AAIV (Asian American Intervarsity): Some of the first people I met at Cornell (after the people in my dorm) were members of AAIV. They were mostly friendly and welcoming, and since then, I've had some incredibly amusing dinner conversations, gotten to go care packaging and reverse trick or treating, participated in a photo scavenger hunt in RPCC (it was too dark to go out on campus), and just enjoyed their fellowship, among other things.

- the trail around Beebe Lake: Recently I've been going out running more because I probably should get some exercise rediscovered my love for sweating and going in circles. The trail around the lake is about one mile long and features great views and lots of geese. It’s also nice because I prefer running on dirt or grass rather than on the road or on a track.

- Cornell Productions: As it turns out, I really like the backstage aspect of setting up and taking down shows and events. So far, I've been allowed to set up lights, help set up sound, stack chairs and stands, and coil and gaff wires. It’s been a lot of fun.

- This place: Three more years. I can’t wait.

*Virtual bonus points to anyone who knows what sport the Revolution play without looking them up. Similarly, name the origins and speakers of the quotes and receive an internet high five from me. Feel free to leave responses in the comments.

Feet above Head, and Other Strange Happenings in Monday B-rock

Sadly, rock climbing is over. Best PE class I have ever taken. A few weeks ago, we took climbing field trips around campus; two Mondays ago, we rappelled out of Schoellkopf Stadium, and last week, we were at Noyes at the K2 bouldering wall, though I’m pretty sure everyone just calls it Noyes.

When we walked over to Schoellkopf, we found one of our instructors waiting for us with about three different ropes tied to the pillars of the stadium. We found out that to rappel, we had to climb out of a window. Don’t try this one at home, kids. Since most of us had rappelled approximately zero times before, we had the rope that we’d be lowering ourselves down with as well as a second backup rope manned by our instructor.

It was definitely kind of weird climbing out a window. After that, it wasn't too bad, besides the fact that you literally had control of your life in your own hands. In the second part of class, we were shown how to ascend a rope without having available hand or footholds. The method involves two small loops of rope tied with prusik knots to the rope you’re ascending. A prusik can slide in one direction, but when weighted in the other direction, tightens and doesn't move. Basically, you use the loops as footholds and slide them up with you as you ascend.

Bouldering at Noyes was all about invoking your inner superhero. If you've ever heard the climbing principle about always keeping 3 points of contact with the wall (meaning three limbs . . . face apparently doesn't count), well, it’s wrong. First off, there’s deadpointing, in which an arm and a leg leave the wall so that you can reach holds further than what you can touch just by stretching out. Then there’s the dyno. By linear extrapolation, three limbs would leave the wall in a dyno. By exponential extrapolation, all four limbs would leave the wall. Let’s just say climbing is becoming awfully nonlinear.

So essentially, we were told to take flying leaps from one part of the wall to another. I don’t think I’m going to be becoming Superman any time soon. During the next part of class, we were taught about heel hooking. Usually, it involves bringing your heel high up on your body (sometimes over your head), but unlike a high step, your body tends to be more horizontal. You can then use your foot to pull yourself upward.

The Noyes wall is pretty small, so to make up for the lack of square footage the entire thing is overhung and all the bouldering problems center around the thought “How painful can I make this problem?” There’s this one problem along an overhanging ridge where the entire thing is made up of heel hooks (because that’s totally realistic and everything). You’d better be channeling Spiderman vibes, because you spend a lot of the route with your back facing the ground.

For the last part of class, we were supposed to come up with our own as painful as possible bouldering problem in ten minutes. I actually made contributions to this problem, which started off with a couple solid handholds, but no footholds. To get to the next part of the problem you had to smear across the wall to get to the next handhold. That got me to wondering if it’s possible to smear across the entire bouldering wall. I can already feel the pain . . . I’m going to try it next time I’m there.

One final message from Spring 2013 Monday b-rock (i.e., me):

Thanks to www.keepcalmstudio.com for the generator.  This picture may only be used for non commercial purposes; use of this picture must give credit to Keep Calm Studio.

Why I Don’t Wear Nail Polish

Three reasons: Hezekiah, the Lindseth climbing wall, and the general state of my nails.  Reason three is probably caused by reasons one and two, but I’m still counting it.

Reason one: As a clarinet, Hezekiah happens to have a lot of little screws and pins that can be quite sharp.  As a clarinetist, I manipulate these screws and pins, and in the process have more than enough opportunities to scratch my fingernails.  Any nail polish on them would come out looking like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Reason two: Since I started rock climbing, besides discovering various muscles in my arms, I've been using my limbs in some unusual ways.  As it turns out, you can lift your leg to your waist while balancing on an outcropping of rock approximately half a centimeter wide.  And a pocket (a type of hold that looks like a hole in the wall) is sloped the wrong way for you to find a fingerhold?  Just shove your whole hand in there.

That technique is known as a hand jam.  To hand jam, simply slide your hand into the desired hold and make a fist.  Your hand is now wider and hopefully will hold your weight.  If it doesn't, well, that’s when you may lose some skin off your hand and quite possibly any nail polish you have on.

Which is why I just avoid the problem by never painting my nails.  They’re already decorated with scratches from my clarinet and a layer of dirt, which leads to reason three: in general, my fingernails aren't in a state to be painted, and if they were, I’m probably about five minutes away from going to play in a mud puddle or something like that.

Basically, I never paint my nails because I’d destroy them within ten minutes of the nail polish drying, but for those of you who do, don’t worry, I’m not going to go around throwing nail polish remover on peoples’ hands.   But let’s not go into what I think about fake nails.

No fingernails were intentionally harmed in the production of this post.  Legitimate Photographic evidence can be supplied at request.

[In other news, I just survived working HEC weekend. Details will follow, but suffice it to say, it sure was an experience. And now, this coming week I have two prelims, a pep band trip, and an essay to write. Was it the smartest idea to work all three days of HEC weekend? Probably not. Do I regret it? Not a bit.]

Double Knots

I’m actually talking about two different kinds of knots here.  Two types of double knots . . . hidden symbolism? . . . Yeah, no.

First, I would like to discuss the art of tying shoelaces.  I tie my shoelaces when I first put my shoes on, but as soon as they become untied, I have a habit of leaving them that way.  This actually disturbs other people, especially the ones who trip over my shoelaces, more than me.  However, when I started climbing, I had to double knot the laces on my climbing shoes because those were getting in my way when they came untied every five minutes.  This led me to the brilliant idea to also double knot my regular shoes.

Yeah, I know.  It took me nineteen years several months to realize that I could double knot my shoelaces and they wouldn't come untied.

Speaking of climbing, (That may have just been a transition, meaning that I may have actually learned something from fourteen years of English class.) there are several knots necessary for climbers to know.  Among those are the double fisherman’s and double figure eight knots.

I had to learn the double fisherman’s my sophomore year of high school when we had to tie our own harnesses.  The double figure eight I had to learn a few weeks ago; it’s the knot we use to tie climbers in to the ropes at Lindseth.  I think I have some sort of learning-to-tie-knots deficiency, because while everyone else is tying knots after one demonstration, I’m staring at two ends of rope in my hands.

I’m not sure if it’s because I want to tie the knots in the opposite direction as the way they’re taught or what, but as soon as anyone starts saying anything like “and take the two ends of the rope and wrap one end around the other, then pull the other end through the loop and bring the ends of the rope back together and you’re done,” I get hopelessly lost after about the “and.”  The first one.  So for me, learning to tie any type of knot more complicated than my shoelaces* involves someone walking me through every single step.  Probably multiple times.  But I can now tie a double figure eight knot, and yes, I am very close to passing my belay test.

*Actually, there’s the “around the tree” method of tying shoelaces, which I don’t use, and no matter how many times I see people do it/have it explained to me, I will not be learning to tie this on my own. And no, an online picture tutorial will not help me. Have you ever tried to draw a knot?

If At First You Don't Succeed

Try, try again; you’ll probably fall again, but try not to hurt yourself.  More life lessons from the climbing wall.  I know, I’m my parents are paying thousands of dollars [for me] to go to Cornell and I seem to be learning the most from my PE class.  This only looks like the case because somehow, I don’t think the general population would find nested for-loops and inhomogeneous linear higher order ordinary differential equations as fascinating as I do, so I keep that fun to myself.

In rock climbing two Mondays ago, instead of learning a few new climbing techniques like we usually do after snack, we were put into groups and told to come up with our own bouldering problem.  We were told that the other groups would be trying our problem, so the goal was to find something kind of absurd, but that we could still climb.  As in, no choosing handholds fifteen feet apart because that’s just ridiculous.

The instructor who was with our group mostly came up with our route, but then two out of the three of us had to climb it.  One of the guys in my group was pretty tall, so he did it after a couple tries.  I, on the other hand, occasionally have trouble getting off the ground because I can’t reach any handholds.

The route began with some solid hand and footholds.  The next move was to move my right hand into a pocket-type hold (I know, I've got the terminology down solid.) and switch feet so that my left foot was free.  At that point, there was some mantling (pushing down on a hold instead of pulling up or to the side) and smearing (using the friction between the wall and your shoe), and that’s where I kept getting stuck.  With both hands jammed into a hold, I was supposed to pull myself up to reach the second to last handhold, but I kept slipping out.

What the instructors have been teaching us in class is that where you put your feet is as important as where you put your hands, and shifting your weight can drastically affect your balance.  I didn't really have a choice about where my feet were, but by shifting my weight onto my left leg, I could push myself upward, move my left hand to the next hold, and finish the route.

It took me almost ten tries, but I did it. And now I have a route on the climbing wall, which I think is pretty cool.