Oh, hi, Ohio

A couple months ago I embarked on some business travel to visit research collaborators in Cincinnati, Ohio. While I was there, I figured I might as well enjoy some of the city, so I had planned to visit the zoo and ended up getting to stop by the art museum as well. I flew into the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) in Hebron, Kentucky. The airport was bigger than I expected, with just under fifty gates spread out across two terminals. From the airport, I took a TANK (Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky) bus into Cincinnati, then a Metro bus up to the zoo.

The Cincinnati Zoo is a decent size – 75 acres, about twice Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo’s 35 acres and similar to the Singapore Zoo’s 69 acres – with variable admissions costs depending on projected attendance; if possible, buy your tickets as far in advance as you can. I spent a little over three hours there, including a late lunch, but wouldn’t have minded an hour or two more if I hadn’t had to leave to get to my hotel. When I visited, because it was already fall and past peak season, not all the dining options were available, and some of the shows and other activities weren’t running.

There were most of the usual suspects you expect to see when you go to a zoo, including zebras, flamingos, penguins, giraffes, and a variety of apes, birds, and reptiles. A number of the African animals that wouldn’t eat and/or gore each other to death got to hang out together, separated from the lions, which were surprisingly active, by a nice deep moat. I also got to see African penguins (by the flamingos), little blue penguins (next to the kangaroos), and some rockhopper and king penguins in the Birds of the World building. Somehow, I managed to miss the elephants and didn’t have time for Cat Canyon or Gorilla World, but I covered most of the rest of the zoo, and a fair number of the animals were out/active, probably because it wasn’t 8000 degrees out like the last time I was at the zoo in Chicago.

Clockwise from top left: lion, ostrich, gibbon, grey crowned crane

One of the reasons I decided to visit the Cincinnati Zoo is that it’s home to Fiona, the hippo who became famous after she was born six weeks premature at 29 pounds (baby hippos typically weigh 100 pounds) and the zoo started posting videos about her. She now also has a baby brother, Fritz, but the family was still being introduced out of the public eye at the time of my visit. At Hippo Cove, when I got there, only one hippo was out in the public part of their home, and I think it was Fiona, so I did get to see her at least. Overall, it was a pretty nice zoo, not too crowded and with a good variety of animals. The layout was okay, though there was some backtracking required to see some of the exhibits. I did have a bit of trouble finding the African penguins, and to see the little blue penguins I had to take a one-way path through the kangaroo exhibit, but for the most part there’s an outer main path that passes by most of the animals.

Little blue penguin

Later in the trip, my former coworker and I went to the Cincinnati Art Museum. Admission is free, though special events may be ticketed. The museum contains a variety of paintings, sculptures, pottery, photographs, etc. from past and present around the world, though it’s mostly American and European art. There were Greek vases, a mummy, teapots, a couple Andy Warhols, a multitude of oil paintings of old English nobles, coffee urns generously donated by P&G, and plenty more. One of the more unique areas of the museum featured works by artists who were either from or spent a portion of their career in Cincinnati; it was interesting to see some more local art that was directly related to the city. We were at the museum for a couple hours, which was enough time to see everything pretty quickly. If you took more time reading about and admiring each piece, you could be there for another hour or two, but I’m not a huge art history person and the museum was closing anyway.

Other highlights of my trip: 1) I did get to try Graeter’s ice cream. Graeter’s is a Cincinnati-based chain that handmakes its ice cream using a small-batch “French pot” process that results in denser ice cream. I tried their Boldly Bearcat flavor, a mascarpone ice cream with Oreos and chocolate chips named for the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. It was good, but I didn’t find it that creamy, which could just have been the flavor I chose, and I would still argue I like Cornell Dairy ice cream better. 2) The hotel had a magical pancake machine. With a single press of a button, you could receive two pancakes within minutes. (When you press the button, pancake batter is squirted onto a conveyor belt and the pancakes cook as they travel down the belt before being deposited onto a plate.) 3) The airport had steamboat models, a plane, and animal skeletons from the Cincinnati Museum Complex, which includes history, children’s, and natural history and science museums.

Clockwise from top left: modern art, teapots, pancake machine, mastodon skeleton at the airport

Around the World in Two Hours

The real reason I attended AIChE. Just kidding/not really kidding. After some debate, we were going to go to the Magic Kingdom on our one free day in Orlando, but then found out they were closing early for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, so we ended up at Epcot instead. It turned out to be a good decision, because the crowds were very manageable, and we were there in the middle of the food and wine festival. No, we did not drink around the world. Which is a thing that people do. 

Instead, we rode all the rides and visited all the countries in the World Showcase before ending the night with fireworks. The last time I was at Epcot was the summer after ninth grade, which was ten years ago. [Ten years. That’s crazy to think about. Also, the current college freshmen were born after 2000. They’re from a different century.] Anyway, Epcot hadn’t changed very much since 2009, which is why I think there’s construction going on there now. Animal Kingdom got blue people land and Hollywood Studios got Star Wars, so it was time to upgrade Epcot, maybe deal with any “outdated cultural depictions.” The entrance was a bit of a mess, but we found our way around eventually.

Spaceship Earth at night

The first place we ended up at was Mission: Space. I’ve been on both versions of the ride and can’t definitively say that I can tell the difference between them, but this time we rode the orange version. Somehow, without any actual training, we successfully landed on Mars. Next, we went on Test Track, which had changed since the last time I rode, though not significantly. The premise of testing a car design remains the same, but the setting was updated? futurized? – think neon lights and OnStar (it’s sponsored by Chevrolet).

Since we didn’t have a map, we then found ourselves circling the World Showcase. We didn’t spend much time in each country, mainly just looked at the architecture and what representative foods were being served. We did watch the animatronic American Adventure show about US history and get funnel cake along the way though. Because #America?

Back in Future World, we made the rounds though the rest of the rides [sadly(?) only missing Journey into Imagination with Figment]. First we walked on to the incredibly popular Living with the Land for a boat ride through some simulated biomes and actual greenhouses showcasing aquaponics, aeroponics, hydroponics, and pumpkins grown into the shape of Mickey’s head. But probably the main attraction in the Land pavilion is Soarin’, formerly Soarin’ Over California, now Soarin’ Around the World. The ride originated at Disneyland in 2001, hence California, and was brought to Epcot with the same film in 2005 before it was replaced by the current movie in 2016. So now, instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, redwoods, Half Dome, and vineyards, you soar over the Matterhorn, Kilimanjaro National Park, the Great Wall of China, and the Taj Mahal. Still a great ride.

We had time before the fireworks for the last two rides at Epcot – The Seas with Nemo and Friends and Spaceship Earth. The Nemo ride is a highly abbreviated based-on-the-movie affair probably most exciting to small children, but you get to ride in a clamobile. Spaceship Earth is inside the giant geodesic dome itself, and goes through scientific/cultural innovation through the years, from writing to the Internets. Thanks to the relatively short lines all night (I don’t think we waited more than fifteen or twenty minutes to get on anything), we rode Soarin’ again before our last event of the night – the fireworks. As part of the renovations, Epcot is transitioning from their fireworks show IllumiNations to something called Harmonious, and is temporarily showing Epcot Forever. I didn’t follow the storyline, if there was one, but there were fireworks. There were kites. We left happy.

Fireworks.  Taken without a tripod or any idea what my camera setting should have been.

Mainly, Epcot was similar to the park I visited ten years ago, except with more touchscreens, which is probably why they’re doing construction on it now. It was fun to be there during the food and wine festival, and even with that going on, the crowds were manageable, and the screeching children few. Like I said, we didn’t wait very long for anything. I think we avoided the one potential wait at Test Track by using the single rider line. We had funnel cake. We saw fireworks. We rode Soarin’ twice. It was a pretty good day.

#AIChEAnnual

I went to a conference and it had its own hashtag. And app. Welcome to the 21st century. I’ve been a ChemE for seven years now, and this was my first time attending the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE – most properly pronounced by spelling out A-I-C-H-E, often pronounced as “achy,” like “achy, breaky heart”). I figured I should at least go once, to experience it. Plus it was held in Orlando, Florida, this year. 

Well, after experiencing AIChE once, I can say that the best way to describe it is crazy. There are thousands of attendees, hundreds of talks and posters, and a couple dozen things going on at any given time. I’m glad I went, but it was five days of controlled madness. You can’t find anything in the program book, because it’s three hundred pages long. You can’t find anything in the app, because it’s horrible. You could search, verbatim, for the title of your talk on polymers, and the app would return talks on drug delivery, oil refining, and microfluidic devices. Even better, the app had the ability to be less helpful the more specific you were. You would search for the start of a talk and get lots of irrelevant results. To help the app out, you would then add more words . . . and get more results.

My coworker and I flew into Orlando on Saturday, in time for the opening festivities on Sunday. We spent the morning recovering from the previous day’s travel, then drove to the conference site in the afternoon. After collecting our name badges, we met up with some other lab members, ran into some Michigan people, and attended the welcome reception for the sake of free food. As a general rule, the bigger the conference, the less free food they’re likely to provide. It’s understandable, because the sheer amount of food required, and making sure everyone gets food, is a massive logistical and monetary undertaking. But as mostly destitute graduate students, at least some snacks would be appreciated.

Part of the conference center.  Poster sessions in the rooms on the left, vendors and attendees in the center, rooms for talks to the right, behind, and ahead left (out of the picture).

On Monday, the conference started in earnest. My labmates gave their talks bright and early, so we were there bright and early. Then lunch was a special event, held offsite with twenty-five years of our advisor’s graduate students. Some of his first students were there, all the way down to his current students. I’ve met former lab members before at info sessions or other conferences, but it was cool to see a bunch (there ended up being about a dozen of us) of them at once. After lunch, it was back to a somewhat random selection of talks and posters, though we did make it to a couple complex fluids talks, before the receptions that night. Most people who attend AIChE will admit that a decent percent of the reason you attend AIChE is to network and meet up with people you know. The first two nights, that’s accomplished by the receptions hosted by many of the larger universities in attendance. Basically, each university sets up in a ballroom or meeting room and gives out food and alcohol for a few hours. If you’re looking for an academic position, this is your time to go hunt down faculty; if you’re not, this is your time to wander around, eat, drink, and run into people you know.

Michigan’s reception (they had really good cake) was Monday night, but we also managed to make stops by MIT, Columbia, and UMass Amherst before calling it a night. Tuesday included more marginally tangentially related talks, plus Cornell’s reception. I saw former professors, classmates, and grad students, and got dessert, so I was pretty satisfied. The rest of the night involved crashing the Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and National University of Singapore receptions.

By Wednesday, we were tired and hungry, but the conference was only half over, and I hadn’t presented yet. We attended a lot of complex fluids talks, some of which were actually relevant to the work our lab does, before leaving at dinner time. On our way back to our lodgings, we stopped by Olive Garden, which ended up being one of the more palatable meals of the trip – i.e. not random appetizers on a plate or Americanized tourist-trap food. I managed to find the blandest item on the menu, pasta in a lemon herb sauce with grilled chicken. No cheese, no tomato sauce, nothing fried, and it even included vegetables.

Late afternoon outside the conference center

Finally, I presented on Thursday. In the afternoon. We attended a few talks earlier in the day before I reported to my session, heard about some projects involving similar systems to the one I work with, and gave my presentation. Being late in the day and late in the conference, you’re mainly just grateful anyone besides the session chair is there. And so we were done with any and all obligations at AIChE. We celebrated with Shake Shack.

After attending AIChE, I will say I’m glad I went, but it was a long week. Though there are constantly things going on, it’s hard to find the things that are most relevant to your research. Besides the actual content of the conference, the location was not the best. The conference center itself was fine, but the only places to get food inside it were the price-gouging hotel-owned restaurants/coffeeshops. Outside the conference center, it was tourist-trap central. All the restaurants were either places you’d take your date/business clients or bars/nightclubs. There wasn’t anywhere you could easily just get a piece of fruit, or a sandwich that wasn’t either grilled or soggy. And I’ll say it again, the app sucked. But I got to hang out with lab people, Michigan people, Cornell people, and other assorted friends, so I guess it was worth it.

Road Tripping: The State of Ohio

Our last day on the road, we were headed west for Dayton, Ohio, then north back to my temporary home in Ann Arbor. My major accomplishment of the day was driving across the entire state of West Virginia. We stopped at the visitor center/rest area to switch seats and say we had physically set foot in the state, then I drove. If you’re familiar with US geography, you might know that West Virginia has a little spike that sticks up between Pennsylvania and Ohio. Yeah, that’s what I drove across. More hours in the car later, we pulled into Dayton. What’s in Dayton? you ask. The Wright brothers were from Dayton, and the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park is there, featuring exhibits, the Parachute Museum, one of their bicycle shops, and the Huffman Prairie Flying Field, with interpretive center.

We started at the interpretive center, where there was an exhibit about the Wright brothers and flight, covering their bike shop days, Kitty Hawk, and further experimentation at the Huffman Prairie. Because they no longer had the consistent winds of Kitty Hawk, they had to change from launching their flyers off a track to using a catapult. They spent two years improving their flying machine, then stopped flying altogether for two years to secure patents. After that, they travelled internationally, manufactured Wright Flyers, and trained pilots. Besides the exhibit, there was also one of those obviously educational videos with cheesy acting and blatant CGI/green screen. I thought it was great.

The next stop was the Huffman Prairie, the cow pasture where they tested their flyers. This is where things get interesting. The interpretive center and prairie aren’t in the same location, but they are both on the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Some parts of the base – including the parts where the interpretive center and prairie are located – are accessible to the public. Some parts are very much not. After some help from the friendly ranger in the interpretive center, we found the publicly-accessible gate and followed the signs to the Huffman Prairie. Mainly, it’s a big field, but they have a replica of the catapult and their flying shed/barn, plus a wildflower walk and a bunch of signs warning you against trespassing. It was a bit of an experience.

Flying shed at the Huffman Prairie

At that point, we still had time to go into Dayton itself to see the Wright brothers’ bike shop and the visitor center for the National Historical Park. Their bike shop in Dayton is similar to the one Henry Ford hauled up to Greenfield Village. At various times, their shop occupied six different locations – the one in Dayton is the only one still in Dayton; Ford took their last building to Michigan. Our last stop was the visitor center. There, we saw some of their printing equipment from when they had a print shop, and the Parachute Museum. Unrelated to the Wright brothers specifically, related more generally to aviation.

The Parachute Museum

On the way back to Ann Arbor, we took a detour back to Columbus to have dinner and see a friend. I know Columbus best as the home of the Columbus Crew, not The Ohio State University, if that tells you anything about how much I care about NCAA football and the Big Ten. We ended up having dinner down the street from the university, walked around a bit, then made the drive back to Ann Arbor. Two countries. Five states. Four days. Would I personally have planned it that way? No, it’s not my style. We’ve established that I can spend entire days in a single museum. But I saw some sights I wouldn’t have seen if I had planned the trip, and spent time with my friend, which was my main goal anyway. And so ended my summer 2019 travels.

Road Tripping: Back in the USA

To circle Lake Erie in four days, we had to cover a significant amount of ground. Which is to say, we drove a lot on the last two days of our road trip. We drove out of Toronto in the morning, headed for Niagara Falls. Since we were already in Canada, we made a brief stop on the Canadian side of the falls. Having been to both sides, and having done some of the tourist activities on both sides, I will argue that I like the American side better. The Canadian side has a paved walkway with better views of the American and Horseshoe Falls, I’ll admit, but it gets worse as soon as you get away from that one area. Behind that street are casinos, hotels, souvenir shops, minigolf, Tussaud’s waxworks, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a Ferris wheel. You know, everything you really need to truly enjoy the natural wonder of the waterfall with the highest flow rate in North America.

Top: American (L) and Horseshoe (R) Falls from the Canadian side

Bottom: American (L) and Horseshoe (R) Falls from the American side

We stayed long enough to take some pictures, then made the border crossing, which took approximately five minutes. On the American side, we stopped again to get the opposite point of view. This side isn’t completely noncommercial – there’s still the Maid of the Mist and Cave of the Winds – but it’s within a state park, which at least tempers the commercialism. The state park is recognized as the oldest in America, but has been majorly refurbished in the past 20 years. Being a state park, there are trails away from the falls where it’s much less crowded and much more nature-y. Again, we mainly remained long enough to take pictures before getting back in the car for one of our longer stretches of driving. We cut south through New York on some alleged highways through a bunch of villages, hamlets, and towns with no grocery stores, gas stations, or traffic lights to be seen. Although we were stuck inching down the state at 45 miles per hour, it was a lovely drive. There were these things called hills. Everyone from the west is laughing right now, but the Midwest is actually, seriously, flat. You don’t always realize it, because it’s not like there are zero elevation changes across the entirely of the middle of America, but you’re rarely surrounded by hills. This brings my list of things I miss about New England to Wegmans, the northeast accent, actual snow, and hills.

View from Rimrock Overlook

Our destination for the day was Pittsburgh, but we made one more stop on the way. We stopped, again very briefly, in the Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania. Confusing fun fact of the day: the Allegany State Park in New York (just across the border) spells Allegheny without the h and with an a. I probably could have spent days walking around in there, but we didn’t have days, we had an hour, so we drove up to the Rimrock Overlook, and I hiked down a bit before hiking back up. It was almost quiet on the trail, if it hadn’t been for motorboats on the lake in the distance. But it was still a lovely walk, with plenty of trees, dirt, rocks, steps, and it was even slightly muddy.

On the trail

And I also miss hiking trails that look like this

When I returned to the car, we drove the last few hours to Pittsburgh. We got upgraded to a suite at the hotel, which has never happened to me in my life before. I guess this is what happens when you book using a business account instead of discount hotels R us dot com. I had dinner at IHOP because it was nearby and also I get hungry for breakfast for dinner once in a while. Back at the hotel, I settled into my personal bedroom to watch American Ninja Warrior and poker. Because no matter where you go, the hotel TV is always showing American Ninja Warrior and poker.

Road Tripping: 2 countries, 5 states, 4 days

I know. I just said that I usually like to only schedule one major event per day three posts ago. However, that’s when I’m in charge of the itinerary. I’m not usually in charge of the itinerary, for various reasons. Most of them being that I occasionally sometimes often have a different definition of fun than my traveling companions do. See: hiking 17 miles in a day with no practice or training, ripping all the skin off my hands, and walking around in snowstorms, for just a few examples. On this most recent trip, I was not responsible for any of the planning and was mostly along for the ride around Lake Erie through Toronto, Niagara Falls (New York), Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio.

We set out for Canada after church on Sunday. Normally, coming from New England, we cross the border at or near Niagara Falls. Even when it’s busy, I don’t remember sitting in line for more than 20 minutes. Wherever we crossed in Michigan, we got stuck for close to an hour. Eventually, we made it to Toronto, with a stop for Tim Hortons on the way. Because donuts.

In the morning, we set out to see some of Canada. We first walked to the Kensington Market/Chinatown area to look at the shops and eat a bit. We had dumplings in Chinatown, and poutine at Kensington Market just because I’ve never had poutine despite having been to Canada at least four times up to this point. It was fine. The cheese was good. The gravy wasn’t too salty and had somewhat herbal notes (rosemary, I think). After our breakfast/snack/lunch, we returned to our lodgings to pick up the car so we could drive to the beach. We went about half an hour up the lakeshore from Toronto to Bluffers Park along the Scarborough Bluffs, which run along Lake Ontario for about 15 kilometers total.

The Scarborough Bluffs

We walked around a bit before going to the beach. There, we discovered that they were banning/very strongly discouraging swimming or wading in the water due to high E. coli levels. I hadn’t been planning to get very wet anyway, so I wandered around some more. It wasn’t a great beach to sit around on. The sand was hard, and it was kind of crowded and noisy, but the bluffs were nice. We left a little after that to explore the lake back near where we were staying. We ended up walking through Coronation Park and the Toronto Inukshuk Park to get to Trillium Park where we saw some nice views of Lake Ontario. These parks are also right by Exhibition Place, which hosts shows, concerts, conferences and other events of that nature, and BMO Field, home to MLS’s Toronto FC, who are right in the mix of teams in the eastern conference playoff race along with the Montreal Impact, Chicago Fire, Orlando City FC, and the one and only New England Revolution.¹

View of Toronto from Trillium Park

Anyway, Trillium Park was very nice. It just opened in 2017. It has walking paths, play areas, a restaurant/café, a Cinesphere where you can watch movies, and a concert stage. Overall, it was a pretty good day in Toronto. I ate some food I hadn’t eaten before, saw some things I hadn’t seen before. I will admit Toronto’s not my favorite city (and my least favorite subway system). I don’t know why, but it isn’t. It’s reasonably bike/pedestrian friendly, with plenty of people doing both, but the roads are also very busy, and things can be a little spread out. If I make another trip to Toronto, I think at this point what I’d want to see is a Revolution game at BMO Field, the Hockey Hall of Fame, and maybe the Royal Ontario Museum. Other than that, I’ve been up the CN Tower, been to Casa Loma, eaten at Chinatown, seen the University of Toronto campus, and now explored some of the lakeshore. On this trip, this was our only full day in Toronto, and the following day we’d be off on our way back to the good ole United States of America.

¹As of writing. As of posting, the Revolution clinched their playoff spot with a 2-0 win over NYCFC last Sunday. It was a fantastic game.

Road Tripping: The Michigan Edition

Days after my friends left, another Cornell friend came to visit. Last year we met in Chicago; this year she came to see me; maybe next year I’ll go see her. We had plans to go on a road trip, but first we spent a couple days in Michigan. First, we got more use out of my Ford Museum membership by making the rounds through the museum and Greenfield Village. Besides all the usual spiels, we got printed copies of the Declaration of Independence, caught most of the Wright brothers’ (+sister Katharine) first flight at Kitty Hawk retelling, saw wool being carded, and heard Edison’s recording device. Inside, we walked through most of the planes/trains/cars/assorted farm equipment, but spent more time in the historical With Liberty & Justice for All exhibit, which covers independence, the Civil War, Woman’s Suffrage¹, and the Civil Rights movement.

Clockwise from top L: Wright Brothers' house, Wright Brothers' bicycle shop,

Rose Parks bus, Hot dog car

After dinner, we returned to Greenfield Village, this time for music and fireworks. When we were in Ithaca, we used to be able to watch city fireworks from the slope. It wasn’t the official viewing location, and you had to be okay with having some of the fireworks blocked by West Campus, but it was kind of fun to share in the unofficial experience on campus with other students. As far as I can tell, Ann Arbor doesn’t do fireworks for the Fourth of July. The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, however, partners with Greenfield Village to do an outdoor concert ending with fireworks accompanied by music. It sounded like it could be good, so I got tickets. The weather had possible thunderstorms in the forecast all evening, but the rain held off, and they only cancel for lightning, no refunds, so we went back to the village. As we found a spot on one side of the lawn, it started pouring.

DSO concert at Greenfield Village

Of course it did. They didn’t evacuate the premises, so we put on raincoats, huddled under umbrellas, and waited it out. After the rain delay, we got to listen to an abbreviated concert. Honestly, you go to outdoor concerts for the experience, not for a quality musical experience. Even the combined dulcet tones of a hundred musicians blaring away don’t carry well outside. There were speakers, so we could still hear, but a lawn in the rain is no acoustically architectured concert hall. They started out with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which I first played in seventh grade for a PawSox game in Rhode Island and last played three years ago in Schoellkopf Field for a lacrosse game at Cornell. They played the overture from Candide (Bernstein, played it last fall in band), some jazz, skipped Copland’s “Variations on a Shaker Melody” (“Simple Gifts,” most probably), played the Army/Coast Guard/Marines/Air Force/Navy service songs (played most of these in ninth grade at Memorial Day parades), John Williams, more jazz, and ended with (not shockingly enough) the 1812 Overture. During the fireworks, there was more music – think patriotic tunes along the lines of “God Bless the U.S.A.” Although the rain threw things off a bit, the experience was still worth it. We managed to get out without too much trouble, even after forgetting where we left the car, and were only slightly damp.

The next morning, our destination of choice was the Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. I’d been once with my parents on our way back to Ann Arbor from Chicago after my brother’s graduation. It’s a couple hours from Ann Arbor, but it’s somewhat different from a typical art or natural history museum, so I think it’s worth visiting. They have lots of plants, some conservatories, a new Japanese garden, and dozens of sculptures amidst the paths and trees. The sculptures range from abstract figures and blocks to metal people, horses, birds, other animals, and giant shovels. Everything’s generally arranged in a big loop, so it’s pretty easy to navigate. We made a round, had lunch, and took a quick walk around the Japanese garden before heading out.

Clockwise from top L: Giant horse, crashed UFO, giant neuron, parallelepiped

Since we’d driven the couple hours across the state, we figured we’d drive a little more to the western side of the state to see Lake Michigan. With the help of Google, we found Hoffmaster State Park and the lake. There was a small beach area but it was pretty crowded and we didn’t have any beach things, so we walked along the shore for a bit to enjoy the sand, water, and views. Before driving all the way back across the state, we climbed up to an overlook for a view of the lake. Then it was three hours in the car on some wonderfully paved highways (read: terribly paved) back to Ann Arbor where I packed for the start of our road trip the next day.

Lake Michigan, Hoffmaster State Park

¹The one thing I was absolutely supposed to learn and remember from US History II was that women gained the right to vote from the fifteenth² amendment to the Constitution.

²Just kidding. It’s the nineteenth³ amendment.

³For real this time.

ChemE 6350: The Theology of Colloids

[October 2018]

The actual reason I was in Houston was not, shockingly enough, to see space shuttles and astronaut gloves, but for a conference. A rheology conference. Rheology is the study of the flow of matter, but because it’s a scary science word¹, it often gets “corrected” to theology, as you might have guessed from the title of this post.

Also shocking, more than three dozen people were in attendance at this conference. The conference attracts all the rheologists (not theologists) in the country, including former Cornell ChemE classmates, lab members, and a professor. Due to graduation, all of us are now at different schools, but it was nice to catch up with some familiar faces. My current lab had a few of us in attendance, plus our advisor, another professor and student from the University of Michigan, and one of our collaborators. Besides all these people who I personally knew, there were also professors who I met when I visited Carnegie Mellon, professors whose papers I’ve read, and a couple of those names who everyone in the research area just knows. If you’ve never heard that academia can be a bit incestuous, you’re hearing it now.

The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall park, right next to the mall where we were staying

This particular conference ran from Sunday evening to Thursday morning. The only event on Sunday is a welcome reception which basically turns into all the professors cross-examining each other about research, all the students alternately avoiding/being ignored by their advisors, and everyone eating free food while trying to see who’s there that year. For the next three and a half days, the day begins with a plenary lecture followed by seven hours of talks by students and professors. I presented during the last slot on Tuesday, which wasn’t a terrible time. I had a day at the conference to prepare, time afterwards to relax and listen to other peoples’ talks, and it was so late in the day no one bothered to show up. The talks cover everything from theory to molecular simulations to experimental techniques about polymers, colloids, polyelectrolytes, surfactants, and more.

In the evenings, after the talks are over for the day, the conference plans an event. Monday night was a trip to a local brewery, where we had dinner, got as much beer as we wanted to drink, and received a pint glass with the society’s logo on it. It’s the drinking accessory I never knew I wanted. Tuesday night was the awards banquet. I didn’t attend because it costs extra money and you have to dress up, but I went to the pre-banquet reception because it was open to everyone, I had a drink ticket, and there was free food. Wednesday night was the poster session, also with free food. I’m a fan of this conference for several reasons. One, it’s small enough that it’s not overwhelming, but large enough that you’ll probably be able to find someone else doing semi-relevant work. Two, we went to a brewery. The last time I attended, the conference was held in Baltimore and the social event was at the aquarium. And three, free food (and alcohol). You could almost survive on free food alone if you supplemented with granola bars.

At the brewery (Monday night)

On Thursday, one of my lab mates, my travelling partner, and I left the talks a little early (sorry to anyone still presenting) to wander the mall and get Chick-fil-A before leaving for the airport. At the airport, our basic economy tickets afforded us the opportunity to board with group 4 and sit in the window seats in the very last row, the third-to-last row, and the sixth-to-last row. We had an uneventful flight back, and with that we returned to a cold and dark Ann Arbor. It was a good trip. I fulfilled my graduation requirement of presenting at a national conference, saw some fellow Cornell alumni, had Texas barbeque, went to Space Center Houston, met up with a Cornell friend attending school in Houston, and had fun.

¹Phenolphthalein, a common indicator² used in acid-base titrations, is one of my favorite science-y words to spell because of that “lphth” string in the middle.

²The one that goes from clear to bright pink at a pH of 8.2. It’s often used in freshman general chemistry labs, and no matter how many times the TA reminds everyone to put the indicator in the base before beginning the titration, someone will always forget. Half an hour later, when this student has dumped three gallons of acid into their beaker without witnessing a color change, someone will cautiously bring up the indicator. When a single drop of phenolphthalein is added, the solution will go from clear as a mountain spring to 90s neon windbreaker pink.

Houston, We Have a Problem

[October 2018]

While working out the logistics of transportation and lodging for my first conference as a grad student, it was discovered that flying there on the day the conference started would cost over a hundred dollars more than flying a day earlier. Plus we’d have to fly out of Detroit at five or six in the morning. Since I was planning to travel with another student and split the cost of the hotel room, we decided to travel to Houston a day early and spend some time doing things outside of the hotel. We left Detroit at 8:45 on a grey forty-five-degree morning and emerged in Houston three hours later to sunshine, humidity, and eighty-five-degree temperatures.

There were only a couple things I wanted to accomplish with our extra free day in Houston: 1) go to Space Center Houston and 2) have Texas barbeque. In order to achieve these goals, we opted to rent a car, which turned out to be a great decision. Texas is not made for walking. Everything is miles apart, and even the things that are close together are separated by ten-lane roads with no crosswalks as far as the eye can see. So if you’re ever travelling to Houston and get advice to rent a car if you’re going anywhere more than twenty feet from your hotel, take it.

Mission Control

From the airport, we drove to the space center, stopping for semi-authentic tacos for lunch on the way. After paying for tickets, we were advised at the information desk to line up for the tram tour first to make sure we made it on to a tour. There are two tram tours, one that focuses more on the astronaut training facilities, and one that goes to mission control. We ended up in the line for the mission control tour, which drives through some of the NASA campus before stopping at the mission control center, named for Chris Kraft, a former flight director who was later director of the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center). We didn’t get to directly see the controllers working (we saw them on a TV screen), but we did see the room where they train them for the ISS (International Space Station). It still looks similar to the control rooms from the 60s that sent astronauts to the moon, except the computers are smaller and there’s less cigar smoke.

Saturn V

Following the guided part of the tour, we were dropped off at Rocket Park, where they have a collection of (surprise) rockets – Little Joe, a Mercury-Redstone, and a Saturn V. Little Joe was used for unmanned tests of the Mercury capsule. The Redstone was used for suborbital Project Mercury flights; it was followed by the Atlas for orbital Mercury flights, the Titan II for Project Gemini, the Saturn IB for unmanned testing of the Apollo modules and Apollo 7, and finally the Saturn V for the remaining Apollo flights. After seeing the Saturn V – it’s the length of a football field and had a building specially built for it – we caught the tram back to the space center.

Training shuttle + 747

The indoor exhibits there include information on Mars missions, some of the items used by astronauts on the ISS, and post-Apollo space activity – Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, the shuttle and ISS. We also saw a film on an ISS EVA (extravehicular activity, or spacewalk) gone wrong, which was interesting. The last exhibit we saw was outdoors. They have a modified Boeing 747 used as a shuttle carrier aircraft with a (mockup) shuttle attached. The 747 was stripped of almost all its passenger seats and reinforced where the shuttle was attached, and is now filled with exhibits about the conception and development of the idea to use a plane to carry the space shuttle. It’s pretty cool; there are three levels you can walk through, the first being the 747 and the top two in the shuttle itself. Once we finished this, we had seen most of the space center, so we headed off for dinner. (Barbeque, a long wait, but this was our best chance to get Texas barbeque since we spent the rest of the week carless and in the hotel. It was worth the wait for brisket.) As for the space center, if you have any interest at all in space, Space Center Houston gets a definite go from me.

Altitude and Art

While I wouldn’t have minded spending my whole trip redoing things in Chicago, I did see some new things, namely the Sears sorry, Willis, Tower, and the Chicago Art Institute. I also (finally) had Chicago deep dish pizza. It was alright. The crust was both over and undercooked, but the pizza in no way desecrated the name of the food it was supposed to be. I’m looking at you, Manhattan “clam chowder.”

Normally, the thought of paying to take an elevator ride and look out windows reminds me of shredding money, but once in a while, I will pay for the privilege of throwing my hard-earned stipend at these tourist traps. This was one of these times. We headed up around sunset to try and see the city during day and night. There was almost no line when we arrived, and we only had to wait at the elevators for maybe ten minutes. Once we arrived at the viewing area, however, we found the tourists out in full force. We walked around a couple times, then decided to wait in line for the glass floor alcoves because we were there, and we had nothing better to do.

View toward Lake Michigan.  Buckinham Fountain is in the bottom left, half covered by the red building.  The part jutting out further down is Adler Planetarium.  Next to that are the Shedd Aquarium and Field Museum.  No clue about the rest of the buildings.  The things in the sky are clouds.

Most of the families and groups were pretty good about getting in there, snapping a few pictures, and moving on. There were a few people who felt the need to do a short photoshoot, take seventeen thousand selfies, and then switch positions with their friend, but they weren’t the majority, thankfully. We watched the sun set while in line, made it to the ledge, took some pictures, and looked down 1,353 feet to the ground. I wouldn’t say you have to do it, but if you’ve bought the CityPass or need to complete a Chicago experience in less time than it takes to go to a museum, I guess it’s worth it.

On our last day there, our attraction of the day was the Art Institute of Chicago. I like art, but I’m not going to debate symbolism or color theory, and if your art installation is fifty-three TVs screaming at me, I will be less than enthused. I found the layout horrendously confusing and kept wandering in circles and/or going left when I should have gone right and/or going right when I should have gone left. By the time we left I had it mostly figured out, but not before seeing European Art Before 1900 four times.

Clockwise from top left: dead chicken, abstract buffalo

(it's supposed to be suggestive of a landscape), Nahant shoreline, dead fish

Overall, I liked the Art Institute. They have a nice variety of paintings, sculptures, furniture, and other art-ish objects. Everything is generally arranged by region and time period and includes Asian art (further subdivided), Greek and Roman art, American art pre 1900, American art post 1900 (up to 1950), Impressionism, Contemporary art, Modern art, the arms and armor, paperweights, and the Thorne miniature rooms (models of rooms built at a 1:12 scale). I was most entertained by landscapes, dead animals, and the paperweight collection. I also enjoyed the arms and armor and American art, plus mini Lincoln in the sculpture court. Other highlights were American Gothic, Georgia O’Keefe’s cloud painting, and that painting Sunday at the Park with George is inspired by.

Top: armor.  Bottom left: mini Lincoln.  Bottom right: paperweights.

It was a quick trip to Chicago, but I/we managed to pack a number of things into it. We went to the zoo, Field Museum, Skydeck, Art Institute, walked along Lake Michigan, saw Grant Park, ate deep dish pizza, and had dinner with my brother. After all that, I got back on the train and headed back to Ann Arbor. We made good time out of Chicago and through Indiana, then outside of Kalamazoo, we stop a couple hundred feet down from the station. They announce that we’re waiting for a freight train to get out of our way. Okay. We sit and wait. Ten minutes later, they announce that the freight train is waiting to get into the yard so it can get out of our way. Okay. Fifteen minutes later, we finally get moving again. Combined with other smaller delays, we’re close to an hour late when we make it to Ann Arbor, but I’ve heard of people being two or three hours late, so I’m not complaining (too much).

Return to the Windy City

[In case you missed me, I was away, but I’m back – and back to work – now. At this point, blog time is running about four months behind. There are a couple more summer posts after this one, then in fall I went to a cider mill for the first time in years and attended a conference. After that, I left the country for two and a half weeks, which hopefully I’ll finish posting about by next summer. Stay tuned.]

Once again, we leave Ann Arbor for this post and head back to Chicago. On this trip at the end of August, I was headed west to see a friend from Cornell – a former fellow ChemE, senior design group member, and roommate – who was vacationing in Chicago. This time, I did not travel at the crack of dawn on a bus-less holiday morning, but in the middle of a Sunday when both the city and university buses were running. I did miss church, but if I’m remembering correctly, this was the first Sunday that I’d missed all year. I rode Amtrak again, and the train ride there went smoothly (besides the fifteen minutes we pulled over to restart the electrical system . . .). Don’t worry, the train ride back was more than an hour late to make up for it.

Instead of recapping this trip day by day, I’ll condense it to two posts, one with things I’ve done before (this post) and one with new experiences (the next post). The friend I was meeting up with hadn’t been to Chicago before, so we did some of the big Chicago things that I’d already done because I’m the kind of person who eats the same ten things every day. I’m not going to be bothered by seeing the same museum twice in a summer.

After I arrived in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, we made a quick trip to the zoo that was notable mainly for the heat. A lot of the animals were in hiding. Either that or they were abducted by aliens. We did see the polar bear, which was MIA last time I was at the zoo. Most of the primates were also in view, mainly because they had no energy to hide from people.

The primates are #OverIt

The first full day in Chicago, I paid a second visit to the Field Museum to spend some quality time with Sue and friends, plus rocks, minerals, and taxidermy. Once again, I enjoyed it, and wandered around for most of a day. Because my friend actually likes food, we left around lunchtime to eat something that wasn’t an eight-dollar museum sandwich, then returned. I skipped the room of fake plants this time, and took more time to look at the dinosaurs. It turns out that last time we missed the part of the exhibit where Sue is being rehomed. She’s not on display yet, but there’s a viewing window that lets you see her in her mostly-reassembled state.

Hi, Sue

Lastly, would this even be a post about Chicago without a picture of Cloud Gate? The answer is no. Here’s the bean:

The back side of the Bean

Pinto, kidney, fava, Navy

Featuring Cloud Gate (aka the Bean). And pinto, kidney, fava, and Navy are all . . . types of beans. Ha, ha; I’m hilarious, I know. Our travels in Chicago brought us relatively close to Cloud Gate pretty much daily. I took every opportunity to visit the Bean. And the rest of this post will be nothing but pictures of Cloud Gate, because this is exactly the kind of content you should expect from me by now.

Sunny afternoon Bean

Cloudy evening Bean

Quiet(er) morning Bean

Cloud-containing Bean

Foggy side Bean

Donut Day

On our last full day in Chicago, we did not visit a museum, but I did get a donut. We took the train to the Wicker Park/Bucktown area and discovered a donut shop upon exiting the station. I had a chocolate dipped old fashioned donut. I don’t regret getting this donut, but it might have been even better plain because the chocolate was a little overpowering. Turns out June 1st is National Donut Day, so we also got a free glazed donut that I ate the next day. Still good.

We did a self-guided architecture tour around Wicker Park that my mother got out of a physical guidebook. Yes, they still make those. Yes, people, including my family, still read those. My newfangled cellular device is barely intelligent, I like reading maps, and I’m kind of old and grumpy inside. I don’t like relying on my phone for everything. After seeing a bunch of houses that had no significance for me, we walked around some more and looked at the stores and restaurants before having ramen for lunch. It was pretty good ramen, but I’ve had better in the Boston/Cambridge area.

Back around Millennium Park/Grant Park, we stopped at the library that’s not a library (originally actually a library, now the Chicago Cultural Center). We saw parts of Keith Haring’s Chicago Mural, painted in 1989 by Haring and Chicago public school students. There was also some sort of art, a big dome, and live music of the loud and moderately unintelligible kind. We returned to my brother’s condo for dinner and I watched Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which was so dumb it was good.

Chicago skyline stitched together in five minutes using Paint

Taken by the Shedd Aquarium/Adler Planetarium

I don’t have a whole lot else to say, so I will mention how we got tickets to all the paid attractions we visited. We opted for the three-attraction Chicago Explorer Pass because based on the activities we wanted to do, this made the most economic sense. The cost is $79 for three attractions ($104 for four, and $119 for five). The prices they list for the things we did are $45.92 for the architecture cruise, $32 for the Field Museum, and $33.95 for the Museum of Science and Industry, a total of $111.87. However, both museum tickets had an extra exhibit/show added to the base price of $24 and $21.95 for the Field Museum and Museum of Science and Industry respectively. But even foregoing the addons, buying tickets individually would be $91.87, so you still come out ahead in this case. Another thing to consider is that you’re limited in what the extra exhibit you can choose is. At the Field Museum, our option was a ticketed exhibit (and I think the mummies weren’t an option); we chose the underground exhibit. At the Museum of Science and Industry, we could pick from one of the giant screen movies; that’s why we saw the ocean show.

The other multiple attraction ticket options are the Go Chicago Card and the Chicago CityPass. The Go Chicago Card is probably the most expensive option unless you’re the kind of person who speeds through museums in a couple hours and are willing to visit 2-3 attractions in a day. The starting price is $109 for one day, but in that day, you can visit as many things as you like out of a list of 28 attractions. Adding days takes progressively less money – I’m kind of wondering now if anyone’s managed to visit all 28 attractions in 5 days ($219) or less. The CityPass gets you into 5 attractions for $106. Three are fixed; the other two have two options to choose from. Note that if you want to go to the Shedd Aquarium, it is not an option with the Explorer Pass, but is included with the Go Chicago Card and CityPass.

To conclude, the Explorer Pass is probably the most versatile for the best value, and was worth it for us on this trip. If I ever wanted to go to the aquarium, I’d probably plan it for a trip when I had time to do everything on the CityPass because tickets for the Shedd Aquarium alone are $40 compared to $20-25 for the rest of the museums. I also haven’t been to the Adler Planetarium, Art Institute, or up to the Skydeck. Also waiting for a good musical to pass through Chicago (or for someone to hand me tickets to Hamilton). Next trip, maybe.

Sue Had It Coming

One of the other major museums in Chicago is the Field Museum, located on Museum Campus along with the Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, and Soldier Field. From Millennium Park, we walked along the waterfront to the Field Museum, entered the museum, and came face to face with Máximo. Máximo is a titanosaur who has taken Sue’s place. Sue the t-rex is currently in storage while a new home gets built for her. We also arrived while a pterosaur was in the process of being hung, which was newsworthy enough for at least one news station to send a cameraman.

Stanley Field Hall, the main lobby of the Field Museum.

Pterosaur to the left, Máximo to the right.

While the Museum of Science and Industry features exhibits containing things people have made, like boats and trains, the Field Museum skews more towards natural history, like rocks and taxidermy. The first exhibit we visited had you imagine that you shrink to a hundredth of your size and explore an underground den of dirt, roots, and insects. We’re going to ignore the scientific implications (hi, Ant-Man) because it’s a cool idea. The exhibit teaches about soil porosity, types of root systems, symbiotic root fungus, and the kinds of insects you might meet.

Just a friendly neighborhood grub.

Next, we walked through an exhibit about conservation, which showed video clips and field notes from an actual Field Museum trip to Peru for rainforest conservation. That led to the Regenstein Halls of the Pacific, featuring objects from and information about various Pacific island nations. From there, we emerged back on the upper level balcony, looked at some of the rocks and meteorites, and then it was time for lunch. Downstairs in the Explorer Café, I uncomplainingly ate yet more museum food before wandering the Field Museum for three and a half more hours.

We returned upstairs to see the gems and jade jewelry. That was followed by an entire hall of plants. We saw maybe three other people in this vast room of pine cones and palm fronds encased in glass. At least some of the seeds were real, but most of the leaves were not. Going through this fake forestry caused us to emerge straight in the dinosaur hall in the middle of the Evolving Planet exhibit. We spent some time visiting with Sue’s friends, then walked backwards through time, watching multicellular land animals devolve into sea blobs and trilobites.

One of Sue's friends, a hadrosaur

Back on the lower level, we covered birds, the cat and dog families, Asian mammals, African mammals, and What is an Animal?. That was the west side of the lower level. The east side contained an extensive exhibit about ancient American civilizations (Mayan, Incan, plus half a dozen others you never knew existed), items from Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples, and the gift shop. Like the Museum of Science and Industry, you could spend an entire day here and still not see everything. I think we missed a few rooms because of how the exhibits lead into one another, but we saw almost everything in six hours, with a lunch break. I did mention that I like museums, right?

[The post title is a play on the song “She Had it Coming” from (wait for it) the musical Chicago. I wanted to name all the posts about this trip after song titles or lyrics from Chicago, but try as I might, I couldn’t relate a musical satirizing criminal justice to penguins, a U-Boat, or donuts (still to come).]