No snow? No problem!

Since the snow gods seemed to be slacking off, we decided to take advantage of the warm weather and visit some friends in Salida Colorado. Plus, as old lore goes, when you leave town, there is sure to be a dumping!

In Salida we found some amazing food, hikes, local flavor and great art. It was really amazing! Salida was like steamboat if you took away the troves of tourists and had all of the shops local. On top of all that, our friends' house was beautiful and they had four fun-loving dogs to boot! By the end of the trip we were ready to come back the next weekend, but alas, it did snow while we were away!

Horace the horrible

We sorely needed a mouser. Not just any mouser, but a hardy one for up in clark at our ranch. So we headed down to the shelter and asked if we could adopt a feral cat. They offered us horrace the horrible, so we got all of our papers in order, bought a carrier and picked up horrace from the shelter. Once horrace was in the car, we read the file. Over his name, feral had bee crossed out and semi feral was penciled in. At 25 pounds, if horrace was semi feral, does that mean that he is just a lazy giant? Well, he is up at te cabing now and I guess we will just need to wait and find out!

OOfta

Hunting isn’t easy – the hike in, the stalk, the cold, and if you are lucky, the haul out. But more importantly, if you do get extremely lucky (or extremely good) it doesn’t get easier. You see if you get a trophy elk, you need to mount it. And if you mount it, you need to carry it and hang it up and an elk isn’t exactly light! Here I am helping  friend carry his mount into the car so he could hang it up.

reunion!

Jeeze! Within two years of going to college, my high school teachers are all grown up! My Spanish teachers came over for dinner and while I was away not only got married, but got pregnant! I tell you, pretty soon I’m going to start feeling old!

Fix It!

With skiing conditions sub par I have decided to take advantage of my free time by getting some things off of my parents’ list. Task #1: fix the pod with some serious JB weld!

Holiday party

Back in the boat just in time for the holiday season! The mountains are tall, the skies are bluebird but there is only one problem – there is no snow! With one lift open – strips of doom – we opted for a hike instead, then got ready for a party. Not bad at all.

the hot springs

There is nothing like the Strawberry Park Hot Springs. Except maybe hiking up to the strawberry park hot springs, getting into the hot pool...

then into the river!

engines

I think the world would just be better off if we all went Fred Flinstone style - no pesky engines, just running to and fro. Starting a bunch of engines after a summer without use is challenging! On the list for yesterday at the cabin were the snowmobiles - only a three hour job, the snow blower - a two hour job including some squirting oil - yum, then the wood splitter. Now the wood splitter was pretty entertaining. We checked the oil - all good, then the gas. There wasn't any, so my dad went to pour some in and it spouted out of the engine onto his shoe. After a few moments of blundering around looking for the leak we found it in a punctured tube. We caught the remaining gas in a container, recut and attached the hose, then started all over again. And this was all before we could even start splitting the wood!

relax?

What is that? I get off the plane in Denver, get picked up by my parents and proceed straight to my brother's house at Colorado School of Mines. There, we go out for lunch, where he informs us that his door got broken and hasn't been fixed yet. But not to worry, he had the door, it just didn't fit into his door frame. You see, his house is really really old and nothing - NOTHING is square. Of course, we decide to fix it, so we get out the belt sander and in two hours flat, the door is in and I'm ready to fall back asleep. It's good to be home.

Packing

Heading home for winter break– with everything necessary for some great adventures in Steamboat and beyond!

My crib

When I first rented  the pebble (my off campus house), it looked like this.

After much building and some ghetto rigging, the place has been transformed. If you follow the video, you can see the shelving in the kitchen, the knife block, made with wooden skewers, the spice shelf and a row of hooks.

Entering the bedroom, you can see the curtain door and tie downs, and plenty of hooks. Then you can see the beds and shelving that I built in. At the far corner is the recurve bow rack and two bars for hanging clothes. I don’t think I missed any descriptions, but it sure was a blast to make, and now it definitely feels like home sweet home. The next modification will include a new kitchen table!

Pawtuckaway

On break finally, I had a bit of recovery time before I headed home. What is the best way to recover? By going bouldering with friends of course! Ray, Eric (a fellow Smartwool ambassador) and I met at the parking lot and proceeded to grate all of the skin off of our hands! Doesn’t that sound like fun?!

what do you think?

Will my cousin like a hand lathed dreidel?

oh navigation!

With Engs 21 over and finals looming Nat and I did the responsible thing to do - climb! Not only did we climb, but we got a tad lost on the way from one crag to the next. You see, fall=leaves and leaves cover trails. So... we ended up on a 4 wheeler road. I've never seen a road before at Rumney - cool beans! Ended up we weren't on Rumney at all, but on someone's private property. So we were going to  make a quick escape until we found out that they had pigs. So after a quick photoshoot we made our quick exit. Best. Rumney day. Ever!

You know you live in NE when...

There is a buck hanging out between you and your wheelbarrow!

Fancy

That's right! Looking good for our final presentation. We presented for the engineering review board, including the dean of students at thayer. Overall, it was pretty dang successful and the board offered funding for more research. SHWEET!

ELK!!

My parents are boss. After getting up at 3AM for five days in a row, they had an amazing hunt in the snow and got an elk, carried it out and butchered it! So jealous! 

A day in the life

You may be wondering, what the heck I do here at camp Dartmouth. As much as it may seem, it is not all fun and games. To start the day off on the right foot, I do yoga in the morning, before class. After yoga and core exercises, I head over to the dining hall for some eats, then class until noon.

This is when the day gets crazy. I work until dinner in the machine shop, working with the metal lathes, mills, 3D printers, computer aided design and other engineering toys. As a TA, I get to learn about the shop for my projects and help other students use the tools for their projects.

After grabbing dinner, I head back to Thayer Engineering school for my statics bridge engineering project. Other TA’s help me with balanceing the forces of bridges, so they don’t collapse. By the time the homework session is over, I mosey back to the pebble and sleep like a baby. In this manner, I work my butt off during the week and try to get out and do some really fun things on the weekend.

Organization is good

Especially for your packs! Especially when you live in humid NH!

Bowls!

And not the smoking type! I decided this year that I really wanted to learn something new – turning wood bowls. I found the biggest piece of maple I could find, chopped it in half, planed it then stuck it on the lathe. At first it was horrifying to gouge into a giant mass of spinning wood. Slowly, it became more comfortable, and the wood peeled off in strands. After shaping and sanding the outside, I flipped and did the same for the inside. After taking great care to dry out the wet green wood, the bowls looks great!

Where I have been

I don’t want to lead you astray. I have been on a crazy adventure the past couple of weeks, but not of the type you may think. I can only dream about skiing, climbing, hiking and hunting. No, the adventure that I have been partaking in is called engineering. I am participating in Dartmouth's gateway engineering class. The only prompt for our group project class was to "improve the quality of life". After a lot of brainstorming, we decided to tackle something close to home for me: the correlation between hip strength and sports injuries. There are many studies showing that there is an optimal ratio between hip muscles and quad backsquat strength. Looking at the picture below, there are two flow charts. The one on the left represents most athletes. Training typically includes dominant muscle training and specific sport training until an injury occurs, then non dominant muscle training in physical therapy. After the athlete is recovered, non dominant training is often forgotten. The flowchart on the left is more sustainable, with non dominant(ND) training intermittently throughout the sports season.

We asked why athletes don't train non dominant musclest since the correlation with injury is already known? We questioned athletes, trainers and physical therapists and came up with 4 reasons:

      1. Athletes feel "too strong" for ND training because there are no direct results, ie: it doesn’t make them better at their sport.
 

      2. Athletes don’t screen for muscle imbalances throughout the season, only post injury.
 

      3. Athletes don’t want to ‘waste’ time with coach/athletic trainer, asking how to do ND training correctly instead of taking advantage of manual therapy/asking how to get better at sport.
 

      4. ND training technique is hard to do and if done wrong only enforces bad muscle patterns.

From these barriers, we came up with goals for our device:
 

      1. A positive biofeedback loop that sets the athlete up, based on their backsquat strength, to strengthen their hip muscles to the correct ratios, thus adjusting throughout the year to their strength.
 

      2. Make the device much less technique dependent than the state of the art.
 

      3. Make the device not a replacement for PT or athletic trainers, but something that would allow the athlete to take full advantage of the trainer’s time. If the athlete has balanced muscles already, the trainer can get straight to manual work.

From there we started designing and building, developing a works-like prototype! Now just to make it a bit prettier…

Homecoming

What would life be without a little bit of hypocrisy? The school has officially cracked down on all hazing, in their words, "anything that could possibly cause embarrassment". Wait? Are presentations in class hazing? I’m confused. Anyhow, on the day of homecoming, all upperclassmen waited in anticipation to see how the bonfire would be handled. Traditionally there is a giant fire, lots of freshmen running around it and lots of upperclassmen yelling at them to run faster or just watching the fire. I almost expected the college to tell all students to run the bonfire, but apparently tradition trumps hazing policy.

So, the freshmen rolled in, stood around the fire and the president of the college welcomed them to the college with a speech that sounded awfully like the introduction to the hunger games.In a whispery voice, President Folt started “What a beautiful night it is tonight.” – creepy, right? She went on to finish off the welcoming with “After this tradition, you will be a true part of Dartmouth.” Hmm.

I’m not trying to say that the Bonfire is or isn’t hazing. I’m just saying that maybe the college should better define hazing, or better yet just be straight shooters with the problem and put the words "Greek Life" in the policy. Or is the DOC in trouble for making  students sleep outside?

Pumpkin carving

Halloween was on a Wednesday. With homework, classes and general life responsibilities, there wasn’t much time for getting out. But it wouldn’t have been Halloween without pumpkins, so the DOC bought a ton of pumpkins and the carving commenced. Awesome!

Lodgaween!

When I was little, Halloween was a time for candy, fun and running around in the dark. Now I am in college and not much has changed. As you have probably seen from previous blogs, the lodge is a traditional Dartmouth Outing Club run cabin at mount mousalake. Students often go up to the lodge, starting during freshmen trips. After trips, the lodge hosts annual parties, lodgoween being one of the best.

As the name infers, the party encompasses the best parts of the lodge – great food and company, Halloween – namely fun and some adventure, and since it is a party, dancing! To kick off the party, lodge crew (the students who spend the term working at the lodge), choreographs a dance. This year, it was single ladies by beyonce. Dancing, costumes, fun. What else do you need?

We can be classy

as a nice contrast from the normal, flair filled college lifestyle, friends of mine threw a really classy party the other day. Like actually classy and formal. Girls in dresses, guys in suits. In potluck style, we all chowed good food, drank, enjoyed each other company and had some really interesting conversation.

Then around 8PM, the music turned the corner, and it dissolved into a dance party. By ten, we had gone back to telling stories around the campfire. I would say that it ranked as one of the most perfectly timed parties ever. Much better than the 12AM party start that happens all too often here at school.

puddle climbing

Sometimes Hanover is like one big cabin, and because it has been raining a lot I have cabin fever, Bad! So I decided to go to Rumney for some puddle climbing. We started off climbing through wet puddles. After it dried out we were able to get on other stuff. Overall, it ended up being a really really nice day. AWESOME!

Finally

A real meal in the pebble! With my parents around, we pulled in all the available chairs, cooked up a storm and picked the last veggies from the garden. With my roommate Jyotsna, we finally christened the inside of the off campus house with a full blown dinner. Thank god, because it is sure getting cold for sitting outside!

The Fall

My god I can't tell you how amazing fall colors are. After sitting in Thayer School of Engineering looking at computers and doing bridge analysis, real life colors are AMAZING. Actually anything outside is amazing. That and sleep, so the weekend that my parents came up I did just that. We checked out the town of Quechee, Vermont said hello to some friends at Ibex, had a wonderful lazy long breakfast morning, raked leaves (I didn't want to lead you too astray), and hiked Mount Cardigan! I love sunny weekends in NH!

Alaskan Salmon!

Last night we had a great barbeque! Everyone either chipped for groceries or brought some food. Hilary, one of my school friends who commercial salmon fishes in Alaska every summer brought some fish. No joke, Alaskan salmon is the best I have EVER tasted.

Rope cleaner

After a long summer of use, my rope was getting pretty dirty looking, so I decided to figure out how the heck to clean the thing. Option number one included soaking the rope in a bathtub, but I don’t have a tub, so I nixed that. The next option was the washing machine, but it sounded like it would leave my rope in a tangled mess. Finally I came upon the pressure wash idea. The design is a ‘T’ joint for a pipe, a hose adapter and a home depot sample of astro turf. When you put the rope into the ‘T’ with the turf and turn on the hose, the rope get simultaneously scrubbed and cleaned…. Sweet!

Typical Rumney day

With the leaves turning and a chill in the air we went to Rumney after classes to get a little climbing because school can’t be all work. With all the fall colors, we couldn’t help but have some fun with it. Of course the day ended at whippi dip with some ice cream.

Best Concert Ever!

Those of you that know me know that I will obsess over my favorite song. Back in middle school I sang the song Boondocks by Little Bigtown so often that my brother tried bribing me to stop. Last year, I happened upon a Grace Potter and the Nocturnals song and have been trying to find a concert to go to ever since. This year I found one; a concert happening in Burlington, Vermont. I immediately bought tickets!

It was an amazing show. Not only did I see Grace Potter, but the opening act was a great surprise! As soon as the Carolina Chocolate Drops took the stage I knew they were going to be awesome. They had no backup singers, but the lead singer’s voice felt bigger than a prewar big band. They played a combination of New Orleans bluesgrass, hip hop and even celtic jigs. In the middle of one of their best songs, the lead singer turned around and pulled out a kazoo and played it like a sax! It was a really fun band to see and might even become my next musical obsession.

After an amazing opener, Grace Potter came out under the setting sky. It was as good as I could have hoped, and after 5 songs or so, the wind started picking up. By the time of their finale, Paris, a full blown storm had arrived. Grace Potter said, “I’m not on anything right now, but this is psychedelic!”

Rock on!

HGTV worthy!

At this point you guys would probably be really surprised if I said that my parents came to visit and something conventional happened, like showing them around or even a normal hike. So far during their visits, we have helped plant an orchard; built a garage partition, built all of the beds in my off campus house and now I have the next visit. This visit was different in a special way – we had a deadline. School was starting in two days flat, and my room had absolutely no shelving, nor did it have room for an armoire, so we did the next best thing – built some custom shelves.

no storage - uh oh!

casual chill time in the bathroom doing some finishing touches

yep - even my friends got handy!

some awkward wood stove handling

We hit the hardware store, then the shelving, then the hardware store again and repeated a few times over, with the help of friends. I felt like I was a part of some home design show when at 10:30pm we were all still working, drilling away. By lunch time on the second day, we were damn near complete, and after one last push, the room was complete, from start to finish it was another whirlwind visit, but I swear the next one will at least include a hike!

look!

so much storage! 

hoorah!