ENVS 7!

ENVS 7 has been a great learning experience for me. The course covered psychology and how it relates to sustainability and the environment. It has left me with many new friends and some great memories. Yesterday was our last trip to the organic farm, and I took the opportunity to get a photo!

Some good ol cabin fun!

Last night Hannah led a cabin trip. We brought all the essentials for some breakfast and while everyone chowed down on chocolate pancakes, I fried eggs. It was a slam run, then to top it off, everyone taught me spoons. If you haven't yet played, I would highly recommend the aggressive, and fast paced card game. Just be warned, if you lose, you get a letter. And the first to spell lake, goes for a swim. Don't worry - I thought it was a pretty refreshing dip.

The SUPs have arrived at ledyard!

And they are already a hit. Now if we could only get more than three days with sunshine!

Fin mold

Wood+fiberglass+epoxy=bomber - nuf said! And it will be perfectly fit to the finbox!

Do you know the answer?!

What goes into an apple

Parent's weekend... a time to relax right?.. Never! Instead of just showing my parents around campus, I decided that we would have a lot more fun visiting a friend of mine's farm and helping him put in a hundred or so fruit trees! I would say that it was a much more productive use of time.

Archery range is complete for real!

And Hannah won the first competition. Right through his wooden teeth!

Never know what you are going to find

For my first year seminar, I am working on a video project looking into the psychological effects of the Upper Valley Land Trust in NH. This morning, I went for a refreshing hike with some of the volunteers and came across a NE salamander. How cool!

Glassing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't think you understand how excited I am about glassing. I even skipped class to get it done earlier! I won't say too much but check out the pics... I can't wait for the launch!

The cast comes off!

This morning Hannah got her cast off. After six weeks in a clunky green thing, crutching around, she was pretty ecstatic. Next up: SUP!

Theater fun

This term I had the chance to take lighting design, so part of the class is in the theater hanging lights. What do we do when we have down time? See for yourself!

Bushcraft p4

For one of my P.E. credits at school, I decide to take bushcraft and wilderness skills. The class turned out to be a super adventure filled weekend.

Do you want to know what the funniest part of last night was? I lost my watch right away. I didn't mean to. When people go on outdoor trips they always say that the best part is not knowing what time it is, but I don't think like that. I would rather just know the time. So, of course, I loose my watch. That was at 11:30 PM when we first started the fire. After what felt like either a really short while or a really long while, I reached under my burning leg (I practically slept in the fire), and voila! My watch. Peter and I looked at each other and stopped. We couldn't decide - to check or not to check. If it had been an hour, would we have the heart to go on? Finally, I just bit the bullet and looked. It was 5:50! We lasted the whole night in a structure mainly made of leaves!

After the exciting night living like cavemen, we headed back to camp and practiced making embers with a bow and drill. In New England, cedar is the best bet for a bow and drill, and I was able to get an ember pretty quickly. After lasting past lunch, I finally crashed and missed the rest of the afternoon napping... Maybe I should live like a caveman more often!

bushcraft p3

For one of my P.E. credits at school, I decide to take bushcraft and wilderness skills. The class turned out to be a super adventure filled weekend.

Building a BA shelter is one thing, but me and one of my friends, Peter, decided to see what it would be like to actually spend a night in the shelter we had built. First task on the list was collecting wood - a lot of wood.

After that, we tried to find a comfortable position. By about 2:30 AM, I was practically in the fire, roasting, while peter was up against the wall shivering. Needless to say, we learned a lot about survival, sleep and fire, and had very little sleep ourselves.

Bushcraft p2

For one of my P.E. credits at school, I decide to take bushcraft and wilderness skills. The class turned out to be a super adventure filled weekend.

The second day, we set off with a purpose in mind: to build a shelter near water that would keep someone toasty all night in a survival situation. We started with location and decided to put our shelter in a corner of a really old foundation. That way, as a fire radiated heat for long enough during the night, it would heat up the rock. From there we made a platform for our bed, and made the bed out of  evergreen leaves... pretty comfy if you ask me!

For the structure itself, we lined logs with leaves then birch bark for waterproofing. It was really amazing to see the structure come together and see how well off you can 'survive' with just your surroundings. After building a fire capable shelter, it made sense to learn different fire building techniques and eat dinner over the resulting fire!

Bushcraft p1

For one of my P.E. credits at school, I decide to take bushcraft and wilderness skills. The class turned out to be a super adventure filled weekend.

The first activity we tackled was carving. With some cedar logs, we hacked out pieces and all got busy carving spoons. Later, with coals from a fire, we burned out the bowls and carved some more. Now I have a pretty cool spoon and some pretty painful blisters!

alive

It was like putting my first sticker on my car... it gives it life! The board now has a logo, and I think for the 12'6" size, the logo is fitting. What do you think?

fin shaping

The board is getting close, so I have started thinking about a finshape... what do you think?

Bike polo!

It isn't at ever school that random games of bike polo erupt on the green. What, you may ask is bike polo, and who in the world would want to play it?! Well, bike polo is the excommunicated, hick cousin of horse polo and is usually played with mallets, a bouncy ball and an assortment of bikes. Here at Dartmouth, we prefer to play with ski gates to differentiate between the red and blue team. Furthermore, on any given sunny day, which is not too often here in Hanover, you can expect to see a wide variety of engineers and bike geeks playing. All in all everyone joins in and it equates a ton of fun!

lighting designer

For a lighting design project, the goal was to create the shadows of a painting with light. The hot spot came out a bit weird through the camera... How do you think we did?

Certified!

To make you a really interesting looking splint at least!

This weekend I got my wilderness first aid certification. Most of the class was boring book work but the scenarios were pretty fun, and it was really hard to try to immobilize a limb using only stuff in a camping pack. Fun fact - antimicrobial creams are pretty much completely useless for preventing infection.

katniss in the making

Alright, I have a confession to make. I haven't seen the hunger games yet. But I did read the book, and if I had to guess, I would vote that hannah is even more serious while she is shooting.

Target stand!

With the weather getting nice and next year's hunting season on my mind, I finished up a rolling hunting stand for the hunting club on campus today. Now, if I could just get a grouping at 60 yards!

Tim's big moment

Dartmouth has a lot of traditions. One of which is Dimensions, a weekend set aside just for accepted prospective students. Maybe the school tried it once and it was really awkward, or maybe Dartmouth just loves to have insane dancing shows, but we use a very interesting tactic to keep the awkwardness down - having freshmen pretend to be prospective students then expose themselves in an insane show that highlights the school. One of my good friends, Tim posed as a prospective student, so after being Phil DeVille (name courtesy of the Rugrats), he got the chance to scare a few high school seniors s*!&;tless. Check out the insanity below.