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?