Easy Commute

I made a pact with myself. With an engineering internship for the fall term, I looked forward to working, but I also had something to prove. I wanted to learn about working as an engineer, but more importantly, I wanted to prove to myself that I could continue to have an active lifestyle while doing so -- by biking to work every day. After looking at maps, I saw that I could mountain bike commute over Burnt Mountain from Hanover to Lebanon, NH.

That meant weaving  around rocks and roots moments after waking up, heading to work only to pant uphill by headlamp for three miles before dropping into windy singletrack for a wild ride down.

The commute became the highlight of my day. Not only was the ride a fun and challenging one, but by riding the same track every day, I watched the season change day by day.

The ride was not without some mishaps. On day one, I carried my bike through a swamp only to exit the trail network on the wrong side of the mountain, slogging to work an hour late. On day three, I took a sapling down on the way home with my handlebars, sending me flying. On day four, I broke a chain halfway to work and pushed my bike the rest of the way. By day five, after going over the handlebars so perfectly that my bike landed, perfectly balanced, wheels still spinning, on my back, I was getting used to recounting my commute to my co-workers. I don’t know if they fully believed me, but I felt bad for anyone that didn’t have the chance to adventure every day and see some stunning fall colors.

Then there was Heat!

The walls went up. The paint was on. The window was set. And so ended my weekend, but I couldn’t let it sit there without finishing the sauna. So I woke up at 6, ready to saw at 7. I figured people were waking up around that time. Or at least they would be now! From then on, I worked during the 2 hours before work and until 9 a night. To say I slept well would be the understatement of the century.

 

The insulation went in pretty easily if not "itchily" - I swear I will be old before all the fiberglass fibers come out of my jacket. Then I tacked the vapor barrier over the insulation. I can’t tell you how blinding it is to be in a room working with a headlamp staring down a mirrored surface.

With the sauna looking like a 1970’s attempt to make a room look larger, I started working on the floor and stove, putting in heat shields where the stove would sit and marking out where the pipe would poke through the ceiling. Sensing the end, I took a day off work, recruited some friends and hammered on the white pine siding for the inside of the sauna. The reason for white pine over cedar was mostly based on cost; pine was 4 times cheaper than cedar and just as mildew resistant. With each section, we were a little closer to firing her up. By 10:30 at night, I had the stove in, the paneling up and the last piece of the bench installed. I couldn’t even sneak in a sauna before I fell asleep.

First there was a shed

I had a project itch; this happens every so often. Usually it is correlated with an unfinished project sitting in my garage. This time though the source was an unstarted project and its potential. The potential was killing me. You see, I had a wood stove sitting in my garage. Just a stove, but with that stove I envisioned an amazing project. I imagined an escape from sore skiing muscles, from NE cold, from stress. I saw a sauna. Not just any sauna - a wood burning sauna made from scratch - designs and all, ready to be moved out when I graduate in three years.

So I got to work measuring, drawing and creating specs. Drawn out, priced and ready to start in a week,  It was the most prepped I have ever felt before starting a project. With time ticking, I ordered parts and recruited help. On a beautiful Saturday, with five friends, we started the sauna. My goal was to get the frame up.

The foundation was set with cinderblock porch supports. The floor was insulated with foam, and protected from critters with hardware cloth. My design idea was to minimize cost and weight, so I could jack up the floor and pull a trailer underneath to move the sauna when I graduate.

The walls went together with room for a window and a simple galvanized shed roof.

Then the osb siding went on, with a final coat of brown paint so my neighbors wouldn’t notice our new addition to the culdesac. By the end of the day we had a shed! I guess this completes step 1, and by the time the sauna is ready, I will sorely need a sauna!

Bike on!

It's not like I am totally out of breath. It's that I went from riding flats to climbing so hard that my lungs hurt. They don’t like what I’m doing to them, but they can suck it up. Because the hill can’t be that high, right? I am in the east.

I am reminded of this every time I go riding in New England. I assume that since I am in the east the hills will be small hills, and riding should be short and easy. One would think that I would understand that with trail names like "the spine" and "coronary" that the reality would be different.  So, here I am on another NE mountain bike ride, with a pair of lungs that are in the midst of mutiny. I finally top out over the first pitch, but the flats also have a way of reminding me that I am on an eastern trail. I stand on my pedals attempting to get enough torque to continue moving through a combination of slick roots and ill-placed rocks. It is almost a relief to reach the next hill, until I remember that my lungs and I were in the middle of an argument. By the time I top out on the measly 550’ ‘peak’, I’m just about exhausted, and that was just the uphill of lap 1.

NE downhills are similar to going down the Heavenly Daze ski trail in Steamboat on a crowded day, after a few inches of fresh snow at mach speed. By that point everything that had once been nice and flat was now a long irregular bump line topped off with a crowd of people, skis, gloves, and other ‘things’ to dodge. (Not that I would ever bomb Heavenly Daze in peak season!) Similarly, on the bike trails every speck of dirt that has ever been flat has washed away, and all that is left on the trails are rocks and roots waiting to snag my tire out from under me. So I hang on, willing my bike to go straight.

One would think that after all this I would hate NE riding, but I surely don’t. In fact, after riding over every rock and after making it down each pitch in one piece, I usually have a perma smile that doesn’t get washed away with the dirt after my ride.

Pannier!

I have been thinking about building this piece for a while: a bike pannier that can hold any size pack. From hand drawing, to a solidworks sketch, to a looks like prototype, then to this! It still needs some testing and some work to be sure, but I’m pretty happy!

New floors!

After living off campus at the Pebble for over a year with constant New Hampshire humidity and very suspect carpeting, hard to tell what the original color was, I decided that it was time for a Pebble renewal. Long story short, my roomates and I moved out of the house, slept on our neighbors’ floor the last week of summer term, replaced the decrepit old carpet with new linoleum and rigged our beds into murphy beds. Behold the unfolded and folded murphy bed pictures. Double the floor space, Not bad, eh?!

DMBC

Dartmouth does things in a very interesting way. We have been getting a lot of publicity recently about frats, hazing, sexual assault among other unsavory topics, but that is only about 5.8% of the picture, if it deserves that. The other 94.2% of real Dartmouth students’ lives consists of many other aspects that really should be getting more attention. We have outstanding academics, a great relationship with our business school, churning out entrepreneurs left and right. We have great clubs, doing everything from gamlan to circus. We have the only student workshops for jewelry, woodworking and pottery in the Ivies, open to all students and faculty - I met an amazing retired medical school professor who has mentored me in my woodturning - , and we have our amazing setting. Along with that amazing setting comes the Dartmouth Outing Club (DOC).

I’m not saying that the DOC is the biggest thing on campus, but it is a highly influential student club and another unique aspect of Dartmouth, differentiating us from the other Ivies. In the DOC, students run the show: organizing, leading, driving, even cooking for all trips. This means that we are responsible for risk management, and in the worst case, getting help in the woods. That said, we have a really amazing safety track record, pointing to our risk management process. For example, for the mountain biking part of Freshman trips, we created our own 2 day mountain biking skills course. Since mountain biking has solid footing within Murphy's Law, perhaps more risky than setting foot in a frat basement, we managed the risk by developing a common biking language, planning, and adapting when conditions changed.
 

We started our "crash" course with some drills. Our goal was to keep everyone safe and having fun, so we didn’t want to skip anything. We had "trippies" get bikes, fit them, then went over getting on and off a mountain bike, which is often different from getting on and off a road bike, especially when you need to do so on a sidehill, or before you go over the front end! After that, we did platform position, which became our favorite word. It is the stance in mountain biking that every biker should get in when they aren’t pedaling. It puts the biker in a great position to break, go over obstacles, and not go over the handlebars. From there we rode around, going through different drills of stopping starting and turning.

Once comfortable on their bikes, we brought the trippies to the skills course that we had built earlier that week. The course had bridges, logs and a teeter totter, everything that we would need to practice looking ahead, getting momentum, using platform position, and making a quick exit off the bike, basic mountain biking skills. And that was just day one.

Day two, we brought our trippies up Oak Hill for a morning ride. We brought them on a singletrack route, consisting of intermediate riding terrain. With our first group, we didn’t really know what to expect. Our biggest concern was safety. We went over getting off the bikes one more time before heading up the trail. We stopped before each stretch, summarizing what would lie ahead, and then rode with leaders stationed intermittently to cheer the trippies along. The trails that we covered were in no way easy.When we got to the bottom after our first full trip with everyone smiling, it was awesome. One of the kids turned to me and said, "This was better training and more fun than a one on one lesson that I had had in Moab" -- not bad for a student run shindig. 

This student run program and many others like it are part of the heart and soul of Dartmouth. The way that the college was established makes the student body a very independent group and this has fostered over time. This summer, as president of the Dartmouth Mountain Biking Club (DMBC), I had the opportunity to work on the budgeting, marketing, and maintenance for the organization. And my story is not unique. Dartmouth has fostered so many amazing programs and projects inside the DOC and out. Colleges have drinking problems; our culture has drinking problems. Dartmouth is one of the only Ivies that still has frats, so we are singled out. I’m not defending frat culture, or blaming it. I’m just wondering why the media thinks that frats are the only thing that Dartmouth is noteworthy for. Because from my experience, there is a lot more.