To-do

First quarter of grad school is finally winding down! I was a pretty busy guy, even as an undergrad, but my workload then does not even begin to compare to the insanity of this past quarter. And supposedly winter quarter is even busier...

Things I still need to do, prior to the beginning of next quarter:

- Do Part 2 of the Macro final (due 12/10)
- Intra-species aging microarray analysis of linear regression slopes (due 12/17)
- Redo microarray analyses with sum-of-median absolute intensity cutoffs
- Continue reliability theory analysis
- Final rotation presentation on 1/7!
- Read through the Bechard manuscript, send feedback
- Learn basic Perl (which, I've been assured, will take me about 2 hours (!))
- Learn basic MySQL
- Start to learn ring theory for winter rotation
- Read the Marshall paper on centriole number

A new GPCR structure

The largest family of cell-surface receptors, the trimeric G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), are seven-pass transmembrane proteins that activate intracellular signaling pathways by switching conformations upon binding of an extracellular ligand. Although roughly half of all drugs function by affecting GPCRs, the only high-resolution GPCR crystal structure determined prior to this effort was that of rhodopsin. The primary problems in crystallizing GPCRs were thought to be the flexible, poorly-structured third intracellular loop (ICL3) and C-terminus. In this paper¹, the authors were able to crystallize the human β2-adrenergic receptor (β 2AR) by both truncating the C-terminus and removing ICL3, replacing it with T4 lysozyme (T4L), a small, well-structured protein that creates a polar surface similar to ICL3. This paper is important, in my view, because the protein engineering techniques used to crystallize this receptor could likely be used for other GPCRs, allowing expanded use of structure-based drug discovery for this family of proteins.

The first question the authors address is whether the engineered β 2AR (β 2AR-T4L) variant is similar enough to wild type β 2AR (WT β 2AR) for their structure to be meaningful. β 2AR-T4L has a two- to three-fold higher binding affinity for agonists and a partial agonist, and it appears to retain its capacity to switch conformations in response to ligand binding, based on the similarity of agonist-induced changes in fluorescence intensity of the fluorophore monobromobimane. They conclude that, due to the similarities of these properties to those known of GPCR constitutively active mutants, the fusion of T4L results in a constitutively active β 2AR phenotype. The overall structures of both unliganded β 2AR-T4L and β 2AR-T4L bound with the inverse agonist carazolol are also similar to the previously crystallized β 2AR-Fab complex. Replacement of ICL3 with T4L allowed the authors to crystallize β 2AR; however, ICL3 is important for both G protein specificity and activation. As predicted, β 2AR-T4L did not bind to the stimulatory G protein for adenylyl cyclase.

The authors are able to draw several insights into β 2AR function from their structure. First, the close packing of the helices on the cytoplasmic face of the receptor suggests that ligand-induced conformational changes occur through shifting of the side chains that interact between the helices. Second, they are able to map previously described mutations onto their structure: mutations leading to constitutive or impaired activation are located along the transmembrane helices, and none of these form part of the extracellular ligand-binding pocket. The structure shows that these residues are connected to each other and to the binding pocket by packing interactions, such that changes in the pocket due to ligand binding could be propagated through the transmembrane helices to the intracellular loops. Finally, β 2AR and rhodopsin share a set of conserved, loose-packed residues near a water molecule cluster that they propose is important in allowing conformational rearrangements due to low steric hindrance.

Left open by this work are the nature and dynamics of the multi-step GPCR activation. β 2AR, with a molecular weight of 38.9 kilodaltons, is a small enough protein that NMR relaxation dispersion experiments could be used to quantitatively probe the agonist-induced conformational changes. The process of β 2AR activation involves at least two distinct mechanisms²: (1) disruption of the 'ionic lock' interactions in the inactive structure between the cytoplasmic faces of helices II and III and helix VI, and (2) structural shifts around a conserved proline residue in helix VI (called a 'rotamer toggle switch'). Different agonists affect these molecular constraints in different ways: full agonists break the lock and trigger the switch, while partial agonists can alter one constraint but not the other. It should be possible to use β 2AR-T4L, which does not interact with the G protein, in the presence of excess agonist to limit the system to two-state exchange between the bound receptor-agonist complex and the complex after tripping both molecular switches. Likewise, β 2AR-T4L in the presence of excess partial agonist should create two-state conformational exchange between the receptor-ligand complex and the complex after tripping only one of the two switches. A potential complication is that, even at agonist saturation, β 2AR is known to sample several intermediate structures.

This structure also opens the door for the crystallization of other GPCRs by a similar method, and to further investigation of human β 2AR-T4L bound to different ligands. Another logical next step from this paper would be to attempt to co-crystallize the active state of the receptor in complex with an agonist ligand. The authors note, however, that efforts to crystallize β 2AR-T4L bound to catecholamine could be hindered by both the chemical instability of the catecholamine as well as the mutant receptor's lack of interaction with G protein, which results in relatively low agonist affinities.

References:

1. Rosenbaum DM, Cherezov V, Hanson MA, Rasmussen SGF, Thian FS, Kobilka TS, Choi HJ, Yao XJ, Weis WI, Stevens RC, Kobilka BK. GPCR Engineering Yields High-Resolution Structural Insights into β 2-Adrenergic Receptor Function. Science 318: 1266-73 (2007).
2. Yao X, Parnot C, Deupi X, Ratnala VRP, Swaminath G, Farrens D, Kobilka B. Coupling ligand structure to specific conformational switches in the β 2-adrenoceptor. Nature Chemical Biology 2: 417-22 (2006).

Resveratrol!

Caloric restriction (CR) has been of interest for some time due to its apparent slowing of the aging process. In addition to conferring enhanced longevity, it is known to correlate with the alleviation of a number of biomarkers associated with aging, as well as lowering age-associated disease incidences. In spite of this, its mechanism remains poorly characterized. Resveratrol, a polyphenol with antioxidant and antitumorigenic activity, is intriguing because it seems to mimic many of the affects of CR, and has been shown to provide a variety of palliative and neuroprotective effects in several model organisms. In this work¹, the authors show that one function of resveratrol is to stimulate AMP kinase (AMPK) activity in neurons. This is a significant step towards characterizing resveratrol's mechanism, which, in turn, may help provide a better understanding of how CR works.

The authors show that in mouse Neuro2a neuroblastoma as well as mouse dorsal root ganglia (DRG) sensory and cortical neurons, resveratrol correlates with an increase in both phosphorylated AMP and a downstream target of activated AMPK, phosphorylated acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC). These increases are comparable to those generated by a well-characterized AMPK activator, AICAR. This AMPK activity is not stimulated indirectly by decreased cellular energy levels (measured by the relative AMP:ATP ratio). Next, they show that resveratrol-mediated AMPK activation halts Neuro2a cell proliferation and induces an increase in neurite outgrowth. This is again similar to the AICAR-mediated AMPK activation effects, and is consistent with AMPK's activity in other cell types. AMPK activation is required and sufficient for this resveratrol-induced neurite growth. AMPK activation is also correlated with mitochondrial biogenesis, as measured by increases in mRNA levels of three markers for mitochondrial biogenesis.

In Neuro2a cells, resveratrol’s activation of AMPK is unaffected by the presence of inhibitors for SIRT1 (associated with stress response and cell cycle regulation, and with polyphenol activities) or CaMKKβ (a kinase upstream of AMPK). This suggested that another activating kinase upstream of AMPK, LKB1, is likely to effect AMPK activation. To test this, DRG sensory and cortical neurons from mouse embryos containing loxP sites flanking the Lkb1 exon were infected with lentivirus expressing a Cre recombinase capable of conditionally knocking out Lkb1 from this engineered site. LKB1 removal reduced AMPK and ACC activation in both cell types. Interestingly, while introduction of a CaMKKβ inhibitor did not affect DRG sensory neurons, it inhibited AMPK and ACC activation in cortical neurons. Finally, the authors demonstrated that directly injecting mice with resveratrol within two hours led to increased levels of AMPK and ACC phosphorylation in the brain.

A major question raised by this work is the difference in resveratrol-mediated AMPK activation in Neuro2a and DRG sensory cells versus activation in cortical neurons. LKB1, which appears to regulate AMPK activation in both cell types, is part of the three-protein AMPK kinase complex, and is known to regulate AMPK response to decreased cellular energy levels (AMP buildup).² As shown in this work, resveratrol-induced AMPK activation is independent from LKB1’s response to cellular AMP levels. CaMKKβ appears to control AMPK response to Ca²⁺ levels in the cell, which raises the question of whether this is also the mechanism by which resveratrol induces AMPK activation in cortical neurons. This could be tested by examining CaMKKβ’s resveratrol-effected regulation of AMPK in varying concentrations of Ca²⁺.

Is there a physical interaction between resveratrol and either of upstream regulators of AMPK examined in this work? One way to test this would be through fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). Attaching a fluorescent protein to LKB1 or CaMKKβ and a small fluorophore, such as Cy3 or Cy5, to resveratrol would result in emission at the small fluorophore peak if resveratrol is in close proximity to the regulatory kinase. Although the specificity of this technique, and the fact that it can be used in vivo, make it well-suited for this, a potential problem is that, due to resveratrol’s small size, attachment of a small fluorophore might alter its interactions significantly. Another possibility would be to label resveratrol, which has three hydroxyl groups, with a radioactive oxygen isotope, then use anti-LKB1 antibodies to immunoprecipitate the complex out of solution. If resveratrol is bound to the complex, Western blotting followed by film exposure of the blot would detect radioactive signal.

Another logical follow-up to this study would be to examine whether resveratrol and CR complement each other. Since resveratrol is predicted to function as a CR mimetic, the expectation is that introducing resveratrol into a system affected by CR would have no effect. There are several assays that could be done to gauge this by comparing CR mice with and without resveratrol to ad libitum fed mice with and without resveratrol. Since CR functions to increase life-span, the most straightforward measurement is mortality. Another, potentially more informative, assay is a comparison between AMPK and ACC activation levels between these four groups. In light of the differences in regulation of AMPK in different mouse neurons, it would make sense to do these assays for a variety of cell types, as it is possible that the CR and resveratrol pathways overlap for some cell types, but not others.

References:

1. Dasgupta B, Milbrandt J. Resveratrol stimulates AMP kinase activity in neurons. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104: 7217-22 (2007).
2. Shaw RJ, Lamia KA, Vasquez D, Koo SH, Bardeesy N, DePinho RA, Montminy M, Cantley LC. The Kinase LKB1 Mediates Glucose Homeostasis in Liver and Therapeutic Effects of Metformin. Science 310: 1642-46 (2005).

UC Bubble

I live in a bubble in Mission Bay, San Francisco.
Except it's not really San Francisco.
It's not even really Mission Bay.
It's just a bubble.

Fun with NAD

I stumbled on this interesting review article a short while ago: Hipkiss, AR. Energy metabolism, altered proteins, sirtuins and ageing: converging mechanisms? http://www.springerlink.com/content/j2332796374m3178/

I thought it led to some interesting predictions -- for example, what happens if you ramp up NAD levels? I've never worked with C. elegans but it strikes me that this might be an easy experiment to do with them, and you'd get results pretty quickly. According to this paper, you're getting this great benefit from increased NAD levels because it's used as a cofactor by an enzyme that converts glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate to 1,3-diphosphoglycerate, which is important because G3P (and its precursor, dihydroxyacetone phosphate) can spontaneously decompose into the toxic glycating agent methylglyoxal. So what happens if you add more NAD into a system? Or, for that matter, increase levels and/or activity of the relevant enzyme (GAPDH)?

Untangling the interactions between telomeres, oxidative stress, and aging

In vitro human cells have a limited replicative capacity before they enter a non-dividing state, senescence. Senescence is inducible by the presence of artificially shortened telomeres. A number of immortalized cell lines contain the enzyme telomerase, which functions to add telomeric repeats to the distal tip of the telomere as they are lost. Introduction of telomerase into normal human cells in vitro extends the cells' replicative capacity indefinitely¹. Since telomere lengths are, on average, shorter in older humans than younger humans, this raises the question of whether telomere length plays a causal role in the aging process. There are, however, a number of facts that argue against this. Mice, for example, have very long telomeres that do not shorten with age, but they age rapidly compared to humans.

The reactive oxygen species (ROS) aging hypothesis states that cumulative oxidative damage causes aging. The results of experiments attempting to test this hypothesis have been mixed. Overexpression of two key antioxidative enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase, in Drosophila melanogaster results in increased longevity; however, this effect only seems to exist in strains that are unusually short-lived². In Drosophila strains that naturally have a relatively long life-span, there is no increase in life-span due to increased antioxidant enzyme activity³. In Caenorhabditis elegans, antioxidant enzyme mimetics increase the life-span of the organism by an average of 44% in wild-type organisms⁴. In mice, a decrease in antioxidant enzyme activity is linked to an apparent increase in the rate of aging⁵.

When exposed to hydrogen peroxide, single-strand breaks accumulate in unusually high numbers on telomeres in cultured human cells due to a specific lack of function of normal DNA repair mechanisms on the telomeres. This translates directly into accelerated telomere attrition, which is ameliorated by the introduction of an ROS scavenger into the cells⁶. Therefore, telomere attrition in human cells is affected by oxidative stress. This creates a link between the telomere and ROS hypotheses of aging. The age-dependent telomeric length difference may be caused, at least in part, by accumulated ROS damage.

In C. elegans, it has been shown that telomere length and aging are independent of each other⁷. This then raises the question of what the general relationship is between ROS levels and telomere attrition. Does an increase in ROS level correlate with telomeric attrition rate in other organisms, and, if so, is that process coupled to aging, or is it an unrelated effect?

Aim 1: To measure telomeric DNA single-strand breaks and oxidative stress as a function of age in human fibroblasts in vitro.

Hypothesis: Telomeric single-strand breaks may show an ROS-mediated increase with age, due to the correlation previously observed between these two factors.

Experimental Approach: I propose to measure telomeric DNA single-strand breaks and ROS levels in a wide age range of human fibroblasts, the same cell type used by Von Zglinicki et al⁶. Assay of ROS levels will be done by measuring levels of superoxide anion, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl radical via a chemiluminescence assay, as described by Aam and Fonnum⁸: the oxidation of luminol by ROS releases photons that can be measured with a luminometer. This assay is performed on live cell cultures and is non-toxic to the cells. A similar assay will be used to measure the levels of SOD. Oxidation of the purine base xanthine to uric acid by the enzyme xanthine oxidase generates superoxide anions. SOD functions to catalyze the breakdown of superoxide anion, so it is possible to gauge SOD activity by measuring the decrease in intensity of light from the reaction of these superoxide anions with luminol.

Telomere lengths will be measured by isolating and restricting genomic DNA from the fibroblasts and running the DNA out on an agarose gel. This will be followed by hybridization of Southern-blotted genomic DNA to a radiolabeled telomeric repeat sequence probe (5'-TTAGGG-3'). Telomeric single-strand breaks will be quantified by a nuclease protection assay, measuring the relative sensitivities to S1 nuclease, an endonuclease that cuts single-stranded nucleic acids, with a strong preference for DNA.

Outcomes: The results obtained here will provide a clear picture of how ROS levels affect telomere length with age in human fibroblasts. If there is a correlation between these measurements, this will indicate that there is a true link between the telomere and ROS aging hypotheses. This data will also present a starting point for unraveling the mechanism for the age-dependence of telomere length in human cells. If no correlation exists, this data will serve as another nail in the coffin for the already beleaguered telomere aging hypothesis.

Aim 2: Compare telomeric ROS and antioxidant enzyme activity levels to telomeric attrition in C. elegans as a function of age.

Hypothesis: Oxidative stress and telomeric attrition may not be coupled in C. elegans, as they are in in vitro human cells, so that there would not be a correlation between ROS/antioxidant enzyme measurements and levels of telomeric single-strand breaks.

Experimental Approach: The approach here will be essentially to replicate the experiment described in (6) as well as that in aim 1 for C. elegans. We will gauge telomeric DNA single-strand breaks and attrition rate for worms exposed to paraquat, an ROS generator, over the life-span of the worms. Assay of ROS levels will be done using the Amplex Red hydrogen/hydrogen peroxide assay, as described by Chavez et al⁹. Telomere length and single-strand break data will be gauged in the same way as for human cells in aim 1.

Outcomes: This data will give a clearer indication of what the interrelations between telomere attrition, oxidative stress, and aging are, and whether they are similar to these processes in human cells. Since telomere length is not age-dependent in C. elegans, if these results show a similar pattern as those for human cells, this would be a piece of evidence that the age-dependence of human telomeres is not a causal factor in aging. If the pattern is different, this indicates that aging in humans and in C. elegans follow different mechanisms in this respect, and that the decoupling of telomere length and age in C. elegans cannot necessarily be extrapolated to humans.

References:

1. Bodnar AG, Ouellette M, Frolkis M, Holt SE, Chiu CP, Morin GB, Harley CB, Shay JW, Lichtsteiner S, Wright WE. 1998. Science 279:349-52.
2. Orr WC, Mockett RJ, Benes JJ, Sohal RS. 2003. J Biol Chem. 278:26418-22.
3. Mockett RJ, Bayne AC, Kwong LK, Orr WC, Sohal RS. 2003. Free Radic Biol Med. 34:207-17.
4. Melov S, Ravenscroft J, Malik S, Gill MS, Walker DW, Clayton PE, Wallace DC, Malfroy B, Doctrow SR, Lithgow GJ. 2000. Science 289:1567-9.
5. Boldyrev AA, Yuneva MO, Sorokina EV, Kramarenko GG, Fedorova TN, Konovalova GG, Lankin VZ. 2001. Biochemistry (Mosc.) 66:1157-63.
6. Von Zglinicki T, Pilger P, Sitte N. 2000. Free Radic Biol Med. 28:64-74.
7. Raices M, Maruyama H, Dillin A, Karlseder J. 2005. PLoS Genetics 1:e30.
8. Aam BB, Fonnum F. 2007. Toxicology 230:207-18.
9. Chavez V, Mohri-Shiomi A, Maadani A, Vega LA, Garsin DA. 2007. Genetics 176:1567-77.

Yet another idea

How would increasing NAD levels in C. elegans affect their aging rate? Would this knock down their levels of MG?

Hmm...

Another idea

Most of my research as an undergraduate focused on telomeric length regulation. However, one of the limitations of the lab that I was working in at the time was that, due to financial constraints, we were not able to do protein work. One aspect that particularly interested me was better understanding the interactions between telomerase and the various proteins associated with the telomere.

The yeast K. lactis contains 12 telomeres that are composed of 10-20 repeats of a uniform 25 base pair sequence that is unique to the telomeres. The major telomeric length regulation pathway is known to be mediated by telomerase, which reverse transcribes telomeric repeats from its RNA template and concatenates them onto the end of the telomere. A major question regarding telomerase activity is what signals telomerase to replenish the telomeric tip. Telomere binding proteins have been shown to be crucial toward both recruiting telomerase to the end and inhibiting its access to the DNA.

One yeast telomeric protein clearly associated with the length-regulation mechanism is the Rap1 telomeric DNA-binding protein. Previous work indicates that telomere length in yeast is regulated through a pathway involving Rap1. Rap1 binds double-stranded sequence along the length of the telomere. Counting of Rap1 molecules at telomeres has been shown to be crucial to telomere length regulation. Each telomeric repeat of a variety of yeast species contains a Rap1 binding site. Telomere mutations disrupting Rap1 binding lead to greatly increased telomere length. The left portion of the K. lactis telomeric repeat is thought to have a negative regulatory function. Rif1 and Rif2 are accessory proteins that interact with the C-terminus of Rap1 and have also been shown to negatively regulate telomere length.

A variety of other proteins contribute to telomere maintenance in yeast. Cdc13 is a single-strand telomere binding protein that recruits or activates telomerase and also appears involved in negatively regulating telomerase. The MRX complex has been shown to be required for telomerase-mediated telomeric addition, probably by helping recruit telomerase to the telomeres. Two DNA damage response kinases, Tel1 and Mec1, also contribute to telomerase's ability to add new sequence onto telomeric ends. It has been shown that the Rap1-based repeat counting mechanism is at least partially dependent on Tel1 expression, but the nature of this epistatic dependence is not well characterized.

The goal here is to dissect the interaction between Tel1 and the Rap1/Rif telomerase regulation pathway. Some basic ideas I had on how I could do this:

- use FRET to observe the dynamics between the different components of this pathway
- attempt to crystallize components of this pathway, then try to dissect the pathway by computation (probably not practical, since there's quite a few relevant proteins, and Rap1 may have been crystallized, but I don't think any of the others have)
- generate multiple knockouts to figure out how many independent control points are involved in this pathway (e.g. cdc13/tel1 double deletion, what happens to the elongation phenotype?)
- use microarrays to determine which genes are being transcribed as the telomeres shorten
- use microarrays to determine how gene expressions differ between WT and mutants with runaway telomere elongation

I had an idea...

I've been reading a bit about the use of hazard functions to help describe the aging process. I thought this was an interesting idea because reliability theory (normally used in engineering to describe technical devices) could potentially be an extra step back from a purely phenomenological view of aging. Hazard functions are defined as the relative rate of decline of the reliability function. Different system arrangements generate different hazard functions: a system composed of elements connected in series would have a different failure rate than one composed of parallel elements. These functions are nice because they let you model systems with built-in redundancy as parallel system elements.

These redundant systems are interesting: you end up with a system constructed of static (non-aging) elements displaying an aging-like behavior (increase in failure as a power function of age that asymptotically approaches an upper limit, much like the late-life leveling-off of mortality rate for real organisms). In addition, although this kind of parallel system structure is sensitive to different levels of initial damage, the failure rates approach the same upper limit regardless of the initial level of redundancy. So you can model a biological system with distributed redundancy as serially-connected blocks of redundant parallel elements.

Incorporating repair capacity into a system could be done in a variety of ways, but I thought the simplest conceptual way was to designate discrete system elements as 'repair modules.' So mathematically, I thought of the repair rate as a term subtracted from the hazard function. For a system with a fixed number of repair modules, I think this would increase their sensitivity to initial damage load, since the initial damage can knock out repair modules in addition to reducing block redundancy. Repair capacity should also enhance the cooperativity of the system. I came up with expressions for probability distributions for simple system configurations containing varying numbers of repair modules per block. I have not however actually used a computer to calculate the failure kinetics for these systems yet, so...more later!

The short version

Two observations so far:

1. Classes seem lame and kind of stupid so far.

2. My research seems like it's going to be really cool (today's my first day in the lab!), and I'm pretty fired up about it.

More later.

Wound down, winding up

'Bootcamp' was intense. It's over now, and for-real classes start on Friday. I'm taking two courses, each of which meets about two hours, three times a week: Macromolecules and Statistical Mechanics. I understand they are pretty tough, so I'm getting ready to jump in head-first from the get-go. I've got a rotation set up, with Hao Li, who has some cool computational work he's doing related to aging research, which has always interested me a great deal. I met with him last week, and I'm actually really excited about starting there. In fact, I can't remember being this excited about something in science for a long time!

At the end of bootcamp, all the first-year biophysics students went to the annual Tetrad retreat at a Lake Tahoe resort. (Tetrad is another one of the graduate programs. They are quite a bit larger than biophysics/BMI and are oriented more towards pure biology.) Getting free food, etc. was great, but I found sitting through an endless stream of more-or-less random and unrelated lectures to be pretty tedious. All of us in biophysics were tired out from our bootcamp, as well...

Hao's lab, being primarily computational, will, I think, require a fair bit of programming knowledge on my part, and, while I was a somewhat competent coder in high school, I've forgotten an awful lot of that in the intervening seven years. I've decided to throw my energy into relearning C++, and I'm finding that it's quite different from, for example, riding a bike! Hopefully I can have the basics down before I'm called on do to any serious programming as a part of my job.

This just in: I'm dim

I've taken a few IQ tests online -- one this morning which told me I have an IQ of 140. A while back, I took tests that gave me 130 and 156. (I also took one that told me my IQ was 22, but somehow I don't think that test was accurate.)

I wonder which type of test is the most accurate. A lot of these tests are 'pick the shape that would best complete this series' sort of questions -- which I think are a load of bunk, because that's usually open to interpretation. (What if I'm seeing a different pattern than the test makers thought I should see? Every test that's like that, it always seems like 2 or 3 of the possible answers COULD be correct...)

My conclusion is that the existence of these tests must be a practical joke. If you're willing to spend your time taking them, you're dim. Nuff said.

Free tuition? Yes please

Although the article's a bit short on details, this sounds like a really good idea: free tuition for math, science, and engineering students.

I even bought a UCSF t-shirt

So I'm finally here, all settled in, got my new place all furnished and organized. It's really great here. I love the apartment, and it's amazingly cheap for the area, especially considering how new and nice it is. The fastest internet connection I've ever been on is included with the rent, no less! Water is included. Electricity is included. I'm 2 blocks from the bay shore. The weather's perfect all the time. It's sunny and breezy every day, highs in the mid sixties, lows in the mid fifties. The fruit here's got to be twice as fresh as the stuff I was eating back in Georgia, and it's just as cheap. City's beautiful, the air's clean, the people are nice.

So, I'm about as happy as I could be with the new location! I figured, since I'd built this place up so much in my mind, that couldn't really help but disappoint me...but so far, I'm liking it as much as I'd hoped I would.

School starts on the 27th, and I'm actually looking forward to it. I'm ready to really devote myself to learning and doing science that I'm passionate about!

To San Francisco, Part 4

Kettleman City, California: blazing hot in the summer, freezing cold in the winter, bone-dry yet humid as hell. Also, it's in the middle of nowhere. If there's an upside in all that, I'm not seeing it.

Interesting -- or really, not at all interesting -- story as to how I got here. Basically, after my misadventure in the Teton mountains, my legs were too beat up to even walk for the next few days, so instead of going up to Glacier, like I'd planned, I skipped that part of the trip entirely (gaining an extra 4 or 5 days) and went down into Utah early.

I discovered two things about Utah:

1. People in Utah are creepy.

2. In southern Utah, it's 110 degrees in the desert, making any kind of outdoors activity completely miserable.

There were 4 parks in the state that I'd intended to hit: Arches, Canyonlands, Zion, and Bryce. It was about 110 degrees at the first two, rendering them pretty much car-only trips. This sucked so bad I decided to skip the other two altogether and come back in a more forgiving season.

I drove through the Navajo Nation and got to the Grand Canyon after sunset and camped out for the night. The next day, I went for an 8-mile, fairly flat walk along the canyon rim...and it started raining. Now, rain in July in Arizona, you'd expect that to be fairly mild and warm...but in fact, it was absolutely freezing. My hands were numb by the time I made it back to the car. I checked the weather forecast...rain that night, rain the next day, rain the day after that.

Bleh.

So I figured, okay, I'll drive to Vegas, spend a few days gambling a bit. I set a firm $150 cap on my losses, and, between a disastrous slots session and a run of terrible poker luck (had a flush, and lost to a full house...how do you like that?), I lost all of it in one day. I dutifully set forth once more, to...well, somewhere, anyway. I stayed with my aunt in LA for a couple of days, and hung out with my friend Lisa. That was fun.

And then I had a full week left before I could move into my place at UCSF.

Not entirely sure what to do with myself, and my newfound lack of a plan, I figured I could spend a good chunk of the time just chilling on the beach and hiking in the hills along the coast. Unfortunately, because for some strange reason lots of people like to hang out along the California coast in the summer, I wasn't able to find any open campgrounds...at all. After spending a sad night in a fleabag motel north of LA, I decided to head inland for the next night. Since I'd spent most of the day puttering along the coast, I ended up having to motel it out that night, too, in good old Kettleman City, California. I pigged out a local In-And-Out, where I had possibly the world's worst tasting two hamburgers. That was really the only noteworthy thing about Kettleman City. Bad hamburgers.

The next day, I drove through Fresno. I have a peculiar affection for the city of Fresno. I'm not really sure why. It's not a particularly appealing place: it's in the central valley, so it's hot as hell there, bone-dry in the summer, and from what I've seen of it, it's basically one big strip mall. But I remember Isabel and I came here in 2004, en route to Yosemite, and ate a bunch of ice cream. I think that's why I liked the place: I associate it with ice cream. So, as you might expect, I dutifully stopped, and had ice cream at the same place Isabel and I had come to a few years ago. It turns out that ice cream, without a girlfriend to accompany it, really isn't quite the same.

I made it to a place called Millerton Lake that afternoon, which was not nearly as high up as I'd hoped...so it was blazing - BLAZING! - hot there. Every day I was there it got up to about 105 degrees, and not a bit of cloud to be found. The lake water was cool, though, and I went for a little day hike around the lake the first day I was there. Since I seem to be the world's worst trail follower, I somehow managed to end up on a dirt track, then found myself climbing up and over about a mile of huge boulders above the lakeshore. I would have turned back, but climbing over the rocks was actually a fairly interesting challenge, and the granite gives you such good traction that you can jump and land on some pretty unlikely looking surfaces, even wearing a pack loaded up with water. I climbed up the steepest trail I've ever climbed before (seriously...this thing was at least a 60 degree angle), then hiked back. And holy crud, it was hot. A ranger actually stopped by my campsite after I got back to express her amazement that I'd made it out there and back in the ridiculous heat.

I ended up staying at Millerton Lake for a few days. In spite of the heat, it was very dry, so it was still pleasant in the shade. (Not like in Georgia, where the high humidity makes it unbearably nasty no matter where you are.) I actually spent much of the second day reviewing my old physics textbook, for want of something more entertaining to do, since the blistering heat made most outdoor activities unbearable. (I did go for a swim. That was nice, and the water was pleasantly cool.) And if you're a nerd, reading physics is actually kind of fun...

The third day, I departed Millerton and ended up heading up towards Yosemite. I was so close, it would have been a shame not to go there, even though I'd been there already a few years ago. I spent two days in Yosemite, hiking, sightseeing, and starting to feel thoroughly gross from spending so many consecutive nights outside. I walked from Yosemite Valley up to Glacier Point, which had two fantastic views...but only those two, which I saw over and over and over again. Still a very nice walk, though. Plus there was a fast food sort of restaurant at the top, where I fueled up on a sandwich, root beer, and a hot dog, then, fortified, practically skipped all the way back down the trail to the valley floor. The second day I went for another hike, more in the backcountry, then left the park and drove down to the coast. I got a motel in a town called Tracy, mostly because I really really wanted a shower, then went down to Sunset Beach the next day. I spent the day walking along the beach and exploring the hills near the coast...then, the next day, at long last, I drove up into San Francisco.

To San Francisco, Part 3

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: I'm spending two days in a motel in Brigham City, Utah, and I couldn't be happier.

I arrived here filthy and exhausted. I guess going four days without a shower, getting lost in the mountains, then driving all night will do that to you. Hair was all spiked up; looked kind of stylish, actually. Sort of ruined the effect when you realized that it was all natural. When I got to the Howard Johnson here, the first thing I did was shower. Twice. It felt wonderful.

The drive from the Missouri River to the Badlands took 'uneventful' to a whole new level, although I think the open plains have a strange appeal all their own. Perhaps they share it with the desert. The half-mad impulse to wander into the blank is, I think, the same. This is what I expected to find at the Badlands, but I was wrong. I wouldn't travel the open prairie on foot until I got to the Wind Cave.

The lands west of the Missouri are surprisingly different than the lands to the east. Uncle Ron mentioned that you really felt like you were 'out west' once you crossed over the Missouri, and I immediately saw what he meant. The land changed from endless flats to low rolling hills, and farmlands turned to ranchlands.

More than anything else, the Badlands reminded me of the Grand Canyon. The first overlook you drive up to is a sweeping panorama of the strange rusty red and gray of the unusual rock formations there, and as you continue on, you find yourself confronted with landscape that looks, more than anything else, misplaced. All around you are the rolling plains, and then in the middle of it, you've got the Badlands.

I was eager to get in some hiking, after spending so much time in the car. I parked at the trailhead near Saddle Pass. The path up the pass was a steep switchback trail that headed up into the rock formations. There was a prominent sign at the start of the trail warning about rattlesnakes, which kept me fully focused for the entire hike.

After less than a mile, I reached the top of the pass, and the rest of the hike was a pleasant walk across the flat, dry prairie. I'd heard that the Badlands area was in a cold snap, but it was still hot up there. I shudder to think what it's like normally! I was pretty well sun scorched by the time I made my way back down to the car several hours later.

After doing some more sightseeing around the park, I drove into the town of Wall.

A word about Wall. There's apparently a drugstore there, Wall Drug, that is really something. They've placed billboards all the way to the Minnesota border enthusiastically proclaiming how wonderful Wall Drug is. Driving through South Dakota, you literally see one of these billboards every 15 or 20 miles. It's very odd, but I guess it worked, because I drove into the town of Wall and the first thing I did was look for the drugstore. Ironically, after all that publicity, I couldn't even find the damn place...so I hopped back in the car and headed west to Rapid City.

With a name like Rapid City, you'd expect the place to be pretty exciting...but it wasn't. (Although I did have an exciting drive through a Rapid City ghetto while I was looking for a place to spend the night.) After entering several nicer places, and determining that they were well out of my price range, eventually I decided I'd splurge on a room at the local Motel 6.

The next day, dutiful tourist that I am, I hit up Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial (actually, the first thing I did was hit up Pizza Hut...which I remember as being unusually good. My waitress was very attractive, though, which may be biasing my opinion somewhat...). In my opinion, once it's finished, the Crazy Horse Memorial will be much more impressive than Mount Rushmore. That sucker's HUGE! And the carving strikes a very dynamic pose, too.

That took up a good chunk of the day, so by the time I got down to Wind Cave National Park, farther south into the Black Hills, it was late afternoon. I did manage to catch the last guided tour of the cave itself before the visitor center closed, which was pretty cool. The ranger who led the tour reminded me incongruously of Captain N, which actually made me enjoy the tour a lot more.

I camped out in the park that night, then set out the next day to do the Adventure Magazine-recommended Highland Creek Trail. It was a pretty cool hike, and would have been even cooler if I'd brought about 3 times as much water as I did. I figured I'd just hike until my water was about halfway gone, then turn around and hike back. But, as luck would have it, I ended up getting to the fateful halfway mark right near the intersection of the Highland Creek and Centennial Trails, so I figured, okay, I'll just hike back on Centennial, instead. It didn't look any longer, and I'd get to see some new stuff on the way back!

Funny thing about the backcountry trails at Wind Cave. I guess because the park itself isn't too well-trafficked, the backcountry trails are deserted. I didn't see a single other hiker the whole day. The upshot of this is that the trails are not as well-marked as they could be, and, sure enough, after clambering up a rocky hillside a little ways into the Centennial Trail, I lost the trail altogether. Or rather, I got on a trail...but not the right one. There were at least four different trails, leading in different directions, at the top of the hill. The funny thing about the prairie trails is that, when in doubt, you generally don't want to take the most well-marked path, because it's almost certainly just a game trail. The buffalo on the plains are great trail-makers...but there's absolutely no reason to think that they were going where I wanted to go. Plus, July is rutting season, when the two-thousand-pound beasts are notoriously unpredictable.

Buffalo can run at speeds up to 30 miles per hour, I recalled reading earlier. Do not approach. Many visitors have been gored to death. I'd actually encountered several along the trail already. One had been blocking the trail, so I walked around...giving it a very wide berth.

So I ended up getting on the wrong trail. It went nowhere, ended after four miles or so, and placed me somewhere in the big white blank on my map. This experience is, in part, why I bought USGS topo trail maps of places where I did big hikes from here on out. I did have a compass, though, and a rough idea of where I was, so I ended up wandering back onto the Highland Creek Trail...and I was almost out of water by the time I found it again. The remainder of the hike was a very thirsty trek across some very hot, very dry prairie. To say I was relieved to see the car again would be a gruesome understatement. I drove back to the previous night's campsite and joyfully stuck my head under the faucet there.

It was mid-to-late afternoon by the time I drove out of the park, and it was evening by the time I entered Wyoming. I found an awesome campground in a town called Buffalo that had a swimming pool, wireless internet, and free showers. The next day, I went to the town of Cody, right outside Yellowstone, and happened upon the Yellowstone Jazz Festival, which was a pretty good show.

Finally, Yellowstone. The good part: very pretty. The bad part: unbelievably freaking crowded. I did a few day hikes the day I got there, including a particularly scenic hike up the Elephant Back Trail, then drove to one of the park campsites for the night. I'd only planned to spend a couple of days in Yellowstone, since I wanted to spend more time in Grand Teton, so I spent the next day trying to cram in all the sightseeing I could. I saw Old Faithful and the rest of the geysers and springs (Morning Glory Pool was especially pretty), Grand Prismatic Spring, went through Mammoth Country and Roosevelt Country and all the rest. Did a short hike down to the brink of the lower falls. By the time I drove south into Grand Teton national park, it was almost 8, and I didn't get to speak to a ranger that night about my planned Teton Crest Trail hike. This sucked, because I had no real sense of how practical what I was planning to do was. I could see a ranger telling me what a godawful idea it was to hike up to above 10,000 feet, alone, into occasionally snow-covered trails, in an area I was unfamiliar with, in grizzly bear country...or I could just as easily have seen him telling me Sure, no biggie. Have fun. I did meet a couple of other Georgians, randomly enough, working at the lodge. One told me that he thought my plan sounded fine, the other said I'd be crazy to go alone.

"You don't want to get mauled by a bear, do you?" she inquired, before rushing back into the kitchen.

Well, that seemed like a fair enough point.

So I was second-guessing myself all night as I lay in the tent. Now, I've done plenty of hiking in bear country (which includes pretty much all of North Georgia), so I'm pretty unconcerned about black bears. I've only actually seen one in all my hiking, and he seemed just as wary of me as I was of him. I understand they're pretty shy, and if you're reasonably careful about storing your food and to make a lot of noise as you walk, they'll almost always steer clear of you.

Grizzly bears, on the other hand, I had no experience with, and am quite a bit more scared of. They're much more aggressive than black bears. They're much larger. They weigh more than some cars. They can run as fast as a horse. In short, they are able and willing to tear you a new one.

I took some comfort in the fact that I'd bought some bear mace back in Minnesota, which is basically super-powerful pepper spray with a 30-foot range. I asked the clerk at the REI that I bought it from if this stuff really worked, or if it would just piss a bear off. The guy said he'd used it before and guaranteed, "This stuff will fuck a bear up." So I felt a bit better about the whole bear situation with a canister of it attached to my belt.

I woke in my tent feeling determined. This was, after all, a steep climb, but a well-traveled one, and I was only planning to be out there for three days! Any self-respecting backpacker would have laughed at me if they'd seen even an inkling of my apprehension. I pulled up to the ranger station and got a topo map, a backcountry camping permit, and a bear canister.

A word about bear canisters. These things are heavy plastic cylinders a little over a foot tall and about half that in diameter, and there really is no practical way to strap them to the back of your pack. Meaning that you've got to make room to stuff that think inside the pack somehow. The ranger assured me that it was highly recommended, and that my second night's campside would not have any good trees to hang my bag from.

I parked my car at the Granite Canyon trailhead, and hired a taxi to take me up to the String Lake trailhead. The ranger warned me that my planned route would be pretty grueling, since most people split this hike up into 4 or 5 days:

So I would travel from String Lake, up Paintbrush Canyon, and camp in the South Fork of the Cascade Canyon the first night. This was to be my most diffcult day: 14 miles. 14 miles with a heavy pack is no picnic even on flat ground, and, if you examine the topo map above and pay close attention to the elevation gain, you can see that my first day was absolute murder. The String Lake trailhead is at 6,500 feet, and Paintbrush Divide is at 10,700 feet. That means that the trail up the canyon is just one long, steep climb. Compounding the difficulty was the fact that I'd had to stop off at the camping supply store near the park to pick up a few extra small things I'd neglected to get at REI, so I didn't end up actually hitting the trail until 12:30 PM.

I was about an hour into the walk, just starting up the canyon, when it began pouring rain. Cursing, I set down my pack and tried to pull out my rain gear, which I'd stupidly packed near the bottom. By the time I'd gotten it out and covered everything, my gear was damp enough to cause headaches for the rest of the day. Thankfully, my two-plastic-bags strategy for my (down) sleeping bag worked, and it stayed dry!

The downpour slowed to a resentful drizzle after about ten minutes, and the rest of the way up the canyon was an on-and-off drizzle and mist, which got colder and colder the higher I went. By the time I passed the Holly Lake campgrounds, I was wishing I'd had the great good sense to split the hike into 4 days, and stared at the family behind me, hiking off to their high canyon campgrounds with not a little envy. Sighing, and eating a powerbar (bleh), plus two or three wedges of dried mango for morale that little burst of sugar energy, I hoisted my pack again and began trudging up the endless incline, towards Paintbrush Divide. At about 8,500 feet, the thinning forest gives way to rocky grasses, and soon the Paintbrush Canyon Trail becomes too rocky even for the grass to survive. The first snowfield I had to cross was a small dying patch, but the second, higher snowfield was 50 to 60 feet across, with a long, steep slide down to an icy mountain lake on the down side. I dug my hiking staff into the snow and slowly made my way across.

I found out the next day that the reason this part of the trail was so exceptionally treacherous was because there had been an avalanche and rockslide earlier, which had covered sections of the path. (The ranger had neglected to mention that little fact to me.) I actually lost the trail for about half a mile, during the steepest, nastiest section, right before you get to the Paintbrush Divide. The trail sort of looked like it went one way, so I followed it, and soon found myself having to do technical climbing up the rocky mountainside.

This can't be right, I thought, grimly turning over and making my way back down to near the second snowfield, where the trail had vanished. Climbing down a 'trail' that steep with a huge pack on is not much fun. Eventually, I spotted another vaguely flat-looking patch of rocks that turned out to be what was left of the Paintbrush Canyon trail, and dragged myself to the top of the Divide. I was puffing with exertion, but it was cold at the top, and the wind cut like a knife.

The path down into Cascade Canyon was a cakewalk by comparison, and the view of Lake Solitude was beautiful. I love the way high alpine lakes look, especially in the sunlight:

As I descended into Cascade, the rocks gave way to lush meadowlands. The wildflowers bloom in July, carpeting the meadows with their reds and yellows and purples. My walk down through the canyon's North Fork was gentle and swift, and the meadows turned to sparse, then thicker pine forest. Nearing the central part of the canyon, I ran into another party of hikers. There were three of them, one of whom was a tall brunette with, I think, the most shapely legs I've ever seen, and they assured me that the South Fork was only a couple of miles away.

It made me very sad that the trail began to climb again about a half mile after that, and I dragged myself numbly through the last couple miles to the first open South Fork campground. I finally arrived at the site with about 45 minutes of daylight left to spare. I was camped out on a high ledge, and I could hear of the waterfall as I went to sleep.

The next day, my legs and shoulders hurt before I even began hiking, but, not having much of a choice, I strapped on my pack and hiked up the rest of Cascade Canyon. After a while, I settled into a nice rhythm, walking through the flowering alpine meadows. It got pretty steep again for the last half-mile before Hurricane Pass, and, true to its name, there was a fierce, cold wind blowing across the top of the pass. I met a couple from Texas at the top, and we stopped and had lunch (meaning dried fruit and granola...) together. I hiked along with them for a while the second day, as we descended into the Alaska Basin.

These pictures of the Alaska Basin do not in any way do the place justice. The basin was probably the most beautiful place I'd ever seen in my life, bar none. I stopped for an hour or so to rest by Sunset Lake, and went for a short (very short) swim in its ice-cold waters. And then I got back on the trail, and promptly got lost.

I'm not 100% sure what happened, but I think I just somehow missed one turn, then another, and I ended up on the Alaska Basin Trail, instead of the Teton Crest Trail. I was headed for a place called the Death Canyon Shelf for the night, and needed to cross the Mount Meek Pass to get there. The reason that the second day was supposed to be my 'easy day' was because the walk from South Fork to the Shelf was only about 11 miles, and the elevation gains were not that severe. Unfortunately, the trails in the basin are not as well-marked as they could be, and after walking up a high, rocky trail for several hours, I finally saw a sign: the Static Peak Divide.

I took out my map, and scanned it for Static Peak. I groaned when I found it. I was completely on the other side of the basin's south end, and I would have to go all the way back down into the basin, cut across the South Teton Trail, then go back up to the Mount Meek Pass to get to the Shelf. According to the map, I'd gone 12 miles to get to where I was, and it was about 6 miles to the Death Canyon Trailhead...but it was almost all downhill, whereas going back to the shelf would be nearly that far, and down-and-up. Already tired, I decided to just hike to the trailhead and hope for the best.

The Static Peak Divide was amazing. It was the highest point of my trip, and the views down across the valley and down into Death Canyon were breathtaking. I began to get worried as I started down the long decline to the canyon floor. There were no camping areas in between where I was and the floor, and I hadn't planned to come this way, so no one would know that I was on this trail if something happened, and the trail was very narrow, with usually a hundred-foot drop off to the side. I needed to move relatively quickly if I was going to make the trailhead before sunset.

My shoulders, legs, hips, and feet were, by this point, actually pretty numb, but I was nonetheless on the verge of saying, Fuck this, bushwhacking my way into the woods, and setting up a nice illegal little camp. But I did manage to make it to the Death Canyon trailhead, which presented me with a completely novel problem: I'd actually started at the Granite Canyon trailhead, which was about 5 miles down the road. I'd been aware of this up at Static Peak, but I just figured that I could hitch a ride with someone when I got there. As I surveyed the noticeably human-less parking lot, I grew less sure of myself.

I walked through the dirt parking lot for a few minutes, until I finally spied a person -- an attractive woman, no less -- walking in my direction. She looked at me skeptically as I asked her if she'd be willing to give me a lift.

She agreed, after a moment. "You're cool because you've got that backpack on," she explained, grinning at me as I hoisted my exhausted rear end up into her truck.

We actually ended up striking up a nice conversation. Her name was Sheena, and she was a cook from Phoenix, Arizona. We had a fair bit in common, not limited to a love of the outdoors and a general disdain for car-bound chubs who drive lazily through national parks to see animals. She had very green eyes. I remember that, because she had deep bronze skin, and the contrast was striking. I wonder if she was wearing colored contacts.

I ended up giving her my bear spray, since I was planning on heading south into the desert, and she mentioned that it was one thing she didn't have, and didn't want to spring for the $50 or so required to buy a can. I gave her my email address and she promised she'd look me up if she ever wanted to do some hiking in California.

So I finally found myself back in my car, and immediately headed into Dornan's, the small park-run area with a bar and restaurant, sat down, and ordered a pizza. As I sat there, eagerly shoveling pieces of the meat-lovers pizza into my mouth, the bartender, a wiry blonde woman who was pretty in an outdoorsy sort of way, asked me where I was staying for the night.

I shrugged. "I'm, uh...not really sure." I grinned stupidly. "I was supposed to camp up on the Death Canyon Shelf."

She grinned back. "Well, I don't think you're gonna make it up there tonight."

"Yeah..." My grin faded, and I told her the whole sad story about getting lost. She commiserated with me for a bit, told me a decent place for camping nearby, and then I took my leave.

Instead of camping at the spot the bartender had pointed me to, like a sensible person would have, I for some reason decided that I wanted to sleep in a motel that night, so I ended up jumping in my car and driving down into Jackson, looking for a room. They were full up, and looked altogether too touristy and faux-old western for my budget, anyway. So I headed out in the pitch black on twisty mountain roads into Idaho, and, if you can believe this, every motel I came to in the city of Idaho Falls was full. So I drove down into Blackfoot. All full.

"Why's everything so full?" I demanded of the desk clerk of the Blackfoot Best Western, in frustration.

She shrugged apologetically. "Don't know. Everyone's headed to the park or from the park, I guess. I hear everything's booked solid down to the Utah border."

So I ended up saying, the hell with it, stopping off at a grocery store in Pocatello, Idaho, and buying:

- iced tea
- pickles
- V8
- bananas
- milk

...and a few other essentials, and I drove until 5 in the morning, when I pulled off onto a little country road in northern Utah and crashed for a few hours in my car. The next morning, I made it to Brigham City, Utah, where I finally found a room, checked in at noon, and pretty much just happily sat inside with the curtains drawn for the remainder of the day.

To San Francisco, Part 2

It was pouring rain by the time I made the short trek down to the American falls. It felt good to do a little bit of walking around, after the sedentary past few days. I took a few pictures, then reluctantly hopped back into the car again. I stopped and chatted with a gas station clerk on my way out of town. She was in her mid-thirties, and had that tough-as-leather outdoorsy look, but was pretty enough for all that. She assured me that it was not usually this cold or this rainy up here.

"My first time up here," I confided in her, as if my nearly incandescent aura of 'tourist' was not already blinding her. I asked her if she liked living here.

She smiled. "Well, I feel like I've got the best of both worlds," she told me. She spoke with a touch of the northern Minnesooouta accent, but it was very subtle. "I live in the city and camp in the country."

I told her I had just come up from the Falls, and she told me all about the really cool things you can do at the Falls that I'd had no idea about: they shine lights on them at night, which is supposedly pretty incredible, and you can take a little ship down to the base of the falls, and it seems like you're brushing right up against the edge of the water.

"Well, I'm headed out today, so I guess I won't have the chance to do that," I said.

She smiled again. "Maybe next time you come by."

Well, who knows? Maybe someday.

The drive across the border into Canada was hassle-free (I celebrated July 4th by leaving the country...I'm so patriotic!), and I made good time along the QEW (which, I'm told, stands for Queen Elizabeth Way...the Canadian equivalent of the Interstate) across lower Ontario. It was grey and rainy outside, and I hadn't planned to do anything in Canada except cut across it, so the only time I stopped was for a brief snack at a very lonely convenience store about halfway across. I bought a sandwich, a small bottle of maple syrup for my brother, and possibly the best yogurt I've ever had. It was fresh, and had nuts and fruit in it. It tasted like heaven.



I got stopped by customs at the border. The border guard looked at my car, packed full of all my belongings, with a suspicious eye. He stared at my passport for a while. He was a thick-set, thick-witted man with close-set, squinty eyes.

He peered at me, frowning. "You Greek?" he demanded.

"Um..." I wasn't sure what to make of his question. "I'm a quarter Greek. My grandpa was Greek."

He scowled. "Oh."

After another couple of minutes of hostile squinting directed alternately at my car and my passport, during which I wondered why U.S. customs was so much slower and more irritating than their Canadian counterparts, he told me they'd need to inspect my car. "Just a random check," he assured me, unhelpfully, and I stopped my car and went inside the inspection post. The customs official who ended up looking through my car was a good-natured older guy from Mobile, Alabama, and he seemed delighted when he discovered I was from Georgia. He left to rummage through my belongings.

When he came back, he handed me my keys with a smirk. "Nice machete," he remarked, grinning.

I left, and made it the rest of the way to Detroit without further incident. I noticed that there are 'INJURE OR KILL A HIGHWAY WORKER - $7500 FINE AND 15 YEARS' signs posted all over the Michigan freeways, which seems a little draconian. I wonder if that even applies if it's just an accident. After a bit of confusion with the strange road numbering system there (am I on 12 mile road? or 13 mile road?), I pulled up to James's tall, skinny townhouse in Novi, a boring, upper-middle-class-ish suburb of Detroit.

Brats, burgers, and miscellaneous grilling sundries in hand, me, James, and James's roommate Jason drove over to the park to grill out for July 4th. We were hauling out all the stuff when James announced that we'd forgotten no less than 10 different things. When we got back, we all stood awkwardly around the grill and it dawned on us that none of us knew what in the hell we were doing.

"I've been having some trouble keeping the coals lit," Jason was saying, poking at the weakly smouldering coals.

Neither of us knew what to do about that, so Jason continued, "But I did use to be sort of a pyro, so..." He smiled and sprayed lighter fluid all over the coals, grinning a manic grin as they burst into flames.

James looked skeptical. "Are you supposed to use that much lighter fluid?"

"I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to," I volunteered, watching with concern as Jason continued to drench the coals in lighter fluid with a big, vaguely disturbing smile on his face.

In the end, James and I swallowed our pride and went over to ask nearby July 4th revelers how to keep the fire going. A highly competent old Russian man who spoke almost no English deftly got our coals going and showed us how to do it. Afterward, we went over to the lake to watch the fireworks. I don't think I've ever a body of water that size that calm before, or fireworks that lame before. We decided we'd either missed the big show (which didn't make sense), or that Novi just had really low standards for fireworks.



James had the whole week of July 4th off, so the three of us spent the next five (I think it was five) days pretty much just lazing around. I got very familiar with James's (wonderful) couch, and took many a nap. We ate. We chilled. We went over to Ann Arbor and saw Transformers with James's friend Paris. We watched 10,000 episodes of Man vs Wild (Bear Grylls is my new hero, incidentally). I actually went running, twice! After so much time sitting around in the car, this was a real godsend. One night, we went Irish pubbing at a local place. I had a blast watching a woman who was at least 55 years old ruthlessly hit on Jason. James, of course, had 1 drink and turned bright red right away.



I stayed in Novi at least a couple days longer than I'd intended to. I kept figuring I'd leave the next day, and, after all, when was I going to get to hang out with my little brother again, anyway? San Francisco's a long way from Atlanta.

On Sunday, I pushed off for Aunt Ellen's place in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I had mixed feelings about the day I was planning to spend there. I was looking forward to seeing my cousins again, but, on the other hand, this was my last 'stop-and-see-somebody' excursion before heading out to the outdoors portion of my trip. I got caught in a massive traffic jam on I-80, near Chicago, and didn't end up getting to Eau Claire until about 3 in the morning.

En route, about 10 different times, I was just a hair's breadth away from stopping and getting a motel for the night. But I kept figuring, it's not THAT much farther, I really don't want to stay at a motel, etc. etc., so I'd stock up on caffeine and sugar and set off into the pitch black again. One great way to keep yourself awake, I discovered, is to open your window, play your music really really loud, and just sort of scream along with it at the top of your lungs. I did this for a good two hours or so before I finally got to Ellen's place.



In Eau Claire, I got to see my cousins Brian and David for the first time in 12 years. They were both completely different (of course) than I remembered them, and I discovered, happily, that I had quite a bit in common with them both. Brian, a pale-skinned, long-haired guy who was so thin he looked skeletal, was getting ready to begin work on his Chemistry PhD, so we had a good time chatting about (extremely) nerdy subjects. (I met his girlfriend, Leah, the next day. She was a pale-skinned, long-haired girl who was so thin she...you get the picture. Also about to start her Chem PhD.) I met David the next morning. He's thin, like his older brother, but otherwise the two are as different as night and day. I'd heard David ran competitively for his high school, so when he mentioned that he was about to go running, I jumped on the opportunity to join him. We both pigged out on bacon right before we left. Bacon + running = win.

I am proud to report that I am able to keep pace with an 18-year old cross country/track runner! Yes, that's right, I'm awesome.

I went out for Coldstone with Brian and Leah after we got back. I had broken out the camera by that point, and annoyed everyone by taking pictures constantly. The fact that almost none of these pictures turned out well only compounded the stupidity. That evening, my uncle Ron took me for a guided tour around Eau Claire. There wasn't a whole lot to see, but we did get to go for a couple of short walks through the woods, which was nice.



I left the next morning, finally off to really see the countryside. I made good time, and zoned out at the wheel, watching the world fly past. The low hills flattened, and the forest turned to grasslands, the rich prairie of Minnesota and east South Dakota, and the landscape was farm after farm after farm. I set up camp on the east bank of the Missouri River, near a small South Dakota town called Chamberlain. If this wasn't the perfect spot to camp, it came pretty damn close:



After setting up camp, I climbed down the rocks to the shore. I found a nice flat-topped boulder by the water's edge, took a few pictures, then sat there for maybe an hour, watching the sun set over the low hills on the river's west bank. The bugs started to bite at dusk, so I climbed back over the rocks to my campsite, and lay down on a picnic table by my tent. A couple hours later, the sun had fallen completely below the horizon, and I watched the faint silver-white traces of the Milky Way slowly reveal themselves.

The morning dawned bright and clear. I took my time breaking camp, and it was almost 11 by the time I had loaded up the car and pulled out. I made the short drive over to the Acta Lakota Sioux cultural center and museum on the edge of town, and spent an hour or so checking out the different exhibits. One thing about reading about the American Indians...their entire heartbreaking history post-1492 really just makes you feel shitty about being an American. It's one of those problems where you think, well, at this point, what can really be done? Obviously returning all the land to the Indians isn't going to work. So what do you do, give them some cash? Hey, here's 500 bucks. Sorry about, y'know, murdering almost all your people and stealing all your land from you!

I had what purported to be the 'perfect cheeseburger' (not so much) from a place called Friendly Casey's, then hit the road, en route to the Badlands.

To San Francisco, Part 1

It is raining in Buffalo.

The whole world is grey as I drive through the final few miles of upstate New York to the Canadian border. I stayed in a motel the previous night - my first of the trip - and awoke to a flat grey sky and a surprisingly cold rain. It's July, but it feels like October would back down south. The rain has slowed to a drizzle when I pull into Niagara Falls State Park and walk down to Horseshoe Falls.

The water is kind of a light turquoise. And there's, like, a lot of it.



I stare off the edge of the falls, thinking, That's a lot of fucking water. I'm a little disappointed in my mind for its total lack of profundity. I take a few pictures, gawk the required amount of times, then wander back up to the restaurant at the top of the falls (called, imaginatively, the Top of the Falls restaurant), where I sit down with an adult beverage and crack open my laptop. "I BELIEVE I CAN FLY," blares the extremely unfortunate selection of music, and after a couple of minutes of this, I go outside.

"STAYIN ALIIIIIIIIIIVE," the Bee Gees shout down at me from the loudspeakers. "STAYIN ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!"

Somebody help me, cuz I'm goin nowhere.



The first leg of the trip could mostly be characterized by a single word, Hot. The end of June in the south is murderously, unpleasantly hot, and even driving 70-something with the windows down doesn't help much. But I made good time to Asheville, and waited for my aunt Diane outside a grand, asian-looking building called, appropriately, the Asiana Grand Buffet. I've always liked talking to Diane. Of all my relatives of my parents' generation, I think she's got the sense of humor most similar to mine. Also, not coincidentally, she's probably the most sarcastic. Sarcasm is pretty much the only way I know how to communicate, so this works out well.

After we gorged ourselves, we drove up to the North Carolina Arboretum and sat down in rocking chairs as we waited for the rain. Diane and her partner Bren told me how nice this place was, and how they'd taken my grandparents up here to relax one time. I, in turn, told them a horrible story about some demented parents that had basted their toddler's face in honey and tried to get a bear to lick the honey off. (It did not end well.)

We parted near the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and I spent most of the rest of the afternoon puttering happily up the winding road. It was pleasant, although it was also quite slow. Before I'd left, my dad kept mentioning Mount Mitchell (and I dutifully paid him no heed at all), but when I saw a sign that said, Highest point east of the Mississippi!, I figured, what the hell.



The Black Mountains are cool, even in the summer. There's a brochure there that claims that the climate is more like that of Canada than North Carolina, and you can see it in the spruces and firs that inhabit the area. The vegetation was of a completely different quality than the dense southern forest below. The trail to the summit, however, was like any other trail through the southern summer forest: dense, humid, and, to be blunt, unpleasant. I was decked out in all wicking fabrics, though, so I actually felt pretty good as I hiked. After several miles, I saw this:



So after all that, I didn't actually get to the highest point east of the Mississippi. Ah well. I did, however, get to eat at the highest restaurant east of the Mississippi, and what a god awful mess that was. The place was run by the state, so I figured it was going to be bad, but it went beyond bad, into the realm of both expensive and bad.

I was planning on camping at Mt. Mitchell, but it was really too early to stop for the night, so I pressed on (and when I say 'pressed on,' in Blue Ridge Parkway terms, that means I went maybe another 20 miles). It was already dusk by the time I pulled into the Linville Falls campground, and thunder rolled as I hastily assembled my tent and attached the rainfly. I hammered down the last stake as the rain began to fall, then ducked inside, happy for my good timing (and pissed that it was raining...rainflies are wonderful, but take all the fun out of camping). I stayed happy about this for all of ten minutes, when a bunch of loud hillbillies pulled up in the campground next to mine, broke out the beer, and proceeded to be obnoxious drunken assholes for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I realized that I'd made terrible progress towards Philadelphia, and that I'd need to abandon the Parkway if I was going to make my cousin Joel's place at a reasonable hour. So I drove for an hour or two through rural North Carolina and Tennessee until I found I-81, then stayed on that road all the way to Pennsylvania.

Joel is 27, and I'm 24. We've never met. Our family is peculiar like that. I'd always been curious about him, and his place was right on the way to NYC, so I figured I'd stop by and meet him. It was about 10 at night when I walked into the lobby of his (actually pretty swank) apartment complex. He came down to greet me, beers in hand. He was a big dude with big muttonchops. He introduced me to his girlfriend, Candy, a cheerful hairdresser with a frank demeanor, and after a few minutes of shooting the breeze, we proceeded to start taking Jaeger shots washed down with Heineken...which we continued to do for the remainder of the night.

We went down to a place called Manayunk in Philly, and went club-hopping, and drank more Jaeger...and more Jaeger...and more Jaeger. Joel told me about himself, his family, and his intense hatred for his ex-wife. He'd gotten married very young, after his high school girlfriend had gotten pregnant, and had been working full time since he'd finished high school. He was a real outgoing guy, and was doing pretty well for himself, but his exuberance seemed tinted by frustration at the opportunities he'd given up because of his failed marriage.

I woke up the next morning on Joel's couch, my spirits high. They remained high for about 30 seconds before I noticed the small garbage can placed suspiciously near my head, containing something that smelled suspiciously acidic.

Candy strode into the room, and glanced at me, amused.

"Hey, Candy," I mumbled, sheepishly. "I, uh...I think I might have thrown up in Joel's car last night..."

She laughed. "Yeah, I think you might have."

Joel was surprisingly cool with this most ultimate of party fouls, and, after we spent a good chunk of the day lying, inert, by the pool, nursing our hangovers, we drove over to the car wash, Mr. Clean and paper towels in hand.

Joel grinned at me as we scrubbed away. "Bet you didn't think you'd be doing any auto detailing this weekend, huh?"

Once his Trooper was sufficiently denastified, we drove to a local place called Steve's for my first authentic Philly cheesesteak.



I should have been impressed, and I really wanted to be, and I didn't exactly lie because all I told them was that I thought the cheesesteak was tasty, but when it comes right down to it, it was just kinda...meh. The cheese fries were great, though. Hard to mess up cheese fries. Soon, we were saying our goodbyes, and we agreed that it'd be cool if saw each other again before we died.

The drive to New York City was hell. On the map, the shortest route from Philadelphia to Brooklyn, where my friend Doug lives, is to take I-95 to the New Jersey Turnpike to Verrazano Bridge, but DO NOT BELIEVE THE MAP'S LIES, this route is pure hell and the traffic on these roads will devour your soul and leave you a lifeless, drained husk of a man.

So I, lifeless and drained, pulled into an alley behind a row of apartments in Brooklyn, jumped out of my car, and bear hugged my old friend. Doug and I grew up together, and it's always nice to see him again. Talking to him makes me feel like I'm a 12 year old again, sitting by the River Forest pool, with nothing to worry myself about except drawing, Japanese animation, and how to get the upper leg in our endless sparring matches.

"So I met this chick at this gallery with a couple friends a few nights ago," Doug was telling me, as he related a hilarious, vaguely disturbing story that reminded me in very jarring terms that we were not, in fact, 12 years old anymore.

Doug's old roommate from Florida, who was possibly the world's skinniest man, stopped by with his fiance the first night. He was a metrosexual sort of guy with fashionable clothes and neatly coiffed hair, and he talked in an endless stream. "One thing I wish I'd picked up from you from when we lived together," he mentioned, in between comments about art and, well, fashionable clothes and neatly coiffed hair, "is your cleanliness!"

His place really was clean. It was clean, but, since Doug's an artist, there were neatly placed pieces of artwork all over the apartment that gave it a pleasantly lived-in feel. I liked it.

I spent two nights in Brooklyn, doing nothing in particular. Nursing a hangover (and a nasty sunburn), this was fine by me, and I'd already seen most of the NYC sights last time I was here, so I was free to ignore my touristy impulses and just chill for a while. We drove out to Coney Island and wandered out onto the pier, watching the kids and the crab fishers and the obese shirtless people making out in public. There was a really cool mural there that we stopped to admire, but I forgot to take my camera with me! I dearly wanted to photograph all the chub, too, but some dreams must go unfulfilled, it seems. We bought the world's worst pina coladas at an oddly out-of-place tiki bar on the boardwalk, mostly because the girl selling them was a knockout.

We drove over to another part of Brooklyn to meet up with Doug's friend from work, Sebastian.

"He lives over in the projects," Doug told me as we drove, offhandedly.

I tried to act unconcerned. "Oh, yeah?" The Brooklyn projects. Oh, god.

We drove, and chatted about the different parts of Brooklyn. According to Doug, the part of Brooklyn where he lives, Bensonhurst, is controlled primarily by the Italian mob, and the neighborhood is actually pretty peaceful and safe because these guys ruthlessly enforce their own brand of justice that includes chopping up the bodies of offenders and dumping them near the fence by the shore, and lying down their families in the middle of the street and crushing their legs with a car. And this is the good part of town.

There were several men hanging around outside of Sebastian's apartment building on the sidewalk. They smoked and played checkers, watching us as we passed. They seemed more bemused than hostile.



Sebastian, it turned out, was a big, genial guy with long black hair and a scruffy beard, a comics and anime fan, and all-around Japanophile. We agreed that the way he seemed to be cool with the rough area he lived in was just by being large and completely unflappable. The three of us trekked around the nearby park, which seemed like a completely different universe than the surrounding slums, then went back to Sebastian's place, where I spent some time jamming on his guitar. It was a steel string electric, and I'm used to a nylon string classical acoustic, so I felt like I played pretty poorly, but at the end of it, Doug mentioned that I ought to come with him and Sebastian to Japan as their guitarist! As we went out for a delicious dinner of all-you-can-eat sushi, I kept wondering if he was being serious.

Sebastian ended up crashing at Doug's place, and we were lying down to sleep when Doug, looking highly agitated, exited his bathroom and began pacing around his basement apartment.

"Um, hey, G," he said, after a few awkward moments. "Got a question for you..."

Shortly after he posed his fateful question, we were dragging ourselves to a laundromat at two in the morning. By the time we got done, dawn was breaking.

Doug and Sebastian left for work at about eleven that morning, and I roused from sleep to say my farewells, and then didn't really manage to get back to bed after that, although Doug said I was welcome to stay as long as I liked. I ate pop tarts, drank iced tea, and read and re-read the map. I guess because NYC is all islands, the roads leading in and out of the city are an almost comically complex maze. Eventually I settled on a route out of the city and hit the road, headed northwest, towards Buffalo and Niagara Falls.



The drive across upstate New York was boring. There wasn't anything in particular that I wanted to see, so I just ate, drove, gassed up, drove, pissed, drove, etc. etc. etc. I missed the turn-off onto highway 17, and spent about 45 minutes on a pointless jaunt into the countryside and back. That didn't particularly help my morale. Because of our strange ordeal the night before, I was exhausted before I'd even gotten to Binghamton. Far too proud of my status as a veteran roadtripper to halt for the day so early, I pulled into a country gas station somewhere in the Catskills and decided I'd just nap in the car. Ordinarily that works pretty well, and sleeping in your car definitely boosts your cred as a hardcore insane nutball...I mean roadtripper. But the sun was shining on my face, and it was just too hot to sleep, so, frustrated, I got out and just lay down on a grassy hillside by the gas station, a water bottle resting against my knee.

An hour or so later, feeling much better about the world, I woke up, got back in the Civic, and didn't stop until midnight, at a fleabag motel about 20 miles from Buffalo.

Final thoughts...

...about World of Warcraft, having quit it a couple of weeks ago, removed it from my computer, etc. etc. The game is obviously a time sink, but more than that, I've come to realize that it steals away your creativity, as well. The whole time I was playing, I never once felt the urge to pick up my laptop and write a story, and in the two weeks since I quit, I've become a fiction-producing machine.

I wasn't really planning to pick the game up again when I got to San Francisco, and I suppose this is just one more reason not to!

89 years

I sit in a room with my dying grandfather.

The only sounds are his rhythmic breathing and the soft ticking of the clock on the wall. The sun has gone down, and the cheery light no longer filters through the blinds. The harsh fluorescent light in the room contrasts sharply with the rural North Carolina darkness outside. There is only a single light in the room, and it brightly illuminates my grandmother's snow white hair and brings a greenish tint to her wrinkled skin.

Two of my aunts are here as well, as well as my mom and dad. My brother is away in Michigan, and had the same reaction I did when I heard the news: a vaguely apprehensive confusion.

Grandpa had a stroke? Say what...?

The doctors said that he had only a few hours left, so we all rushed here as fast as we could. But hours pass, and he lies in the hospital bed underneath the fluorescent light, and his breathing continues, rhythmic and strong. My aunts are back in the room now, and the conversation has resumed. Mom wears her usual look of unflappable calm, though it is tempered by empathy today: the Chinese believe that the separation of soul and body that occurs when a person dies is acutely painful, and that a dying person ought not to be touched or spoken to.

"A mountain sits on his chest," she tells me softly, where the others cannot hear, and tells me of the Chinese belief that a dying person is scoured by earth, water, fire, and wind before passing away. Wind is the final phase, she says, and the most painful. "Ah mi tuo fuo," she says, repeating the Buddhist prayer quietly, musically. "Ah mi tuo fuo. That is all you should say." She turns away, and walks down the hall, continuing to pray for him.

I return to the room, where the bright sound of Dancing With the Stars blares from the TV, and stare at grandpa's sunken cheeks. He will never regain consciousness, they told me, and he has no chance of recovery. So we are here to make him comfortable, and stare at him and each other as we wait for him to die.

Roadtrip!

This is the tentative plan, anyway! I've been trying to figure out how much time I ought to allot for this trip. At first I thought a month would be wayyy too long, but when I break it down:

- 2 days to get to NYC (probably a stop-over and some hiking on the Blue Ridge Parkway somewhere)
- 2 or 3 days with Doug in Brooklyn
- 1 day to get to Niagara Falls
- 2 or 3 days with James in Michigan
- 1 day to Wisconsin
- overnight at Aunt Ellen's, then 1 day to get to the Badlands
- 3 days hiking and camping at the Badlands
- 1 day to Yellowstone/Grand Teton
- 4 or 5 days combined hiking and camping
- 1 day to Arches/Glen Canyon
- 3 or 4 days combined hiking and camping
- 1 day thru Monument Valley and to the Grand Canyon
- 3 days at the Grand Canyon
- 1 day to get to Las Vegas
- 1 day in Vegas
- 1 day to the Sierra Nevada
- 1 day hiking
- 1 day to San Francisco

...add that up and that's 29-33 days total. So if I leave on June 30th, that should be about perfect for an August 1st arrival in SF.

Everything's still up in the air, of course!

Blurbs

I made an A in my QM2 class!

I graduated.

I went dirt biking, which was awesome.

I went for an all-day hike at Fort Yargo. I need to hike more often.

I read up a bit on rock climbing. Always thought that would be a really cool hobby. Gonna call Atlanta Rocks! tomorrow to set up an intro lesson so that I can climb on my own!

Realized that flying lessons probably are not going to work out this summer (again!). Just not enough money, and the discounted lessons didn't come through after all.

Set a date for my move-in to SF: August 1st, which gives me a little under a month to explore the city before classes start.

Setting up my Grand Crazy Road Trip for the summer, en route to SF, which I'm planning on drawing out for at least a few weeks. At the very least, I'm thinking of hitting up Philadelphia, to see my cousin Joel, NYC, and maybe staying with Doug for a few days, Michigan, to see Niagara Falls and hang out with my bro for a few days, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, just cuz they'd be awesome. Gotta go up into Canada for a bit, just to say I've been to the country. Grand Canyon would be nice, even though I went there before. Definitely gotta go on a long drive up the coast highway in Cali.

I'm tentatively planning to leave my job on June 20th, then spend a week or two with my parents, before heading west (well, north, first, but ultimately west!). I'm thinking July 1st would be a nice round date to leave on...

Finally got a response from my research advisor! He has approved my program and methods, and now I've just got to assemble the paper. Hello publication number 2!

James says he's going to buy Civ 4. Yes! I'll finally have someone to play Civ with!

Blizzard's coming out with a big game announcement on the 19th. If it's not Starcraft 2, there will be much moaning and gnashing of teeth.

I'm getting pretty burned out on World of Warcraft. Just hit level 63, and I realized that I'm not having that much fun...

Decided that I think that the WoW version of l33tspeak is hilarious. L2blog, nubcakes lololol!!!1!1one1!!roflcopter

Watched James play Dawn of War the other day. Daaaaamn, that game looks cool! Might pick that up.

Broke up with the girl I've been seeing. That sucked. But she was leaving for Europe in about 20 days, and I was leaving for Cali before she got back, so our relationship would have ended then anyway. Drawing it out was starting to feel very pointless and lame.

But I generally like being single. Guess I'm sort of a solitary guy, so being alone again's fine with me.

Bought a new mouse! Corded laser mouse with 5 buttons. 2000 dpi! Don't know exactly what that means, but the tracking resolution seems very nice. Yay mouse.

Isabel's coming back in a few days. Heard from her for the first time in a while a couple of days ago. That'll be neat. She seems to have had a really miserable time in DC, and is re-enrolling at UGA in the fall.

Developing a bit of an issue with acne. Kinda let my diet go there at the end of the semester. Hopefully it'll clear up now that I'm back to eating relatively healthy stuff.

Decided that I like Ron Paul quite a bit as a presendential candidate, and that Obama might be a bigger douche than he seemed originally. 'Equivalent work,' lol. Kinda hoping Paul wins the Republican nomination, and Richardson wins the Democratic. Not that either has a chance in hell of happening. It'd be neat, though.

Decided that Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) is a lame hypocrite. Really don't care for his modus operandi of pretending to have this 'I link, you decide!' neutral attitude, but linking to the most partisan bullshit you can possibly imagine. Feel the same way about Rand Simberg, although he at least is fairly upfront about what his opinions are. Guys, stop pretending you're independents (or libertarians) when 95% of what you say is just shilling for the Bush Administration, 'kay?

I'm looking forward to leaving Athens, more than pretty much anything in the world right now. Gotta go gotta go gotta go. Over the past year or so I've really come to realize just how intensely I dislike the South and the attitudes of people in this part of the country.

In the same vein: frat boys. Why am I living in a place where like 2/3rds of the people I meet are bigoted, asshole fratties? To hell with these guys, seriously.

I feel like I really ought to do something remarkable this summer, since it's my last summer that I'll have off, and I actually have some money for once! There's the road trip...but, I dunno. I kind of want to fly off to Australia or China or somewhere really far away and just explore for a while, before school starts. China probably wouldn't be a good idea, since my Mandarin sucks, but... I don't know if I really want to blow all that money to go to a place like Australia. Hmm...

That's pretty much all my thoughts...for the time being, at least.

Fin

Well...I'm done.

That final was pretty brutal, and it did, in fact, take almost the whole week to finish. I think I probably made a low to mid B on it...so I have no idea what my grade is in the class, but I'm pretty sure I passed, which is what matters.

Still kind of waiting for it to sink in!

The final insult

Holy crap this take home final is really really really hard.

I have a week to do it...might actually take the entire week! O_o

Cookie cutter

It's so nice to not have to study quantum mechanics...

Thinking of re-starting the World of Warcraft account, though probably not till after I take this final. Might roll a rogue character. Haven't decided yet. Thinking of respeccing to 33/28 arcane/fire for my mage, too...

Penultimation

My quantum mechanics class ended early. Apparently he just ran out of stuff to teach us, so today was our final lecture (and it only lasted about 15 minutes)...so we're done. Sort of anticlimatic, really.

We go in on Tuesday morning to pick up the take-home final, and then we have a week to do it. This is a huge relief for me...I don't have to cram for this thing! I can do pretty much anything he'd care to throw at me if I've got a week to do it. I'm not sure where I really stand in this class...I ended up getting a 90 on the second test, so if he counts that first horrible exam, my average, including my homework grade, is about a 65...which is a mid-C according to his odd grading scale. If he doesn't count it, then I've got a pretty high A. Either way, I'm definitely passing, and I'm basically guaranteed a passing grade thanks to the final being take-home! (And after I turn that sucker in I'm headed down to Atlanta to have the most extravagant meal at Pappasito's Cantina that you can possibly imagine...)

My research project still isn't finished, but hopefully Jake will get back to me soon with the news that my analysis and routines basically work fine, and all that's left is to assemble the paper.

So, I'm basically done...my protracted undergraduate years are finally at an end. This summer I'm gonna chill a lot, play a lot of video games, and then go on a long, one-way road trip to California in July. Lookin' forward to it!

Ding!