Damage report

Here's the painful part...

hanging by a thread...

remnants of the rear triangle...

severed limbs...

the whole package.

Car 2, bikes 0

So last night I met a new riding buddy and we headed out from the main entrance of the hospital. We got back much quicker than expected, minus 2 bikes and plus an ambulence and backboard. There's something to be said for living and working on a hospital campus. As for the accident itself... here's a quick summary. We were just riding along one of the local highways when a Saturn went to make a left turn from the opposite lane, and took out both of us in the process. I rolled over the hood, broke the windshield, and landed facedown on the pavement. Beth, the girl I was riding with, took her knee into the taillight and her hand into something else. I was conscious the whole time, but since I'd hit my head twice and cracked my helmet in quite a few places, I got to go through the whole neckcollar, full backboard deal. I came out of the situation in as close to one piece as you could reasonably expect. Both knees are pretty battered and bruised, and I've got some serious chainring marks on the inside of one shin. My head's alright, no headache or anything, just a small cut on my forehead. Right now I'm waiting to see the bike, which I already know is in bad shape.

Out of Oxygen

Not quite - let's make that carbon dioxide. I got my first experience racing in the area, and it did not go as planned. I hadn't been able to ride in the middle of the day until this past weekend, and it makes a huge difference. The humidity could kill someone, I swear. And if it's not the humidity it's the rain- check out these photos. Let me point out that these are "before" and "after" shots. Originally, I got the camera out to take a picture of the downed tree on the other side of the courtyard. About five minutes later we looked out the window again, and there was one down right in front of our door. This is pretty much what it takes for me to make an evening workout into an indoor trainer session, but tonight I didn't have a choice. These pictures were taken after my ride, the one that I almost did outside because it wasn't really raining that hard. I guess the Colorado motto doesn't apply here, you know "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes." Around here, five minutes will just topple another tree. I'd like to point out that these trees had to have been around for awhile, because no one plants anything near that big - and it was the wind that took them out, not the lightening.Yesterday was my day off after racing this weekend, and I headed over to Hershey Park with my roommate Elise. We had a great time, hitting as many rollercoasters in 3 hours as you can on a normal Sunday.

Who's this Hershey guy?

I realized Sunday morning that it's been a good five years since I've been on a rollercoaster. I don't even think about going to an amusement park on weekends, because I can get plenty of thrills on my bike without having to stand in lines. But I just invested in a Hersheypark season pass along with some of the other students in my program, so we'll be there a few more times this summer. It was a really good time, and I realized that you can go faster on a rollercoaster than it's possible to go with anything that requires human reaction times for tight turns, loops and things. So, I give them credit, those things really are pretty sweet. Also in the area is the Hotel Hershey, a swank place with gardens just down the road that I haven't gotten around to checking out yet.

On Monday morning, it was back to the lab for some peptide synthesis. Even though the process can be done in an automated fashion, it was cool to use a more hands on method. I had to skip out on my lab today to attend another workshop up at the main campus, on Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Tomorrow, our lab is hosting a professor from Yale who will be speaking about delivery systems for drugs, genes, and proteins. They have actually been talking about this professor since we got here a couple weeks ago, so it should be good. My project is working on a controlled drug delivery system, so this should be pretty relevent.
The crazy thing that I noticed while writing this post, is that none of the stuff I've mentioned would exist today without Milton Hershey's support. This whole town is a tribute to what he did, from making chocolate to funding a medical center.

Can't blame the DHers

XC riding is dangerous - not much suspension, 6" rotors, and nothing but spandex for protection means there's little room for error. At least that's what the downhillers say in New Jersey - I'm not totally sure it's any safer than riding a big bike off a drop, or a skinny tires at 30+ mph on the pavement. But I had a day to myself on Saturday, so I searched the internet a bit and found an awesome freeride park in Vernon, NJ. The riders I met from Massachusetts say its the best place on the east coast, so I guess I got lucky. I'd probably consider that one of my best days on a bike - meeting cool people and riding all kinds of new terrain. They have rocky technical runs, jump trails, random dropoffs, and a lot more stuff my parents really don't want to hear about. And even better, it's located right next to a water park, which means there are lots of people in swimsuits staring at the fully armored dirt riding junkies and asking how much our bikes cost. But when I was convinced my arms just wouldn't stand another run I had to switch into the lycra chamois and get on my skinny tired, full carbon Ibis and do some ummm... "real" riding out into the backroads of NJ. At that point, I could feel the impact from a crack in the pavement all the way in my shoulders, but I shouldn't complain about any day where I can ride for 7-8 hours.

"I'll nanofabricate you!" - ???

I got up early this morning to catch the shuttle that goes from the Hershey to State College, aka the medical campus to the main campus. We were going to a cell culture workshop because I'll begin working with cell cultures later this week to create a sample to do some in vitro testing. Josh & I both made the four hour round trip, and with the shuttle times we had plenty of time to check out the Penn State Campus. He's a newish Penn State student, after transferrring from Virginia Tech this past semester, so the campus is pretty new to him too. For lunch we checked out this little Cajun place called Spatz, which was really good. We got teased about it when we got back to campus because they say that that's where all the professors eat, but hey, we didn't know that. We have a few more workshops in the next few weeks, but hopefully we won't have to go up to State College too many more times after that. It really ends up being an all day thing, and I barely had time to get out on my bike by the time we got back home. The riding's so different here that it's been interesting trying to adjust. My heartrate just won't go as high and I never really breathe hard, but I'm still working hard. It is really cool to have a whole new area to explore, and between that and sitting in a lab all day, it's not hard to motivate myself to get out when I'm done with work.

I can't think straight enough to title this but...

So over the last week, I've driven myself and all my stuff to Hershey, flown back to Grand Junction, and then back again to Hershey... I think that redefines the term "jetlag". I'm pretty tired now, so excuse any mindless babbling you might find on this post. I went home for my sister's Bat Mitzvah, and spent more time travelling than anything else. It wasn't planned that way, but I had a 3 hour layover in Denver, then the plane was delayed for another hour, which made me miss the connecting flight, so I had to stay in Washington overnight and wait for the first flight to Harrisburg this morning. Then I found out that my bike had made it, but my bag hadn't. So I was late to lab and I barely found clean clothes to wear. We're still trying to get things set up in lab, which meant I got to wear a lab coat that apparently belonged to a Dr. John so-and-so, M.D., Department of Urology. And we found out that Nalgene sells lab books for $40 apiece, which makes Mesa State bookstore prices sem like a bargain.