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.