...and I'm done!

Yesterday I defended my thesis...and passed! With a title like "Methodologies for Efficient Structure and Conformational Change Prediction of Peptide Based Nanosystems" how could I not pass?

After a quick trip to 50' for some climbing, we celebrated.









My gift to myself for graduation is a new Canon A710is. It takes pretty pictures.





They're probably going to be even better once I learned how to use all the manual features rather than relying on the auto mode.

European Vacation Part 7 - the end for now

The night I got to Weinheim, Jochen and Andi were planning on having dinner at Andi's mother's house, so I joined them. Mrs. Knopf cooked us a wonderful and delicious dinner and then we went out for a walk. Pretty soon we found the blackberries....tons of them. Dessert!







On June 17, the whole family and I went canoing on the Lahn river in Hessen. It had been a while since I was in a canoe, so I was excited to float again. The river was idyllic...nothing but green passing through small villages. There are some small falls along the way, but we didn't run them, instead we made use of the locks. It was a great end to my trip and I enjoyed connecting with the Kinzels again. When we got back to the house, I checked my email and saw I had a message from TRUMPF. After some back and forth, I was offered an interview for the next day.

I spent the last day of my trip preparing for and then having an interview in Ditzingen with TRUMPF. I think it went pretty well, but I will know for sure within 2 weeks.

I had an amazing trip, but it wouldn't have been half as good without the friends who supported me....so thank you to all of you who let me stay, took me out, or just befriended me along the way! I may be back sooner than you think.

European Vacation Part 6

After leaving the Dolomites, Eric and I headed to Innsbruck. The weather forecast was pretty gloomy again, but Innsbruck had culture (indoors) and mountains (outdoors), so we were ready for whatever came. We didn't have reservations at any of the 3 hostels in town, but felt confident we would find beds somewhere. Immediately upon leaving the train station toward one of the hostels it began to rain, but we found the road its on within 10 minutes. We searched up and down the road, but didn't find the hostel anywhere. We asked some locals and they said they only knew of another one across town. (I later found this hostel, right where we were looking, but down a little alley.) We set of cross town in search of the other 2 hostels. By this point its dark and we're thoroughly soaked, both getting a little cranky. We finally find the second hostel, but no one is working the desk, so we search for the third. We come around a corner and Eric sees a building with a huge HOSTELING INTERNATIONAL sign on it. Hurrah! It was after the official last check in time of 10pm, but we must have looked pretty sad, so they gave us beds. We definitely disturbed our Chinese roommates by coming in so late and all wet, but they paid us back overnight with a chorus of snoring.

The next day we started at the Ferdinandeum, which is part of the state museum. This was the most varied museum I've ever been to. Starting in the basement and going up, the exhibits went through every culture that has ever occupied the Inns valley. Stone, bronze, iron tools to Roman sculpture, to classic Christian art, to supermodern art, with a butterfly exhibit thrown in for good measure. The butterfly art and science stuff was very cool, but not as cool as the top floor where there was an exhibit by a local artist named Thomas Feuerstein. The exhibit was called Trickster: Politicians, Demons, Parasites. Woah...I'm going to let this do the talking.















We then went to a castle on a hill just outside of town to see how the other half lives. Decadently and narcissistic is how.





We realized something else once the clouds hanging over the mountains cleared. While it was pouring on us in the valley overnight, it was snowing in the mountains. No more going up high to climb on this trip.



Eric was leaving Innsbruck that night to continue his journey and I was going to stay, so we wandered around town taking in the sights and celebrating the end to our fellowship.







As usual for us, the conversation that night turned to what we wanted out of life. For quite a while now I had been tossing around the idea of looking for a job in Germany. I have previous experience and very good contacts at TRUMPF in Ditzingen and I liked the area near there. So I decided that the next day I would get the ball rolling and see if I could get an interview while I was in Germany. I was leaving in one week, but it was worth a shot. I spend half of the next day in an internet cafe, fixing up my german resume and writing a cover letter, emailing my contacts in the US and Germany. So I applied and waited to see what would turn up.

The next day, I rented a mountain bike from one of the shops in town, took their advise about the local trails and headed off. There was really only one way to go out of town, UP. I rode fire road for most of the way up since the singletrack trails were too steep to climb. After about 3 hours of climbing I reached the highest point you could go on a bike in the area.



Don't ever tell me cows are clean animals.




The way down was mostly singletrack, with some very steep, sketchy parts. It didn't help that I was on a rented bike with inappropriate tires, v-brakes, and a Model T front fork. I took a few small spills, much to the delight of onlooking hikers, but most of it was really fun. I stumbled across the local sport climbing area on the way down too. By the time I got into town I had had enough of riding for the day, so I brought the bike back and headed back to the hostel for a relaxing evening.









The weather forecast for the foreseeable future was looking very warm and sunny, so I got it into my head that I wanted to go to a lake where I could swim and catch some rays. After much emailing and searching around online, I found a nice hostel in Überlingen on Lake Constance (otherwise known as Bodensee). I got there on July 13 and walked the few kilometers from my hostel, along the lake, into the town center. When I got to the main square right on the lake, there were 2 huge bouldering walls set up and tons of people around. I swear I did not plan this or know anything about it...Überlingen was hosting the German bouldering championships the next day! In fact, that day (Friday) was the open competition and I could have participated had I gotten there 30 minutes earlier. I really wish I had too, but the problems they had set up looked really fun. I watched for a little while, then headed back to the hostel. That night my only roommate was a guy in the German army who was out on a bike tour for the weekend. He had a millions questions for me about US politics and we ended up talking until 1am.









I knew that the finals for the bouldering championship didn't start until later in the evening, so I went to the beach for the day. I had a new book and was eager to tear into it (Extrem Laut und Unglaublich Nah). Later, I walked into town for the bouldering comp. Needless to say, the guys and girls participating were good.











The last stop on my trip was Weinheim again, so I hopped on a train the next morning and headed back to my friends there.

European Vacation Part 5

This is the part of the trip where things got really exciting for me. I was headed into the Alps, to commune with nature, enjoy the scenery and climb some really big mountains! First stop was a town called Rovereto. There's a small village just south of town called Mori which has a mid-grade difficulty via ferrata that goes up the cliff from town. Via ferrata means "iron road" or "iron way" in Italian and is a climbing method very exclusive to the Alps. Basically, instead of carrying a rope and either traditional climbing protection or even quick draws, all you need is a climbing harness and a Y-shock absorber thingy. This Y attaches to fixed steel cables that run up the cliff. Also, any section of climbing harder than about 5.4 has metal spikes anchored into the rock to grab or stand on. Its not exactly low impact and its not exactly difficult either compared with free climbing, but it does take some guts. Whereas in free climbing you can't exceed a factor 2 fall, here 5 is the approximate max. So the rule is: don't fall. The Y-shock absorber will help to reduce the acceleration in the event of a fall, but its not magic and some very big, pretty devastating falls are possible.

Since neither Eric or I had done a via ferrata before, we didn't want to start with something ridiculously hard or very exposed in case we couldn't handle it. So we started with via ferrata Monte Albano. There was another group of Italian climbers that started just before us, but we soon overtook them when one of their members couldn't get over a section. From there on, we cruised. It takes more raw arm strength than regular climbing, but much less technical ability.












We reach the top of the cliff right around noon and started hiking for the actual summit of the mountain which was still almost 1000 meters above.











Summit achieved, we hiked along the ridge and then down through village after village covered with wine grapes in between, all the way back to our hotel.





We were feeling pretty confident about our abilities to climb via ferrata, so we decided to up the ante and head into the Dolomites. The ferratas here weren't that much more difficult than Monte Albano, but these were in high alpine areas where a mistake carried much greater consequences. We took a series of trains and buses to Cortina d'Ampezzo, where we hopped one last bus to a trailhead near a high pass. We had to beg/bribe the driver to let us off at the trailhead instead of a real village, but it worked. The night before I had called the closest hut to the trailhead and asked for beds for two. They said they were filled and directed me to another hut that I wasn't able to reach by phone. So we headed for the first hut in hopes that they would have 2 beds free.



Sure enough, they really didn't have any free beds. It was already late afternoon by this point and we didn't have sleeping bags or any real shelter, so we took a gamble and headed to the next hut in hopes of finding respite there. Rifugio Giussani was an hour's hike away, but practically straight up and we figured less people would make the trek all the way up there. Luckily, we were right and we had a place to sleep and food in our bellies to prepare us for the next day.



The weather forecast for July 8 called for morning sun, with rain occurring sometime in the afternoon. We were going to attempt a series of via ferratas that lead up a narrow ridge, over a series of smaller summits and eventually onto Tofana di Mezzo (3244 m). To reach the beginning of the route, we actually had to descend from the hut then traverse around the corner of the ridge to reach the ferrata. We left the hut at just after 6am in the clouds, but the sun soon poked out and we were in clouds and sun for most of the day. Along the traverse we saw a herd of ibex who clearly put our scrambling skills to shame.







The climbing was very similar to what we had experience 2 days before on Monte Albano, but the scenery was completely different. Everyone around us were pillars of rock erupting from green valleys, all swimming in clouds. We achieved the main ridge and first minor summit, Punta Anna, and the climbing became very easy, often unprotected, but very exciting.





After a couple of navigational faux pas, we neared the next summit, which had to be approached by an unprotected ladder. No matter how many times I've climbed a ladder before, nothing scared the crap out of me like this one.



After the ladder, we went into a shallow, but very narrow col connected to Torre Aglio (Aglio Tower). On Torre Aglio, there are two options. Either traverse around it or go up it. The thing that we weren't so sure about at this point was what happens if you go up it. It turned out, that the only route of descent is the same as the ascent and simply leads back to the traverse. So we got to the top via the most difficult section we had done yet.





By this time cumulus clouds were starting to billow. Not above us really, but next to us. The summit of Tofana di Mezzo was obscured by clouds and we were not sure how much longer it would take to achieve it, so we called a retreat. It was only 12:30pm, but the threat of being caught in such an exposed area in a thunderstorm was terrifying. We descended a difficult section of ferrata from the tower and followed the traverse into the Bus de Tofana, which is actually a col that has a hole under it, forming a natural bridge. We walked over the bridge and then continued to climb down into and through the hole and onto an enormous scree field that would take us back toward the hut.







We arrived back at Rifugio Giussani around 2pm in bright sunshine. Being Sunday afternoon, the deck outside was packed with hikers and climbers, so we chilled out there, ate and got tans. Despite the good weather at this point, Eric and I both agreed that we had made the right decision to escape to lower ground rather than push our luck. Sure enough, 4 hours later the storm finally materialized and our fears were proved correct, albeit a bit premature. It poured all night.



The next morning the rain subsided to a light drizzle, but everything was much too wet to climb, so we hiked back to the road. Rather than going straight down the way we had come up, we took a roundabout way through two other valleys toward a pass where we knew we could hail a bus. The day another mixture of sun with veils of clouds hanging around all the peaks.