The retreat itself is held in a really beautiful place. Stanford owns a "hotel" near South Lake Tahoe towards the southern end of Fallen Leaf Lake. (It's at the end of fallen leaf lake road if you want to look at it through google maps.) Stanford Sierra Camp is basically a set of lodges with housing suites nestled around the edge of this lake. From here any number of outdoor sports are offered including tennis, basketball, sailing (a number of boats ranging from ~5 person boats to others more suited for individual sailing), waterski (in the summer) and of course hiking. But this is the Biochemistry Department retreat, so we only had a few precious hours on Thursday to explore these possibilities. The rest of the time was all science all the time except when eating and sleeping.

Not that this is a bad thing, I learned a tremendous amount in just three days. Further, I now have a good idea of what projects are going on in each lab. Most of the talks were very interesting, but some actually didn't really overwhelm me with interest. In these cases I often couldn't really see how what was being discovered was really important or particularly novel. Again though, the vast majority of the talks were fascinating and even though I'm not specifically interested in every last one of the projects being explored in the department, I would be very happy to find myself as close to the bleeding edge as these labs. Luckily, I'll have that chance.

On Thursday I decided to take a boat out sailing despite the drizzle. The scenery was still quite impressive and more importantly there was enough wind for me to go very fast. There's nothing quite like gliding along the water with no noise other than the rushing turbulence along the hull. In the morning I got up very early to see the sunrise and take a brief jump in the lake. Very brief. I'm not sure what the water temperature is except that it's very cold, but hey, it definitely wakes you up.

This past Sunday was the first football game for the Biochemistry intramural football team. Unfortunately we lost to the team from the graduate school of business. On the plus side, it's likely they're the best flag football team in the league with several championships under their belt. This upcoming Sunday will be the real test of our abilities. Also this Monday I learned that the finger injury I sustained two weeks ago at football practice is in fact a small fracture and a distended tendon in my middle finger. I'll be going 4 more weeks in buddy splints, basically velcro straps that act like tape connecting the middle and index fingers. Whatever, play hard, get injured. It would be nicer if we won though. Luckily, Sunday we'll do that.

On the non-retreat work side, we ended up missing two lectures of macromolecules, meaning when we returned on Monday we had a lot of catching up to do. Tuesday night, I did manage to finish watching both video taped lectures and the first half of the problem set. Rotation-wise today I ordered primers for my experiments so come Friday I'll be able to start doing some PCR-mutagenesis and getting the project moving. Meantime, I've got to figure out where I want mutations for the 30 amino acids following my DNA binding domain.

I'll conclude with some pictures from the retreat and football:

Classes are also starting to really get underway. We have our first problem set for the macromolecules course and yesterday we all met to discuss how to solve the stickier problems (more or less all of them). We got our first paper to review for the frontiers course as well. Frontiers is a course held by the genetics, developmental biology and biochemistry departments that basically reviews a paper from the current literature by that week's seminar speaker. We read the paper then on Tuesdays at 5:00 we review it as a group. On Wednesday the author of the paper gives a talk at Stanford and afterwards joins the students in frontiers for a separate question and answer session. We can then ask them about pretty much anything we'd like. How did they get into research? What does figure 4 in the paper we just read mean? Is there a flaw in their assumptions? How do you write a grant to get money for what you actually want to do as opposed to what institutions will fund? That kind of stuff. Trouble is the paper for this week was really dense genetics. Especially considering that I've never taken a genetics course in my life, a deficiency I hope to address at some point in the near future. Even the professor had a little bit of trouble making sense of it. Nevertheless once we got to the meat of the paper it was really quite interesting to get some exposure to the rather new kind of whole-genome genetic analysis it described.

It's not all classes and rotations here though, the biochemistry department graduate students have started a co-ed intramural flag football team. We practice once or twice a week and I feel we're getting pretty good, which is great. Unfortunately there have been some casualties of the game. Eric, a 3rd year in the Pfeffer lab, has torn or twisted or otherwise damaged the tendons in his pinkie finger pretty badly. Two practices ago, I also became a victim of football practice. I tried to catch a throw that was coming in low to the ground, but it was dark so my hand wasn't in the right place. The ball jammed into my right middle finger pretty badly. A few doctor's appointments and a set of Xrays later and my finger is now in a cast. I also have an appointment with a hand specialist next Monday to tell me whether or not I've actually chipped a bone in one of the joints. I may not be playing in the next couple of weeks. We'll see; hopefully it heals by the time we actually start playing games. It's still a little bit swollen and I can't fully curl the finger without it hurting. I think it's getting better though. Hopefully anyway.

But I don't need a finger to go biking. This past Saturday I took the nice bike out for its first intentional long distance ride since I got here. I say intentional because earlier I locked my keys in the car after getting my bike looked at. Luckily the bike was out of the car, so I had a way to get back to Stanford from Mountain View to get a set of spare keys (Escondido Village staff loaned me a key to get into my apartment). Total distance: 9.2 miles. Saturday though, that was intentional. I went for 15.4 miles up Page Mill road, which is actually fairly uphill for most of the ride traveling away from my apartment. The way back was much nicer. Now 15.4 miles isn't actually long distance by the standards of people who bike this way fairly regularly, but I'll get to some longer trips eventually.

I end here with some pictures I've picked up in the past couple of days. I'm trying to get better at remembering to take pictures, next entry I'll try to have some from the Biochemistry retreat. Tomorrow we leave for Lake Tahoe where Stanford has a kind of conference center. We'll stay there three days courtesy of the department. It's going to be really beautiful. During the day though, we'll be attending department talks and poster sessions. So on top of being nice place, we're going to get a thorough introduction to the state of research in all the labs in the department. It's going to be an intense, informative weekend.

We got there, set up camp, all that good stuff, then went for a short hike. By then it was maybe 4 or so, plenty of daylight left. roughly two miles later, we were welcomed back to camp with burgers of all sorts. Beef, veggie even turkey; I had no idea that there even were turkey burgers but there you go. Of course eventually we garthered around a roaring campfire and talked long into the night. This being something like 10 or 11. I don't think we made it past midnight, but who's actually looking at a watch here? Being good scientists of course, we decided to experiment with placing an empty beer bottle in the embers to see whether it would melt. It did. We would try again with more, bigger bottles, having planned the fire to more completely cover the glass. But this would have to wait, the sleeping bag beckoned. The next day, a breakfast of charcoal-warmed bagels with nutella contemplating two options: 10 mile hike, 15 mile hike. Both would go 5 miles to a waterfall then the 10 milers would return to camp following a slightly different route and the 15 milers would go 10 more miles, braving hills and sweat to show their worthy athletic skill. 10 miles is for sissies.

The waterfall was beautiful, we got there just as the sun was breaking through the trees to shine on the flowing turbulent water. We ate lunch: sandwiches of hummus, cheese and lettuce harmoniously complimented by animal crackers. At this point we asked the fearless leader, a 5th year by the name of Charlie, how far we had gone and were dismayed to hear, "5 miles or so." Ok so maybe 10 miles isn't for sissies. Reexamining the maps led to a new plan: 12 miles. We would all hike up a ways to a crest where the pacific could be glimpsed at a distance, then go back down to camp. Everything went swimmingly, though the view of the ocean was a bit off due to fog/haze on the distance.

Upon our return, we boiled water to make pasta which we then mixed with Prego and grilled sausages. I learned to play a game called Phase 10. To say the very least, I was terrible at Phase 10.

The fire was started, and we resumed our experimentation with glass. We added a bottle of wine, bottles of Corona, Heineken, Gordon Biersch and Fat Tire ale into the heart of the fire. We we left with a gooey mess which unfortunately broke easily as it cooled unevenly. With a few beers on the belly we held a racy session of "Never have I Ever" before repairing to sleeping bags once again. In the morning we took down the camp and drove home.

The whole experience was really wonderful, I met a many of students from other departments, creating connections I'm not sure I otherwise would have had the opportunity to forge. In fact, I was the only student from the biochemistry department to go on the trip. I also saw just how beautiful California is. This wasn't just an ordinary forest, this park was populated with redwoods, trees that towered incredibly high, shading the length of our hike. Some were hollowed and the whole group could stand fully inside the tree with room to spare. The natural beauty of this place is really quite incredible and only a short drive from home.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera. Charlie will be grouping people's pictures so I'll link those when I get the chance.

On other news this week has yielded my first classes and a rotation project. Classes have gone well, we don't have any exams, only problem sets roughly every week. I'm taking Biological Macromolecules, a course explaining how proteins and DNA assume their shapes and perform their functions. It seems very interesting and it's taught by some of the people driving the field forward. There isn't just one instructor but 10 or so that each take a few lectures to cover their topic of expertise. This is a very different model than undergraduate classes at Maryland and I really look forward to seeing how the rest of the course goes.

I have also set up a rotation with the Ferrell lab. I'm not working on the traditional expertise of the lab (biological oscillators), but on the evolution of protein regulation. In particular, I'm working with a postdoc who is testing a hypothesis as to how acetylation may have emerged as a regulator of protein function. We will be testing mutations to test certain protein sites for relative susceptibility to acetylation and control by such a mechanism. This means I have a ton of reading to do this weekend, which is OK. This is what grad school is about, and I'm glad to be finally moving down that long road towards a degree.

I missed my meeting on monday so I don't have an official home for the first quarter here. Initially I was supposed to meet with Jim Spudich, the graduate student advisor in the department, at 2:30 on Monday. This didn't happen. We then sort of met during the orientation session on wednesday, making plans for a real meeting for the following morning. Unfortunately Jim Spudich has caught a nasty flu and he's been out the past several days. I've been trying to set up a rotation on my own, and that's going relatively well. I'm thinking of going with a lab working in a field that to be honest, I never really saw myself entering. I'm told this is good, that rotations are there for exploring new areas, making mistakes, being wrong. I hope so and fully expect this will be a great experience, but nevertheless I'm a little worried about the whole situation. It's not always comfortable outside the comfort zone.

In other ways orientation has been great. Our class has really started to come together as we basically remembered everyone from interview weekend. There's only seven of us and we will be in all the same classes together so we'll be able to keep each other up to date with notes and about what's happening in other labs. The biochemistry department graduate students have decided to form an intramural football team, so we'll have plenty of group-bonding experiences there too.

Really in general, the department is extremely welcoming. My only worry now is how to get back into work-mode. I've been on vacation all summer for the first time since high school and I could stand to have more of it. There are always things to do around the apartment; general cleaning, getting my bike perfectly fit, laundry, grocery shopping etc. It's been relatively relaxed so far because I don't have to put in hours in the lab yet or work on classes, but this is graduate school so I'm fully expecting the workload to surpass undergrad, therefore leaving less time for doing all those little things necessary to keep the days flowing smoothly. Not to mention physical activities though football will be useful in that respect for a few months.

As with everything, this will take some adjustment. Before I know it I'm sure I will be seamlessly juggling all the chores of single-living with lab work and classes. Or at least not dropping the ball too often. In the end, I look forward to all of it.

Some things were surprising however. The fact that Nebraska isn't quite flat, much to the dismay of my transmission. It was snowing in Wyoming. The hotel in Rawlins, Wyoming population 8,658 only had one room left (unfortunately a "smoking" room), and gas in "Skull Valley" Utah was outrageously expensive: $3.39 for a gallon of 87 octane gasoline, much to the dismay of my wallet.

Some things weren't surprising. The scenery in some places was really incredible. Particularly the landscapes of Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. Most every rest stop along the way comes complete with condom vending machine but some go even further, offering a whole "kit" for a night out. One particular rest stop helpfully provided 25 cent sprays of "exquisite replicas" of popular men's colognes. Creative names were of course the norm, again, "Skull Valley" Utah.

Nevada.

The open road and bugs on the windshield.

Given the huge distances involved between stops, eventually a sign for 100 miles to X becomes "only" 100 miles to X. 50 miles means you're almost there and 30 miles means you're basically already there. Unfortunately we weren't quick enough with the camera to take a picture of the first sign we saw for San Francisco or the "Welcome to California" sign, but I do remember them as tremendously welcoming, cheering us along the final miles of our voyage.

It's good to see the signs

Escondido village was relatively easy to find. I got my key from the front desk, found the building and moved in. The apartment is a decent size. The studio is very well appointed, plenty of shelf space and closets to store pretty much anything. I think my only complaint would be that I could have dealt with a smaller bathroom and more room in the rest of the apartment, but really there's plenty of space throughout. I guess I could also use a place to store long items, say for example a mop, but the bathroom will do.

Overall however, I'm extremely happy with the apartment. I'm also happy with the area. Palo Alto is a lot more alive than I thought it would be if a little expensive. The weather so far has been fantastic, and I'm told it's been this way for most of the summer. It's easy to adjust to this place, I'll definitely be able to call it home.

One problem: I didn't yet have a hitch to tow said trailer. U-Haul didn't have the part in stock either, so I ordered a hitch online, got it delivered the day before I was to pick up the trailer and convinced the guy who installs hitches at U-Haul to stay past closing time in order to install the hitch so that the next day I could actually get the trailer.

Conveniently he let me take the trailer that evening so I didn't have to come back (much to our mutual relief I'm sure). Having secured a hitch and trailer just in time, I went to AAA to get Trip-tiks, basically a map of the itinerary from my house to Stanford broken down into roughly 200 mile increments. AAA also provided guidebooks for the states we'd be seeing as a source for finding hotels as we go. Finally, I purchased a huge lock to ensure the security of my trailer.

The planning stage complete, with all my boxes packed and waiting to be moved into the trailer, I faced the hardest part of the whole moving endeavor: goodbyes. Leaving behind family, friends and significant other was very difficult. My family and I are very close and given the short distance between the University of Maryland and my house, I've grown accustomed to having dinner at home once a week. My brother being in New York, I could also go visit him practically anytime for a $30 round trip bus ticket. I will definitely miss these things. I do have a couch though, and Stanford's a beautiful place so I'm sure I'll get visitors. Also I've enlisted my father in helping me drive across the country.

We left much later than we would have hoped packing the trailer having taken far longer than expected, so tonight we only got to Cleveland.

Tomorrow we really start driving. We'll need to go 10-12 hour days if we hope to make our target. 362 miles down, 2,544 miles to go.

I love to travel. Pretty much anywhere and any way, whether it's hotels or mud brick huts, pickup trucks or airplanes, suitcases or one-day backpacks for a whole week. This summer I worked with the Maryland chapter of a group called Engineers Without Borders building latrines in a tiny village called Uduzhapa (pronounced Oodoochahpa) in Ecuador. In keeping with the general travelling theme, this fall I will be driving my beloved Subaru across the country with all my worldly belongings to reach Stanford in 4 days or bust.

When I get there move in, start work, graduate in 5.5 years (hopefully), then who knows? Academia, private sector, other, we'll see.

My beautiful girlfriend Jullet

My brother Sebastien

My mother among the wreckage of the living room