Be Prepared

So camping went...not as planned. After driving up to Santa Cruz, we stayed at Marty's uncle's house for the night. We got in at 01:00 and got up when the (very loud) espresso machine dictated. Once awake we discovered that some of the trails we planned to hike were closed and we couldn't get some of the permits that we needed on the weekend (it was Saturday). Poor planning on the part of the person who planned the trip. Oh well.

We had a backup plan. Sort of. We made one up on the spot, so that's kind of the same thing. We decided to make a day-hike of what would have been the last day of our trip and then go the rest of the way home to the north bay -- all three of us live within an hour's drive north of San Francisco -- and then go to the Boy Scout camp in San Rafael to camp for a couple of days.

We started our day-hike and had to ford a stream. Our oxen didn't die, fortunately, but Marty didn't have AMAZING HARDCORE WATERPROOF HUNTING BOOTS like Liz and I and so he hiked the rest of the 10 miles in wet socks. He had 5 blisters afterwards and decided to bail on additional camping. We took him home, spent the next day working out details of getting permission to camp on the Boy Scouts' land (a mini-adventure of its own) and then went out to spend one night camping.

Along the way we came across something that I had forgotten was up there: an old B-17 engine. One of the last B-17's manufactured crashed there on its way to Hamilton Air Force Base and one enormous radial engine is all that remains. I decided that my portfolio theme for my photography class would be HMC students doing non-academic things that they really enjoy, so I took some pictures of Liz with the engine and our packs, tying in to both her love of aerospace and of backpacking. When I finish shooting this roll we'll see how they turned out.

The moral of this story is something that I didn't realize until I'd been at college for a while: things don't always have to go as planned and that doesn't have to be a bad thing. I often get an idea of how something is going to work out in my head and then get stressed, consciously or unconsciously, when real life gets a hold on my plan, even if my "plan" is just my unofficial, unconscious view of what I expected to happen. It's amazingly freeing to step back and realize that it doesn't matter...we can have a fun time by completely ignoring the plan and doing something totally different.

Be Prepared is the title of this post, and the motto of the Boy Scouts, but being prepared can take on many forms...often it means having a well thought-out plan, but it could just as well mean be prepared to throw out your plans and do something different. If you're prepared, it'll work out fine. I was just told by someone that you need a well-formulated plan so that you have something to deviate from when you get into the field.

Although that was a good stopping point right there, I thought I'd bring this back to Mudd. I mentioned above that my photography theme is pictures of Mudders doing things that get them really fired up. I decided on this because I'm graduating in May and wanted to explore what it was that made me love this place for the last four years. I remembered back to freshman year when I was amazed to find the breadth of personality here at this tiny, technical (officially liberal arts) school. We have all kinds of people who enjoy all kinds of activities:

Jacques and Tavi, my freshman year, taught a class on Maori fire-spinning, called "Poi" which I really enjoyed. Jason was so good at unicycling that he can ride his unicycle up and down stairs and "idle" in one place talking with you. Brett drives to the mountains and tries to convince people to go mountain biking with him. He also sculpts. Scott flew RC planes and turned down at least two good job offers to go get a PhD in some form of aeronautical engineering. Marty plays Go. Alex was offered the role of Simba in the Disneyland Parade, although he turned it down because he would have had to take a year off of Mudd. Matthew auditioned for the Dapper Dans: Disneyland's barbershop quartet. A surprising number of Mudders are on the ballroom dance team. Liz bakes cookies for the dorm and sews magnificent costumes because she feels like it. Camillo dropped out because he decided his passion was in the martial arts and last I heard he was teaching German Longsword lessons and learning parkour.

We have all sorts here, and it really makes it an amazing place.

~KMarsh

Great Craic

If you've read Trevin's blog you'll know that at Mudd we refer to something that's fun or addictive as "crack". I find it amusing, then, that in Ireland when something is fun they call it "good craic" (pronounced crack). I spent my spring break in Ireland visiting my girlfriend who is studying at the University of Limerick for the semester. The flight over was long as was the immigrations line at Dublin -- I actually had to start asking people to let me ahead of them in the line when I looked to be in danger of missing my connecting flight. I made it, but just barely.

Once I got to Ireland Liz and I started traveling...we went to several places around Limerick and then flew to London for a day. While in London we took a train to Stonehenge and then came back and saw Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery. Of particular note was the tomb of Sir Issac Newton, which we visited so we could shake our fists at the man who has caused generations of luckless science students untold misery.

Back Ireland we took a train to Dublin for a day trip and visited several sites of historic importance -- particularly the Guinness Storehouse which was leased by Arthur Guinness back in the day for 45pounds a year good for 9000 years. The company apparently finds various ways to give back to the Irish people what it saves on rent. We also went to visit a ruined castle that was destroyed by Oliver Cromwell. Most of two walls still stand and students from the university often walk down to it and throw parties there. On the last day of my trip we had a small party with a Tex-Mex dinner and watched Braveheart with an Irish bartender who has been kicked out of American bars for complaining that they don't pour their Guinness correctly.

You can see my photos here: http://tinyurl.com/2rhmut

~KMarsh

Mish-mash of Updates

It's been a while since my last post. Two Sundays ago I went to the circus training school in Redlands with a group of people arranged by math professor Rachel Levy and spent an enjoyable afternoon learning static trapeze, tumbling, and other fun physical activities from the people there. I was planning on doing a major post about it once I got access to some of the pictures, but I haven't gotten any so I'm going to forge ahead for now -- this post will be mostly me updating on what's happened recently, so if you want to hear about anything more in-depth, just ask.

My eye is better, so that's good. Those eyedrops itched something terrible.

In big news right now, as many of you probably are aware, Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released in the United States on Sunday, March 9th. Smash Bros. is one of the more popular group video games here at Mudd, so we were all eagerly awaiting its arrival. I went with my roommate to a friend's house in the next town over (Badier graduated last year but we still hang out with him on occasion) on Saturday night and picked up the game at its midnight release then played for 8 hours. It was one of the worse decisions I've made this semester, but I knew it was going to be and decided to deal with it.

I am going to be orientation photographer during freshman orientation next year! Orientation happens the first week or so before classes begin in the fall and it's a time for the freshmen to get adjusted to the school and to life away from home without worrying about classes or upperclassmen. The freshmen get grouped together in "sponsor groups" of about 5 frosh each and get taken under the wing of an upperclassman "sponsor" who takes them through orientation and answers any questions they may have. I'm not exactly a sponsor, as I won't have an assigned group, but I will be the photographer for orientation so I'll be there working with the freshmen. Maybe I'll see some of you there.

Last weekend was a conference here at Mudd to discuss the possibility of an aero center at the college and I was invited as a student panelist. This warrants an entire post of its own, so I'll leave it at this for now.

Finally, I'm heading off to Ireland for spring break this year. My girlfriend is studying abroad at the University of Limerick this semester and I'm going to visit her for the entirety of break. I'm getting very excited, since my flight leaves on Friday at the end of this week. I have far too much stuff to get done before then....

Okay, this is sad. I got up for class today and then when I got here I realized that I managed to knock my clock ahead an hour when setting the alarm last night, so I was an hour early. That's always a terrible thing (remind me to tell you that story from freshman year sometime), but I went off to breakfast and then came back and started this post to kill the time before class. Class time rolls around and still there's no one here. I don't remember anything about there not being class today, but it seems that not only did I wake up an hour early, I didn't actually have to wake up for this class at all today.

~KMarsh