The first and last day of graduate school

I began graduate school on August 16th, 2001. After a year of rotations, I joined Daryl Kipke's Neural Engineering Lab at the University of Michigan, and six years later, I graduated with my PhD. In total, from the time I began graduate school to the time I "completed all requirements," was seven years. Exactly seven years. As in I turned everything into the Rackham graduate school on August 15th, 2008. Why did it take so long? Now that is a long conversation my friend.

On my first day of graduate school, I woke up in Ann Arbor in my new apartment, had a cup of coffee, and walked the 2.5 miles to the Krause Natural Sciences Building on central campus to attend the "boot camp" for neuroscience students where we learned basic techniques in neurobiology. I remember being a bit tired that day because I had stayed up late the previous night writing songs with my roommate Eric. I was single at the time, not tied down to much of anything, and unknowing what the future held.  The out of focus* photograph below shows that first morning.

Seven years later to the day, on August 15th, 2008, I got up in the morning, went to Expresso Royale for a cup of  coffee spiked with a shot of expresso (graduate school having increased my tolerance for caffeine), then biked the 1.5 miles to my lab in the Lurie Biomedical Engineering Building on North Campus. I grabbed the last two dissertation forms from my advisor, printed out a revised table of contents, and then biked from north campus to central campus to pay a $70 binder's fee to the University of Michigan. I then turned all the final paperwork in to the administrative staff at Rackham graduate school. The last person between me and my PhD told me she really liked the dedication to my grandfather at the beginning of my dissertation and the Henry David Thoreau quote at the end of my dissertation (it's funny as I think she is the only one who noticed those two things...none of my faculty advisors commented on them). She then printed out a "fulfilled all requirements" paper for me, and told me I was done. 

That was that. I wanted to hug her. Happiness. I stood there awkwardly for a few minutes overcome with emotion, and she rightly noticed it and shook my hand saying "Congratulations." I walked out of that building in the early afternoon and the day had never looked so beautiful. I had to go back to lab to help a labmate with a experiment, and here you can see me on my last day of graduate school looking over a surgical prep.

Then, the day after graduate school, I found myself a victim of eternal recurrence, sitting in a high school classroom. 

Would I do it all over again? I am happy having studied and continuing to study neuroscience, but I probably would have taken more engineering classes in undergrad. It would have made graduate school a helluva lot easier given the nature of my dissertation. The only "what if?" on my mind is whether I should have gotten a materials science or aeronautical engineering degree instead. Would I be, to phrase Maslow's hierarchy of needs, more "self-actualized?" I imagine everybody has such thoughts. Scaled Composites is hiring....sometimes late at night I playfully let my mind wander, and I imagine just hopping in my car, driving out to California, and knocking on their door.

*****Fin*****

*Note: The out of focus picture of my first day of graduate school above was taken with a Kodak DC4800 3.1 MB digital camera (the out of focus is my fault). In 2001 consumer digital cameras were still very novel, and I was the only one of my friends and colleagues who had one. I had received it as a graduation gift from my parents for my B.S. in Biochemistry. It was a decent camera, but at the time it was about $500-$700. Nowadays a camera of similar features and quality would probably sell at the drug store for $50.

Continued Search for Optimal Rocket Motor

I've taken up amateur rocket construction as a hobby in the past year, and my current struggle is designing a rocket motor that 1) doesn't burn too fast, overpressurize, and blow up, and 2) that doesn't burn so slow that the thrust isn't sufficient for leaving the Earthly plane.

I thought I was rather sophisticated with my load cell set up.

But my motors are not at the stage yet where I need my static test stand (which I spent the last few months idly working on) to record the thrust time profiles. Rather I need to spend more time playing with ratios of gunpowder, baking soda, and glue, so as to finally get a motor that burns for about two seconds. After that I will record the thrust with the static test stand and start scaling the recipe for bigger rockets. See video below.

Codicil: Coming back Home, 9000 miles and 19 States

I have been in graduate school too long, and I have become too comfortable with the free lifestyle it offers. After defending my dissertation, I felt a sense of wanderlust I had never felt before. I literally couldn't stand to look at a computer screen, to walk down Beal Street to my lab, or walk down South University to Panchero's to eat my typical burrito. It was just too much of the same of the same of the same every day.

The mind turns inward in graduate school. I became so immersed in my own black hole of thought that I forgot there is a world beyond the same streets I walk every day. It sounds trite. It is trite. It is true. America has plenty of beautiful places and fascinating cites; I don’t think I’ll ever fully explore them all.

But, after traveling around this country, I still find myself wanting to stay in Ann Arbor. My friends have criticized me for becoming too comfortable in grad school and Ann Arbor, and that I risk becoming stagnant (if not already). I’ve always felt rather odd regarding this criticism. One of the joys of graduate school, beyond becoming an independent scientist, is that I have seen the world: most of the United States, Egypt, New Zealand, China, India, Dubai, Europe multiple times, Mexico multiple times, Puerto Rico, etc.... I do not feel the need to leave Ann Arbor to find a new place, as I travel one week a month on average anyway. I enjoy, at the end of things, always coming back to Ann Arbor. And now that I am graduated and have my PhD, I am viewing this town as my home rather than as a place I am simply staying on a long-term visit. Tim, born in the Midwest, staying in the Midwest.

The road trip ended symbolically with my flight back from New York City. From the unpretentious Bopper taking me around the west coast, I rolled back to Detroit in first class, surrounded by suits. After landing and waiting for a special lady to pick me up at the airport, I idled with psychedelic visions of the walkway to Terminal C in my mind.

Encore: New York City pt IV -Summertime

With the arrival of Saturday, Thad was off work, so I suggested we go back to Williamsburg to lounge around on a generally nice hot Brooklyn Day. We sat at the Verb Cafe again, I tried to edit my manuscripts, Thad tried to read the New York Times, but it wasn't happening. Thad found it hard to concentrate and relax with all the people around, and I was a little bit hung over from the night before when we went out until 4 AM in the morning. So... we just chatted and watched the stick figure people.

Since it was a hot day, the fire department had opened up the fire hydrants for people to run through. Not many of the hipsters took advantage of them, but their dogs certainly did.

Bedford Avenue was closed off to traffic, and the streets were full of people enjoying themselves. Having been to New York, Chicago, and Pittsburgh in the period of the last three weeks, I am shocked by how beautiful the woman are in cities compared to Ann Arbor. Now Ann Arbor, like any college town, has plenty of pretty gals. But in urban centers, I don't know, women just seem incredibly more stunning than in rural middle America. I hypothesize such dense beauty is due to a number of factors: 1) the women in cities are generally in better shape since they walk a lot, 2) they are generally better dressed or dressed more exotically with the "newest" fashions that are pleasing to the eye due to the novelty, 3) some probably actually are models, 4) cities also have more a diverse population, so there is more of an "exotic" effect and 5) The simplest explanation: there are more women around, so the chance of seeing bombshells is higher. I don't have any pictures of the angels, unfortunately, as I often feel uncomfortable taking pictures of strangers without their permission.

A nice young woman had brought a barrel of sidewalk chalk, and she and her toddler were drawing pictures on the road. I asked if the chalk could be shared, and she happily gave me some of the chalk to draw with. I am, and will continue to be, a notoriously bad drawer, and so I drew the only things I know how to draw: a model of the neocortex column and a spaceship.

Following the walking tour of Williamsburg, we biked to Manhattan to see the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (see post on MOMA here) and visit central park. On the way, I saw a taxi garage, a lovely taxi garage, with plants everywhere hanging from the ceiling.

And then we went to central park. Central park was full of its typical melange of people: troupes of gay men in roller states dancing to music in makeshift rinks, groups of young black kids playing African-inspired percussion instruments, break dancers, lovers, bikers, and the like. I took a brief nap in one of the fields, and then we began to motor on to make it to our Mets game. Thad and I were talking as we were walking our bikes through a crowd on our way out, when a big black guy told us to stop and walk around a touch football game. We had screwed up the last play. I'm sorry, Puff Daddy. He was playing some touch football with his kids, and that was his bodyguard who had told us to watch where we were going.

I actually thought it pretty cool that the hip hop star could enjoy a day in central park like the rest of us, with minimal entourage (one dude), and no one would bother him.

We had tickets to the Mets game, but we had lounged too long in Central Park, so there wasn't enough time to bike out to Queens to make it to Shea Stadium. So...we had to break our own rule of not taking the subway anywhere on this trip. We were those guys, bringing our bikes on the subway.

We actually didn't even make it to the game until the 6th inning, but it didn't really matter because the game went out to 14 innings anyway. Twas the Mets versus St. Louis, and St. Louis ultimately won 10-8. When we left the game (saying goodbye to Shea Stadium as this is the last season before it is demolished), we biked down Northern Blvd all the way from Flushing back to Long Island City before we headed south down to Bushwick. We were exhausted from the near 20 miles of biking we had done that day and crashed out at home.

The next day had some rather nasty weather, but we tried to make it to a free concert in Brooklyn. Unfortunately, it was packed beyond capacity, so we met one of my old friends from Ann Arbor for dinner, and we spent the reminder of the night playing dominoes.

I got up up at 9 AM the next morning to get my cab for my 11 AM flight back to Detroit. Now, since I was rolling first class, I thought LaGuardia would run as fast as Detroit Metro (10 minutes tops to go through check in and security in first class lines), but I was wrong. It took 45 minutes to check 5 people in. The staff at the airport were overworked from the previous day of bad weather, the airport was full of people who had stayed through all night, and everyone was generally pissed off and not very helpful. Due to the huge lines, blast, I missed the flight! I had to arrange for another flight the next morning, 6 AM.

What a drag. I was ready to go home, and I had to get back to work anyway to work on my dissertation revisions and manuscripts. But, like staying at a party two hours longer than you want to, even though you liked the party, I had another day in New York City. I spent most of it in an internet cafe working on a manuscript that was due in two days. Some of the local hipsters would come in and out, and I particularly noticed this one gal who came in with her Boston Terrier. I normally hate these dogs..so yappy and alien looking, but this one was incredibly well behaved while its owner was surfing the net. I asked the cute gal if I could take a picture of her and her dog, and she laughed and said it was fine. I also enjoyed how her shirt was a shirt in name only.

And Yes, I was actually working, not just taking pictures of pretty girls with their dogs (see Hirak! I told you so).

I worked until about 9:30 PM, then took the L train back to Thad's place. I had to get up at 3:45 AM to catch my cab at 4 AM to the airport, so we chatted only briefly before I packed up and tried to sleep for a few hours before heading out of New York City to go back home, the great American exploration coming to a satisfying close.

Coming Up: Codicil: Coming back Home, 9000 miles and 19 States

Encore: New York City pt III - The Postcard That Redeemed Our Faith

While at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Manhattan, I stopped at the gift shop to buy a postcard to send to my lab. I wrote a message, got a Stars Wars stamp from Thad, and put the postcard in my pocket as we went out that Saturday night, figuring I would find a mailbox as we were carousing around. I never did find a mailbox; in fact, I rather quickly forgot about the postcard in my pocket. The next morning I realized I had lost it, and I was a bit depressed about my postcard lying in the middle of the street somewhere in Manhattan or Brooklyn. But, since the the postcard already had a stamp on it, perhaps some honorary citizen would find it and mail it for me. Thad was skeptical, saying something to the tune of "This is New York City; You'll never see that postcard again." 

Checking my lab's mailbox yesterday, look what I find! Someone, somewhere in New York City, found the postcard and placed it in a mailbox. Thank you whomever you are. I immediately called Thad to rub it in, and he said "Wow. That's awesome. I was wrong. It's restored my faith in the humanity of New York." 

I should note that Thad's faith in New York City's humanity had been recently damaged due to a robbery of his apartment four months previous during which his labtop and guitars were stolen.

Encore: New York City pt II - Biking Around Town

Upon landing at LaGuardia Airport, I took a cab to Bushwick, a Puerto Rican/ Dominican neighborhood in Brooklyn where Thad lives. I immediately noticed a change in the cabs from last year; They now have TV's blaring ads to you while you are in the car! You can turn it off, but in my cab it kept restarting every 60 seconds. It's the end of days. I felt like I was in Bladerunner.

I met Thad at his place, and after a couple hours of me asking him about his art (he is a apprentice glass blower for the famous artist Josiah McElheny) and he asking about my science, we decided the most appropriate action would be to find a place to rent a bicycle for me so I could explore NYC without the confines of a cab or subway car.

We went to the local bike shop where Thad gets his service done and espanol is the lingua franca. The owner, a nice short South American looking dude, told me he didn't rent bikes. I explained to him that the weather was just so nice I wanted to bike around NYC the weekend, and I would even buy one from him and sell it back if necessary and was there something that could be worked out? and so on. It didn't take much; he took me downstairs to a storage area full of old bikes  and offered to give me an older, but working, racing bike for a $60 deposit and $20 to rent for four days. 

Oh yeah! New York City in the summertime! Now, I've always felt I am a pretty good biker, given that I bike anywhere from 3-10 miles a day for work and use a bicycle as my principal mode of transportation, but navigating the traffic of Ann Arbor is child's play compared to New York. I just couldn't believe how fast, and how reckless, Thad was in weaving around the traffic. He would literally cut cars off, and with no helmet either. His bike was also faster than mine (he had a light single speed with freewheel), so he was always way ahead of me. I took some videos with my camera; they don't really show our biking in NYC in full glory, as the most exciting, hairiest spots I couldn't film because I enjoy being alive.

(By the way Thad, The East River is technically a strait, not an estuary.) But anyway, unless you are an Olympic Athlete or a Nobel Prize Winning scientist, there's always someone better than you. Check out this link of Bike Messengers in NYC. They make Thad look like he still is using training wheels.

Last summer when I visited, we happened upon a community hang out bar behind a deli in Bushwick, and we ended up spending all night drinking beers and hanging out with the locals. It was the cheapest bar in town; you go inside the deli, buy some beer, and then go out into the back yard to hang out and listen to Cuban/Puerto Rican music on the large speakers. Last year they said we were first white people there in a long time (they also said we were cool, but don't bring any more friends into the neighborhood and jack rent up). We came back this year after getting the bike, and they actually remembered us. One of the dudes, Pablo, actually asked me if I had finished my PhD yet! Per last year, the other people who didn't know us gave us weird looks, but as the night progressed, and we began playing dominoes with some of patrons, pretty soon we were just part of the noise. I asked Pablo to take a picture of us, and he, half-jokingly and half-seriously, said, "Sure I can. Now you can show all your friends at home you were slumming it." Ouch.

Thad had to go to work the next day, so we called it a night fairly early. Thad doesn't have a couch, so I slept on a small sleeping pad in the studio room of his apartment. It was so hot that week (late July Brooklyn) that this minimal sleeping arrangement was actually pleasant compared to a bed that would have gotten soaked in my sweat.

When I woke up, Thad was gone, so I hopped on my bike to Williamsburg to do some reading and work on papers. And, yes, all you skeptics out there, I actually did get some work done editing some drafts of my manuscripts (one of which I just recently submitted!). The change of scenery was refreshing, and sitting outside at Verb Cafe, idly people-watching and thinking, was downright lovely and relaxing. 

After a few hours I had done all I could do with pen and paper, and I went to a nearby internet cafe to begin editing my documents. After a few hours of that, Thad got off work, all flustered from God knows what, so I suggested we get something to eat at a nearby Italian restaurant...Ahhh....Our waitress actually had an Italian accent. Who knew?

Turns out Thad was flustered because multiple other Toledo (our hometown) friends were in Brooklyn that weekend, and he was getting overwhelmed because his cell phone kept blowing up. After dinner, we saw, quite randomly, a friend's band who was in town at a local overcrowded venue full of hipsters quite younger and more beautiful than us. I was getting a little bored, so I suggested to Thad and the random Toledo friends that we go the Ear, one of the oldest bars in NYC, and a nice biking distance away on the west side of Manhattan. After a brief silly "Who's doing what?" conversation...

We made it out to the Ear around 1 AM in the morning, and stayed, like we did three years ago, until it closed at 4 AM in the morning (I don't know if I could handle living in New York City year round. The city would tempt and swallow me whole with its seductive vices; I would never get anything creative done and would simply waste away financially and spiritually). 

Before we left, we took a picture next to the "Ear" of the Ear bar, similar to previous years. Thad and I then rode our bikes back to Brooklyn, and I had to withstand Thad's verbal onslaught of how badly I was riding my bike. Ugggg,,,,

Coming up: The postcard that restored faith in humankind.

Encore: New York City Pt I - Landing

After the NIC conference in Cleveland, I was hoping to drive Bopper out to Brooklyn, New York City to see my friend Thad in my annual pilgrimage to the big city (2005, 2007). I had grandiose plans to recruit Thad and the locals to spraypaint/tag Bopper. Alas, Bopper broke down, and my roadtrip was cut short. I called Thad in Cleveland and told him I couldn't make it.

But....never say die. It turned out I had enough frequent flyer miles on my Northwest Airlines account that I could fly in New York City for free, and first class to boot! So, a month after returning to Ann Arbor, I finally completed the vacation tour of America by getting on a plane to New York City. Due to inclement weather the night before in NYC, air traffic control had the arriving planes circling for an hour while other planes took off. I didn't mind, as the seats in first class were comfortable enough that I actually (gasp) enjoyed being in the plane (the free wine also helped).

The upshot of the circling was that when we descended, we were able to get a very nice view of Manhattan due to the direction we were coming from.

In the pic below you can see the docks of Brooklyn in the background.

In this pic you can see the Williamsburg bridge (left) and the Brooklyn bridge (right).

And, flying over Midtown, if you look in the lower left of the pic below, you can make out the Empire State Building.

The Hand of God Saved Chevrolet

Tonight, I am in Chicago,  and a tornado hit and ran havok among the neighborhood. My friend's Chevy HHR car was miraculously saved by the power lines. That tree branch is literally 6 inches above the car. We could drive it away if the zombies were coming, but only if the zombies were coming. That's a 6 inch difference from rather funny to incredibly tragic. 

Memphis - Will You Still Rock when You Are 80?

With sad hearts Eric and I left Austin to drive to Memphis. I had to be in Cleveland in two days for the Neural Interfaces Conference to present a poster of my research,  and I was sad that my great American roadtrip was drawing to a close.

Such being my dreary state, driving through hot, humid Arkansas was still rather fun. 

While on I-30, a Jeep full of cutie pie black girls kept passing us, and we passing them, on the highway for about half an hour. They were heckling us and Bopper, saying things to the variation of "You need to pimp that thang!" but with a good-natured smile. I would occasionally jokingly yell back about how Bopper didn't need any modification.

Later on that day, we saw a Lexus pulled over by the side of the road and a black guy trying to flag people down for help while his family and friends sat miserably in the heat under an overpass. Given that we had been helped in New Mexico and weren't in any particular hurry, we stopped to see what he needed.

They had a flat tire, but the man didn't have the right socket on his tire iron to remove the lug nuts for his car. He asked me if I had any tools.

I have dreamed of this moment.

Do I have any tools? Sir, how about a full mobile garage? I dug* through my trunk....

*Note: My trunk latch had failed in Austin, so the only way to access all my gear in the trunk was by digging and scrounging through a hole in the back seat which I had ripped off the frame. That was fun in the 90 degree humid heat.

....gave him a full socket set, a 2 foot long socket wrench, and a 2.5 foot long torque wrench. I guarantee no one on the highway, besides maybe a travelling mechanic, had the extensive tools I had. The man was jubilant with my tools (he actually wanted to buy some off me, but I said I was on the road and might need them later). Sure enough, the man had his tire removed and replaced in no time. I looked at his car, a 90's era brown Lexus, and I noticed his tires had absolutely no tread. I said to his friend, "Wow, are these aftermarket racing tires?" I genuinely thought they were, as they looked like Goodyear flat rubber racing tires. The man changing the tire said, "No they're not. I know they need to be replaced. I was going to change them next weekend." They were normal tires, just completely worn! Wow, I guess if it never snows you can get away with it.

He wanted to give me money for helping him, but Eric and I wouldn't accept it. We just told him that the next time he sees folks on the road in need, help them. He said he would, but he still shoved a $20 in my shirt pocket anyway. He wouldn't take no for an answer.

We finally rolled into Memphis at 10 PM that night and tried to check into the hostel. Now, Eric had checked in with his cell phone, so we had rather cryptic instructions via text message on how to get into the hostel. The hostel turned out to be a converted church, and when we pulled up there were two British lads trying desperately to get in. No one was answering the door. Luckily for them we showed up, and we entered the door codes to get in.

And then frightening happened.

There was NO ONE there! No one is the hostel! No one at the desk, no one in any of the rooms. The Brits kept saying, "This is mental man! It's like a horror movie yeah?" I did check the refrigerators for severed heads. There weren't any.

We knew Memphis was a happening place, and it was Saturday night, so we figured maybe everyone went out to Beal street for the night (but shouldn't there should be at least one nerd reading a book on the couch?), so we dropped our stuff off on random beds in the hostel and caught a cab out to Beal Street and the Home of the Blues.

Lots and lots of black people on Beal Street; white folks are minorities there. I dug it. The street was closed off, and people were walking around drinking beers watching, dancing, and listening to the street musicians. We had four hours to kill since some of the clubs didn't close until 4 AM, so we walked around for a bit and Eric and I got a kick out the British lads speaking of their sexual escapades with American women (some of their exploits were lovely, some were funny, and some were rather disgusting (i.e. soiling the trousers)).

After the street musicians began to wrap up, We decided to walk into a club called Blues City Cafe and see a band that sounded pretty rockin' from outside.

Now as a music snob, I've heard a lot of live music. I've heard a lot of GOOD live music. But mostly I have heard musicians in their 20's and 30's performing some variant of rock or country music with guitars, keyboards, drums, or some combination thereof. But I was not prepared for what I heard in the Blues City Cafe; I witnessed the tightest blues-rock band I had ever heard, and they were just some house band called Freeworld! The band consisted of about 10 members, from vatos in their 20's to dudes in their 70's with multiple combinations of horns, flutes, guitars, basses, drums, and numerous vocalists. When they went into a 20-minute improvisation version of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition," Eric and I just sat there, shaking our head in disbelief at just how damn good they sounded.

I particularly liked one of the players, an old man periodically playing the flute and alto saxophone. During a break, I went up to him and complemented him on his playing. He turned out to be incredibly friendly and warmed up to us rather quickly. He ended up talking to Eric and I for most of the night in-between sets, regaling us with stories about the course of his long career. He had played with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the like in his earlier days; you can see a picture of a younger version of him in the middle of the photo below playing next to B.B. King.

And a picture of him playing now.

His name is Herman Green, and he has a star on Beal Street. He serves as a sometime musician and spiritual leader for the band Freeworld, and at 80 years old, he still rocks, still dances, and still flirts with the pretty gals in the club (and in a charming way that old men can sometimes pull off). Neither Eric nor I brought our camera out that night; all we had was Eric's camera phone, in the night no less. But forgive me gentle reader. Here is a pic of Herman's star on Beal Street.

And at the end of the night, we took a picture with him and the cutie-pie waitresses. In this grainy image, I am on the left, then a waitress, another waitress, Eric, and Herman standing outside the cafe.

The police started to clear up the streets, and we found a cab back to the hostel with an Ethiopian woman cab driver who spoke Amharic all the way back home on her cell phone. The hostel was still incredibly creepy, but we were so tired (and drunk?) we just passed out on any random bed that was available.

When we woke up the next morning, there were people roaming around, so I guess that confirmed we were staying at a normal hostel. When we looked at the chore board, sure enough, Eric and I had been assigned chores to clean the bathroom! What!? No one answering the door? No notification from any human being whatsoever the night before? Sleeping on random bare mattresses? Eric grabbed our chore card off the wall, looked at me, said, "this is bulls**t dude, let's get out of here." And, trying to hold grins off our faces, we crept out of that hostel and got the hell out of there, having never talked to a single person. We had to do some backtracking to get back our way on the highway, but we were able to get a lovely view of crossing the Mississippi during daylight hours.

I had to make it to Cleveland that night for the NIC conference, but we got stuck in traffic in rural slow speed limit Tennessee, and we were only in Northern Kentucky by 10:30 PM. We ended up staying in a hotel in rural Kentucky that night, just below the Ohio border.

The next morning we crossed the Ohio river and I got that familiar sinking feeling. Why is it that Kentucky is interesting but Ohio is not? You have deep Southern accents in Kentucky, but you cross the Ohio River, and suddenly you are in bland Ohio (give or take 50 miles of Southern Ohio where it is still hilly and rural.) My mind kept saying, "Oh my, Tim, you have traveled around this wonderful county, and now you have to come back. But be still your heart, at least you can have one last adventure before going back to Ann Arbor by heading out to New York City after the NIC conference." But when we stopped in Columbus for gas, the disaster with Bopper's head gasket began.

But I did make it up to Cleveland (over four hours to cover the last 100 miles), and I was able to attend the conference in a badly damaged Bopper. I hob-nobed with some scientists, talked about my future with some potential future scientific collaborators, and I also saw the coolest poster ever that qualifies as modern art. It's from Bill Shain's group at the Wadsworth center in New York.

But my mind was also elsewhere with my car troubles. I made friends with a local cab driver who drove me around town over the next couple days while I tried to figure out what to do with Bopper.

I eventually found out I was done. Bopper was prohibitively expensive toast to the tune to $3000 if I had it fixed by professional mechanics. I had to rent a U-Haul for $300 at the end of the conference and tow Bopper back to Ann Arbor. My great American road trip was cut short, and that was that.