Ride. Hike. Boulder??

This morning a group of grad students and I went down to Rothrock for a nice morning hike. 5 of us biked down, and passed cars, cows, and tractors on the way. Oh Central PA you are entertaining but so beautiful in your country ways! For our hike we decided to ascend up some large boulders on something that isn't marked as a trail on the map. It was awesome climbing up it - here's a less rocky part of it:
Aviva smiling for the camera in the Central PA trees. The plants surrounding the trails reminded me of low willows in AK.
Mushroom?? That looks like it could kill me. But it makes for some contrast in the woods.

Wipe Out!!

So I completely took a good spill on my commuter bike today. Leaving west campus and heading over the IST bridge to Walker building, I decided to try to adjust my headlight while I was riding.. and BOOM, lost my balance and went flying down into the brick wall. I was so embarrassed and scraped up my body pretty good. Best part was, I was on my way to a meeting with the guy in charge of funding me for work for our NPS project. Good thing he's known me for 3 years and knows of my constant biking, so the wreck didn't seem completely out of the ordinary (Although this was the first time I EVER wiped out on my commuter). But since I'm talking about this bike.. isn't it purdy? It's very fast around town - 27" tires, singlespeed, jazzed up commuter bike, with a bugle horn. Yes, that's right, a bugle horn, $5 straight from the shelves at Target. It used to have a retro computer too, but I tried using it in the 0 degree weather last year and it stopped working. (boo!)On a brighter note, today was my kind of day weather-wise. Upper 60s/70-ish degrees all day. It clouded up this evening but is a very comfortable day. Funny though that it feels kind of chilly compared to the crazy heat that we've had.
State College isn't so bad now is it?

ECCC Mountain Bike Opener!

This weekend was the ECCC season opener at Lehigh! This is the closest race other than our own - about a 3 hour drive east of State College. Unfortunately, it was hella hot, was about 80-85 degrees the morning of the race.
We were lucky enough to have a real home to stay in, rather than piling 10 people into one hotel room. Ryan's grandma lives about 5 minutes from where the race was at Lehigh mountaintop campus in Bethlehem. She fed us and everything!

There was a XC course (my fav), a short track XC course, and two downhill courses throughout the weekend. I did the XC and STXC (I hate the STXC, don't ask me why I keep doing it). The XC was the same exact course as two years ago. While I was riding through it, I noticed exactly where I wiped out on one of the bridges and fell into the ditch two years ago. Luckily, I didn't relive that moment.

Somehow there were three of us girls racing for PSU! This is an "away race" tie-breaker for females as long as I've been there. I was very excited to have other girls from our club racing.
Jess (the awesome freshman), Kelly (my super senior bud), and I after the XC race
That's me cursing the short track race in the bug infested woods.
Caitlin from Tufts - my partner in crime in Womens B last year rockin' the Womens A STXC.
Downhill gear?? I wish I was that hardcore!
Tim breaking away in the STXC.

Overall, the PSU crew scored 4th for the weekend, not bad considering the 1st through 3rd place schools had way more racers than we did. Our freshman girl, Jess, is a really strong rider even though she just began riding a few months ago.

Next weekend we're heading down to Maryland for an enduro race and a few other events. Endurance races = awesome.

Hot Hot Heat

Ok... it's 8am, the relative humidity is 94% and it's going up to 89 TODAY.

Summer needs to end. Even my roommate from Miami thinks so. :-)

A surprise visit from NJ!

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from Alexis and Jonathan saying they were on their way to State College from Hershey! As Alexis said, "State College was just too tantalizingly close to not come". HOORAY! They came and we wandered the streets of State College. It was really nice to have them here. I also got to see my good friend Becca on Saturday - she came up for the football game. I was just getting used to not seeing my alumni friends.. and they suddenly reappeared from their respective homes!
Al and Jonathan on the lion -
Al and I being goofy on the lion.. his ears are like handles!
This was my last weekend in town for a little while so it was very good timing to see my good ol' friends. Yesterday and today I went exploring to see how to get to Scotia from my house via the bike paths. Yesterday I didn't have enough daylight to figure out where all the paths went, but today I did get to Scotia and rolled around there for two hours. There was a fun ramp built up on this log.
5 days til Lehigh MTB Season Opener!

108,000 Fans

Something glorious happens when you put 108,000 screaming fans into a packed stadium. I wasn't at the front line of it today since I was working at the concession stand and not watching the game in the stands, but the Penn State Football Glory lives on. I smile and remember why I love Penn State so much.

Here's the Cycling club's stand at Beaver Stadium:
My favorite line working at the concession stand was a guy coming up to me and asking, "Where's the beer at?" Sorry buddy, no beer here. I told him to go downtown after the game.

We played Florida International University today, whom I haven't ever even heard of. Thrashed them up 59-0. But the entertaining part about the game today was that after our game was over, fans began to leave, but stopped dead in their tracks to watch the rest of the Michigan game on the TVs... And Michigan got beat on their own turf, OUCH! Michigan (and Ohio State) are our big rivals, so everybody was jumping and cheering that Michigan lost to some no-name football team.

And this is when we say...

We Are... PENN STATE!

Internet Is Finally Working!!

I finally figured out how to get my wireless adapter to work, hooray!

Here's a rundown in pictures of recent activities:

Before I left Pittsburgh I played Big Brain Academy on Wii and took some silly test and it told me that I had the mind of a meteorologist. Coincidence or fate?
My bike returned the day before I was to return to State College. Not in very good shape.
The drive to State College was on a very hot and hazy day. Yuck!
Sarah had her wedding shower and baccalaurette party on Saturday. It was quite a fun day!
Sunday Brent, Clay, Lee and I went on a 6 hour bike ride through Rothrock. Started at Shingletown and ended up on the ridge and shot down the gas line. I loooooove the gasline downhill, it's a blast!
There was a wildfire on the ridge a year and a half ago, and as everything is growing back the dandelions are everywhere! I should have grabbed some fireweed seed and spread it around! Note the fire scars still on the trees.
This week's theme seems to deal with spiders. Here's a big old one on our lamp post out front.
I've almost taken out at least 30 pedestrians on campus this week. It happens every year - the new students come and don't look when they cross the street. And then you have the irresponsible cyclists who don't know the rules of the road. It's a big mess but I see it as a fun game, like the biking version of Frogger.. except that there's people in the way instead of cars.
Jake and Maggie make a nice welcoming committee. Maggie is just a pup and gets overly excited about everything.
My new toy!! A Kelty 0 degree sleeping bag.. I'm getting geared up. ;) It was on super sale because they're phasing out the model. Manushkka had fun dragging me across the floor in it.
Classes are great so far. MWF I have a GIS programming class, a humanities gen ed which is actually quite interesting so far. The class is called Science, Technology and Human Values and over-analyzes things, which I'm very good at doing, so I think it will be a cool class. Then I have Yoga, a decent break for lunch, and tropical meteorology. Most of my teachers rock, so I think it will be a very good semester. I'm back working at the climate office for one last time. I'm hoping to really push forward on the NPS project that I started two years ago and get it to the point where everything will be pretty much done or in a format for a non-GIS person to be able to handle. So far so good. I'm also taking choir one last time. It felt great to press the "intent to graduate" button on Elion, and my grad school stuff is more than halfway done.

So in a nutshell that is the most recent news. My bike is going in tomorrow for a diagnostic lookover by my buds at Freezethaw. Racing starts next weekend at Lehigh! Bring on the dirt!

Internet Is Down

My computer and the internet at my house haven't made friends yet. Therefore I haven't been able to post any pictures yet! I have taken a lot of random shots at school. I know at least one person in Maine is waiting for pictures.. so hang your horses! :-) I'll be back blogging soon..

P.S. I'm taking YOGA this semester and it ROCKS!

The baby girls

Here's a picture of my nieces Rosalie and Gretchen in the suitcase I just emptied. They want to come along next time! :-)
In May I thought it would be funny to plant pumpkin seeds all over the garden and not tell anyone until after I left.. here's what I came back to!
A little pumpkin, but healthy and still growing!

Rainy Days in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh hasn't stopped raining since I got here. We've gotten over 3.5 inches of rain in our backyard in the last 4 days. My plan was to soak up the sun at the wave pool if I had to deal with 90 degree days, but that chance hasn't come yet. Maybe tomorrow. :-) And maybe tomorrow my bike will make it's way back from wherever it's vacationing right now. I'm freaking out a little bit about it being lost since I had planned on doing a couple good long rides before race season. I'll keep you updated on that.

I've been able to hang out with my baby nieces over the last two days. They are so adorable with their big blue eyes and cute happy faces. I don't have any pictures of them yet.. what a bad aunt I'm being!

Moving into school on Friday.. new place and new roommates. There will be four of us and two dogs in a fairly roomy place. I'm pretty excited to have new roommates.

I already miss Fairbanks a lot. I finished my UAF general application two nights ago, and filed my intent to graduate this semester just today! I'm pretty pumped about that! It's about time, hmm?? Walker building will finally rid of its most loyal student/tenant (practically), ha ha. I can't wait to see everyone there but I do look forward to moving on.

Three more days til PSU!

Wow!

I am amazed how easy blogger is to use! I should have started this awhile ago since my old blogs on my PSU account will be deleted 6 months after I graduate. But no no no, of course I had to be different. Oh well, you blogger lovin' people finally sucked me in. So here is the new masterpiece, ready for a billion adventures along the way...