Stanford

Well after my massive bout of driving on Friday, I was left with a very short 19 mile drive from San Jose to Stanford. This concluded my 3973.9 miles of driving across the country. For those who are wondering, I averaged 39.42 miles per gallon, which considering the fact that my car was fully loaded and I drove over two mountain ranges, I think is pretty good.

When I arrived back it Stanford it was almost surreal driving through a place that I had been thinking about for the past few months. I checked in and received the keys to my apartment. My apartment is on the fifth floor of one of the couple of graduate student high rise buildings. While this made it a little bit difficult unloading the car, it also makes for a very nice view.

You can see the Hoover tower there and when the sun isn't quite so bright you can also see the ridge that runs on the far western edge of Stanford's campus. Despite the fact that room is smaller than my last apartment, the fact that I have such a nice view it makes it feel much more spacious.

When I arrived my roomate had already moved in, but wasn't in the apartment. He eventually came back and I learned that his name is Vincent. He's french and attended the University de Polytechnique in Paris. He couldn't bring much stuff on the plan and today we spent some time in Walmart and Radio Shack getting him some stuff including a new cell phone. He seems very nice and plans on being here for about two years doing a master's degree in materials science.

In the meantime in the little bit of time that I have been here. I've already driven up to San Francisco and run 10 miles with Kamil in Golden Gate park and along the ocean front trail. We also had breakfast in a small cafe near Kamil's apartment. I've also been out to have dinner with Andrew (from Berkeley), Kshipra (from Stanford), and Albert at a small Italian place in Mountain View. Apparently the Duke network is still alive and well. Although I'm also looking forward to building a Stanford one as well.

As for the apartment, her e a couple of shots of my desk and my bed. It's not much, but its comfortable and I can't wait to get working on stuff.

Well I hope you have all enjoyed reading about my trip. It's been awesome and I can only hope that the adventure that I have here at Stanford will be able to match it. I know at times I have been prone to rambling, but I think that most of the trains of thought have been at least a little coherent. I think I'll try and post something to this blog whenever I do something fun or experience something cool at Stanford so check back every now and then. Thanks for reading and I hope you all enjoyed the journey. California, here I am.

All the Way to Reno... and California

I left Salt Lake City pretty early on Friday. I stopped by to see the great salt lake on the way out of the city. It has a certain natural beauty to it, but it's also a little bit barren. It seemed to stretch out forever into the desert with only the mountains to bound it.

Unfortunately, after the great salt lake, there wasn't much to see in Utah or Nevada. For the first 300 miles or so there were at least some mountains to look at, but eventually it was all just rolling hills with scrub bushes on them. The worst part was that the road was straight for periods of 30 or 40 miles at a time. Without my IPod, I'm not sure how I would have made it without going crazy.

It was 511 miles just to get to Reno and the R.E.M. song couldn't have been more appropriate. It seemed to last forever, but I got there. I kept myself occuppied racing the freight trains.

I also saw too rather curious things along the way. The first was what appeared to be a random sculpture in the desert. I managed to get a picture of it as I drove by at 75mph. If anybody can tell me exactly what it is I will pay them money. The second was a road sign that I couldn't help, but get a picture of as I drove past. Along the Utah/Nevada border there is a small town named Ola, which I couldn't help but be reminded of a certain computer science professor.

After racing down I-80 out of Reno and finally into California, I stopped by to see Lake Tahoe. It wasn't very far off the highway and to my surprise, there were still people out swimming in the lake. I guess it's a little bit warmer than the ocean this time of year. It really was impressive to see just how big it was. I guess Friday was the day of two lakes. Not many people can claim to have seen both the great salt lake and lake Tahoe both in the same day.

After seeing lake Tahoe, I had a relatively short (150 mile) drive down to Albert's house. Albert is a former Duke grad student that I worked with who is now working for NVIDIA in San Jose. I finally made it to his house around 9pm PDT. I had been driving for 13 hours and I'd gone more than 800 miles, but I made it to California! Now all I've got left is a short 19 mile hop up to Stanford. Whoohoo!

9/11

The morning of September 11th always seems to be especially poignant for me. This year that day again dawned clear and cold without a cloud in the sky, just like it had 7 years earlier back in Maryland. Even the National Park Service out in the wilderness of Wyoming remembered to honor the day:

I realized that I didn't have much time left to spend in the Grand Tetons so I decided to begin my morning with a little run to the top of nearby Signal Mountain.

Signal Mountain is really just a small mountain in comparison to some of the nearby true mountains. It's only about 9000 feet high and isn't very steep on any side. It even has a small 1.5 lane road that leads to the top. For me this was ideal for a run. I hadn't been able to run much recently and I wasn't about to go flying into the forest where I might happen to find myself suddenly between a mother bear and her cubs. Instead I decided that running up the road was a slightly safer idea and also would present more of a challenge as the grade would be steeper. The ascent proved to be about 3.5 miles and I felt pretty good other than the mild headache that I usually get when running at altitude. I carried my camera with me to the top and I was amazed at the view. Signal Mountain is located almost at the very center of Grand Tetons national park and without many other high points of elevation nearby, provides extraordinary views over much of the park.

Interestingly, most of the best photos that I took from the Grand Tetons came from this short run to the top of Signal Mountain. It was nice to get out for a run as well. :)

After leaving the Grand Tetons, I stumbled around nearby Jackson, WY for a little bit. I had lunch at a very peculiar shack and read about the rising rate of deadly incidents involving domestic petroleum workers. Apparently many of them are taking meth to help them get through long shifts and stay focused. I can't even begin to contemplate operating heavy machinery while being high on meth.

Post lunch, I began the journey out of the northwest corner of Wyoming down to Salt Lake City. Surprisingly the fastest route first took me northwest into Idaho, before dumping me down onto I-15 down to SLC. Let me just say that all of you should goto Idaho just to see their license plates. "Famous Potatos" is the motto enscribed on their tags. Despite this I can't think of a famous potato off the top of my head other than Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story. All right I'm rambling now so I'll also mention that I crossed the Snake River 5 times over the course of 2 hours! See snakes really are everywhere, just as Samuel L. Jackson said.

I made it to SLC before sunset and managed to go see the Mormon temple in downtown SLC. It was very interesting and not nearly as large as I would have expected. However, their attention to detail was phenomenal. Everything was well tended and every stone had been perfectly cut. My favorite part of the visit was later in the evening when I came back from dinner to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearse. Here's a short video of them practising one of their songs for the upcoming Sunday worship.

The power of the choir was remarkable and I'm sad that I won't have the opportunity to hear them on a Sunday morning. Nevertheless it's cool to know that I've at least heard them.

After briefly venturing west of the city I realized I was progressing into the wilderness and retreated back to the safety of the city for the night. After some trouble locating a free hotel I managed to find one near the airport (expensive) and get a little sleep.

Hail to Yellowstone/ A Day of Interesting Smells

Well I made it to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons and spent all day yesterday and all of this morning driving/hiking/running around seeing stuff. I'm currently in Jackson, WY about to head to Salt Lake City.

Arriving in Yellowstone was a very cool experience. Five minutes after leaving the entrance gate I'm driving behind a few other cars up a mountain to Sylvan pass. The weather is not looking all that great and the next thing I know it begins to hail! It was crazy! Little pea sized hail everywhere. It was almost like nature is saying: "Welcome to the wild." Needless to say five minutes later it looked like this:

It turned out that would be a microcosm of the whole day. It must have stormed for about 15 minutes at least 5 times that day. After each one it would clear up and be sunny for about 45 minutes. It was very weird. It also meant that I couldn't go on any very long hikes for fear that I might get caught on top of some hill with no shelter and little golf ball sized hail pelting me in the head. Instead I went to visit the geyser area over near Old Faithful.

The geysers are pretty cool and I managed to see Old Faithful erupt from the top of a near by hill. It was pretty cool to see, but I still thought some of the other geysers were more interesting. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some of them just bubbled, while others would send periodic jets of water into the air at random moments. It was cool, everything except for the pungent odor of sulphur permeating into every part of my nasal cavity. Speaking of strong smells, at least the sulphur wasn't life threatening. Earlier in the day, while I was driving to Yellowstone I stopped to take some pictures of the Rockies and I noticed a rather curious smell emenating from the region where my disk breaks reside in my wheel wells. Turns out my breaks were REALLY HOT! And if you're wondering, this is what the road looks like that causes your breaks to almost light themselves on fire:

The point is I made it safely, but don't ever let your GPS make you take US 14 through the Rockies and remember that shifting down one gear is not nearly adequate enough, sometimes you have to down shift two or three gears! Lessons learned.

Alrighty, well my computer is about to die some I'm going to post this and try and put some pictures up. I'll write about the Grand Tetons later. Check out the pictures.

To The Brink/Lord of the Flies

Well I didn't quite make it to Yellowstone today... I made it to the brink of the Rocky Mountains when I realized that my GPS was taking me off of an interstate and onto US route 16 which winds into the Rockies. It was getting dark, a storm was moving in, and as crazy as I am I wasn't about to start driving into the mountains as tired as I was. I retreated back to the nearest town, Sherridan, WY, and have decided to spend the night here. I'll get up early and try and finish off the remaining 200 miles to Yellowstone tomorrow morning.

As for the drive to this point, it was actually a very nice drive across acres and acres of open grassland in Wyoming. Let me just say that it truly deserves the title Big Sky Country. It feels like everything is just bigger and more spread out. There were times when I couldn't see a car in front of or behind me or on the other side. Just me and some cattle... Speaking of bigger, even the bugs out here are bigger. At one point I had to stop early for gas because my windshield was so coated in bug guts that I couldn't see out of it.

As you can see from the front of my car, it is going to need a serious washing when I get to California.

Alrighty, I'm now going to bed. It's been a long day considering I started it by hiking out of the Badlands in South Dakota and I'm now at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Hopefully I'll make it to Yellowstone tomorrow morning.

Picture Album

Also I'm not sure if there is a way to see the Picasweb album associated with this blog, so here's the link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.edward.bauer/CaliforniaDriving#

Into the Wild

Well I'm currently sitting in a Starbucks in Rapid City, South Dakota after going to visit Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse this morning and spending the last two hours searching for and finding Rapid City's niceist car repair man (nothing major). More on this later.

I appologize for the relative dearth of posts. Apparently places with internet aren't nearly as ubiquitous as on the east coast. So I'll give a short summary of what has happened and talk about some of the cooler parts...

I had an awesome weekend in Kansas with Lauren and Sean. On Saturday Lauren and I drove out to Topeka to see Sean. We had a nice relaxing day just chilling out and then we went to Manhattan for dinner and a party. It was nice not to have to drive and to spend some time with company.

On Sunday we drove back from Topeka and early in the afternoon I left to head north to Vermillion, South Dakota. I passed through Iowa and Nebraska and even got to see Omaha from a distance (Kamaal received an honory phone call). I had dinner with one of my parents' old friends in Vermillion, South Dakota. I spend the night in Vermillion and left the next morning to head to Badlands National Park, which despite still being in South Dakota was a good 400 miles away. I made it to the Badlands early in the afternoon, owing to the nice benefit of crossing into the Mountain Time Zone.

For those of you who have never heard of the Badlands, they aren't nearly as bad as they sound. If anyone has seen the opening of Jurassic Park, the scene where Dr. Grant is digging up the velociraptor occurs in the Badlands. It's a very barren landscape with lots of rocks and very rugged grasses. However, it is also very beautiful as I'm sure you can see from some of my pictures.

After spending most of the afternoon hiking some small trails, I decided not to spend the night in the park's campground. Instead, you're allowed to spend the night in the backcountry as long as you are half a mile off of any road and out of view. I hiked back one of the longer trails for about an hour and set up camp just as the sun was setting. Let me just say that it was amazingly quiet and amazingly dark out there. I could see more stars than I've ever seen before in my life. I could also hear even the smallest sounds. It was like being in a sensory void. It was a little unnerving, but also exhilarating knowing that the nearest human being was over 10 miles away. It's something I probably won't do again in the immediate future, but it was nice to have the experience.

I woke up early this morning and hiked the hour back out to the road, civilization, and my car. I got to watch the sun come up as I was hiking and I hope you won't mind that I didn't take as many pictures this morning as I was truly enjoying the moment. I hope you each have a chance to experience something like this at some point in your lives.

After getting back to my car I took off and drove the 80 or so miles to Mount Rushmore, which surprisingly is pretty far of I-90 in the Black Hills. It was cool to see, but there wasn't much to do and I didn't spend more than 15 minutes there. Since I'm such a stickler for political correctness I also went to see the Crazy Horse Memorial to the American Indians. It was like Mount Rushmore on steriods. Again it was cool to see, but not much to do.

After leaving the Black Hills behind I came back to Rapid City to get my car's power outlet fixed. For about three days I have had problems with it shorting out and I kept having to put new fuses into the fuse box under my steering column. Eventually though the fuses started burning out immediately after I would start my car and my power port wouldn't work at all. After trying five different places in Rapid City, I found a very nice gentleman that helped me take the front of my center console and fix the power port. He didn't even charge me anything. I was very fortunate to find such a nice person to help me fix my car as he could have easily charged me for the half hour that we spent fixing my power port.

Alrighty well that brings this post to close. I'm now going to get back on the highway and drive the 700 or so miles to Yellowstone. Hopefully I'll get there later tonight. Enjoy the many pictures.

Waking Before the Rain

I realize that I'm failing to keep to posting once a day and I promise to try to do better. This post is actually about stuff that happened on Friday.

After having spent so many nights in a tent in scouts, I had forgetten how different it was than sleeping inside. On Friday morning I found myself strangely awake at 5:20 in the morning. Since I am rarely awake by natural causes at 5:20 in the morning, I was rather confused at my sudden state of consciousness. Needless to say, I decided to take a look outside. Low and behold, on the horizon I could see lightning. I decided to move everything that I didn't need in the tent with me into the car. I then realized I was still tired and went back to sleep.

About 30 mins later the wind kicked up, it started raining in waves, and lightning was everywhere. It never ceases to amaze me the ability of those basic instincts that will wake you up anytime and anywhere whenever something needs to be done to ensure your safety.

When I did eventually get up around 7am, I rushed around quickly to pack my tent away in the rain. I only got a little wet and before I knew it I was on the road again. Driving through the remnants of Hannah was not much fun, but there wasn't much traffic and few turns to be navigated.

The only other interesting event of the day occurred when I came to the border of Illinois and Missouri. I had never actually driven across the Mississippi river. I had seen it from New Orleans, but it is an entirely different thing in the middle of the country. It was very cool to be driving across a river that is an entire mile wide. I tried to take a couple of pictures while driving across the bridge, but I really only captured the guard rail as I was paying more attention to my driving. I'll post some of these later. I hope you all enjoy staring at concrete.

I eventually made it to Kansas City around 5pm central time. Over 11 hours I had driven 650 miles and I felt surprising good. Lauren's apartment was a nice refuge in the center of the city and I was happy just to relax and take a shower. After a quick tour around KC and the suburbs where Lauren used to live, we had dinner at a small restaurant in Parkville, MO. It was a nice American place with an excellent cream of cheese soup. Needless to say, after we were done eating, I was ready for bed.

I promise more pictures and updates soon.

Chasing Obama

So I decdided that before I left for my trip, I would check to see if Obama/Biden were going to be anywhere along my route. Coincidentally, Obama was scheduled to be giving a speech in York, PA, right along the route generated by my wonderful GPS with the British accent. So a short 45 minutes into my trip I found myself in York outside of a gated industrial plant. Unfortunatley all three gates to the plant were being guarded by about 10 secret service agents. The event was apparently invitation only, but I did get to see the Obama/Biden bus. Close enough? Who knows. I guess I can read the stump speech on his website.

After that I got on with the rest of my journey. The Pennsylvania turnpike was pretty boring other than the three mile long tunnels through the mountains. Everything went rather well until I stopped to get gas along one of the 14 miles that I-70 stretches through West Virginia. I swear the sign read Exxon, 1/2 mile on the left. Well half mile to the left took me up the side of a mountain where third gear and 3500 rpms got me all of 25 mph. No gas station! Note to self: never get off in West Virginia. Thankfully, Ohio was more normal.

Well I made it almost all the way across Ohio before it started to get dark. I happened to notice a sign on the side of the road for a state park and decided that it might be a cool place to camp for the night. The sweet British lady on my GPS directed me out to the camp grounds where I managed to locate for myself a nice non-electric camp ground to set up my tent. Here's where I stayed:

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/tabid/716/Default.aspx

It was nice as I got my tent set up and got something to eat before the sun went down. I even managed to catch the glimpse of a nice rainbow as a couple of showers moved through. All in all, it was a good first day and I even made it to bed before 10pm. Amazing! I'll post some pictures a little later.

On the Night Before...

Where to begin? I'm not sure if leaving home for the second time is easier or harder than it was the first time. On one side, there are fewer friends here at home and even some where I'm going; on the other side, there will be no safety net like there was in college. Either way, I think the hardest part is leaving behind all those people that have made your life stable and comfortable for so many years. These people that have formed you into who you are and provided a context for your life give a certain familiarity that is difficult to leave. However, looking at it, I hope that freeing myself from this context will give me the room to have new ideas and experiences that will provide a foundation for how I lead the rest of my life. Here's to dreaming...








As for a more technical matter. The car is packed. Everything fit well and I even managed to get all my cooking stuff into the car! Above is a picture of the trunk (and yes, Matt, that is an 'Italia' jersey) with everything inside in a highly compressed state. I've also programmed all of destination addresses into the GPS and I've updated my IPod with some brand new tunes from several sources. To get a feeling for where I'm going to be spending my time over the next week and a half, here is a picture of the UI (User Interface for all non-computer science people, can you tell I'm excited to get started?). I've had the car checked out, new tires put on, and even changed the oil. Everything should be good to go and I'm hoping my trip is a mechanically sound one.


Baring any unforseen circumstances I plan to update this blog at least once every other day. I'll also be documenting my trip and posting pictures in the album with a link at the bottom of this page. I'll try to label all the pictures so you at least know what you're looking at. If anyone has any questions please comment on stuff and I'll try to answer them the next time I post.


To close this post on the night before I leave, I wanted to share with you two very different and seemingly contradictory quotes with a similar them that seemed especially pertinent to me. The first is from a classic Led Zeppelin song, appropriately named 'Going to California.' It is a song lamenting the loss of an old love and the struggle required to move on in life.


Standing on my heel on the mountain of dreams
Telling myself its not as hard, hard, hard as it seems


As I struggle to get ready for this new part of my life, this quote has a very poignant meaning for me. At the same time, a more uplifting lyric that has also played a major role in my life comes to mind:


We've been on the run
Driving in the sun
Looking out for number one
California here we come
Right back where we started from

California, California, here we come...


This Phantom Planet song never ceases to lift my spirits and give me hope that good things can always come from going to some place new, especially California. As a I goto sleep tonight and prepare to leave tomorrow, I'm sure these two songs will be juxtaposed in my mind, harmonizing and clashing with each other, but all the same reflecting the complexity of emotions that can exist as one phase of life ends and a new one begins. California, here I come...