Backpacking in Europe: Part I

My sister Liz and I are currently backpacking in Europe. We arrived in Barcelona, Spain on May 18 and are departing from Athens, Greece on June 21. Here are highlights of our tour so far:

Barcelona:

• Tandem bicycle ride along the Mediterranean Sea.
• Visiting Olympic Park and Botanical Gardens
• Eating tapas, drinking sangria
• Walking through twisting streets of old city
• Seeing Gaudi's Sagrada Familia basilica
• Happening across the Madrid Fan Zone for a championsip soccer match being played in Barcelona. Thousands of fans dressed in red and white striped jerseys partying in the afternoon in preparation for a 9:30 pm match, creating a Where's Waldo-type scene.
• Searching for the Barcelona fan zone.
• Discovering the Barcelona fan zone is in fact the Sevilla fan zone, as Barcelona was chosen as a neutral site for the Sevilla-Madrid match.
• Watching the soccer match in a bar called The Obama, complete with a life size statue of the American president.

France/Provence

• Visiting Chateau d'If, prison on an island off the coast of Marseilles and setting for Alexander Dumas's Count of Montecristo.
• Strolling through open air markets and munching on delicious fresh fruit and veggies, croissants, pain au chocolat, warm baguettes, amazing cheeses.
• Spending three nights in Cassis, resort town in Provence. We went hiking on cliffside tracks and spent the day on a beach that required a challenging walk to get to (this didn't stop the French, as the beach was packed).
• Driving through cute French towns with friends Charlotte and Stephan.
• Visiting Pont du Gard (Roman aqueduct) and a couple Roman stadiums. In one stadium we attended a bullfight, in the Spanish style ending in the killing of the bull.
• Swimming in the Mediterranean and watching kite surfers.

Italy

• Staying in Riomaggiore, one of five villages in the Cinque Terre.
• Hiking the breathtaking coastal track between the villages of the Cinque Terre.
• Going on a couple runs on very steep tracks in the Cinque Terre.
• Kayaking on the Mediterranean, during fairly rough seas.
• Eating focacia with pesto and mozzarella
• Cooking our own pasta with walnut sauce (decent).
• Strolling through non-tourist towns of La Spezia and Massa.
• Three day walk with challenging ascents in the Apuan Alps from Resceto to Castelpoggio. These mountains are known for marble mining, which we witnessed in abundance. Marble for Michelangelo's David was mined here. Mining didn't ruin the walk, as we had some tremendous vistas and were led for an hour by an Italian couple who showed us trenches used by soldiers in WWI and pointed out native flora. We were treated well in two rifugios, where we received filling and cheap meals and had comfortable beds to sleep in.
• Walking around the Leaning Tower of Pisa and taking the obligatory tourist pictures, followed by gourmet gelato.
• Spending the day at il Ciocco, an Italian resort where Liz's friend Nick is working. We were treated like kings to free four-course meals and spent hours lounging by the pool.

We arrived today in Florence and walked a bit around the Duomo, a massive Gothic cathedral. We plan to spend a couple days here and then travel to Venice, Rome, Naples, and a Greek island. It has been a very epic trip so far and I'm super excited to begin the art history portion of our tour.

Rakiura

Two weekends ago I competed in the Dunedin Three Peaks footrace, which traverses Mt. Flagstaff, Swampy Summit, and Mt. Cargill. I finished the approximately 29 km course in 2:27:32, in fifth place in the overall men's category (a few masters and one woman also beat me). The weather was perfect, with sunny skies and cool temperatures. Some sections of the course required some semi-bush-bashing. Overall it was a great introduction to mountain running and a very enjoyable event.

Last weekend I traveled to Stewart Island with Emma, a friend from the biochemistry department. We rented a car and took the ferry across, then walked the Rakiura Track, a 3-day 36 km hike over rolling terrain and through pretty native bush. Emma discovered that she is not super keen on tramping or long rough boat rides, but we still had a pretty good time. Here are some pictures:



I depart New Zealand next Thursday, May 6! In August I will begin in the MD/PhD program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Gettin Folded Wit It

The latest high-impact project from my bench:

Getting Folded Wit It

Writing, Running, and Board Games

I've morphed into 80% writing mode in the lab, working toward submission of my masters thesis a few days before I depart New Zealand on May 6. I've found that while it's easy to become motivated to do lab work every day, I don't really feel like writing very often. Fortunately the writing is interspersed with demonstrating procedures to Sam, the honors student who will be continuing the DnaK/Hsp70 project in the lab, and making plans for single molecule FRET experiments later this month. I'm also working on a lab website. Most labs at the University of Otago don't have their own website, but these days websites are essential tools for recruiting students and postdocs and disseminating information to collaborators and the public. The only half-decent web design program we have access to is iWeb, which is not nearly as good as Adobe Dreamweaver but will still get the job done.

For several months now I've been running 4 days a week on steep trails around Dunedin in preparation for the 3 Peaks Run in two weeks. This race goes over 3x 700+ meter mountains: Flagstaff, Swampy Summit, and Mt. Cargill.
http://www.leithharriers.com/threepeaks.html
I'm also hoping to have time for one last adventure before I leave--to the Rakiura Track on Stewart Island, one of the most remote places on the planet and possibly the farthest south I'll ever venture.

The past two weekends the lab has had social events. First we had a board games evening at my flat, featuring Wabbit Wampage and Robo Rally. It was Earth Hour that evening, so at 8:30 pm we turned off the lights and put some candles in beer bottles. My flat is on a hill and you can see some of the city from the window, but we were disappointed when there was no decrease in city lights during Earth Hour. This weekend we went to Sigurd's house for a potluck. It was a perfect sunny and calm day, so we just sat out on the patio eating chicken pot pie, lasagna, roast chicken, salad, and pavlova all afternoon.

Last week I gave my last presentation to the lab, which I've posted here. It was also the world premiere of "Gettin Folded Wit It," which will be posted on YouTube shortly.

Parents visit

My parents Carol and Jim arrived in Dunedin this morning! I still haven't seen them yet, as they are sleeping off jetlag, but am looking forward to touring around the Otago Peninsula with them tomorrow. Then they will be off to Fiordland, the West Coast, Mt. Cook, and Mt. Tongariro, a snow-covered volcano on the North Island.

I've had a fantastic few weeks back in Dunedin, enjoying the late summer sunshine and making good progress on my thesis writing and finishing up a couple experiments. We're now ready to take the fluorescently labelled protein I've made to a total internal reflection microscope down the road at the medical school for single molecule studies. We hope to immobilize the protein to a poly-lysine cover slip that will allow us to resolve the fluorescence of individual DnaK proteins. If we overcome a few technical hurdles and can see the protein move, it would be the icing on my thesis and to my knowledge the first time anyone has done single molecule studies of Hsp70.

Also in the last few weeks we designed a t-shirt for the Wilbanks group that I will be proud to wear. Here is the design.

Living my last months to the fullest

I arrived back in Dunedin last Saturday morning, after an exhausting month of travel around America. Here is a recap of cities visited, in order, in a 4-week period: Pasadena, MD--Boston, MA--Ann Arbor, MI--Chicago, IL--Stanford, CA--San Diego, CA--Chapel Hill, NC--Berkeley/Stanford, CA--Memphis, TN--Berkeley, CA--Portland, OR--Dunedin, NZ. This travel extravaganza includes seven interviews, one 24-hr bout of experiments at the Stanford Synchrotron, one visit to friends in Berkeley, and my grandmother's funeral. I'm now very happy to be back in quiet warm Dunedin, where the undergrads are only just arriving. The day I got back there was a big festival in the Octagon with the whole town attending it seemed, which reminded me of the small community feel I get here. It was great to see everyone in lab again, and in my first week back I managed to produce a doubly labeled DnaK protein with shifting fluorescent peaks that report the conformational change upon addition of ATP, which has been the primary goal of my masters project. Now I have something to write about.

The interview process was fairly enjoyable, as I met a lot of interesting professors and students and saw three cities I had never before visited (Chicago, Chapel Hill, Portland). I was particularly impressed by Michigan (where I've been accepted!), Stanford, and UCSD. Michigan has a solid cohort of people working on protein folding diseases, as does Stanford along with a well organized MSTP and beautiful campus, and UCSD has research opportunities at the world class Salk, Scripps, and Burnham institutes.

My time in New Zealand is running out. My scholarship ends this month, so the faster I submit my thesis the less tuition I have to pay, although I'm hoping for a friendly grant from the Biochem department. Returning home will be bittersweet in many ways. On the one hand I'm looking forward to taking my research to the next level in a major U.S. academic institution, and from what I've heard the first two years of medical school can be a blast. I'll be happy to be closer to family and friends and good bagels. But I've had an incredible amount of fun here and really enjoyed the chilled out change of pace that I now can see in stark contrast to the fast-moving, consumptionist, ambitious culture in America. I know I'll be back many times later in life.

Chilling in MD (for real) before interview mayhem

With a jam-packed month of MD/PhD interviews beginning Tuesday next week, I've had a relaxing couple weeks in cold Anne Arundel County Maryland. For Christmas I received two oven-safe frying pans with lids, 3 large mixing bowls, a wire wisk, adjustable measuring spoon and cup, and a complete set of knives! As tempting as it is to take all this equipment back to New Zealand, I've decided to hold it safely here in Maryland for my indefinite return to the U.S. most likely in May. I've had a great time cooking in our large fully equipped kitchen here, serving pad thai, fish tacos, and salmon linguini among others. I've been doing a lot of reading, including a couple Science and Nature magazines, but have most enjoyed Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. Amazingly, I had not heard of this guy before stumbling across the book at an airport bookstore. His Central Asia Institute has been building schools for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan for the past decade and a half. Some of the stories he recounts about being led on wild goose chases by self-interested businessmen resembled some of our experiences in Tanzania. I agree wholeheartedly with Mortenson's view that educating youth, empowering women, and in general promoting peace in the tribal regions of central Asia does far more to protect American security than bombs and guns. Mortenson's schools do not teach extremist Islam (like the madrassas) nor Christian/American values, but unbiased (as is possible) history along with basic reading, writing, and math. A young Muslim who wants to go on jihad has to get approval from his mother, and an educated mom is far less likely to approve of violence than an uneducated woman. One of Mortenson's comments really hit home: that American soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, who have immediate contact with the people and culture, have a far better understanding of the issues than detached State Department officials planning the wars. Apparently Three Cups of Tea has become required reading for military commanders.

I'm pretty excited for interviews. I'll get to visit some new cities and universities as well as meet a lot of new students and researchers. I should probably invest in one of those travel pillows though.