Pictures from two of my favorite places

Here are some pictures from Ann Arbor and Williamstown taken this fall.

The Michigan football experience

Today I finished my weekly quiz (this week's topics were biochemistry and anatomy) around noon and discovered that a fellow student was selling a single ticket to the afternoon season-opening football game at Michigan stadium against Connecticut. I wanted to get to at least one game this season and decided that no game was better than the first game. So I arranged to buy the ticket for $30, then headed to a store on State Street to pick up a t-shirt--I didn't want to be caught in the Big House without spiritwear, and I certainly didn't want to be mistaken for a UConn fan (of which I think I saw two the entire afternoon). I bought a yellow shirt with a straight "Michigan" logo so I could wear it to other sporting events. Then I coasted down the hill on my bike, past thousands of students playing dance music and drinking outside of frat houses, and relished the big-midwest-school-pregame-experience. I thought the partying we witnessed in Barcelona before the Madrid-Seville championship match was the most excessive I would ever witness, but the pregame celebrations I witnessed today may equal or surpass those of the European fans. For one thing, tailgates started around 7 am this morning for a 3:30 pm game (In Barcelona we witnessed dance parties at noon for a 9 pm game). In Barcelona there were two main fan zones for each team, relatively well contained by fences like a nice benign tumor. But in Ann Arbor the parties had metastasized, with many small and medium sized gatherings and tailgating over several square miles around the stadium.

I navigated through the throngs, parked my bike at the outdoor track, and joined the herd moving to the stadium gates. Everyone was decked in maize and blue, and there was palpable excitement for the first game of the season. It was partly sunny at that point, not too chilly, and I watched overhead as a plane drew an "M" in the sky with its exhaust; there were also a couple helicopters flying around the stadium at lower altitude. Unfortunately, when I got to the gate I was told that for a student ticket I needed a student ID, which I did not have on me, so had to squeeze through the crowds to a ticket office, wait in line for twenty minutes, and pay another $30 to get my ticket "validated" (i.e. make up the difference to a non-student ticket). As I was waiting in line some fighter jets did a flyover of the stadium. I made it into the stadium just after kickoff, went to section 29, and showed the usher my ticket. "Way down there," he told me and pushed me rather hard down the stairs. My ticket, it turns out, was from a med student who also went to Michigan for undergrad, so she had some pretty amazing seats. The stairway was packed with people and it quickly became obvious that there were way more people at the lower levels than who actually had tickets to be there. The row with my seat, like all the other rows, was completely full of students standing sideways on the bleachers. There was no way I was going to fit too, so I stood around on the stairs for awhile until a security officer told us to move out of the stairs and I sheepishly slid myself in between two screaming students. There I stood for the first half, both feet only half on the bleacher, back twisted, neck craned, watching Michigan score two touchdowns in the first quarter and nothing for Connecticut. I heard "The Victors" fight song, the lyrics of which are plastered all over med school posters, and some other cheers with arm chopping and key shaking. Connecticut scored a touchdown and a field goal in the second quarter, but Michigan also scored another touchdown. At halftime I was expecting everyone to leave to get a hotdog or something, but instead I was surprised that as the clock ran down everyone suddenly sat down on the bleachers around me. Before I knew it, I was trapped, surrounded by a sea of knees. There was no escape--so I just watched the marching band perform. They were good but not loud enough. Finally the third quarter began and I decided to exit the student section and explore the rest of the stadium.

I did a full loop, smelled the fried dough and caramel corn, and sat down in a non-student section on the opposite side of the field. There I watched as Michigan continued to demolish UConn (they won 30-10). The stadium really didn't look that big because it wasn't super high, but in the fourth quarter it was announced that the attendance was 113,090, an NCAA record for the best-attended college football game ever in America! That got the crowd really excited. The student section did some more cool cheers; for example they split into two groups and yelled "Go" and "Blue" back and forth for a minute. They also started a wave. Many fans started leaving in the fourth quarter, but all the students stayed to the very end. Finally the game was over and it was a reverse pilgrimage back into town, with many stopping at bars and restaurants. What a game and ritual!

First week of medical school

The first week of approximately 416 before I graduate is behind me. I learned what a suppurative exudate is (composed of neutrophils and dead cells, basically pus) and how to use Bayesian probability to calculate the risk of an individual carrying a disease gene. Some lectures on DNA structure and transcription were review. But overall it was an exciting and interesting introduction to medicine. I was especially inspired by a patient with the Huntington's disease gene who talked to our class in the middle of the week.

The first sequence, which lasts three weeks, is called Patients and Populations and consists of some genetics, pathology, and epidemiology. With one or two exceptions, the lecturers thus far have been engaging and funny and eager to answer questions. My classmates are friendly, smart, and easy to talk to. I think med school is going to be alright.

In recreational activities, I've joined fellow students on bike rides, runs, and games of frisbee. Last night I went to an MSTP student's house to watch Lagaan, a Bollywood favorite introduced to me by my high school social studies teacher. Tonight I went out to dinner and ice cream with the MSTP students in my year. This morning I went to a cooking class at Hollander's household items shop. This was a clutch find, as they have cooking classes twice a week for $15 a class. I learned how to make Provencal Sauteed Chicken, Potato Gratin with Garlic, Lemony Grilled Eggplant, and Poached Figs in Red Wine. The instructor is a French woman from Paris with her own catering business.

Ann Arbor continues to impress me as an all-around awesome place to live. There are parks and trails everywhere, amazing roads for cycling, tons of tasty restaurants, lots of places to get local produce and meat, and generally friendly smiling people. Life is good.

Town of trees, and potholes

Last weekend I drove a 10-foot rental truck carrying all of my belongings from Pasadena, MD to Ann Arbor, MI. This was my first "serious housing move" since I was bringing large unwieldy furniture to an apartment I'll have all to myself. The drive was uneventful except for a nasty thunderstorm in western Pennsylvania. I arrived in the evening after driving all day, and since my apartment wouldn't be ready until the following morning, I stayed in my favorite inn, the Motel 6 on the outskirts of town. That night I found that Chipotle had opened a store in downtown, which was not there three years ago! This was a bittersweet find, however, because I have fond memories of stuffing myself with "Giant" burritos from the famous BTB (formerly Big Ten Burrito, sued for copyright infringement), an Ann Arbor icon. Fortunately the burrito market here is substantial enough that BTB remains in business.

The next day I took advantage of the four-day truck rental period to drive to Target to buy miscellaneous household items. There are some things you take for granted and are slightly taken aback when they're not there in your new apartment. Toilet paper, shower curtain, and dishwashing soap come to mind. In the afternoon the new MSTP fellows met together for the first time. The main purpose of this meeting was to inform us that as first-year MSTPers we were responsible for performing a skit at the upcoming MSTP retreat. This would be our only formal commitment for the first week, during which we were receiving $500, so apparently they want a very funny skit.

On Wednesday we had another MSTP social at Dominick's pizza restaurant. There I learned that the state of the roads around Ann Arbor is a hot issue, which I was encouraged to hear after a bone-rattling ride the day before. The nicest cycling road in town, Huron River Drive, is nearly unrideable, and repairs are way behind schedule due to town and state budget shortfalls. Ann Arbor cyclists are taking matters into their own hands, working to raise funds themselves to pay the construction crews. The hope is that they'll start repaving in a few months.

Here are a few pictures from my new apartment, located in the "White Coat Ghetto" a short walk across the Huron River from the Michigan Medical Center.

I'm in the basement, so the view I have from one small window is obscured by the big bush on the left. It is a little cooler down here though.

What's behind door number 6? The suspense is killing me.

Already busy with logistical items.
Bicycle workshop.
The "den."
The kitchen, with tiny but mighty oven and spectacular knife set. (Not shown: four beautiful new wine glasses)
The kitchen table. A real newspaper, other than the Ann Arbor 3-page biweekly less-than-rag, would be great but delivery of the NYTimes is very expensive.

This afternoon Nobel Laureate (Chemistry) Ada Yonath is speaking here. She's worked on the structure of the ribosome. Should be an awesome talk!

Pilgrimage to Napa Valley

I'm currently visiting my dad in Sacramento, California for a couple weeks and yesterday I made a pilgrimage to the wine capital of the United States, Napa Valley. To get in the mood I started the day with a visit to the Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science at the University of California Davis. Robert Mondavi was largely responsible for dissemination of Napa Valley wines around the world and passed away two years ago. On the inside, the Mondavi Institute looks like any other laboratory building for biology or chemistry, with labs full of scientists in white coats holding pipettes at long benches covered by reagent bottles and fancy equipment. The labs are connected by boring white hallways lined with scientific posters. The only way you would know it's a Food and Wine Institute is by reading the names of the labs (might say "Sierra Nevada Brewing Laboratory"), by finding the usual waiting room news mags replaced by Wine Spectator and The California Dairy Dispatch, or by noticing the abnormally large number of offices with signs saying "Closed from 12 to 1 for lunch." On the ground floor there was a wine marketing conference going on. As I walked by I heard the presenter insist that you might really like your dog, but it doesn't belong on your wine label.

From Davis it was about an hour drive to Napa; the town didn't look too exciting so I headed up the Silverado Trail through the heart of the valley. Just about every acre of land was covered in grapes. Napa Valley is a good place to grow wine grapes due to its unique geography and climate. In some spots the soil contains volcanic lava, and in others it contains maritime sediments from when the San Pablo Bay reached into the valley. Thin and rocky soils cover the hillsides, which decrease overall yield but lead to grapes with concentrated flavors and sugars. Napa Valley's climate isn't too cold or hot, and it has a long growing season with warm sunny days and cool nights, allowing the grapes to ripen slowly over time.

I stopped at the Honig Winery in the Rutherford American Viticultural Area. I had read that Rutherford soil is a unique combination of gravel, sand, loam, and volcanic deposits that provides especially good conditions for Cabernet Sauvignon. I tasted four wines--first a Sauvignon Blanc in which some of the grapes had been left in contact with the skins for a few hours before pressing, presumably enhancing a grapefruit flavor. The second was a 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon with grapes from the Honig vineyard that had been aged in American oak for 18 months. Third was a 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon with grapes from a nearby vineyard that was aged in French oak. Last was a late harvest dessert wine made from Sauvignon Blanc grapes that were infected with Botrytis fungus, which dehydrated the grapes and concentrated the sugars. All the wines were good but at $40 to $75 per bottle they were outside my budget.

I finished off the day with a very hot but enjoyable walk on a trail up Cold Canyon near Lake Berryessa.

Today Alex and I went sailing on Lake Natoma near Sacramento, reviving an old hobby of mine. As I was reviewing sailing terms and techniques, I was reminded of the various points of sail, the possible orientations of a sailboat relative to the wind direction. Sailboats can't sail directly into the wind, but they can sail about 35 degrees to either side, called "close hauled." If the wind direction is perpendicular to the sailboat, that's called a "reach," and if the wind is coming from behind the boat, that's a "run." What is the fastest point of sail? At first it seems obvious that a run would be fastest--that's when the wind is squarely hitting your sails from behind. But the fastest you can go on a run is the speed of the wind. In fact, the fastest point of sail is usually a broad reach. This can be explained by considering two points. First, for all points of sail except a run, forward movement is caused by sails acting as airfoils, like airplane wings generating forward lift. Second, the wind direction experienced aboard a moving sailboat, the apparent wind, is different than the wind experience by a stationary object, the true wind.

Let's say you're on a broad reach, with the wind coming over the corner of the stern at a 135 degree angle to the direction the boat is pointed. The wind will flow over the sails and accelerate the boat forward. As the boat accelerates, the apparent wind direction shifts forward. It's the same thing that happens when you're driving in a car on a rainy day and the rain is pelting your windshield from ahead. When you get out of the car though, the rain is falling vertically.

When the boat has accelerated to the point at which the apparent wind is 45 degrees off the direction of travel, a comfortable close haul for most boats, the boat is going 1.41 times the speed of the true wind. Racing boats that can sail closer to the wind than 45 degrees can travel significantly faster--at 29 degrees off the apparent wind, the boat is going twice as fast as the true wind.

I found this wikipedia page helpful for visualizing with vector diagrams.

According to Wikipedia, "in 2009 the world land speed record for a wind powered vehicle was set by a sand yacht sailing at about 3 times the speed of the wind."

Greatest Survival Stories

I recently read South by Ernest Shackleton, an incredible story of survival in the Antarctic. In 1914 Shackleton and a team of 28 scientists and sailors embarked on an expedition to cross Antarctica, which Shackleton judged as the last important polar mission after Amundsen became the first to reach the South Pole in 1912. Their boat, the Endurance, became trapped in ice in the Weddell Sea, drifted helplessly for months and was finally crushed at 69 degrees latitude, forcing the crew to abandon ship. They drifted further on ice floes for hundreds of miles until their floe broke up beneath them and they scrambled into lifeboats. They landed on mountainous, ice-covered Elephant Island, 550 miles southeast of Cape Horn. From there, Shackleton took a crew of five others in the lifeboat James Caird for a fifteen-day journey to South Georgia. They weren't done once they landed on the south side of the island, however, because the whaling stations were on the north side. After regaining their strength, Shackleton's team walked for 36 sleepless hours over glaciers and through dense fog to the whalers, who would help the expedition rescue the remaining crew on Elephant Island.

Shackleton's story has been billed as the greatest survival story of all time, and I don't doubt it. What makes it so impressive is the length of time spent away from civilization (21 months for those left on Elephant Island) and the harsh conditions endured (hurricane-force winds and blowing snow were common, and temperatures were typically tens of degrees below zero Fahrenheit). What really makes the story, however, are the navigation, leadership, and decision-making skills of Shackleton and his lieutenants. Every member of Shackleton's Weddell Sea Party survived the ordeal, not by luck or fate, but by always keeping their wits and positive attitude despite unimaginable physical challenges.

This got me thinking about whether other survival stories could rival Shackleton's. Here are snippets of a few more incredible tales, most of which have associated books that I intend to read at some point:

1) Joe Simpson's "hop and crawl" back to base camp in the Peruvian Andes, recounted in Touching the Void. Simpson broke his leg descending from the nearly 21,000 foot Siula Grande. His partner Simon Yates proceeded to belay Simpson down the mountain, but Simpson went over a cliff and Yates was forced to cut the three-hundred foot rope separating the pair. Simpson fell into a crevasse and was presumed dead by Yates. Miraculously, however, Simpson survived by landing on an ice shelf and over three days struggled back to base camp.

2) Alexander Selkirk survived for four years on the Juan Fernández islands off the coast of Chile. He was left there in 1704 by his boss Thomas Stradling after he starting causing trouble on their ship Cinque Ports. Selkirk's story was the likely inspiration for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, which I also recently read.

3) Antarctica is not surprisingly a survival adventure hotspot. In 1911, a few years before Shackleton's cross-Antarctica attempt, Douglas Mawson and two colleagues Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis were sledding over the icy continent when Ninnis along with most of the group's provisions and dogs fell through into a huge crevasse, killing all but one dog that managed to hang on to a shelf 50 m down. Mawson and Mertz continued back to their base, eating dog meat and liver to survive. Mertz went crazy, fell into a coma, and died. Mawson made it back to the base to find that their ship had departed hours before, forcing him and a few companions left behind to spend the winter in the Antarctic. The experience is recounted in Mawson's Home of the Blizzard.

4) In 1971 Juliane Koepcke was aboard a flight from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa in the Amazon rainforest. The plane encountered a storm and a fuel tank was hit by a bolt of lightning, tearing the right wing off the plane. Ninety one people on the plane were killed except Koepcke, who was somehow ejected from the plane as it broke up 2 miles over the forest canopy. Still sitting in her row of seats, she spun through the air like a helicopter blade and suffered only minor injuries upon landing. She walked down crocodile and piranha-infested streams for 10 days, finally being rescued by Peruvian lumberjacks. Koepcke's story has been made into two films including Werner Herzog's Wings of Hope.

5) The following year another plane crash miracle happened in the Andes. A flight carrying 45 rugby team members crashed in the mountains when a strong headwind and clouds caused the pilot to miscalculate his position. Twenty-seven people survived, but the search for the white plane in white snow was called off after eleven days, as the survivors heard on a radio. There were no animals or vegetation on the mountain, so after the few chocolate bars they had were gone, the only option was to eat flesh from those killed in the crash. Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa hiked for 12 days across the mountains to alert a Chilean cowboy. Fourteen remaining survivors at the crash site were rescued by helicopter, two and half months after the crash. Alive: The story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read tells the story. In 2006 Nando Parrado published his personal account Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home.

Interesting that all of these occur in the southern hemisphere and 4 out of 5 in South America. Anyway, some exciting and inspiring reading material for the next few months.

Europe Favorites

Out of approximately 1600 total pictures taken during my trip to Europe with sister Liz, here are some of my favorites.

This is the center of the 1992 Olympics complex in Barcelona, on the hill of Montjuïc. On the left is the Montjuïc Telecommunications Tower, designed by Santiago Calatrava to represent a kneeling figure making an offering. The central vertical needle casts a shadow on the brick plaza below and can be used as a sundial of sorts.














Bicycling along the Mediterranean in Barcelona was definitely a highlight of the trip. This was my first time riding on a tandem bike. Liz and I got the hang of it right away. The person in front stirring has to be cognizant of the larger turning radius and greater distance required for braking. The person in back just has to trust the person in front because she has no control whatsoever. Pedaling together at the same cadence is a minor incovenience.















Gaudi's Sagrada Familia Church in Barcelona is one of my favorite works of architecture. Construction was begun in 1882 and is expected to be completed in 2026. The magnificent towers and facades are unlike any other church I've seen. While Liz and I decided not to pay the entry fee, we spent a good amount of time looking at the Passion facade, which features Jesus crucified on an I-beam (not shown).





















This is the Pont d'Avignon in southern France, from the popular nursery rhyme "Sur le Pont d'Avignon." The bridge over the Rhône river was constructed in the 12th century but took a beating from floods and only four arches out of the original 22 remain today. According to the song people danced on top of the bridge, which I could definitely see possible on a warm pleasant summer evening such as the one of our visit.

Pardon me for liking bridges, but this is not a conventional bridge--it's the Pont du Gard and part of a Roman aqueduct 50 km long near Nîmes, France. The downward slope of the aqueduct was just 0.4%, meaning in descended only 12 meters along its entire length. Although it's a profoundly beautiful structure, it was rationally constructed with one specific funtion: carry water from point A to point B.














I'm not much of a beach person, but this is the kind of beach I like (it would be even better without all the other people). This is Calanque d'En-Vau near Cassis in the south of France. The water was blue and chilly, there were big cliffs all around, and you had to hike 1.5 hours, or kayak, to get there...perfect.
















This picture was taken during our hike in the Apuan Alps in Italy, not too far from Pisa.














Florence was probably our favorite city. It has some of the finest art in the world (Michelangelo's David is only the start), and a view of the city at sunset from Piazza Michelangelo is awe-inspiring.






















Venice is swarming with tourists and prices are outrageous, but it's also sinking and turned out to be a must-see for us on this trip. Cities on a body of water, whether it be a river or the ocean, have a worldly and often romantic ambiance, and Venice takes this to the next level. There's no other place in the world where the ambulances are boats.














This is a very nice mosaic, 2000 years old, from Pompeii. It's one thing to see ancient temples and stadiums. In Pompeii, one has the opportunity to see well-preserved houses, restaurants, baths, and a brothel, to actually go back in time and imagine oneself as a Roman.















This is the Roman Forum, the main marketplace in the ancient city. The best preserved buildings here are the ones that were lucky enough to be converted into churches. I like this picture because it made me imagine what a large modern city, like New York, would look like if it was abandoned, looted, and left to the elements for 2,000 years. I think there'd be a lot more asphalt and concrete and fewer elegant columns. By the way, the white building in the background of this photo is the magnificent monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of unified Italy.














The Pantheon in Rome was another of our favorite architectural wonders. It is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.















This is my sister Liz sitting on the face of a 3,000-year-old statue of Dionysus on the Greek island of Naxos.














The Parthenon, taken from nearby Hill of the Muses. I always find it fascinating that the Greek style of architecture is essentially the same we use today for any important building.