Ithaca is Gorges

Monday, April 27, 2009

Fall Creek Gorge, Ithaca, NY

The weather has been fabulous the last few days, resulting in lots of reading taking place outside.  I've been taking full advantage of Libe Slope, Cornell's flowering trees, and of course, the gorges.  Forgive me if you've seen enough flowering tree pictures, but the magnolias are in full bloom now, and they look and smell amazing.

View from under the magnolias

Petals, petals everywhere

Melissa, Illika, Hillary, Tahra and I walked down into the gorge to enjoy the lovely weather.  I spent a while reading (research for my comlit paper), then we just walked around through the shallow water a bit and tried not to slip on the slimy rocks.  I also tried my hand at skipping stones for the first time since I was about 5 (at which time I totally failed).  I actually managed to get one to bounce 3 times.

Balancing

Overnight

Friday, April 24, 2009

Hoffman Challenge Course, Dryden, NY

            Because our only van-certified instructor (Chris) couldn’t make it to the overnight, we had to recruit Mark to drive us up to HCC, where we parked in the corn field along side the woods, unloaded our considerable amount of baggage, and hiked in to the platform.

            The weather was gorgeously warm, though a little wind, but Mark had heard that there was a chance of scattered thunderstorms later, so he left the van with us in case we needed to leave in the middle of the night.  We pulled ropes and rigged two full circles, and Andy and I jugged up first and switched on to our motion lanyards to help the students transfer on to 

Happy campers, waiting to climb

anchors.  Dana stayed down as ground crew, and once the students were up, she hooked the sleeping bags and pads onto one of the ascension lines so that we could haul it up.

            By now, dark was falling as everyone started setting up their sleeping arrangements.  I opted to sleep in a hammock, even though our class was small enough that I could have fit on the platform.  I climbed up in the canopy and settled into my sleeping bag, pulling off my shoes and helmet but staying on my motion lanyard for the night.

            After a while of enjoying my cozy sleeping bag and the tree swaying in the wind, we started to see lightning on the on the horizon.  We all half-thought we were imagining it, because the sky was clear and we couldn’t hear any thunder, but the more we watched, the more obvious it was.  In a tree is probably the last place I’d want to be in case of lightning, so we opted to bail out now when the lightning was still far off rather than wait and have to leave in a big hurry.

            The part that took the longest was packing up the sleeping bags and pads—usually, we drop them off the deck in the morning, then pack up on the ground.  But as it was dark, we would have had a hard time finding them, so we had to be careful as we packed up to keep everything clipped to something else so as not to lose it over the edge.  Once we had the stuff under control, we started sending students down, with Dana on the ground already to give a fireman’s belay.  Then Andy and I sent the baggage down and rappelled out.

            I was glad that I had just done the hike from the platform in the dark the night before, because there is no path and getting lost was not something I wanted to add to the list of the night’s excitement.  We had a little adventure driving back, as Andy had never driven a COE van before, and then we were nearly locked out of Bartels (where we needed to return our equipment), but we found the one door that comes open if you give it a good hard tug.  In spite of the crappy circumstances, our class took it pretty well—at least they had gotten up to the platform and enjoyed the night a while.  Not to mention, no one got struck by lightning.  Always good.

Overnight Rigging

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hoffman Challenge Course, Dryden, NY

            Mark, Devin, Lillian, Dana and I packed up gear and hammocks and went to the challenge course to set up for Friday’s class and overnight.  Saturday’s class planned to do alternate ascension methods in class, so we found them a tree with low hanging branches to try out the motion lanyard, then rigged two other trees with p-chord for the yo-yo method and prusiking.  We also left one without a false crotch so they could demo that in class.

            For my class, we had decided to do rig your own tree day, where the students would try to pick, shoot for, rig and climb there own tree.  Obviously, this required no work on our part for pre-rigging, so with everything set for Saturday’s class plan, we hiked down to the platform to set anchor lines and hammocks for the overnight.

            Saturday’s class was much larger than Friday’s, and they needed 4 hammocks in addition to the 6 people that fit on the platform in order to get everyone up there.  Devin, Lillian and I jugged to the platform, and Lillian started placing anchors for the people on the platform while 

Devin jugging up

Devin and I used our motion lanyards to climb up into the canopy and string the hammocks.  I discovered that it can be very annoying how the motion lanyard forces you to face in a specific direction—twisting around to tie hammocks up behind me became awkward and uncomfortable.

            By now, dark had fallen and we discovered that only Devin and I had headlamps, and worse, Devin’s wasn’t working.  It ended up working best for me to leave my headlamp off so that all of our eyes adjusted to the relative darkness.  I actually really like working in the dark—rappelling in the dark always makes me feel very Mission Impossible.  The hike out of the woods in the dark (without a path of any kind) was a little interesting, but I ended up glad for the experience later.

Class Selection

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Uris Library

We just had pre-enroll for next fall's classes, so I now have a tentative schedule.  I got into the english and comparative literature classes that I was really hoping for, as well as a French class, a cognitive studies class, and an anthropology class.  I had figured out from last semester that trying to do pre-enroll on North Campus, which is full of other freshmen all trying to log on to the website at the same time, becomes an extremely slow process.  Hillary, Melissa, Tahra, Illika and I decided to head to the library to be on a different internet system.  

Happy, sleep deprived faces

Because pre-enroll starts so ridiculously early, and you really have to log on right when it starts to have a hope of getting your classes, it was a very sleep deprived night.  But worth it, I hope.

Progress

English: Reading for Writers

This one's taught by my writing seminar professor from last semester, who I really enjoyed.  It involves reading short stories and writing critical essays on them, as well as creative pieces that attempt to mimic the voice and style of the story.  It's sort of a creative writing class, but more structured.

Comparative Lit: Life and Love in Two Languages

This class is about how being bilingual affects writing, and the socio-linguistic aspects of literature, which really interests me.  Also, I realized after choosing this class that it's taught by someone my comlit professor from this semester suggested I would really like.

French: Intro to Textual Analysis

A starter-level course in French literature, with close analysis of French writings.  I might swap this one out for a different french class that would involve analysis of literature as well as movies and other media.

Cognitive Studies: Intro to Cognitive Development

This class covers mental development throughout life.  It is a good starter for the cog studies minor that I am considering, language cognition, which studies how people learn language.

Anthropology: Comparison of Cultures

This is a pretty basic level anthropology class, which would cover my cultural analysis distribution requirement.  This class could easily change or be dropped altogether.  I wanted to have a 5th class so that I would have the opportunity of dropping one, and my first choice was an education class, but it was full.

Cherry Blossoms

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Behind Olin Library

I took my reading outside today, and found a beautiful spot to read under a row of blooming cherry trees just behind the library.  I laid out on a stone wall right under the masses of pink flowers, and watched hoards of bees zooming around in them-- the bees were completely 

Hello, bee!

uninterested in me, since they had all those gorgeous flowers to choose from.  All in all, a lovely way to spend an afternoon, if you must be doing homework.

Big Tree Rigging

Hoffman Challenge Course, Ithaca, NY

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

            For big tree day, we decided to use the tulip poplars by the HCC, and Devin, Mark, Rob, and I packed up and headed out to rig.  This time would be a little more intensive than my last rigging venture, as we had to set up anchor lines for all the students.  Saturday’s class has 10 students, plus instructors, which translates to a lot of rigging.

            It took us quite a while to find the trees, and when we did one of them (the one that I had climbed, briefly, on my own big tree day) was looking rather sick.  The other one looked great, and Devin, Rob and I started shooting for it while Mark went in search of a good second tree. Devin gave me first go with the big shot, and I amazingly managed to hit exactly the highest crotch on my 3^rd shot.  As it turned out, that highest crotch was really, really high.  Our 200 ft rope didn’t reach, and we had to tie on another hank of static rope to complete the full circle.  I jugged up trailing my motion lanyard, and once I got off the main line, hauled up the short static lines for the anchors, 2 false crotches, and a hank of p-cord.  The view of the valley was really impressive, being 100 feet off the deck in a tree on Mount Pleasant (the highest point in Tompkins County).  

The lovely view

Now that I was in the tree, I realized that the rope I was jugging had been trough a crotch, but also over a very tiny, fragile-looking twig that had actually been supporting my weight the whole time I jugged.  A little freaky, but really, if that twig had broken, I would have fallen a maximum of 6 feet before the rope caught on the actual crotch of the tree.

            By now Mark and Rob were working on the second tree, and Devin had to leave.  I quickly set one false crotch and threaded the line through so that I could repel in case of emergency.  We ran into some snags (pun intended) when I pulled the rope up, as the knot connecting the long static with our extendo-segment got stuck in some twigs just out of reach.  We had to remove the extendo-segment, then Devin set one end of the rope in a hard anchor on the ground.  There wasn’t enough rope now to make a full circle without knots that I could be lowered on, so I was warned not to get myself knocked out.

            I set the second false crotch (spending way too long untangling the mess of p-cord to feed through), then worked my way around on my motion lanyard to set the anchors.  Finally, with 4 solid anchor lines and 2 elevators rigged, I switched to rappel (very easy off a motion lanyard, thank you blake’s hitches) and finally returned to the ground.

Amazing sunset-- I caught the beginning of it up in the tree, when I was without camera, and the end back at Bartels

            Mark and Rob had finished before me, as they had run out of anchor ropes to put up, and they helped me pack up the last of the stuff before we all headed out.  We nearly got the van stuck on our way out of the HCC, and had to back all the way down the road.  By the time we got back to Bartels, it was nearly 8, the sun was setting (gorgeous), and I was more than ready for some food and sleep.

My class later that week, enjoying my handiwork

Easter Egg Fest

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Hillary's Room

Hillary's mom brought her an easter egg dying kit when she visited, and since Illika had never dyed eggs before, we decided to show her how it was done.  While we were boiling the eggs, we 

Easter Matching Game

followed the suggestion on the dye kit and played a few rounds the easter-themed memory matching game that came in the kit.  I lost-- apparently I have terrible memory skills.

Hillary, caught in the act of dropping an egg right into the yellow (you can actually see the yellow splashing)

We spread newspaper (luckily-- we spilled a lot), and even scrounged up some crayons.  We watched "It's the easter beagle, Charlie Brown" in the background, while I managed to dye my fingers almost as much as the eggs.  Finally, we had to clean up and get back to real work.

A few days later, Illika managed to snag some mayonnaise packets and we turned our little works of art into some very tasty deviled eggs.  The addition of Hillary's cajun seasoning mix made them quite delicious.