School & Cycling

This last week was the official start of classes. As indicated in my last post, this means almost nothing for me; I’ll simply continue what’ve been doing all summer, research. However, I do have a tutorial class on macromolecular x-ray crystallography, which I started on Thursday. It was great; it was me and another student in the lab sitting and being taught in my PI’s (primary investigator) office for about two hours. This will occur weekly throughout the semester.

I found something exciting on campus this week and that is a shower near my lab! Why so exciting you ask? This means that I can take my rides (cycling) in the early morning and go straight into lab. My road bike has become an integral part of my routine, as it is practically the only real exercise I get, not to mention the only exercise that I can stand when there are no mountains to climb. On Tuesday and Thursday I took a ride in the country that lies between Durham and Chapel Hill. A lot of the land is owned by Duke and is known as the Duke Forest, none of which is developed. The rest of the land is made up of estates, horse property and sparkly spaced modest homes. Being in the middle of North Carolina, the land is thick with trees. In other words is gorgeous. (When I tell locals I miss the mountains they retort, ‘I bet its nice to have trees though.’ While it is nice to have trees, to compare having trees to having mountains is like comparing having a salad to having steak and potatoes; sure, salad is substance but surly not as rewarding and satisfying as steak and potatoes.) I also took a ride on Saturday in the same area but made a bigger loop. In all, I put 75 miles on my bike this week; I’m slowly getting back into shape.

I went on a date Friday. I was a half hour late though as I put the wrong address into my GPS. But she was cool about it. We ordered Italian food to go and had a picnic on the lawn of a LDS church. Afterwards I helped her set up for a YSA dance that she was in charge of. I met a lot of new people as most of the participants were from the Raleigh singles ward. It was a great time.

Below are a few pictures that I took with my phone as I was riding out in the country.