Maine Part I

Hey All,
Mom, Dad, and Kelly made the trip over to see me here in Connecticut this past Thursday, and this weekend we went up to the beautiful coast of Maine, in the town of York. I don't have much time to discuss it all right now, because I still need to catch up on sleep from the exciting weekend, but I will lay down some quick facts to keep everyone wanting more, which is coming in a few days once everything settles down here.

So here are the 4 quick things I learned in Maine:
1) Every restaurant serves lobster, often in more than one form. For instance you have whole lobsters, lobster rolls, lobster stew, etc. etc.
2) The tides are very interesting, one minute all the boats are sitting on a sand bar, the next minute they are floating.
3) The word "wicked" is used frequently. For example, a midwestener would use the phrase "the plate is very hot," but out here in Main it is proper to say "the plate is wicked hot."
4) To my dads disapointment there is no such beer as Miller Genuine Draft out here. Instead, Sam Adams is the beer of choice. Not that this is a bad thing, because I must say the Sam Adams Summer brew, is now one of my favorites, not that I like MGD anyways, but either way, Sams Summer is good on the beach.

Here is a quick pic. that captures the spirit of Maine (or at least for my Mom it does, she loves lighthouses as many of you know if you have been to the cottage):
This is the Nubble lighthouse that was 1 mile away from out hotel, it is truly beautiful and a very important symbol for Maine.

The BIg Apple

Hello All, this post is all about the big apple, also known as New York. First things first, the city is really huge and there is tons and tons of people, some of whom are pretty strange.

Here are a few pics to hold you over till the full description.

The tallest building in the city, the Empire State Building.

New York stock exchange.
Jeff and I standing in Times Square at night.

F is for Friends

My two good friends Nick and Jeff came out on Wednesday to spend the next 4 days haning out. We are all cyclists, so of coarse, we went for a 3 hours mountain bike ride the night they came out. The ride was a blast, and it was cool to get a ride in with them.
I gotta make it short, because Nick is sitting here waiting, so the next day I am going to see my buddy Pete who lives southern Connecticut. Then, us four are going to hit New York City! Pete, Nick, and I have never been, so it should be a great experience.

Oh yeah, Nick and I took some shots for the blog, check them out:

Cool Panoramic Shot

Here is a neat shot I took today on my bike ride. It was 5 photos, but I combined them to make a panoramic view of a cool barn and rolling hills just off the University of Connecticut campus. Enjoy!

10 hours and a bottle of raspberry tea

Today I worked for 10 hours, I was the last car to leave the R&D parking lot, way to go me! The day was pretty good and I helped make 4 samples and I also finished and prepared the 4 samples that I created that are being run tomorrow. Making the samples is lots of fun, the two guys that I work with when I do this are pretty funny, joker type guys.

As soon as I got home, I just made some dinner. I put together two left overs, bakes beans and a breast of chicken. Not very exciting, but it was quick easy and moderatly tasty, so two out of three ain't bad. Then I hoped on the computer and just have kinda been dinking around. I am think that I am going to get ready for bed and watch a move. Not very exciting but oh well, work was pretty long.

A day with a friend

Saturday was a really great day because my good friend Pete came to visit. Its pretty funny, I got this internship last fall and I knew I was going to be in Connecticut. Pete has been a friend of mine all the way though college and we were on the cycling team together, we were also roommates for the past few years. Pete was interviewing with a company out in Grennich, CT and it turned out that he got the job, so both of us were going to be in CT this summer. He lives about 2 hours away, and he are planning on doing some good adventuring this summer. So Pete drove up to my house, and we went for an awesome 55 mile bike ride. It was similiar to the ride I did a few weeks ago, except it was not raining and cold, and I had some good company. It is funny how much quicker this ride went by then last time, good company and weather I guess.

Pete and I then went and grabbed some lunch at this pizza place we found on the bike ride. We ordered the local micro brew, and I am not going to do that again, not very good! The pizza on the other hand was pretty tasty. Then the bill came, and we both dived for it, I really wanted to pay for lunch because he had to drive up to see me, but he really insisted so I let him nab it. So, thanks for lunch Pete!!!!!

About this time I started thinking, one of my best friends for the past three years is not going to be in Ann Arbor when I head back this year. This really hit me pretty hard when I left lunch, and I guess this is growing up, but it goes by so fast, especially when I am so lucky to have everything better then I could have ever hoped. Everybody always tell you it goes by before you know it, and its so true, I am doing everything I can to slow it down and enjoy it all, but it really is tough. This is one of the main reasons I am doing this blog, I am doing it so everybody can see what I am up to, but I also thought that keeping this would help me think back to all that I do this summer, and will allow me to "slow" it down.

On that note, I love you all, and being over here all by myself is rough, but I will see everyone soon, and some others even sooner.

Dinner on the Company

Friday was a good day at work, I had a meeting with my boss about my progress, then more intern orientation with all the interns this time, and then an intern dinner.

The meeting with the boss went really well. We were discussing my progress, and my path for the rest of the summer. I now have a more defined idea of where I am going on more of a week to week basis. For the next month I am going to keep on working on similiar stuff that I am doing now, then starting July 1st I am going to make a more structured experiement. In terms of my progress he thinks I am doing well, and he seems to think that I am organized and keeping it all together, so that is good.

The intern orientation was fun because I got to meet all the other interns, which include interns from Research and Design (thats me), quality analysis, and then marketing and the business side of the company. We had a few speakers, both were vice president of something or another, and then a presentation on harassment. I don't understand these harassment presentations, they always present situations that are so off the wall, you really can't help but laugh about it. Harassment is not funny, but everytime I get one of these its always a joke, that should change.

Then the dinner. This was the best part of the day. The place we went was pretty nice, and all 14 or 15 interns went then 3 or 4 people from Rogers came along as well. We got tons of food, I myself got chicken fajitas, but I got have gotten what ever I wanted. My the crowning moment was when I got a beer, a beer on the companies tab, I could get used to that! I also got dessert, and at the end of the meal I am sure the bill was pretty hefty, thank you Rogers!

How to Leave Comments, the easy way.

After hearing all the headaches about leaving comments, I decided to try it out and make it easy on all of you. So here is the easy three step process.
1) click on the comment link at the bottom of a post.
2) Leave your comment, in the comment box, then under choose an identity, choose other and put your name in the name box.
3) Then click on publish post, and you are all set, and you don't have to sign in, and no danger of losing your password.

24 Hours of Boyne: Sofa King Fast

The 24 hours of Boyne is done and over, and everyone had an absolutely great time. To get some of the details out of the way: we got 2nd place in the 4 man team category (even though we only have 3 people) and we had just as many laps as first place, they just managed to finish 40 minutes earlier than us, a really close race with everything considered.

I would first like to thank my team, Dad and Nick, you guys really gave it 100% and it really payed off. Next I would like to thank my support crew, Caroline, Mom, Kelly, and Maria, without you guys we would have gone hungry, never woken up for that graveyard lap, and prabley still be figuring out whos turn it was and how fast our laps were!!!!!
Here is a picture of our tent with some of the team and support crew.

From my perspective the race was very very brutal. I ended up riding 12 laps which equals about 120 miles and about 2 miles of vertical gain. I really gave it my best shot, and I have the chafing and blisters to prove it (of coarse these are on my rear end, so I wont prove it, but you can take my word for it). The highlight of my racing came from the first lap. Let me explain the beginning of the race a little bit for everyone. Everyteam sends one rider, and every one who does it individually, these people place there bikes about 100 yards away at the beginning of the coarse, and remove their front wheel. When the race begins everyone sprints over to their bike and then puts on the front wheel, and then starts heading to the trail. This part is really fun, and its a really cool way to start a race. My team selected me to be this guy, so I ran as fast as I could, and I ended up being the 4th or 5th guy to get on their bike and start moving. After that I turned up the heat and caught and passed everyone within about 2 minutes. After that I just kept on crusing around the coarse, going fast, but not quite as fast as I could, I mean I had to ride another 24 hours, so I had to play it safe. I kept up this pace the whole way through, and I ended up being the very first person to finish the first lap. I then went out for the second lap and continued at this pace making sure that I kept in mind that I had to race for 24 hours. When I finished up this second lap I taged Nick to go and he went for it. I then found that I was not only the first person accross, but I was the first person accross by about 5 minutes (a big chunk of time when the lap took me 43 minutes.) So that was my glory for the race.
This is a picture of me coming around for the first lap, with the fastest time!

The rest of the race was pretty good, we got some rain in the middle of the night, which made it difficult to see with the lights we use for night riding, but we all made it through! The team really pulled it together at the end with Dad puting in a really great lap, setting up Nick and I to do some serious work, allowing us to pack a lot of laps in the last few hours, and get 3 laps counted for the last hour of riding, which put us right next to the first place team.
I also have to give credit to my friend Steve, who rode in the solo class. He came in first place with 17 laps, what a race!

Here is Dad rolling in from one of his laps. This guy was nuts, when ever he was about to go he would ride about 400 circles right around the tag off area, waiting for the guy to come through, he was always ready to go, although I am not sure how he didn't get dizzy.


Once again, thanks again to my team and my support crew, it was a great race and I am really happy that I flew back for it!This is the dance I made up at 3:30 in the morning, it may not look like much, but believe me it was awesome!!!!!

The Past Week of little posting

In the past week I have been really busy. I had to work more at the earlier part of last week so I could leave early on Friday to come back home for the 24 hours of Boyne Race. This allowed me to leave work at 1:00PM on Friday to make it for my 6:00PM flight out of Boston. Also last week I got a little cold type flu thing that lasten about two days, this was no good with the up coming race, so I had to lay low and try to get as much sleep as possible.

In terms of work, it was a good week, because Friday was my first pay day! So that is a plus, and also I got to learn some new testing on some machines and got to more or less finish up getting all the start up garbage out of the way.

Thats pretty much it for last week, I will be posting much more regularly this week.

The Town of Storrs Mansfield

Work was work today, they are done moving all the furniture around, so I have an office now which will allow me to get much more done.

When I got back from work I wanted to go far a nice easy bike ride to test out the knee. So I decided to do the route I did the first day, except this time bring along the camera to caputure some of the Storrs Mansfield scenery. (Hint: you can click on all these pictues to make them larger! Then click on your back button to get back to the main blog)


This is an old abandoned shack that is out in the woods along one of the back country roads. Its pretty neat, looking tucked away in the woods. I went to get a close look and believe me, I will not post those, becasue the inside is falling aprt, I want you to have a nice vision of this town.
This is a picture of a little river that runs down a rocky hill bedind the shack. Just look at all of the rocks, this is very characteristic of the woods out here, lots of rocks on hillsides.
This is bread maker here, look at how professional this looks, this should be a computer background! This is taked pretty much on the University of Connecticut (UCONN) campus, and I could not quite give it justice, but there are lots of rolling hills in the background.
This is a pretty cool place right here, a cemetery that started back in 1693. There are a lot of headstones, as pictued below. The oldest one I could find was in the early 1700s. A lot of the headstones are so worn away that you can't even read them, and the ones that you can read are hard to make out. It is really a sight to be seen, its weired to think that more than 300 years ago people were standing in the same place I was standing looking at brand new headstones.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures, its truly hard to show how pretty and how "New England" this place is. I can't want to show my visitors around so they can get an idea of how neat this place is!

The Weekend!

The weather this weekend was pretty nasty, Saturday it was about 50 or below and rainy, and Sunday was overcast with about an hour of sun, and then right back into storms. The big event for me on Saturday was a bike road bike ride. I rode 63 miles, it took 3.5 hours, and let me tell you, it was hilly hilly hilly. I have ridden in the rocky mountains, the mountains in Georgia too, and I hate to say it, but the hills over here seem to be just as tough.... and maybe even tougher. In the rockies and Georgia you know when you are going to climb, and you climb for anywhere between 15 minutes up to an hour, and then you are going down then you are riding on flat land. Over here in Connecticut though, you are always go up a hill, then down a hill, up a hill, up a hill, down a hill, no flat spots really. This is really taxing on your body, as it never really gets a break, and you never know how long the hill is, it could be 45 seconds, or up to about 12 or 13 minutes. Needless to say, about 63 miles in the rain and cold, and up all these hills I was tired, and rolling into the driveway has never felt so good. Oh yeah, I rode up into Massachusetts, so I got to ride to a different state on my bike, a first for me.
Then I went to the mall to get some work clothes, and long story short, I found some pants that fit me(a tough thing to do), and two polo shirts, and after all the discounts and coupons it was only $40.00.
On Sunday I was planning on doing a mountain bike ride, but when last night my knee started to bother me, I think it was because of the cold weather. So I decided to save me knee, and take the day off. I went to Wal-Mart and did some grocery shopping, its amazing how much the food costs for one person, so far about $200.00 for these first two weeks, I hope it starts to go down! Played some guitar, haven't don't that in a while, and right about now I am going to sit down and get started on the book I have been wanting to get started for the past week. Its an engineering book that is supposed to read like a novel, we will see about that.

Week 1 in the bag

An excellent week to say the least. Everything is working out really well, work is good, the house is good, the bike is awesome, and I am surviving by myself all right. I can only hope that this continues for the rest of the summer.
I went for a ride today, I wanted to ride the route that I meant to yesterday, and mission accomplished. I realized what turn I messed up on, and the ride was nice. The weather was less than great, drizzling and about 45 degrees, but I bundled up and toughed it out, gotta train when no one else will.
But I would have to say the highlight of the day occured during the working hours. I meet the secreatary that was on vacation last week, and she is a really nice lady, talks a lot, just like mom. Well anyways, I was standing there with a few other folks, and they all had Rogers shirts, and I did not. So she would not stand for that, so she went into a closet and came out with a collered denim shirt with the Roges R&D logo on it, I feel in love right away. This was also convient because it was casual Friday, so I had a pair of jeans on. The thought hit me right away, the possibility that I could be wearing a full denim outfit has finally arrived, and after 21 years I was about to look truly awesome. So I did it, I put that shirt on like it was destiny and was covered from head to toe in denim, a dream come true. I had to share this will all of you, so I got home and the first thing I did was took a picture of myself in the entire ensemble. So, read it and weep everyone, full denim....

Day 4 in the books

This morning I did not want to get up, I am for some reason extreamly tired every morning, maybe the bed is just that comfortable, or I need to go to bed earlier.

Work was good again today, I finally finished all the check list that my mentor has to do with me. I then continued to read through all the literature I have on polyurethane chemistry, and then it was out to lunch with the boss. It was a real good lunch, we really seem to get along just great, and I can talk to him just like a friend. Although, I asked he had a daughter, because I saw some pictures of little kids in his office, but he has two sons! oops, I felt pretty silly at this point, but I recoved well with some more kid like questions. Rogers then flipped the bill for the meal, all right!

After lunch I had another 2 hour safety session which wasen't as bad as the first, but the other intern was falling asleep the whole time, so that was pretty funny for me. Then after that I went back to reading the literature, and finally at the end of the day I had to move all my desk stuff, because they are installing new carpet. Then left the office at about 4:30 and headed home for a ride. The weather looked pretty bad, but I decidec to go out anyway. Long story short, I got lost a little bit and the GPS did not get satellite reception, so I did not do the route I wanted too, but I did have a good ride.

I meet my second and final housemate Derick. He is a 35 year old DJ/resturant manager/guy in a band. I spent some time with him last night, and he seems like a good guy, and is a drummer and wants me to give him some drum lessons, so it looks like I will be doing that again.

And the last thing for tonight is that I appreciate the comments that I have been getting lately, its just as nice to hear from you guys as it is for you to hear from me, so keep it up!

Mike

2nd day

Work was pretty good, had a rough two hour safety session, but you have to do what you have to do. Then went for an awesome 2 hour bikeride, tons of awesome rock gardens and some pretty nasty climbs for the single speed.
Got home had some dinner, hung out at the camp fire in the back yard with some of Will's friends. Now its time for bed, and I need the sleep.
Short post I know, but a working man needs his sleep.