Jenna's Blog

The Journey to Laramie, WY

June 7, 2010 at 2:48 am (Traveling)

I left Rochester around 7 AM on May 20^th and started driving to Mahomet, Illinois. The drive with all the stops included took about 12 hours, and I crossed over into the Central Time Zone (one hour behind the Eastern Time Zone). The longest part of the trip was driving through Ohio. Many times I was tempted to drive off to Cleveland to see what Drew Carey was so excited about, but I stayed on track. Indiana is where the land started flattening out, and there were an abundance of road signs telling me to repent for my sins.

My Aunt Lydia, her husband, and children live in Mahomet and offered to let me stay the night at their home. Once I arrived in Mahomet, my Aunt graciously took the family and I out to a sushi dinner.  Both of Lydia’s children work for a private company that develops packaging and bottles for beverage companies. It was great catching up with the Brazier side of the family, and I will be stopping in Mahomet again on my way back. The next morning, I left for Omaha, Nebraska.

Just beyond the Iowa boarder is the World’s Largest Truck Stop, also called Iowa 80. They weren’t kidding. This place had a regular restaurant, five fast food restaurants, a gas station, convenience store, and large gift shop bigger than the gift shop at Corning Museum of Glass. The place was packed with people.

The gift shop

Eight and a half hours later, I arrived in Omaha, Nebraska. My second cousin, David, and his wife and three children live in Omaha where David works from home for a steel company (optimizing their production line using classic physics) and his wife works as a pathologist (along with many other titles) at a near by hospital. David and I talked a lot about grad school and his experience. David is a Doctor of Physics and proudly gave me a copy of his dissertation titled “Hydrogen and Deuterium in the Cosmic Ray Flux,” and told me to enjoy some light reading. Lets hope he doesn’t quiz me on it at the next family reunion.

The eight-hour drive between Omaha and Laramie was probably the worst leg of the trip. Nebraska is very flat and hot until the western part of the state where the time zone changed and I started to see tumbleweed and plateaus. Once I crossed the state boarder and drove through Cheyenne, I could see the Rocky Mountains. Having never seen landscapes and desert like nature before in my life, I was pretty excited to say the least.

Plateaus!

The REU program provides room and board. More specifically I’ve been place in a double occupancy room in McIntyre Hall on campus. McIntyre is 12 floors high and is considers Wyoming’s tallest building. Meals are offered in the building next door, in a fairly large café with plenty of entrée options. The campus also offers many other services such as the recreational center (RC). In the RC there is a pool, gym, various courts (racquet, volley, etc), dance rooms, general exercise room, and a HUGE climbing wall open for bouldering and climbing. The RC also has a great outdoor program which you can repair your bike with their tools, rent a bike for the summer (I rented one myself, $20 for the summer), and equipment for almost any outdoor activity (mountain bikes, tents, hiking gear, etc).

Laramie is considered a city with a population around 27,000. However, it is really isolated, making it seem very small in comparison to Rochester. To me, it is odd what businesses exist in Laramie and what ones don’t. The only department store here is Walmart and then there are several fast food places and restaurants that cater to college student appetites, such as the mythical Sonic. I call it mythical because I have only seen commercials for Sonic, never the actual restaurant. Behold! Laramie has one. Also there is this bar across the street from our dorm called The Library (Karen, I know you would love this.)

The bar across the street from the dorms.

On that Sunday (the 23^rd) all of the students met and we enjoyed an indoor barbeque (due to 40 mph winds) at Dr. Hoberg’s house. The next day Dr. Hoberg gave us a tour of the campus to show us where to go, introduce us to our advisors, and provide more information about our stay and potential trips. I didn’t notice until we were doing a lot of walking and climbing stairs that I felt out of breath and a headache coming on. Most of the other students were in the same boat, and Dr. Hoberg explained that it was due to the altitude which roughly 7,200 feet above sea level and estimated there was bout 20% less oxygen in the atmosphere. He also explained that Laramie is considered an elevated desert. Rochester, NY is at about 550 ft and my hometown in Maine is 85 ft.

For lunch we had a pizza and met our advisors. My advisor is Dr. Milan Balaz (pronounced with a soft ‘g’ at the end), an organic chemist who focuses most of his research on DNA. You are probably saying to yourself “Hey, isn’t this REU focused on alternative energy development?” Yes, it is, but I will get into that in a later entry. The rest of the afternoon was filled with safety training courses.

This sums up the traveling experience and introduction to Laramie.