A couple months ago I shared Conan O'Brian's 2011 Dartmouth commencement speech on my Facebook page. I felt the need then to spread it around because I was impressed by not only its humor, which I expected, but by it's message, which was both profound and directly relevant to my life the past few years.

Conan said in his address "There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized." I know this is true because this happened to me.

When I graduated Dartmouth in 2007 I thought I had the next phase of my life completely laid out in front of me. I was in a Ph.D. program in Madison, WI, and I had moved there with my girlfriend of the past two years. My worst fear was that I would somehow mess up this perfect plan.

To abbreviate a tragic story, I messed it up. My funding was cut and I was forced to graduate with my Masters degree in December 2008 after just 3 semesters. I had neglected my studies my first year, and in my rush to finish that last semester, was forced to neglect both my future and my friends.

To quote Conan quoting somebody else: "Nietzsche famously said "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you."

In January of 2009 I found myself unemployed in a staggeringly poor job market and living on my now ex-girlfriend's couch. I applied to probably 50 different jobs and internships at ski areas, the Student Conservation Association, the National Park Service, and a few other random places. For that month I heard nothing back and was left to wonder at night as I slept on that couch what had become of my life.

Then, good things started to happen. I got one offer, to work as a visitor services intern at Guadalupe Mountains Naitional Park from March through May, and then another, to work in Yellowstone National Park as in intern through the Geological Society of America's GeoCorps program during the summer.

Later that year my friend Sarah was able to help hook me up with a job and place to live for the winter in Vail, CO. While working in Vail I convinced my Yellowstone supervisor to rehire me to work there for another summer, and I also applied to grad school again and was accepted at Arizona State.

Conan, speaking of his own time in between leaving the Tonight Show and debuting on TBS but mirroring my feelings towards my time off from school, said "it was the most satisfying and fascinating year of my professional life. To this day I still don't understand exactly what happened, but I have never had more fun, been more challenged—and this is important—had more conviction about what I was doing."

This Thursday I will begin my second year as a Ph.D. student in Volcanology at ASU. Yellowstone and Vail, like Dartmouth and Oklahoma before them, are now places that I feel have become a part of me. Living in those two places directly changed my outlook on life and I would not be the person I am today without the influence of those experiences.

January and February of 2009 were the most depressing weeks of my life and marked the end of a dream I had been following for many years. I was forced to follow a new dream, one I was creating and shaping as I went along, not always with a clear idea of where it would lead me. In the end I did return to graduate school, but in a program better suited to me and with the experience and drive necessary to succeed.

I would not be where I am today, or who I am today, without having lived the through the disappointment that consumed my last months in Madison. Knowing now the path I followed after I left Wisconsin and where it led me, if given the chance to relive my time there, I would gladly let disaster befall me again, just to be able to experience the three years since.

To end his commencement remarks Conan said "Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen." I couldn't agree more.

Road Trip 2011: By the Numbers

I got to Tempe on Saturday from my latest epic summer road trip. I really am fortunate to be able to have so many amazing trips like this, props to grad school and the nomadic periods of my life I guess. Instead of writing a boring trip report though, I think a simple list of intriguing numbers, a la Sports Illustrated, will be an entertaining way to recap my journey:

4700: Miles driven
109: Highest Temperature recorded while I was in OK
106: High Temperature the day I returned to Tempe
-57: Net Indian Casino winnings
32: Lowest temperature experienced (there was ice on the picnic tables in camp one morning)
32: Total Days
11: Days doing field work
4: Days playing ultimate
4: Days hiking
8: Days on the road
31: Total Nights
14: in a tent
2: in my car
4: on the floor
2: on a sleeper sofa
5: in a hotel bed
4: in my own bed
29.4: Average mpg for the whole trip
19: Total number of 14ers I've climbed, after climbing Bierstadt and Evans on this trip
13: Games of ultimate played
10: States visited (AZ, UT, ID, WY, MT, CO, KS, OK, TX, NM, in that order)
6: National Park Service Units Visited (Cedar Breaks, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Fossil Butte, Rocky Mountain, Petrified Forest)
2.3: days/shower ratio
8: days/shower ratio while in Yellowstone
3: Bear sightings
2: Wolf sightings
1: Pairs of boxers worn for the 2 weeks in Yellowstone

ASU Field Camp

Tomorrow I leave for my next adventure: TAing ASU's field camp in Payson, AZ. Should be a great opportunity to refresh my field mapping skills as well as get out of the Phoenix heat for a few weeks. I'll be back in mid-June, hopefully with some good stories to share.

M.U.T. Ultimate: A 3 Part Series

III. M.U.T. @ PADA MOSH

PADA MOSH this past November marked the 7th time Mike's Ultimate Team, a.k.a. M.U.T., has gathered to play ultimate together. While I have only been back to Dartmouth once since graduating, these yearly gatherings have turned into my de facto mini college reunions, and also a chance to play great ultimate. M.U.T. entered this weekend on a 3 tournament and 20 game winning streak. And you could consider it a 4 tournament winning streak since M.U.T. was the only team to show up to the cancelled Frozen Disc of Death in 2007. It's really amazing to consider how far we've all come as ultimate players from when we first got together. None of us were the players we are now when Mike first pulled us together, we were just friends who loved ultimate. But now members of M.U.T. include all-region players, club and college nationals qualifiers, and multiple team captains, presidents, and coaches. It's amazing not only how much we have each improved over the years, but also that nearly all of us continue to play at the highest levels that we can.

In addition to PADA MOSH serving as a mini college reunion at Mike's place in Philly, we were putting our winning streak on the line against the toughest competition M.U.T. had ever faced. Saturday was cool and slightly windy, and we breezed through our first two games, and comfortably beat a talented Swarthmore alum team that would go on to win the B bracket. After playing primarily with the Pimpdags and random pick up mixed teams in Colorado and Montana the past couple of years, I was again amazed at the ease with which we play good ultimate together. There was no real strategy or focus on the game, we'd just go out, play hard, then return to the sidelines and continue joking around and catching up with each other. Eventually we'd find ourselves at the soft cap up a few breaks. It was effortless.

Sunday was different, it was colder and much windier, and our usual underseeding by the T.D. had us playing our first game against tourney favorites Horned Melons, who had their own stock of nationals players. M.U.T. would be subbing competitively and thinking strategically this game, and though I was less than thrilled with my play so far that weekend, I was excited to reprise my Dartmouth role of zone offense hammer catcher.

I made the most of it too. I sat out the first couple points, letting our better players try to get us an early lead with an upwind break, but it didn't happen. We went down 3-0 and then had an O point going downwind. If we let the melons get another upwind break we'd essentially be out of the game. So I self-called myself and stepped onto the field, telling myself it was time I made a play and stopped sitting around letting our nationals players try to win the game for us. M.U.T. wins because every single one of us is good, not just because we have a couple all-region players on our roster.

Sometimes life gives you opportunity to immediately back up your own bravado, and this was one of those fortuitous moments. The Melons came zone to prevent a good downwind punt, and Crew quickly found himself trapped on the sideline as I found myself with about half the field to myself playing the cross-field wing. Crew wound up and threw the most incredible blading hammer I've ever seen in my direction. The wind was pushing against the flight of the hammer and as the disc flattened out it was pushed back to midfield. I took off sprinting to intercept it's path and I remember thinking it resembled a jet skimming the ground as it flew downfield. The disc was moving too fast for me to run down, so my only hope was to cut its path at the perfect point. As the disc crossed in front of me I bid as high and as far as I could, and with a loud 'thunk' it stuck in my hand. Being fully aware of conservation of greatness, I quickly dumped the disc to Mackey and a couple throws later Mike hit me with a scoober for our first point of the game.

I immediately took a sub and received just as many 'sick catch' comments from the Melons as from my own team. Some older guy came up to me and said "I've been watching ultimate for years and that's the best catch I've ever seen". The game was even from there on out, we scored all of our downwind points and our upwind line was able to get a couple goals to tie the game at 10s with hard cap looming. However, with their back to the wall, the nationals-caliber players on the Melons did what they do best and scored an up wind O point to go up 11-10. Hard cap came on during the next point, but we weren't able to score our upwind O point and M.U.T. finally lost, 12-10.

The winning streak ended at 23 games spanning 5 tournaments. The Horned Melons would go on to win the semis by 6 and the finals by 4. We would win our consolation game and get 5th place by forfeit. We knew though that our quarters game was the game of the tournament, and had been played at a different level than any of the other games that day, and that was something to be proud of.

I can't wait to do it all again.

M.U.T. Ultimate: A 3 Part Series

Part II: Hey, just so you're not surprised, we're really good.

The next time M.U.T. got together was in November of 2006 to once again play in Dartmouth's Frozen Disc of Death. To the crew that played at Ow My Knee in 05 we added Socks, Mackey, some more Wellesley women, and of course Colin Mahoney. This tournament is still one of the absolute best I've ever played in, which means a lot to me since I was the TD. All of M.U.T. was crammed into 17 school, pasta jamming and watching 'Stick It', the party had a bonfire and good beer, I had hot chocolate and gummy bears at tourney central, and the weather was awesome.

M.U.T., made an appearance at M.i.U.T., Mike's injured ultimate team, as many of us were dealing with some rather big injuries. Ralph had some wrist thing wasn't supposed to throw, Seth had some shoulder thing and wasn't supposed to huck, Fishie also had a shoulder thing, Jersey and Socks had knee things, and Tyke had torn her ACL a few weeks prior and couldn't play at all. That didn't keep us from continuing to have fun though. I donned the penguin suit for the first time and time outs involved various forms of cuddling or games of chicken.

Oh yeah, and we won the tournament going away. I had seeded us 4th out of 16, behind the Dartmouth Alums and Dartmouth 07/08 teams that I thought would be our biggest competition. Unfortunately we didn't get to play either of them as they lost in bracket play, giving us a tough game against Enough Monkeys and their zone that we barely pulled out thanks to the handling skills of Mike and Socks. We went up big on UMass in the finals and spent our last few points trying to get the huck connection from Colin to Snitch completed, which we finally did, giving us M.U.T.'s first tournament win.

Months passed and most of us graduated and moved on, in my case I moved to Wisconsin. That didn't stop Tyke and I from flying out to meet up with Socks, Mike, Seth, Min, Ralph, and Fishie to play at Wildwood in July of 2007. This tournament saw the first ever M.U.T. jerseys and frequent trips to swim in the ocean between games. And of course we won again. Sort of. We went 6-0 and were about to play the finals when some people had to leave to catch flights, so those of us that remained finagled our way into a tie for first which involved Seth and a guy from the other team co-carrying the trophy and yelling in celebration. I think we got to keep that trophy though. Anyone know where it is? Do you have it Mike? You should. Our winning streak was again almost halted in the semis of Wildwood when we found ourselves down 2 with the hard cap on. Thankfully Wildwood has 2 point goals, so after the pull we worked the disc backwards into our end zone and Mike hit Seth for the 2 pointer to tie and force universe. Of course we scored on universe.

The bond of M.U.T. was so strong in the summer of 2008 that M.U.T. returned to play at Ow My Knee despite the fact that the team's namesake was unable to attend. Joining us this time were Min, Cabo, and Kell. The later two who showed up 2 hours late Saturday to much rejoicing as it upped our male roster from 6 to 8. Due to confusion with a Canadian mixed team called MUTT in the score reporter, M.U.T. came into the tournament seeded 25th of 32 teams. We tried to talk our way into a higher seed from the TD, but he wouldn't budge, leading to Mackey's phrase directed at the TD and any team we played that weekend "Just so you're not surprised... We're really good". Those were indeed prophetic words, as aside from another tight game with Enough Monkeys, we rolled our way into the semis, winning every game 13-5 or thereabouts. Unfortunately for me I hurt my knee in the first game on Saturday (oh the irony) and didn't play much. After a decently close game in the semis, we were playing 7 Express in finals and the game went to universe point with M.U.T. receiving. 7 Express was so concerned with Ralph cutting deep that two girls followed her under, leaving Fishie wide open to catch a huck from Seth and win the tournament on a 3 throw point. Celebration obviously consisted of a giant cuddle puddle.