July 7th, 2012

I had a field trip with my engineering class! There were two options for our final project: take an electro-mechanical device apart and add a new feature OR create a site improvement plan for the Catawba sustainability center. I was the only one that chose the sustainability center (silly environmental science major). So i was put into another group and now we’re taking apart a toaster (my idea for improvement is to make the toast jump really high like it does whenever snoopy makes toast at Thanksgiving – we’ll see how successful my proposal is). For extra credit (and to see if anyone would get inspired and switch sides) we still took a tour of the sustainability center. Picture a farm abandoned sixty years ago aaand tada! I came home with the ticks to show for it. But it was such a picturesque landscape.

On our way there/while getting lost we ran into two through-hikers on the AT. They were from Atlanta and had started at the beginning of the trail in Georgia and three months later are there to greet us in Virginia – complete with stories of surviving those latest rounds of storms in a lean-to. I was a little bit jealous (though not of the scary storms) – can’t wait to someday cross that off the bucket list.