My Adventures: Housemates & Bike Routes

7.25.09

As of tomorrow, I will have officially lived in Ithaca, NY for two weeks!

Before discussing the pictures of my daily views around town, I should introduce my housemates. There is Haruo from Kanagawa, Japan. He works as a genetic programing research assistant in the vet school. There is Elliot, the owner of my house. Elliot is originally from near Philadelphia and is starting his final year as a PhD student in the Plant Genetics department. The majority of his research involves selective breading of wheat. For the past couple weeks, he has spent just about every weekday in the field harvesting wheat for his study. There is Toby, Elliot's one year old puppy. Toby is full of energy and is typically the source of our laughs. He especially likes it when you scratch him behind the ears or play fetch. Last but not least, there is Herbie, Elliot's parrot. Herbie is very talkative in the mornings and early evenings. As far as I can tell, Elliot as taught him two different whistles as well as how to say "Hi Herbie!" and "Pretty bird!". Herbie can also say these phrases in different tones. I should also mention that Haruo has suggested teaching him some Japanese. ;)

Elliot chose to turn his front lawn into a garden. He has two raised beds filled to the brim with vegetables and herbs as well as a variety of flowering plants surrounding the garden. In this picture you can see the pink Echinacea, the yellow California Poppies, and the cabbage.

Elliot's love for plants definitely shows.

Every morning I jump on my bike and ride up this hill. It's a great, but very challenging, way to wake up in the morning. I will admit that it has taken me two weeks to ride to Cornell without having to get off and walk my bike. It took me a few days to determine the best route to my building on campus. Not to mention, I was quite discouraged when I first went up the hill but encouragement from friends definitely helped. Going down the hill was just as scary but I'm also starting to get the hang of that as well. The hills around here are much steeper than the few teeny ones in Buffalo.

Just to the left of this picture there is a small park where you can walk up along a gorge until you get to a small but beautiful waterfall. Basically, I live right down the street from a waterfall!

After the first hill, the road weaves back and forth around beautiful houses and their stunning gardens. The switchbacks make going up the hill a lot easier than just barreling straight up Buffalo Street, one of the steepest streets in town. There is also a walking path that parallels the gorge.

At the end of the switchbacks, I ride through this old cemetery. I saw a woodchuck run into a whole between one of the grave stones a few days ago. In terms of woodchuck size, it was quite big and round.

I have to go up a few more hills until I reach my building--Riley Robb.

The graduate student office was just remodeled so I was able to choose a brand new workspace that had never been occupied by anyone else. It's a little on the bare side now but I've been slowly making it my own.

This is the wet lab where I have been spending some time learning how to do Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) test on groundwater samples. More specifically, we are looking to see how much of one type of pesticide is in each groundwater sample.