History 7

Fall '05 - Spring '06

The 2005 season was a long one for me, so I was ready to take a break... And take a break I did. Seven weeks without a bike ride that fall. I didn't sit on my butt though. I participated in two large projects for school, and I dated, successfully.

The first project was writing the software for the Washington University IEEE Dance Floor. I was part of the CSE436 team that wrote the software package to control the floor. The project was very cool and was a hit at the debut. It appealed to me because it covered the every part of a program. Our software interacts directly with the physical microchips that turn on and off the LEDs as well as providing a control interface for any person who wants to control the floor. There is now an extension that allows people to make animations to run on the floor. I have a half finished, partially working version of the software on my computer that will react to the music being played. All the machine would need is a line in. I don't consider myself done. There are others, still in school, who continue to make the hardware more robust, and I hope others continue with the software.

The second project was for CSE462. It was to create an USB Harmonic Ultrasound system. This was also very cool, in theory. It became cool in practice once it actually worked (there was a lot time in between where it was simply a burden.) The final product could be miniaturized into a probe head and powered via the USB cable. The harmonic imaging was done in hardware so the system didn't put a heavy burden on the host machine. It was able to image roughly 20cm deep with a decent resolution. After the project was finished, I pushed to continue the project, hoping that it would turn into a published paper or possibly a commercial product. There were many practical questions that needed answering, and before we could sort everything out, another company had put out a product that was similar enough that it wouldn't pay to pursue our idea further. Still, very cool.

As for the dating, nothing to note till Erin. She's great and super supportive of (almost) everything I do. I was kind of a shit-head to her during this time though, so we'll skip over that.

After a grand total of three rides, I went to Tucson in January. I put in back to back to back monster weeks to make up for all the base that I hadn't been building. When I got back I was finally all psyched up for cycling again. I tried to balance school and training January and February, until the Vuelta Sonora, Mexico (UCI 2.2). Mexico was an amazing experience that I wouldn't trade for anything. The life experience was too great to put into this context. At one point I decided to write an account of my experience. It soon grew to many pages and I lost my motivation.

The weekend after I got back, we decided to go race in Ohio, just to keep racing. The first day was rained out. Apparently the course was flooded. I was the only one that stayed for the race the next day, as I was on my way to Oberlin anyway. Sunday, March 12, 2006 I was hit by a deer while in the soon-to-be winning breakaway. Here's the picture:The two yellow arrows in the picture are the deer (right arrow) and I (left arrow). I'm not going to claim that that was the exact deer that hit me, but yes, a deer did hit me. That deer knocked me that far off the road. I was fine. My bike was not. The deer was one of many that ran across the road. Enough said.

Spring racing continued, and I raced well, being able to contribute to team wins and scoring many top 10s. Graduated: Washington University in St. Louis May 2006.