On Top of the World

With the Amgen Symposium in LA this coming weekend, and poster presentations just two weeks away (!!!!!!!!!!!), it's certainly time that I should start fudging finalizing data from my experiments. Unlike with many previous projects, I have a fair bit of positive results I could present. One major issue did come up this week though. When making my transparent brains, I tried it on rat brains. The only literature available on this technique, however, is on mouse brains, which are a lot smaller than rat brains. Needing to troubleshoot was bound to happen. Though the experiment worked beautifully on control mouse brains after two weeks, after a month of incubation in the transparency solution, the rat brains (which were the ones I needed to get to work), were still barely transparent. I decided a month was long enough and they needed to get their act together, so I worked some magic (read as: made a new transparency solution and moved one of my brains to see if that would help). Sure enough, after incubating overnight, it got way more transparent, and subsequently grew 4 millimeters ish in length over the next two days. That's a lot for a rat brain! It's over 150% the size it started out as! I'm kind of scared to see what it looks like when I go in in the morning. Regardless, I can now use some fancy microscopes to visualize connections in the brain. Berkeley has some pretty great microscope facilities! Crossing my fingers for a positive outcome regarding results this week.

But now for the best stuff, my weekend! Saturday I spontaneously went to a San Francisco Giants game vs the Houston Astros, and it was AWESOME! It was only my third ever baseball game (second in the major league). AT&T Park, where the Giants play, is a really great and unique ballpark, I thought. From our seats we had a great view of the bay, scoreboard, and whole park in general.

  

 From my poor judgement of what a good baseball game is, I thought it was a good baseball game. No one scored until the wayyy later innings, and at first we thought it was going to be a shutout. The Giants were up 2-0 at the top of the 9th, and somehow the Astros managed to make 2 runs, causing the game to have several extra innings. We all thought it was because their AMAZING pitcher, pictured right, finally left the game in the 9th inning. It was really fun to be able to stay the extra time though and watch the game. I'm starting to really like watching baseball. Who would have thought!

A sea of orange

There were flags all around the stadium. Go Red Sox!

After many extra innings, the Giants finally got some runs, and won. Yay! Gotta support the team of the city I love! 

And now Sunday. I don't even know how to describe Sunday other than one of the most incredible days I've had while out here, if not one of the most incredible days of my life. The inherently awesome thing about Sunday was that I got to hang out with two gov loves all day, Mark and Sarah. We went on an adventure up north to the east peak of Mt. Tamalpais and to Point Reyes National Seashore. 

Unfortunately, it was extremely foggy for most of the day, which greatly diminished the amount of things we were able to see, mostly at Point Reyes. Being that Mt. Tam is a real mountain, and not the baby hills in my backyard in Berkeley that I call mountains, we actually rose up above all the fog/clouds into clear skies. I felt like I was on an airplane! 

The above photos were only from the drive up - not even the good views yet! The drive up itself was crazy windy! But rather fun. I don't think in the time we had we could have dreamed of hiking up the mountain, but the road went almost to the peak, and then hiked for maybe a mile up, and explored the little woody areas and rocks at the peak. 

We watched the clouds roll over the cities 

Mark, me, and Sarah on the trail to the peak

Hello, view. May I stay up here and gaze at you forever?

As I've expressed countless times before, I'm falling more and more in love with the things I see and do in CA every time I do something new, especially pertaining to things like hiking in the great outdoors. Today was no different. Except for the times I've been to places like Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks, I've never seen anything as beautiful as what I saw today. And even though I have seen those beautiful places in the past, each place has its own unique quirks and reasons to appreciate its beauty. From the top of Mt. Tam, especially that we were over the cloud/fog line, I felt like I was on top of the world. I could look all around me and see out into the distance, either into the cities of the Bay or the mountains to the east, and felt like I was in the best kind of fairy tale. But it was real life. Before I came to CA on this trip, and even before I went to NC, I made a promise to myself that I would travel to places where I would look around me and never be able to believe that I was in a place so majestic and beautiful. In the back of my mind, I would make my comparison to Pandora, the fictional planet brought to life in the movie Avatar. Being where I was today was the first time that I felt like I was somewhere just as amazing as Pandora. I thought of it kind of like the Floating Mountains, mostly because the trees off into the distance met by the clouds beneath us gave that sense. It's a little evident in the photo below, but that, and none of these photos really, can ever truly capture the beauty that is the view from Mt. Tam. Thinking about it, I'm sure there are much more beautiful and remote places in the world (unfortunately, much of the beauty here was taken away by electric wires running across and down the mountain), but it doesn't change that I was filled with awe and wonder from this special and magical place. 

Floating Mountain of Pandora?

Wimpy rock climbing, since I was too freaked out to
climb on top of the taller one. 

View down into the valleys

This rock I did climb! 

Not the rock I climbed in the previous photo. But there
were lots of rocks to explore in the little woody area
at the peak, all of which offered incredible views.

After staring in wonder at the view for what could never be enough time, we headed to Point Reyes. Unfortunately, we drove back down into the fog, which never cleared up. Going through Point Reyes, we barely saw any ocean or beach. We got glimpses of the cliffs, which were that much more menacing in the fog. Although it must be a beautiful area when not completely covered in fog, the fog made it a very different experience, with its own special type of beauty.

We did two very simple destinations in Point Reyes, the lighthouse (pictured below) and one easy trail. The lighthouse was a short walk through a canopy of trees and along some cliffs.

Looking straight down from the cliff area, we did see the Pacific Ocean. 

 Or through the cliffs...

...which rose up through the fog in a scary but wonder-inspiring type way.

We next drove a little ways to get to a trail which runs along one of the little bays that comes into Point Reyes. If we had several more hours, we could have taken it all the way to the ocean, but I really enjoyed what we did do. We walked through the woods before coming out on the bay, and then walked along the hills/mountains, whatever they are, around the rim of the bay for about an hour. All of the photos are going to appear grey, because the fog settled in right over the entire area. However, again, it provided a different experience which was really special. I don't think I've ever been anywhere so serene. If Mark, Sarah and I stopped walking and chatting, there was complete silence. We were just surrounded by a vast expanse of mountains covered in trees, settled fog, the bay, birds that would fly over the water and into the distance, and to top it all off, a lone kayaker in the middle of the bay. I have never experienced such tranquility as caused by the presence of nature such as this. It really would have been a great place to come out, hike for several hours, sit, and just take in everything, relax, and think. 

Sarah and me

Moral of today's story: I WILL do whatever it takes to come to graduate school out west, because I am a determined individual who can succeed and make her dreams come true, and when I'm out here for graduate school, I not just explore and take advantage of all that California has to offer me, both what I have and haven't seen in my time here this summer, but use it as a stepping stone to travel the world and explore what everywhere else has to offer me.