[On location in Ithaca, New York]
It’s been a fun time visiting Carl up here in Ithaca so far. After I got up here Friday night (which was a bit of an adventure, considering Ithaca’s messed-up street system … seriously, Ithaca makes Eau Claire, Mankato and Saint Paul’s streets all seem brilliantly laid out!), we hung out with some of his astrophysics grad student buddies and watched a movie (“Tsotsi,” a really interesting South African film from 2005) on Carl’s super-cool projector screen that he’s got set up in his apartment. I wonder how much getting a system like that would cost…
Yesterday afternoon Carl took me on a bit of a walking tour of part of Cornell University’s enormous, sprawling campus, which sits on a ginormous hill overlooking the city and Cayuga Lake, the longest of the Finger Lakes. Overall I think it’s a prettier campus than Penn State’s, and probably larger in area (even though Cornell only has maybe half the students of PSU), and a lot of really eclectic architecture.
Yesterday was an absolutely gorgeous (gorges?) day, about 25 degrees with a clear blue sky, a fantastic day for a walk and for taking pictures! From campus we took a walk down the spectacular Cascadilla Gorge, which links campus with downtown. The trail is “closed” in winter, but we were still able to make the trek down the icy and snowy steps 
(with extra caution at certain points!). It normally wouldn’t take very long to walk the path through Cascadilla Gorge, but when you have two people like Carl & I who really love to take photos, it tends to take a bit longer. 🙂 But it was totally worth it, and the scenery was breathtaking!
We had planned to take in the Ithaca Chili Cookoff & WinterFest downtown, but the niceness of the day worked to our disadvantage, as the downtown area was totally packed. The lines were tremendously long even just to pay for the tickets with which you could sample the chili and wings from the various vendors, not to mention the long lines for the chili vendors themselves. Oh well. Neither of us really had the patience for all that queueing, so we made our way back up to campus so we could each get some work done until it was time for dinner and hockey.
Carl managed to score a couple tickets to the Cornell vs RPI hockey game. Hockey is *the* premier sport here at Cornell, and tickets are kinda tough to get as a result. It was a fun game to be at, as Cornell whipped Rensselaer 7-1. Hockey crowds are a really fun lot too (at least when the home side is winning!).And now it’s getting to be time get ready to head home to State College in a bit, as I’ve gotta be back before Bible study this evening. Hopefully the roads won’t be too much of a mess, and I actually hope the precip this afternoon stays all rain. That’d definitely make the driving easier. Farewell from Ithaca!