Again, What the BLAP?!?

This weekend I visited the University of Notre Dame to see just what their graduate chemical engineering program has to offer. The campus overall has a serious old money feel about it, what with its gilded dome and numerous dual-purpose religious/football works of art (i.e. Touchdown Jesus, First Down Moses, and Fair Catch Father Corby). And the bookstore is very classy indeed, as you may have heard. The problem that I seem to be encountering, however, is that these visits increasingly do not teach me anything new about the program beyond what I learned from their website. Or at least that’s how it seems. Maybe I’m actually getting some kind of travel fatigue.

The other problem is this annoying pattern of bad weather arriving upon my return from a grad school visit. This time, I was sitting in the South Bend airport, and once again my mother informs me of some storm that blew through Nebraska and Kansas, dumping snow and canceling school (well, in Nebraska at least). What’s more, there was a second front on its way in Colorado, which could spell serious trouble for my expedition to the Black Canyon.

Coming into Kansas City, I was treated to the greatest amount of turbulence I have yet encountered. It was kind of like being on a big wooden, rickety roller coaster, but with soft drinks and little snack packets. Then I had to drive through some sleetoid precipitation most of the way back from the airport. Luckily, it didn’t really freeze, but since it was night, I (along with most of the other drivers on the interstate) still didn’t really feel comfortable driving 70 mph. After finally getting back to Lawrence, I conferred with Dana the Viking about our expedition, checking road conditions and weather forecasts with the Internet.

Now, the Prius is good at many things, but four-wheel drive is not one of them. In fact, I’ve never really tested the Prius in snowy, mountainous conditions, and Dana the Viking’s rear-wheel drive Volvo was certainly not going to do better. So, feeling very uncertain about driving in a small car on slick mountain roads, we cancelled the expedition, discouraged.

I’m pretty bummed right now. If anyone is still in Lawrence and wants to hang out this week, I’m basically available, aside from spending tomorrow with my grandparents, who have just returned from Egypt, and my cousin Brian, who had a birthday today, and his family. Other than that, I guess I’ll be reading and working on my Plant and Environmental Safety project. What an anticlimactic final spring break of my college career.

This better not happen again when I come back from Champaign at the end of the month.