Iron Horse Weekend!!

Finally back to the mosquitoes after a lovely three day hiatus. Poor things were so hungry, my arms are the testament to that...
Now, the Iron horse! After a rushed work session in the early hours Friday morning, we were off on time around 8am. A pretty uneventful drive to Silverton, a few showers, a hunger crisis moment, great conversation, excellent. We met my Mom at the courthouse in Silverton so we could leave the cars for the next day and make the rest of the way piled into the highlander. A quick stop at the fairgrounds to check in, and we were home! Mom had a great spaghetti dinner all ready to go, after which we debated the chances of our actually racing the next day given the forecast of 80% rain/snow and high of 56 in Silverton. Lucky for us, the day dawned cloudy and a little chilly, but the rain and snow held off the whole day!! My race was allright, we rolled up the valley really slowly. I'm sure no one wanted to go fast before Mara Abbott decided to go fast...needless to say, I was dropped on Shalona, and ended up with the exact same time as the last time I did the race two years ago, and 32nd place. I was pleased, and disappointed:) Still have to break 3hrs sometime, only need to take off 10 minutes!! Our after race picnic was as pleasant as it's ever been, Anne joined us (conference director for RMCCC) and a bunch of the nordic kids and some parents were there as well. We still had leftovers, although by the end of the weekend I think we left the parents in good position to finish the rest of it off. Sunday's crit was super fast and hard. A few of the faster girls had not raced the day before, and I managed to stay on to the pack for around half, not sure because there wasn't a time clock at the start/finish (really annoying, and honestly, how hard would it be to put up a clock??!!) Anyway, a huge crowd made the race a lot of fun, many of my high school classmates were there cheering me on which was fun until I got dropped...:) I ended up 17th overall. The time trial was pretty good, I would have done A LOT better with any type of aero gear. I actually ended up 2nd to last :( I thought I did better, but not having any aero gear at all, and a very flat/rolling first section, made a huge difference.
All in all a great weekend! I miss Durango a lot, and seeing all my friends there almost made me wish I was moving home for the summer as well. Fort Collins is a great place to be though, and there's so much more to look forward to!
Some pics courtesy of one of Dads work friends:

Scenes from the Lab

This is particularly for the parents/Grandparents, those people who don't really know where I work and what I do. (as always, you can click on a pic for a bigger version)

I start my day off by "picking pupae". Pupae are the stage of life of a mosquito right before it emerges as an adult, flying, insect. I pick them out of the pans they hatch in, and put them into cages where they will emerge as adults, but cannot escape. This picture shows the incubator we keep pupae pans in. If you look closely, you can see mosquito larvae, they are longer and touching the surface so they can breath.



Next I usually take care of the adult mosquitoes by feeding them (yes on my arm...you all might have seen twitpics of this....) and collecting eggs, putting in new cups for them to lay eggs in, and collecting individual females for a specific part of my project. In this picture, you can see larvae pans on top, mosquito cages in the middle shelves, and then on the bottom shelf, small individual "icecream carton" cages for individual females so I can get eggs from individual females, and know they were the only female laying those eggs.



Today I started isolating DNA from the individual females I've already collected and gotten eggs from. I will be analyzing their DNA to look for unique genetic sequences for which I've designed a detection system (called primers for use in melting curve PCR for anyone who has any idea what I'm talking about...) In this picture you can see my tubes of ground up mosquitoes on the hot plate at the top of the picture, the ice bucket used for keeping samples cold while I'm working with them, and the centrifuge for spinning my samples to concentrate the mosquito material to the bottom of the tube (it spins around really fast and centrifugal force pulls the heavy particulates down to the bottom)


This is where I wash dishes...mostly mosquito pans after they are all adults, I don't really use a lot of glassware, most undergrad students put in a lot of hours washing glassware. Unfortunately we don't have one of those in our lab...


So, I hope you learned something today about my lab and what I do! Yay for science:)

Summer is AWESOME!!!

It's been a few days since I last updated, so let me give a recap of the awesomeness of my summer so far :)

Day One: Friday afternoon! Beautiful mtn bike ride with Caley, Erick and Aaron. I got dropped super hard, but that's ok because then I can go my own pace :) Perfect way to kick off summer, get all the stress from finals out on the trail.

Day Two: Saturday was a lovely day! Slept in, biked out to Verns with Emily and Brendan and Caley for epic cinnamon rolls and hearty breakfast, got some fun books to read at the library, read until it was time to go to Tirrels grad party, then the party! Tirrel and family put on an awesome party with keg of Easy Street, tons of delicious salads and grill food and deserts. We stayed until it was almost dark, chatting and playing badmitten. Watched some Star Trek season I and went to bed. I have to add here, Caley has been watching the old Star Treks ever since we saw the movie so that we can go see it again and he'll understand all of the tiny little reference that only Trekkies would understand:)

Riding to get cinnamon rolls on the tandem<3 (click on picture to see larger version)


Day Three: Sunday was another amazing day!! We woke up pretty early to get the bikes ready and packed up, then headed over to breakfast at Uncle Kevins. First breakfast of the year out on the deck, and man it was hot out there already! We also got some delicious rhubarb straight from the garden for making a pie. Then it was off to gas up, get a fellow teammate and head down to Boulder for some criterium action! Caley's first race was at 1:15, my race was at 5:40...so, I had a beautiful day sitting in the park, reading my book, and looking up occasionally to cheer on the boys. Caley totally called me out on reading during his race :) He ended up 2nd in the cat 2 race, and was already tired for the pro12, which some super fast guys showed up for (guys who ride in The Tour fast...) so finished about in the middle. My race was awesome! A bunch of really fast girls showed up, Amanda, Meredith Miller, Amy Dumbrowski, Mara Abbott, some girl from Colavita who's Australian and wins lots of stuff...anyway, it was FAST! The first three laps were primes as well, so it was all I could do to hold on for those couple. I ended up staying with the front group for about half the race, dangled for a super long time, and then finally got totally popped with about 19 on the clock. I got caught up by a few other girls with about 16 to go, and after reminding them not to be mean to me (one yelled at me to pull through when I was, just not as fast as she would have liked....) sprinted to the finish for 2nd in that group, and 20th overall! Although, there were a bunch of lapped riders who got mixed in with us, and I know for a fact that the girl who placed "15th" I definitely beat, so who knows how I actually finished up! Which is exciting, and I'm sure there weren't that many girls who were Cat 3 so I'm saying I got top three for sure in the Cat 3's :) All in all a great day!

Day Four Monday: Worked the normal work hours, then went on the Rio recovery ride which was actually slow for the first time I think because people had actually raced over the weekend and were tired :) It was a gorgeous day, super hot, around 90 something for the high. We're definitely not used to the heat, but at least it's not humid! After the ride we stopped at Tirrels to attempt to help her finish the keg from Saturday. Wasn't going to happen, but we did get a few games of badmitten in, and some more good visiting time with cycling peeps. It's funny how they are the only people we hang out with, makes sense, but still funny at times how insular our world is. It will be really strange to move to a new place, guess we'll just have to join the local team whenever we do move!

Day Five Tuesday (today): At work, already been very productive! Took care of the mosquitoes this morning, updated and organized my notebook all afternoon, plus got the last of the primers designed and ordered with Dr. Black. Now I just have to start isolating DNA and getting as many females as I can to lay eggs for me! Hopefully I'll be able to have some results by the time we leave for CA...not sure if it's going to happen, but I'll try. Tomorrow will be spent grinding up my female mosquitoes, I hope to have some room in the big lab to work so I can have other people to talk to:)

I'm still looking for the picture thingy! As soon as I find it there will be lots of fun picks from the already great summer break!

CAN'T WAIT FOR THE IRON HORSE!!!!

Finish of Our TTT

Caleys phone takes pretty awesome pictures!

Mental Break

Taking about an hour break from studying and everything for the last hour before my class. I think I figured out one of the things that was plaguing me last night (how to find error degrees of freedom in a split-plot design) and now I'm drinking coffee, listening to NPR online, and trying not to hyperventilate about the upcoming exam. I am not, I might add, at work. After a 9.5hr day yesterday (8 of which were spent in consultation with Dr. Black) I needed a change of scenery; my sunny, cozy little living room fit the bill.
I'm bummed because I can't find the thingy that lets me put pics on to the computer from the camera. Hopefully we'll find it when we move in roughly two weeks....aaaahhh, hadn't realized the move was so soon! Next week will have to be spent looking for boxes and trying to decide what needs to stay out for the remainder of the month, and what can be packed away. Poor Caley, I feel so bad that he will be moving everything without me. However, it will probably go more smoothly without my low-blood-sugar-induced-crankiness/stressed outness :) Moving has always been a highly irksome adventure, someday we will be in one place for more than a school year.
After the stats exam I will immediately begin work on the take-home exam for BDV which is due by email at 5pm on Friday. For all the previous exams I have been able to use a full week, this one will only get 2.5 days....should be fun! I actually don't mind that kind of exam too much, as long as there aren't any questions I have to dig too much to find answers for I should be ok.
Also, (geez, lots has happened in the past couple of weeks!) I now have a full graduate committee. We will be meeting on Friday for about an hour just as a preliminary sort of thing. I'm not sure what I should bring/be prepared for, but I'm going to bring the GS6 form, and a rough idea of what my project aims should be. I think I've already accomplished the first aim which is to characterize populations of mosquitoes from Tapachula and the lab to determine unique haplotypes to be used as genetic markers. I guess the second aim would be to create the genetic markers, and the third aim would be to evaluate the strains for insecticide resistance, and I'm not sure if I need to look at vector competence as well or not, or if I have to evaluate fitness etc...hmmmmmmmm I guess that's what the meeting is for! Hopefully there won't be too many surprises and I'll come away with a better idea of how to finish this thing up next year!

Wish me luck, I'll need it!
-Megan

1554 (fav New Belgium beer) is the perfect way to end a very successful biking weekend. Not studying for finals like I should be of course, but a few delicious beers and some fajitas courtesy of our resident cook-and-bottle-washer, Phelan.
Road race was one of my best races ever! 23rd place, I finished in the top four of the group I rode with for most of the race, dropped most of the other girls on the climb up to the overlook of the reservoir, and dropped the ones that caught up again on the South dam.
Took 23rd in the crit on Saturday (go figure...I'm super consistent). But I got prime points in the 3rd or 4th prime, totally my accomplishment of the day!
TTT today was horrible, legs felt like crap, and Rachel dropped off so I had to stick on while Tirrel and Julia pulled me around for half of the course. Oh well, I'm ok with it, the RR and crit make up for poor performance today!

I hope to post some sort of pictures soon, we have misplaced the thingy that takes photos off of the camera and puts them on the computer. boooo.

Have a wonderful good night, and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL THE MOTHERS!!

Love,
Megan

Photos from New Belgium

Courtesy of shorttrack1 on flikr

Pics from the last day are missing, so maybe I'll add more once the guy updates his flikr acct.

Beautiful Sunday Morning!

I love the days I can get up and do what I have to do and start the day on a positive note. Today was one of those days! I woke up early (around 6:45) then snoozed until the alarm went off at 7:30. Dashed off to work in the glorious sunshine with rain still clinging to the grass and leaves with that amazing after rain/morning smell. The worms were out, that's how green and glorious it was out there :)
Picked some pupae at work, then fed the damn mosquitoes on my arm...let me tell you, it was an exercise in self control and overcoming one of my great fears in life, mosquitoes biting me. I'm sure I've discussed it in the blog before, but a fateful trip one summer to Michigan left me forever scarred from the bird-size mosquitoes that would hunt you down at all hours of the day and night. The past 5, almost 6, years of my life in the lab have been spent overcoming this childhood aversion to that minute, blood-sucking, insect.
Now enjoying a little cup of day-old coffee in my beautiful sunny, airy, cozy living room before heading over to Uncle Kevins house for some delicious waffles and sausage and whatever yummy fruit is available. Oh, and whipped cream, can't forget the homemade whipped cream:)
Later today I will be testing out the new time trial bike (unfortunately not mine to keep) and then a two-three hour ride with the girls on the road course, and then a volunteer party at Pelaton for the amazing volunteers for nationals. As part of the nationals team we are being required to show up in our kits...hope they don't mind that we'll all be sweaty and gross from a ride:) I'm going to bring the camera today, so hopefully I'll have some good pics for you all to look at from this beautiful CO day!
-Megan