Blog of Bermanism

It has obviously been a long time since I’ve posted in my blog, and my regularity is similar to that of a 90 year old man who hasn’t been eating his Wheaties lately. So much has been going on, that is has been impossible to write. Two weeks ago, I went to Galveston to support my friend Chris in his dissertation defense at UTMB. It was so nice to be there, and he totally rocked his presentation. I’ve actually seen him give a few presentations in my time, and this was his best ever. His talk flowed well, was well balanced, didn’t overwhelm the audience with minutia, and was given clearly and calmly. His committee was obviously impressed since they gave him an easy time in his private defense. Apparently, they asked him to sit down and they discussed theory for two hours. I wasn’t so lucky and I got grilled pretty hard in mine. But, both of us survived the process and can now be “not that kind of doctors” together. After his defense, our other best friends, Brandon and Darla showed up and we went out with some of Chris’s local friends and his lovely and ever awesome wife, Amy, and we tore Galveston a new one, to the degree that that’s even possible. The next day, we all went to Chris’s sister’s beach house in Crystal Beach and had some awesome southern Texas BBQ and were in the company of what feels to me like close family members, since we’ve all been together for so long (since freshman year of college). These people and their families are seriously like my brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles. I feel as close to them as I would feel for any member of my family, and for me, that’s saying a lot. Unfortunately, I had to leave the party early to book it to the airport to catch a flight home. It was so nice seeing everyone, it is such a rare and wonderful thing when we do. Even better, when we do manage to get together, it is as if we were never apart. There’s no hesitation, no small talk, no tepidness about who didn’t call who or not knowing the person anymore. I think it is because we all have remarkably stable personalities. While we have all certainly matured since freshman/sophomore year of college, we’re all inherently the same people we were back then. And, because of that, our compatibility has never wavered. We’ll always be friends, we’ll alway be family, no matter what.

Once I got home from that, I started feverishly writing a manuscript from graduate school that I’ve been meaning to finish up for 1.5 years now. I managed to get it done in two days and off to my old professor. I’m still waiting on edits from her, but we’re one step closer to getting that unfinished business completed. On that note, I may be going to Memphis for a short amount of time in the next month or so to set up my database system on their servers so that my graduate legacy can live on beyond my time at UT Austin.

After I finished my paper, I got cranking in my current lab. I’m very close to finishing up a project on Parkinson’s disease and the development of a potential mouse model for it. The work is very exciting and I’m only a few experiments away from putting together the final version and getting the paper out. The project was started by a former postdoc in our lab named Wai. She had to leave the lab prematurely due to a career move by her husband. But, she’ll be glad for the project to be finished and published as well. With any luck, it will mark my first publication and will get me out of this hole of not being able to get my work out there, something I’ve been working very hard at.

Rachel turned 30 last week. We had a great party in her honor here in Sausalito. We had about 30 people come from around the Bay Area to our favorite Italian restaurant in Sausalito, Rustico. I had set up a set menu with four courses and the owner provided us with a jazz band. It was really great. Rachel’s mom and brother also joined us and two of her best friends from college, Kuan and Kelly flew in to surprise her for the weekend. It was so nice to see everyone and everyone had a really great time at the party. I must say, however, that the cake at the end of the night was the keystone event for the evening. I ordered it from the Sausalito Bakery. Rachel’s favorite cake is vanilla cake with butter cream icing. So, that’s what I ordered. I told the baker that we had 30 people and that her favorite flowers are red roses, so maybe he could make some icing red roses on the cake. Well, he made this gigantic cake for at least 60 people and he outlined the cake with REAL red roses. The roses against the beautiful white icing job made for a cake that most people would be proud to have at their wedding. Not only that, but it was absolutely delicious. Anyway, we had a great time and Rachel was brought into her 30th year with style.

Finally, we had a regatta on Sunday at Lake Merritt in Oakland. This regatta was the reason that I couldn’t plan something more elaborate for Rachel because I knew that she really wanted to race at this event. It was my first time at Lake Merritt, and it was a great experience. Once again, my coach was very good to me and put me in some really excellent lineups. I was in the top Men’s 8+ and a really fast Men’s 4x. Our primary competitors on the west coach from Kent Mitchell rowing club were out in force at this regatta and were out for blood after SW Masters in Sacramento, where we beat them all day long. As usual, Marin and Kent Mitchell traded places again and we came in a very close second to them all day long. Our 8+ was 1.6 seconds slower than they were (for those who don’t know, that’s about 2 feet out of a 65 ft. boat). Our 4x was also only 2 seconds slower than theirs. Both boats were a pleasure to row in and I’d certainly do them again. But, the race that I’m most proud of was the Men’s pair (2-) that I rowed with my great friend Ken. We’ve been practicing this boat, which is one of the hardest ones to row well, for about 1.5 months; not a lot of time for that kind of a boat. In this boat, we each have one oar on opposite sides, and there’s only the two of us in the boat. To be able to row it, the rowers have to be very well matched and technically similar in style. Our 2- has been really good from the beginning. But, we had never raced it before and we had never done a 1000m piece in it at race pace. This was to be our proving ground and we had some heavy competition. In the lane next to us was, of course, Kent Mitchell in the 2- that won Masters Nationals last year. In the far lane were two of our best older rowers at MRA, Andy Kerr and Dick Draeger (Dick won a bronze metal in the ‘62 olympics for the 2-!!). Dick and Andy had a 40 second handicap on us that we had to make up!! I figured that meant that we had to be 250m ahead of them to make up that kind of handicap, which is a whole lot against great rowers like them. Anyway, we lined up fast because the officials wanted to try to catch up on time, since they were behind schedule. Ken and I didn’t get in the long warm up that we would have liked, but we were ready to have a good row with no expectations. The line judge called, “attention, go!” and we were off. Kent Mitchel jumped a length on us after five strokes in the start (we need to work on our starts, but we knew that), but we were ahead of Dick and Andy. So, I just rowed our own race. I got us on course (I was steering while rowing) and we settled to a nice sustainable pace, probably 32-34 spm. At about 250m in, I looked to see where KM was, and to my surprise, they were right there, maybe 1/2 a length open water on us. I told Ken and we took a big power 10 at the 500. Ken called, “clean it up” and I lengthened out and relaxed a little, an then we really started to move. I looked again at 300 to go, and we were closing on them, and they were working hard to keep their distance. I called us up two in the rate, and we moved again. We had almost closed the open water gap between us and the US champion 2-. I called up two again, we really started moving. We were stern to bow with them. They made a move to hold us off and I called up two, one last time, and we were overlapped with them. They finished first and we were 4 seconds behind them, something I’m very proud of against competitors like that, they are certainly among the best in the US. Dick and Andy had a difficult row and finished nearly a minute after us, but we made us our handicap on them handily, which put us solidly in 2nd place. My steering was a pretty erratic (it is really hard to keep a 2- straight), so we probably rowed an extra few hundred meters because of it, but we managed to stay in our lane and not flip (which is really easy to do in a 2-). All that means is that we could be even faster than we were. If were to row the whole race clean, instead of just the last 500m, work on getting our starts faster, and go in a straighter line, we could be that much faster. Anyway, it was a great experience and it was definitely a proving ground for a very experimental boat. It also reassured Ken and I (and others on our team, I think) that the two of us belong out there with the groups we’re boated with. It was really fun, and I thank Ken for being willing to experiment with me, being that I’m a good 5 inches shorter than he is, and he’s quite a bit stronger than me.

This week and next week, I’m doing more animal behavioral studies. These things take up my life for two weeks, so that should be fun. That’s all I have for you today, but that hopefully catches everyone up a little bit. More on the other side…

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