Catching Up ... And Heading Out

Our Internet is still down so I've come off the mountain and into town to finish up some freelance writing work and pull together a quick blog as I try to wrap things up before vacation.

A columnist for the Daily Pennsylvanian is hoping a little more information than usual will come out of the Ivy League presidents' meetings. He makes reference to possible "merit aid," packages, something I've also heard whispered about. He touches on possible changes to the Academic Index, which my sources tell me at least some at the meetings would like to see aggressively changed for possibly even abandoned. (I tried to say that last week without quite saying it and in doing so confused a few of you. Sorry about that ;-) The Daily Pennsylvanian columnist writes:

In previous years, merit aid vs. need-based aid was thought of as a zero-sum game. Nobody wanted to touch it. Now that might have changed, especially since it could have an equalizing affect on recruiting without the need to utter the dreaded S-word - scholarships.

Dartmouth has revealed the search committee for a new president. There's a story in the Daily Dartmouth.

A Cornell athlete has won the NCAA triple jump for the second year in a row. There's a story on the Cornell website. What's interesting is that the 2007 NCAA champion from Cornell came back to defend in 2008 ... as a Florida State graduate student. The Tallahassee Democrat wrote:

Unable to continue at Cornell under Ivy League rules that prohibit graduates from competing, (Rayon) Taylor transferred to FSU.

One of the posters over at AnyGivenSaturday has been cruising around the Internet finding street-level (and also aerial) photos of FCS (I-AA) football stadiums. It's worth a look here.

And finally, as I noted above, we are leaving on vacation tomorrow. Regular visitors to this electronic neighborhood will recall that two summers ago we loaded the kids up in our 1984 "poptop" VW Westfalia camper van and headed out for a 7,500-mile, blue-highways trip to White Sands, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Zion, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore and even Lambeau Field and Niagara Falls on the way home.

With only three-plus weeks available, we planned our last trip with the idea of picking up the tour on the West Coast in another year.

This is that year. We are flying into San Francisco tomorrow night and renting a VW camper van not unlike our own in Redwood City. Then we are steering north. Our tentative itinerary includes Mt. Tamalpais, up the coast to Mendocino, a quick zip into Oregon to get the kids another state for their "collection," then down to Lake Tahoe and Yosemite. We'll play it a bit by ear but Muir Woods, Redwood National Park, Crater Lake, Shasta, Mono Lake and Carson City (my father's family is from nearby Minden, Nev.) are other places we might want to explore. We finish up back in San Francisco where we have tickets to see the Giants and Cubbies on July 3 July 2.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to pass them along. (I'm bringing the laptop so email any recommendations you might have – and don't completely forget about the blog. I may toss something up here from time to time if wi-fi is available.)

And yes, you are right, this isn't the best year for a driving vacation of any sort. But the kids are at the age where if we don't do it now, we might never do it, so off we go!