I have stayed in East Lansing many times since 2011 (you can search East Lansing on the blog and see the many pages that come up -- I just did for nostalgia). I visit Professor Keith Promislow at Michigan State University. I met Keith in 1998 when he was working in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University. We worked together for about a decade on a collaboration with Ballard Power Systems (a local fuel cell company). Somewhere near the end of that project, he moved to Michigan State. I like Keith and I like working with him, and at some point when my kids were old enough, I thought we could keep collaboration going if we spent more time together and I started visiting him for a month or so every Summer. The tradition continued this Summer, and I went to work with him on a couple of projects: an analytic and computational technique to model 2D geometric gradient flows (related to materials science) and a computational capturing simulation for sea ice formation. We geeked out at the blackboard.
Usually I fly to Detroit and take the bus to East Lansing, but this time I flew to Toronto, rented a car and drove down (about 5 hours). My experience making a land crossing to the US is quite different to the process at an airport. At Vancouver airport when flying to the US, you go through customs in Vancouver before you board. I say I am a Professor travelling to a conference or going to MSU to collaborate and they wave me through. At a land crossing, I get all kinds of questions. They ask whether I am getting paid in the US (honest answer "no"). They ask what I am working on and I say "Applied Math". The follow up is "so you are only applying to work on the project" and I continue to try and explain. Keith says they may just be pretending to be confused in case I underestimate them and let slip something I should not. At the crossing to Michigan, I can honestly say it could have gone either way with the guard I talked to. Keith's recommendation was to say "I am going to collaborate on a book" because everyone can understand what writing a book is like. I will try that next time.
I did the car rental and drive from Toronto to have a car in Michigan for a change but also it gave me a chance to stop in Toronto and visit my son and his partner there. My son is in a PhD program and UofT in Public Health.
So in East Lansing I had a car and also rented a bike as usual. The car is the same model as the one we own in Vancouver, but a newer model with Car Play that shows google map directions on the screen. This is a feature I really liked, but not quite enough reason to buy a new car.
Keith turned 60 this year, and I timed the visit to be there for the celebration. I made this for him (an H index is a measure of research success).
I also timed the visit to catch the last hour of the East Lansing Art Festival. I found the fantastic tie-dye vendor for the first time in several years and resupplied.
I discovered that my wife does not like looking at me wearing tie-dye shirts. I told her she should think of how happy I am wearing them, but I am not sure that sold it. I kept myself out of trouble in the evenings making paper mache bowls. I gave one away in East Lansing and the rest to my son and a friend in Toronto.
Thursdays I hosted dinner at my long stay hotel. This is a fun crew, one of the reasons I still like going there after all these years.
