(not-so) Brief Bio
I was born an raised in Palo Alto, California, a few miles from Stanford University. My interests growing up were varied: at age 5, I met Steve Kutcher, the "Hollywood Bug Man", and promptly decided that I would someday become an Entomologist. I chased butterflies for a few years, until at age 8 I discovered the wonders of carnivorous plants. I spent much of my time over the next few years cultivating a bug-eating garden in the back yard. The hobby even inspired some family vacations to bogs around the country.
Around age 10, I somehow got into my head that Clown College was where I belonged. I spent hours practicing and perfecting my magic and juggling acts, even going as far as becoming a member of both the Society of American Magicians and the International Juggling Association. I made some pocket change performing at children's birthday parties and local festivals.
By late Junior high, I started to realize that being a clown wasn't a good way to get chicks, so I quietly gave it up, and started focusing on something a little cooler: electric bass. I took Jazz Bass lessons for a few years, and eventually my friends and I got together a ska band named Route 49. We played all the local teen clubs around the south bay area, oblivious to the fact that the only groupies we had were our parents. Even so, we had a lot of fun.
All along this time, my parents had dutifully enrolled me in many team sports, including baseball, where my only interaction with the ball was the rare pop-fly to my permanent position in right field. I fared a bit better in soccer - I may not have been able to dribble by anyone, but at 5'10" and 125lbs (the actual stats on my first driver's license!) I could run circles around my more inertially-challenged teammates. This inspired me toward the cross country team in high school, where I usually finished somewhere in the middle of the pack. But my real sporting success came in the swimming pool. From age 5 to 18, I spent my summer Saturdays competing for the Eichler Swim and Tennis Club, and eventually was varsity captain my senior year of high school. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of my high school carreer took place as a result: the JV girls swim team nominated me for homecoming king. Hey, I take what I can get.
After graduation, I headed 2000 miles east into the great Midwest, and studied Physics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. It's a small Christian school, named after none other than John Calvin himself. My experience at Calvin is one which I would not trade for anything - I gained such an appreciation of how all the liberal arts and sciences fit together. I would venture as far as saying that I don't think I could be studying toward a PhD right now without seeing that kind of balance in academia.
College was a blur - I was a four year letterman on the Varsity swim team, a Physics major, and even managed to sneak in a semester abroad in Hikone, Japan. I spent the summers working at Redwood Camp, an incredible summer job in the redwoods above Santa Cruz, California. With graduation and the impending threat of real life looming, I decided to head back to Japan for another year and participate in that rite-of-passage for wanderlust-ful middle-class youth: teaching English. I spent a year at it in Sendai, Japan. It was an incredible year, but I have to admit that by the end, I was a bit tired of always sticking out - many times quite literally.
Upon return to the states, I applied for and began a job as a mountaineering instructor at Summit Adventure near Yosemite, California. I had grown up backpacking and hiking with my family in the Sierra, which I am entirely convinced is the most beautiful place in the world. I've seen the Japan Alps, the Swiss Alps, the Andes, the Rockies, the Appalacians, the Cascades - none of them can compare. When I wasn't in the mountains, I was teaching sixth grade Environmental Education at Mount Hermon Outdoor Science School near Santa Cruz. It was there that I developed my passion for education, my curiosity about the secrets of the night sky, a desire to go back to school, and probably most importanly, a love and shared vision with the most incredible woman I've ever met. We'll be married in December 2007. And that brings me to today, where I sit analyzing supernovae, training for triathlons, escaping to the mountains, and generally loving life. What can I say - God is good.