Freshman
Mechanical Engineering
San Diego, CA

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Global Security and Intelligence Studies
Pinetop, AZ

Libin Daniel

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Aerospace Engineering
Faridabad, Harya

Cassandra Logan

Freshman
Aviation Business Administration
Dessert Hot Springs, CA

Steven Leon
Freshman
Global Security and Intelligence Studies
Tucson, AZ

Brianna Valencourt

Freshman
Space Physics
Dallas, OR

Tanner Class
Freshman
Global Security and Intelligence Studies
Huntington Beach, CA

Kerianne Hobbs
Junior
Aerospace Engineering
Spring, TX

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Most Recent Posts

Surprise Visit!

March 2nd, 2010

This post was written by Steven Leon

On Friday, February 27th, my family came up to Embry-Riddle! It was a planned visit but what was not a part of the plan was the inclusion of my Grandpa! When I opened the door to see him there my heart jumped with joy. I hardly ever get to see my Grandpa because he lives in Atlanta, so it was a very big and pleasant surprise for me. They paraded around my dorm, met my suitemate Noah and raided my fridge, but it was okay because I was so happy to see all of them. My Mom brought up frozen Eegee’s all the way from Tucson and I was ecstatic to try the February Flavor of the Month, MANGO TANGO. I love mangoes, as my close friends know, and I actually am enjoying it right now as I write this blog! I shared some last night with my friend Daria who is also from Tucson, and with fellow blogger LIESL HALL, who likes Eegee’s too! I remember in the summer her mother commented on how delicious Eegee’s are, and I would gladly have bought Liesl’s Mom an eegee’s if she were here. Ahhh Eegee’s really is ambrosia, especially with the mix of Mango. So after the very quick tour of the school and my suite, we went into town. I showed Grandpa and my family what there is to do in Prescott and we went out to eat at Red Robin. As usual, the food was delicious and it was just awesome having my family here. We went into town and I showed them the nice part of Prescott. While searching the town center, we found a large memorial plaque dedicated to those who fought and died during the Vietnam War that were from Prescott. Coincidentally, one of the names was the name of my Dad, Robert Leon! Of all the possible Leon’s, there was one named Robert. Weird. Afterwards, we went to Fry’s for a much needed shopping run, where I bought Longhorn Colby Cheddar Cheese, bread, jam, forks, a knife and more essentials. My Dad brought an entire box of Oreos which I plan on devouring after the APFT test on Friday.

Mango Tango!

My family also brought my favorite trail mix, Cashew Cranberry Almond Blend with Butterscotch Chips. According to my friend Angelo, the mix smells heavenly, but I am missing out as I am missing my sense of smell. After the trip to Fry’s, I treated them all to a trip to Outtakes. Everyone got something interesting from there and my Mom walked out with some hot chocolate, realizing that she had given up chocolate for Lent. Unfortunately, my family had to leave soon after that because they had to get home at a normal hour (it takes about 4 hours to get back to Tucson).

Grandpa!

I said goodbye to Grandpa, Dad, Mom, James, Michael and Sarah outside and watched the big red Expedition with the “My Son is an Eagle Scout” bumper sticker leave the ERAU parking lot. It was sad to see them go but I had a lot of fun with them while they were here. After they left, I had to go to the library to complete some homework and actually managed to get a lot done despite several distractions around me, including the hilarious antics of my friend Angelo, who snapped a picture of my hard at work in the cozy library. inlbrary

On the way back from the library I noticed that a lot of signs and posters have been put up around the school for upcoming SGA elections. The Student Government Association has these elections every year, and although I do not directly know any of the candidates, I have already made up my mind for whom I am voting for. I actually considered running to be an SGA representative for next year, but something kept me from doing it. If I had been running, a lot of time would have been devoted to a campaign that I do not have the time for right now. As a whole, the weekend was amazing and I cannot wait to come home soon and see a lot of my friends for Spring Break!

Julie for Treasurer, one of the running candidates

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The BLOG

February 25th, 2010

This post was written by Steven Leon

Me and my friend Mahlet who is Nicaraguan

: Me and the Vegas showgirl

I watched the movie “The BLOB” recently, and I remember when I was younger, my Dad showed me the movie and I found it to be quite droll and boresome. Now, I’ve decided to label my blog, The BLOG because I cannot come up with a more clever name. I just got back from an extra credit movie for Psychology. Earlier, I mentioned to my eccentric and motivated teacher, Dr. Lohn, that a movie my Satire teacher showed me last year, One Flew Over The Cookoo’s Nest, would be an interesting view for our class. The book is about the an evil nurse named Mildred Ratched who demeans the masculinity of the inmates of a mental hospital until a new patient (Jack Nicholson), proves to be more than she can handle. Later tonight I am going to a PI KAPPA PHI informational meeting with Paul and Angelo to learn more about this great fraternity.

All the events of the last week have rushed by so fast, and I may have forgotten some important stuff I did. Oh! I forgot to put in a picture from Vegas! So I met this showgirl named Ashelza from Bulgaria and got a free picture with her. The picture above is of me and her.

The cold up here has been ridiculous! We have had several snow filled nights that happened to cancel PT this Monday. We were supposed to run five or six miles that day, so I was very relieved to have gotten that text from my squad leader informing me that PT was cancelled. However, we ended up running the same lenght on Wednesday and it was perfectly fine, so it was all good. One thing I did notice however is that when I am outside, running, walking or even stealing Greg’s scooter, the ferocious and bitter wind is always, ALWAYS facing me, no matter what. Even when I was walking down to see the comedian, Andy Gross, on Friday, the wind was blowing so hard it blew off my hood of my ERAU sweatshirt. The frost on the ground and the blowing snow is something very nice to wake up to, because this doesnt happen, ever, in Tucson.

SNOW

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www.ebay.com has been a frequent favorite site of mine because I never took advantage of it. I bought the 2nd Season of the Simpsons, which arrived today, and right this Very second I am watching one of the more comic episodes. I also bought three DVD’s for very cheap (The Invasion, Cloverfield, Poseidon), which are a lot of fun to watch while doing math or psychology homework. I also bought a few presents for my sister, Sarah, whose birthday was on Sunday. I bought her a stuffed little piggie, as well as an extra PT patrolcap for me and a knife. Correction, I DID NOT buy Sarah a knife. I wish I could have been there for her birthday but I was here.

My EBAY merchendise

I also attended the Activity Fair that was sponsored by the International Students Association. I love wordly stuff, especially because I founded the International Club aty my high school with friends Teddy and Chelsea. There were tables from every country and an array of foreign food and items that dazzled the hundreds that attended. I sampled food from all the countries and enjoyed the Bratkartoffeln dish from Germany the most because I really miss German food. We were all given a “passport” from which we could get stamped to show the countries that we visited. I visited INDIA, GERMANY, POLAND, CANADA and THE PHILIPPINES, and the food was delici0us! Some bands performed music and Indian exchange students did some exotic dance while Polish old people danced around in cultural dress and hats.

: India, Germany, Poland, Canada, Philippines

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Granite Mountain

February 22nd, 2010

This post was written by Austin Troya

Things have been very slow, yet fast-paced recently. What I mean by that is a lot is going on, however, not much to mention. Probably the most interesting thing since my last post was a hike my friend, Brody, and I went on two weeks ago. We left the school at 11:00 am for Granite Mountain, a 10 minute drive. Once we got there, it was about a mile or so hike from the parking lot to the base of the mountain. What we didn’t realize was that we went over a ridge that would confuse us a lot on our way back. We started out strong, hiking up at a quick pace since there was no brush obstructing our path.

Granite Mountain is about 2500 feet vertical and depending on how you go, the horizontal distance can range from a mile to a mile and a half. There is also a trail on the backside.

Brody and I wanted to get up and down the mountain as quickly as possible, so we went up the side that’s most vertical. We decided that it would be easiest to get to the top if we followed streams up. Now, at the time, I didn’t even give thought to the fact that I couldn’t see any snow and yet, there were flowing streams on the mountain. The school is almost directly south of Granite Mountain, and when it snows or rains, the wind is generally going south. We got to a point where we had to cross between toes on the mountain when we were about half way up. We rounded a corner - until that point, we had seen only two four foot patches of snow - and suddenly we were staring at two feet of snow solid along the mountain. We figured it wasn’t too bad further along so we crawled across the snow (so we wouldn’t sink) and crossed the stream to the other toe. We made much less progress now that we were hiking in snow, but continued on. We got to what we thought was going to be the top and realized we had reached one of three summits. Unfortunately, ours was about 500 ft short of the others and require hiking down quite a ways before being able to reach the others.

It was four o’clock at this point and I told Brody that we really needed to go to make it down before dark (I’d been bugging him for a while and he insisted that we had kept going). To make matters worse, it began to snow and then we were in a blizzard. We began our descent, through the snow, and I realized that we were taking a completely different path down than we had up. Due to our lack of time, we had to do this to make sure we were off the mountain in time. Our largest problem was that since Brody and I had not seen the snow from the school’s vantage point, we only had light gloves and jackets. My hands and feet quickly became cold as we walked down along a stream. The temperature had dropped significantly both because we were so high up and since the sun was slowly going down. There’s not too much more to say about the walk through the bushes…ah, actually, almost the whole way up and the entire way down was through very dense brush to make our trek harder.

We finally reached the base of the mountain just as the daylight faded and that’s when we saw the ridge I mentioned earlier. We were both very confused since we didn’t remember it. Hiking toward it, we jumped on a trail that we thought would take us to the car. It was pitch dark at this point and after hiking on the trail for a while, I told Brody we should just turn off the trail and go over the ridge to try to find the car. It turns out this was a good idea since that trail just went along the base of the mountain forever (or a really long time). Once we got to the top of the ridge we saw the main road and we were home free. Walking through very dense mud, each of our shoes accumulated 5-6 pounds as we continued. After crossing through two barbed wire fences (not illegal at all) we finally reached the road.

Now it was almost 7:30 pm and pouring. Brody had a heavier jacket so he gave me a poncho he had in his bag. We walked across the street to figure out where we were and called my roommate, Trevor, to pick us up. After standing there for fifteen minutes, we figured out he had already passed us and so we made our way toward the parking lot. It turns out that the trail we hiked on the ridge made us over-shoot the car. We were almost at the lot by the time Trevor came back, but he took us the rest of the way.

Brody and I finally made it back to the school around 8 or 8:30…it’s all a blur now. We were both fine except some scratches and I had very mild frostbite on my fingers that’s almost completely healed by now since it wasn’t much below freezing (30 F) on the mountain. The lesson in that story was to either wait until the snow is completely gone or take the trail up the back side instead next time. Here are some photos/video of the mountain from our trip:

Video 1: Climbing Up the Mountain Video 2: Snowing at the top