Travel, Structural Engineering, and Tech Startups!

With school starting this week in many parts of the United States, at this moment millions of students are completing the traditional first homework assignment of the school year: writing an essay entitled “What I did on my Summer Vacation”.  During my childhood, this exercise was always considered to be the best way to transition us kids from the lazing, fun-loving, carefree boys and girls of summer to the laser-focused, hardworking achievers of the other nine months of the year.  What better way was there to get me to slide back into work mode, than thinking about the hours I spent scavenging through the neighbors’ trash, looking for parts to build a go kart (summer before sixth grade)?  Or recapping all the time spent researching, via trial and error, the optimal grass-mud mix for sunbaked bricks, as I tried to build a full-scale replica of a Sumerian ziggurat in my back yard (summer before fifth grade)? Continue reading →