Unplugged in Baxter State Park

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Some of the best reset buttons don’t have a power button at all.

This summer, a group of us from UMaine packed up and disappeared into Baxter State Park for a weekend completely off the grid. No internet, no electricity, no notifications. Just good friends, big mountains, and the kind of quiet you only find deep in the Maine woods.

Trip highlights

🥾 Hiking Doubletop Mountain. Steep, rocky, and completely worth it for the view at the top.
🛶 Canoeing on still, mirror flat water.
🔥 Grilling saffron jooje kabob over the fire, a little taste of home in the middle of the wilderness.
🌈 A surprise double rainbow over camp to send us off.

The hike in followed a mossy stream through the trees, cool and green and completely silent.

It opened up onto granite ledges and rushing water, the perfect place to stop, soak our feet, and catch our breath.

And then, right as we started packing up to head home, the sky decided to put on one last show.

Watch the vlog

I put together a short video of the whole weekend. Take a look:

Highly recommend Baxter State Park for a summer adventure. Sometimes the best way to recharge is to fully unplug.

Swapping the Engine in My Subaru

Sat, 20 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Some weekends you recharge in the mountains. Others you spend covered in oil in a parking lot, and honestly, those are just as good.

My Subaru Outback had been fighting me for a while, so one weekend we set up shop in the parking lot and got to work.

We started out hoping for a modest fix, replacing the valves and valve guides on the original engine to bring it back to life. I pulled the cylinder heads and we went through the valvetrain piece by piece.

But the old engine had other plans. After a lot of work it became clear it was simply done. So we did what any stubborn mechanical engineer would do. We pulled the whole thing and swapped in a fresh engine.

Out with the old, up on the hoist and out of the car.

I did this alongside my great friend and master wrench, and what could have been a frustrating repair turned into one of my favorite weekends of the semester. Engine hoist, hand tools, a cylinder head on the bench, and a lot of laughs. There is something deeply satisfying about understanding a machine well enough to take its heart out and give it a new one.

A clip from the swap

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Watch the full vlog

We filmed the whole weekend. Here is the story from start to finish: