The BioBus Daily News

We rolled into Urbana last night, and got an early start this morning, pulling the bus into the Leal Elementary school driveway. We had about 10 clases of 20 students each on the bus today, split into two halves. Ric led discussions about the (cellular) meaning of life with half the class while I showed them the differences between bacterial and animal cells inside the bus. It was a beautiful warm sunny day and we ran off the solar-panels all day long.
We got a pile of letters from the students which was really nice – here is one of them:

Dear Bio-Bus
We are so happy that you came to Leal School to let us learn about bacteria and animal cells. Looking into the microscope was the best part. Seeing the bacteria was like watching little worms squirm around. The cheek cell looked like a smooshed and crumbled candy wrapper or a piece of sand.
Sincerely,
David
P.S.
How do cells make completely different cells?

We will work on answering all the great questions that came up over the next few days!
Tomorrow is another day of students, ranging from kindergarten to 5th grade. I expect hat Ric and I will have a great time tomorrow too, in spite of the rain we’re expecting.

Good day fellow bioforms

I’m so excited to be part of the BioBus project.  We have just finished our first full road-day on the way to Champaign / Urbana, IL where we will be opening the BioBus at various schools and universities to teach the peoples HOW THE CELL WORKS!  My whole body (I know, this is crazy) is like a million tiny individual lifeforms all working together to make me a person.  I think yours is, too, but you might want to ask your doctor about that.  After several rain-delayed days, we finally hit the road.  Our official starting point and time: Rubulad, 11:10 am.  We sat up last night talking to the live-in Rubuladers about the fascinating process of staining a cell, while one of them was in the process of creating a beautiful work of art – it’s amazing how many parallels there are between art and biology.  We also spent a decent amount of time talking about the slime mold.  Check it out: a slime mold is a bunch of separate one-celled life forms that, at a certain point in their life cycle, COME TOGETHER AND FORM A MULTICELLED LIFE FORM.  Just like me.  But don’t take my word for it – come aboard the BioBus and find out!  You will actually get to harvest cells from your own body and view them under a microscope.  Now I don’t know all the technicalities involved – I leave them up to Dr. Ben – but I do know that I am cells, and you are cells, and we are all cells.  This bus?  It is a cell.  But unlike you and I, it is not made up of invidual cellular bits of live all working together.  It is made of metal and wood and grease.  So it is not really alive.  But it’s the BioBus and it rocks!  Even with a new paint job?  Nope it’s still not alive, despite how it gleams in the midday sun!

We leave bright and early from this lonely truckstop in middle-of-nowhere PA for the golden shores.. er, plains.. of Illinois!  See you soon!

Love,

Ric

P.S.  He doesnt have opposable thumbs so he can’t actually write blogs himself, but I’d like to introduce our BioBus mascot, Elliot the Dragon.  He also doubles as the guard-dragon when we are away from the bus, and keeps a lively discussion on the road.  He make take part in classes, as he is very good with children and quite knowledgeable in cellular biology (as a dragon he was not allowed to enroll at Colombia, but spent several years auditing classes and is petitioning for an honorary degree.  We’ll see.)

Feels great to be on the road heading West again! We are retracing, in reverse, our journey made exactly one year ago, when Ed and Robin and I made our way to New York from California. I had forgotten how steep some of the PA mountains are – fortunately we are almost out of them and into flatter and flatter land. One mis-step today when I missed an exit – but Ric made good as navigator and brought us back to the turnpike quickly – after showing off the bus a little on country roads. The new paint job is really wonderful – people’s reactions are really funny, we’ve been getting even more dropped jaws, honks, and waves than usual.

My laptop is still dead and is making a harrowing ‘yowl’ every-time I turn it on. I fear for the hard-drive… fortunately I have a drive with a relatively recent backup. But we’ve got the lab computers setup tonight and bus-wide internet going strong. I am so grateful for all the donated computer equipment we’ve received.

Well, a long day of driving tomorrow as well as prepping for Monday’s teaching, but I will leave you with a few photos from the past few days.

I apologize for the lack of updates over the past few days, but my laptop is, after 6 years of trusty service, dying a painful death! So I write this post from my phone.
In spite of off-and-on torrential downpours over the last week and continuing into the foreseeable future (tomorrow, that is), we have laid down two coats of insulating primer on the outsides of the bus and 3 coats of insulating, reflective paint on the roof!
And, until it started pouring a few minutes ago, Donald started putting in the blues on the side of the bus. It is very exciting, and will look great. We are using oil paints, so the rain doesn’t seem to have much of an effect, though of course you can’t actually be painting while it is raining and you have to wait until after the bus dries off to begin again. So, if we are lucky we can get most of the rest of the color done tomorrow and Friday morning so that we can make it to Pittsburgh Friday evening and Urbana by Saturday night. Teaching begins Monday morning at Leal Elementary school in Urbana.