Introduction

Hello!  My name is Carey McCachern.  I am from Edmond, Oklahoma.  This is my last year at OU, and I can't wait for an exciting semester.  My major is Electrical Engineering, and I love to learn.

Carey in Cinque Terre

This summer, I worked for an underwater robotics company in Berkeley, California.  When I graduate, I hope to use my degree to build robots for sea or space exploration.  One of my tasks this summer was to make a 3D model of a shipwreck in Lake Tahoe.  I attached a GoPro to the bottom of my robot, and flew it around the sailboat pictured below.  This is one of the approximately ten thousand photos that the GoPro took during the dive.

Sunken Sailboat in Lake Tahoe

I tend to collect hobbies.  I enjoy photography, Geocaching, backpacking, astronomy, and I'm an amateur radio operator just to name a few.  If I can combine my hobbies, then that is even better.  The photograph below is an image I took of my friend Greg on our way to go backpacking in Colorado.

Milky Way from campground on the border of New Mexico and Colorado

I also really enjoy biking.  I bike to campus, the grocery store, and just about any other place I need to go within 5 miles of my apartment.  Bicycles are an amazing invention: you get to your destination, enjoy the outdoors, build muscle, are more environmentally friendly, avoid parking hassle, and save money all at the same time.  Although most people in Oklahoma exclusively use cars to go anywhere, transportation is different in other parts of the world.  For instance, despite lots of car traffic in Berkeley, CA, the city is very bike-friendly.  The photograph below was taken from the Berkeley I-80 bridge which is about a 5 minute walk from where I worked.  While there is much more highway traffic in the Bay than in Oklahoma, a lot of people ride their bikes or take the BART.  With public transit and a bike, I could get almost anywhere in the Bay area without ever needing a car.

Traffic under Berkeley's I-80 pedestrian bridge

Another one of my hobbies is traveling.  I spent last semester in Arezzo, Italy, a town in Tuscany.  Almost every weekend I travelled to someplace new.

Duomo in Arezzo

With every new trip comes a new map.  Maps are magical.  And while online maps are great for showing how to get from point A to point B, print maps give the big picture.  In addition to a collection of maps I own from places I've been, I also own an atlas for planning road trips (An atlas is a book of maps for those of you who can't remember a time before smartphones and Google Maps).  Just looking at an atlas makes me want to travel everywhere.  I'm even tempted to join a group called the Extra Miler Club whose members have the goal of traveling to as many US counties as possible.

Right now I am reading a book called Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon.  It is a story about a man who travels the United States by only driving on small roads, or "blue highways" in his Rand McNally Atlas.  The idea is a good philosophy for life as well as travel.  Too often, we focus on getting to a destination, but we don't enjoy the path there.  On my way to Colorado this summer, we attempted to avoid the Interstates, and I plan to continue traveling blue highways whenever possible.  Below is picture I took of one such blue highway just before we got to Great Sand Dunes National Park.  It really is a much more enjoyable experience to get off the beaten path and to explore somewhere new.

Road before Great Sand Dunes National Park

Note: All images shown are original works