This was the day I actually started traveling, but this adventure really started in early November. I attended IROS'96 in Osaka from November 4th to the 6th. After the conference I attended the U.S.-Japan Graduate Student Forum which was a one day mini-conference attended by 20 U.S. and 20 Japanese graduate students. During the forum a gentleman from the NSF Tokyo office told us about the Summer Institute in Japan. Since I was having such a good time in Japan I thought I might apply when I got back to the United States. One of the nice things about the forum was that the U.S. grad students got to travel to Tokyo and to Tsukuba to visit research labs. By the time I left Japan on the 14th of November, I definitely planned to return to Japan.
When I got back to Dartmouth I had a bad cold and a very bad case of jet-lag. By the time I recovered I had to hustle to meet the December 1st deadline to apply for the Summer Institute. I made it though, and that was the REAL beginning of World Tour '97.
So on to June 25th, 1997. Naturally I was way behind in my preparations to leave. On the 24th I was still working on my robot which I was planning to take to Japan. That meant that I would have to pack the night before I left. I had to take the 4:00am bus to Boston airport because my flight left at 8:00am. So I packed until it was time to catch the bus and then I was on my way with too much luggage and too little sleep. As usual, I told myself that I would sleep on the plane which almost never happens. But I did get an hour of sleep on the flight from Boston to Minneapolis.
Before I left I had arranged to meet Anita Shaw, another participant in the Summer Institute. I carried my bags from my arrival gate to hers which just about did me in. I was carrying my robot in one bag (which weighed about 30 pounds) and a laptop in another bag (I'd say around 20 pounds). So when I met Anita and Greg Jaczko (another SI participant who Anita met on her plane) I was too tired to accompany them to that huge mall in Minneapolis. Hey, a night without sleep and I'm a wreck! Finally we boarded our 747 bound for Narita airport. Charles Clinton (yet another SI participant) was sitting two rows ahead of me and we talked for a while about the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory where he would be working. When the plane took off we all realized that we were extremely lucky--it was nearly empty! I had a whole row to myself so I tried to get some sleep. Somewhere over the Pacific it became June 26th.