Not-So-Serious Bio

I grew up in a part of Pennsylvania that transformed from dairy farms to suburbs as I watched. I spent my youth playing with ham radio and electronics, and listening to local progressive radio stations (having come of age at the unique time when both art-rock and punk were respected music forms).

In college, I was a DJ for WPRB (103.3FM, New Jersey) and spent the rest of my free time playing rugby (hook, wing forward), and exploring the swamps, briars, and EFMs of central NJ with the Princeton Hash House Harriers. (By the way, "hashing" may not be what you're thinking of.) In freshman year, I broke my leg in a rugby game against Villanova, who later offered me a teaching job---if I also served as faculty advisor to their rugby team.

Dartmouth undergraduates might be interested to know that Princeton did not have a fraternity/sorority system; rather, students joined "eating clubs." Like most rubgy players, I joined Tiger Inn, which had a rigorous selection process involving beer and a thorough examination for social skills (if you had any, you weren't allowed to join).

After college, I "squandered my twenties in Pittsburgh" (as my advisor likes to put it), running with the Pittsburgh Hash, which also led me to other adventures, such as

• racing bicycles (separated shoulder, fractured skull)
• being a founding member of the CMU Cycling Team (but I wasn't the oldest member---that was "Grandpa Dave," psychology grad student; I was just "Uncle Sean"; we had lots of fun playing mind games with the youngsters)
• running ultramarathons (stress fracture in foot). Jerry Agin, who was nearly as old as my Dad, kept going off to do these ridiculously long races over ridiculous terrain. When I asked him what it was all about, he'd just smile. So I had to learn. Fortunately, he was willing to teach.

Warnings to Ph.D. Students:

• don't do what I did in grad school, which was to spend more time doing long training rides in the North Hills than I did in the office
• and also be warned that life will catch up with you: at one point at Dartmouth, I was 30 pounds heavier than my old race weight

In my days in government service, I hung out in the small, close-knit Los Alamos trail-running community, exploring the canyons, the high mountains, the cool unmapped Anasazi ruins way out in the backcountry. With some other no-good louts, I helped found the Los Alamos Atomic Hash; and also learned the wonders of Los Posadas.

Moving to IBM and New York lead to

• orienteering (broken toe), the next logical step in trail-running: no trail. This is also the perfect sport for men, since you're not allowed to stop and ask for directions.

I moved to Dartmouth because it was the only Ivy League university on the Appalachian Trail. Now that I'm at Dartmouth, I am one of the few individuals who have lived in all four U.S. states that begin with "New."

I'm also spending more time:

• mountain biking on our wonderful local trail networks
• fat biking on these same trails when the snow cover is too deep for regular bikes
• cross-country skiing
• snowshoeing

Back to Sean's Home Page

Maintained by Sean Smith, sws@cs.dartmouth.edu