Oh, and

I FINALLY read the last Harry Potter. I meant to save it entirely for the plane, but my devilish housemate threw his copy on the table in front of me, so what was I supposed to do? As usual though, I devoured it in short order, so I figured I would reread it on the flights to Germany and pick up the details I missed the first time around. I finished it while I waited in Heathrow; I guess it took me ~14 hours to read it? Feel free to discuss the book openly in front of me; I will no longer shush you.

Cologne

I had a good week in Cologne, and am home, full to the brim with geochemistry, the local Kolsch, and kuchen (bier and cake, not usually at the same time). To whatever extent I was mildly emaciated after the field, I've successfully indulged my way back.

I've been to this area once before, but it was 13 years ago now, and I never had to navigate my own way around, and I have to give the Germans credit for an extremely easy and efficient public transportation system. I guess that is also in comparison to navigating around in China, which was slightly more challenging (probably due more to language than anything else).

Anyway, it was pretty uneventful trip; just the usual conference stuff. Sit around all day listening to talks until I was brain-dead, drink free beer at the poster sessions (that is the typical way we get bribed into it, and the germans were no exception), then stay out later than I planned, eating, drinking and socializing. Usually makes for a tiring week where I can't actually claim to have done anything tiring..... Only thing I can claim is that I presented a poster on the paleotemperature data I've been gathering from Wyoming samples.

As a side story, the most entertaining things at talks are the analogies scientists come up with to make their work easier to understand. The most entertaining ones I heard this conference came from a session I sat through on geochemical evidence for the origin of life. "Imagine you cook some chicken at 500 degrees for 500 million years, and then let it sit for a few more billion years. What color should it be? What does the chicken smell like?" This was an attempt to make it clear why it is important to distinguish between gray and black, and why the aromatics go away. I was entertained. Won't be trying it anytime soon in my own kitchen, however.

We did have an afternoon off in the middle of the week, so I wandered around the city with some other grad students, and then spent an hour or so at some hydrothermal baths in the city. It was a nice way to spend a cool, rainy summer afternoon.

The Cologne Cathedral, the symbol of the city, and a pretty amazing gothic cathedral:


typical european street near my hotel:

Loose ends

So, the end of the trip was pretty uneventful, and I worked my way through Minnesota and South Dakota sample sites in about 5 days.

I got to see the Badlands again, and a thunderstorm that rolled through early Friday morning provided another spectacular sunrise (opening picture). I crashed in Laramie with some Santa Cruz friends who'd just moved to town/were attending a conference.

I've enjoyed the last couple of days in town, catching up with friends, catching a Shakespeare Santa Cruz performance and working on a poster. I leave for Germany on Saturday (ok, a long plane ride, but at least it isn't a car and I can read Harry Potter finally!), and will be at a conference in Cologne for a week. Then I'm home, almost for good......

Home!

Got back to SC yesterday afternoon in enough time to unpack, have a fantastic gnocchi dinner with fresh, home-grown veggies (yes! I haven't missed all of the California prime time!) and unpack a little. It was great to wake up to familiar sun through the skylight and hear the sea lions again. It's good to be home!

Home soon...

Just a quick post to say I should be home late Sunday night or certainly by Monday, and should be done with work in South Dakota by Friday night. Saturday and Sunday promise to be LONG driving days. Santa Cruzians: see you soon!

Bridge collapse

(taken from a spur road down from University Ave, of the north part of the bridge)
On Sunday afternoon, under the guise of getting a MN gazeteer from Midwest Mountaineering, I borrowed Ilana's bike and rode over to the Seven Corners region, which is just west of the collapsed I35W bridge. I had expected to spend a half an hour in that area to get a glimpse, and instead spent 3 hours on a slow, stunned 360 tour of the area. They had just reopened the stone arch bridge to the public, which is the first bridge north of I35W. And it was packed with people. In fact, the whole circuit was packed with people and I was extremely glad I had a bike. Around the time that I reached the Guthrie, just before crossing the stone arch, the Twins game let out, so many folks used the opportunity to come see what there was to see. Some people were visibly shocked, some upset, some quiet and some behaved like it was some kind of circus show. A lot of my photos will look just like the media photos; if you travel the circuit from seven corners to stone arch, then south down the east side of the U of M campus and back across the washington Ave bridge, you get all the vantage points available, which aren't many. Absolutely everything is roped off with police tape and many of the smaller U of M pedestrian bridges are closed. But those vantage points are plenty.

Photos:
Taken from a parking garage in seven corners toward the north side of the bridge. The cars are all on the southbound side of the bridge, and the bridge in the background with traffic on it is University Ave.
The north part of the bridge on the river. It is a little hard to see, but the structure in front is a part of the locks system for the ship traffic on the river. I don't know how much/if any damage the locks sustained, but the bridge JUST missed taking out the locks too.
The media circus on University Ave, near the entrance ramp to I35W southbound.
The amazing thing about this scene, to me, is how the road looks like silly putty, when you stretch it then twist it. Except that all of that is concrete and steel.
The whole scene was really hard to look at and hard to not look at. It also amazes me, especially after seeing it, that the collapse didn't kill more people. The potential was there to do so much more damage, both in terms of lives and infrastructure, so I guess that is something to be grateful for, but it will be a long clean-up.

Iowa

The three-day tour of Iowa started in Ames. I stopped there to pick up a selection of clam shells from folks in the biology department; this inevitably means a trip to a basement room full of odd bits of preserved animals. In this case, many jars of amphibians and snakes!
Then, a quick wander through central campus:
I then headed south, towards Madison county/covered bridge land. I hadn't realized those bridges aren't actually in use anymore (well, at least the one I saw), so the road has been built bypassing the old covered bridge. I pulled in late to a campsite in the SW corner of the state, and started the whole process again the next morning. Soil and river water sampling got me as far as the northwest corner; I also stopped in Sheldon and visited the DeJong graves there (mom's mom's family). I couldn't find great-grandpa Peterson's grave though. Stayed the night near Spirit Lake where it rained all night and all morning. Stopped in Ruthven, saw a few more graves: and then grabbed the last Iowa samples in the north central region before heading to Minneapolis.

Pork Plasma?

So, as I waited to pay the toll in Decatur to cross the Missouri River into Iowa, I saw a tanker trunk in front of me. I wouldn't have payed much attention except for this warning on the back: "Inedible...something non-food grade something.....pork plasma.

First of all, when was the last time you wanted to order up some pork plasma for dinner? In fairness, I did eat pork blood in SE China, but it is served in little rectangles with a tofu-like texture and is tasty and salty, but still not common in american cuisine.

Which leads to the second thought that crossed my mind. Let's say you did have a hankering for pork plasma. With or without the "inedible" warning, would you really walk up to a tanker truck full of the stuff and try to get a swig? Curious.

And the third thought. What IS non-food grade pork plasma used for and for that matter what is food-grade pork plasma used for?

The googling effort on this will just have to wait.

Nebraska Hospitality

Cranked through Nebraska in four days. I kind of like it; especially the northwest and northeast corners. Maybe I just happened to drive through them at the right time of day (dusk, clouds)...

I won't bore you with too many details, because modern soil pictures are even less exciting than fossil ones (I know, hard to imagine). But, the Nebraska soil scientists are an incredibly helpful bunch, and they did what they could to keep me from leaving empty handed: However, I'm gaining some valuable experience that should help me if this whole academics thing falls through. I figure all of the logistical work makes me qualified to be an event planner. Or maybe I could also get a job as a truck driver with all the driving? Or perhaps a singing career? I've been doing a lot of loud car-singing lately.

I've also had to adjust my sense of a successful day: I'd say today has been the most successful since I managed to collect three samples, each one at least 100 miles away from the one before, and then managed to make it to Ames, IA this evening. I also managed to time each sample between heavy rain and thunderstorms, which actually made the sampling stops cool and pleasant.

Also just heard about the interstate bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis, close to my old neighborhood. So far, I've heard from everyone I know, that they're fine, but that makes the second interstate bridge to go down in a couple of months (the bay area lost a bridge to a tanker truck a few months back).

A couple pics:
the obligatory crooked-arm shot in front of the not-so-dismal Dismal River, NW Nebraska. I tried to stay out of the way, but I'm just going to blame it on the field hat. An idyllic pastoral scene from NE Nebraska