No wonky

Another great interweb diversion...

2009-10-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Since I'm yet again behind on my updates, I offer this little gem of a blog to keep you entertained. Cake Wrecks. I can't take any credit for finding it; Rachel read about it in the New York Times, and has since spread the love. Start at the beginning, or preview some goodies: remember bandit the crayfish? Here is his cake-likeness. Cars on the cake brings back fond memories of birthday cakes from my youth. In fairness, though, those cakes were FABULOUS - We had cars, and rocket ships and edge-to-edge M&M tiling. Go Mom! AND, they were exactly what we wanted. Not sure the same can be said for all of these cakes, though.....

Here's a lovely example of a recent personal "cake wreck." Well, it wasn't a total wreck, and this wasn't the finished product, but it was a chocolate cheesecake designed to be a mid-ocean spreading ridge, complete with the magnetic anomalies. Imagine it baked, with the center line scooped out, and filled with strawberry jam.... Megan and I designed this for the earth science picnic - it could have qualified in "best chocolate dessert," "creative use of cheese" and "best geologically themed food item," but we designed it hoping to win the Trifecta. Only later did we find out we could only qualify in one category, not all three.

(preparing to pour the batter over the basalt, I mean crust, I mean..)

(yum)

Ok, I tried to get back to lecture-making, but this site is too good. A couple more examples. Check this one out to see a preview of the Yeti's defense cake. AND, she pays homage to talk like a pirate day. New favorite interweb distraction.

Why am I paying rent?

2009-08-18T21:18:00.000-07:00

(It's a long day in the lab when the wrenches come out)

After Washington, I spent a good two weeks in Santa Cruz before I left again, this time for a work trip to Pasadena. All in all, it was a great trip. It turns out that when a machine gets "automated," no one wants to use the old, manual machine. SO, I had it all to myself and had 10 extraordinarily good days in the lab. The metric of success these days isn't actually how many samples get measured in total, but how many I manage to get onto the mass spec compared with how many I start cleaning. Typically, I ruin or flush away (let me clarify: on a vaccuum line, not the toilet) at least one sample for every 3 days in the lab. This trip, I had a perfect record, despite still doing a few stupid things on the line. This also probably means I used up 6 months to a year of good lab karma...

I even managed to take the weekend off to play in southern LA with my friend since 1st grade, Lundi. She showed me some of the classics: the hollywood walk of fame (yes, there is still a mob around MJ's star), Rodeo Drive and Beverly Hills. After getting foiled in our attempt to see an outdoor free concert at The Getty, we consumed a nice bottle of wine on the Santa Monica beach and caught up on the last three years or so.

(I get Britney)

(Lundi gets Kermit)

(molested blocks of cement. Oh, I mean famous blocks of cement)

(this is a guy's personal semi being valet parked.... I thought about asking him if I could borrow it to use as my field vehicle, but he didn't seem very friendly)

Got back to smoky Santa Cruz and am just trying to make the most of the week and half at home before I leave for 3 weeks in the field. Cross your fingers for good fire karma for that trip!

STP and then some

2009-07-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

(a gorgeous day out on Lake Washington)

Since I've already forgotten the details of the Death Valley trip, I may as well skip straight to vacation and then maybe some day I'll post about Death Valley (aka you may never hear about death valley....). So, a couple of Mondays ago (and despite some last minute travel complexities regarding the end of the mountie's clutch - ouch!) Calla and Pete and I made it to Seattle in a day without too much trouble and managed not to lose the bikes. Spent 4 nice days with the family; caught up on some sleep, racked the far recesses of my brain trying to remember the names of My Little Ponies,

(um, firebolt? Morning glory? Maybe we should just put them in costumes...)

caught up with Grandmama,

(grandmama is now officially on the interweb!)

(da fam)

and even managed to get out sailing.

(who was the crazy monkey who let me steer?)(crazy monkey)

Bright and early Saturday morning, Calla, her family, her friend Kylan and I joined ~10,000 other people on a bike ride to Portland. We had beautiful weather all day Saturday, and arrived in Centralia happy, a little tired and wicked hungry.

(Calla, her family and their two tag-alongs)

As an aside, of the the various endurance sports and outdoor pursuits I've participated in, cycling wins the prize for making me want (need?) to eat the most (followed closely by skiing). One rootbeer float, plate of spaghetti, polish sausage and bag of cheetos later, the food coma set in and we all crashed by 9:00. Sunday found us with not such nice weather, but we learned how to dodge the rooster tails created by the rider in front of us. (Kylan and Calla wait with the masses to cross the Lewis and Clark Bridge into Oregon)

(the after photo)

Anyway, a rewarding experience and I feel especially lucky to have shares it with Calla's family. Also entertained and impressed by the HUGE variety of folks out for the ride, and the unicyclist who made it (apparently with the original goal of doing it in a day!). Don't worry, Christie, it wasn't Dubin.

Mom and Dad patiently waited in the rain for us at the finish, and then we headed to Manzanita Beach out on the coast, to join Dan and Helene and Audrey for a couple of nights. More relaxing, though I read an issue of Vanity Fair from cover to cover, that had some great pieces about Palin, AIG, and the implosion of Harvard's endowment and found some of that mildly distressing. If a school like Harvard can find itself with a budget deficit of $220 million, what will happen to the already cashed strapped institutions like the UC system? Well, we're quickly finding out... Playing on the beach and drawing with sidewalk chalk helped, though, as well as a nice trip to the Tillamook cheese factory (mmmm, fresh cheese curds!).

(conquering crabs)

(I only remember agreeing to have my feet buried. Big brothers ALWAYS escalate....)

Thoughts on the scientific process

2009-04-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

I know I've been promising Death Valley pictures and stories, but have gotten a little bogged down. I'm heading to Pasadena this weekend however, so I'll have some random bits of time to kill in the lab and will post, I promise. In the meantime, a friend posted this link on facebook, so I thought I'd share it with you all. I'd say misplaced competition is my biggest complaint with science (I'm sure it really applies to most of academics though) so it was interesting to see the results of someone who made the conscious decision to try to play well with others.

Enjoy!

Quarter Collage

2009-04-12T17:27:00.000-07:00

(Pacific Madrone in Castle Rock State Park. My favorite tree here in California)

Since everything from winter quarter is out of order anyway, here is the amalgamated happenings from the rest of quarter. I guess spring break will get its own post.

There were some nice hikes. Some were rainy, some were complete with slugs and newts and some even had sun breaks and friends from long ago and far away.

(Rachel and Leighton conquer slippery rock)

(slug love)

(Leighton models the latest in slugwear. Look for it at the bookstore soon...)

Greta came from the cold, snowy east for a visit and California was nice enough to bless her with reasonably nice, sunny weather for February. Don't think the reservoirs were happy about that though.

(old friends in a cave)
(checking out the rain from Castle Rocks State Park. We lucked out)

The annual cocktail party.....

(pretty much sums up the evening)

The annual Tahoe weekend. Great weather, and the advent of snow-suzie sticks? Don't know, but it adds an element of challenge to the game when you're supposed to catch the cup one-handed, no body trapping. To wear mittens (and most certainly fumble) or go bare-handed (and certainly lose feeling and fumble)? Tough call.

(Pascale gearing up for the throw)

(Pete and Dai gear up for some heckling)

(gorgeous view of Lake Donner)

And, a glimpse at what I've spent most of my time doing: dealing with these lovely rock specimens. Paleosol carbonates at their finest. Sectioned, glued in epoxy and drilled. Yes! Witness the magic. The first chapter on these lovely nuggets of science is finally in the editing process and hopefully will be submitted for review SOON! End of the month, maybe? Yay!

New Zealand, part something until the end

2009-03-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

(Ah, January in New Zealand. Does not suck)

Ok, we're just going to truck through the whirlwind of the rest of the trip. We parted ways with the big group in Auckland and Ellen and I soldiered on. First, we went back south to the Waitomo Caves to participate in the infamous cave rafting. Bottom line: put on a wetsuit, crazy-big shorts, helmet and headlamp and an innertube and float down some underground river. It was fun. And really cold. And you see "glow worms" which aren't REAL glow worms. They are just the larvae of some moths that have bioluminescence. For obvious reasons, I don't have any pictures.

Then we headed to Tongariro National Park, home of a volcano paradise and home to the volcano that played Mt. Doom in those movies about Hobbits. Our attempt to do the alpine crossing was thwarted by rain, so we did a short, nice, rainy waterfall hike instead. I could see hobbits appearing at any point.....

(the volcanoes in Tongariro. or most of it...)

(a waterfall)

(a giant carrot. found while entertaining ourselves instead of hiking in Tongariro)

(sweet, sweet volcanic deposits. Wonder where they came from??)

(Lake Taupo, aka large caldera. Apparently the result of a VERY LARGE eruption that happened ~1800 years ago.)

After Tongariro, we headed north to the Bay of Islands. On the way, we found a lovely little beach. For some reason, I felt a special affinity for this place. Hmm.(Yay! Who knew we had a beach in New Zealand!)
(ripples on my beach. check out the shell fragments collecting in the troughs!)

(Goat Island. Scene of some snorkeling)

The Bay of Islands was beautiful. Gorgeous water, beaches and we saw bottlenose dolphins, and one little blue penguin. We rode the boat through the hole in the rock and got a lot of sunshine.

(Kind of reminds me of something out of a Bond movie. Any minute, the wall is going to open up in the rock and reveal a nuclear weapon...)

Finally, we stopped through a Kauri forest on the way back to Auckland. Kauri trees are native to New Zealand, but were heavily logged. The Kauri forest has some very old, very big old growth trees.

(this tree is 16 meters in circumference!!! That would take ~12 people, joining hands, to completely ring the tree!)

New Zealand, Part 1: Wellington and the escape north

2009-03-08T22:47:00.000-07:00

(Huka Falls. That gorgeous turquouise water is the result of extra natural filtering from all the volcanic rocks that the water passes through. A LOT of the water looks like this!)

Ok, I'm finally going to post about the New Zealand trip. Sorry for the delay. Going through the photos overwhelmed me just a bit......

Arrived in Wellington (southern-most city on the north island) on January 11th, for a conference on climates and biota from when the dinosaurs died (65 Ma. in case any of you are shaky on your geologic history) until we had ice on the poles (roughly the Eocene-Oligocene boundary, ~34 Ma.). So that means it was a conference devoted to studying greenhouse climates. It was great! Gave a talk, and there were only about 150 people who attended, so it was a really nice size.

(View of Wellington)

To me, the best conference tidbit was a sneak preview about a tropical temperature reconstruction made from a giant prehistoric snake. The thing is huge: they estimate it weighed around a ton, was 13 meters long and up to almost a meter in diameter! If you didn't hear this already, check out the NPR story about it from early February.

Amazing in its own right, but it also bears on climate. Snakes can only get really large when the climate is really warm (that whole cold-blooded thing). Tropical temperature reconstructions have been a problematic area for awhile - how do you heat up the poles without heating the tropics, which is what many of the paleoclimate records suggest up to this point? Do the tropics actually have some kind of intrinsic thermostat or are our proxy techniques failing us somehow? Climate models have a lot of trouble getting the poles to warm without heating the tropics..... So, this particular story suggests that the tropics were much hotter back in the day than other records suggest, simply based on the size of this snake. And yes, in the talk, they referred to this as "Giant Snake Paleothermometry." Awesome. AND, the presenter even wondered out loud whether this would help him impress J. Lo. I love my job.

(An esteemed researcher of early Paleogene climates. Perhaps he thought he was riding the giant snake?)

Enough about the conference. Wellington was a nice city, not unlike some California port cities. The conference was held in the conference center of Te Papa, which is also a natural history museum. Sadly, I missed the exhibit on the Colossal Squid.

We finished up the conference on the 16th, and I took off with some other attendees to work our way north to Auckland, to drop a couple of folks off at the airport. The first day, we drove to Hamilton, and saw a lot on the way. Drove by Mount Ngauruhoe (aka Mt. Doom) in Tongariro National Park, stopped along the shores of Lake Taupo (which is an old caldera) for ice cream, saw Huka Falls and stopped at the Waikite Valley Thermal pools for a soak before driving the rest of the way to Hamilton.

(the source of the heat for the thermal pools)

(Waikite Valley Thermal Pools)

(Turns out baby ferns look like monkey tails)
(This weird texture felt like rubber, but apparently is what the actual leaves grow from?)
(just an odd bird with a fantastic hair-do)

Next day, we headed from Hamilton to the west coast, to a town called Raglan. On the way we stopped at Bridal Veil falls, which is now the second Bridal Veil Falls I've seen that is also associated with columnar basalt (quick, can anyone guess where the first one is?).

(Bridal Veil Falls. It you have a good eye, you can pick out the columnar jointing of the basalt that makes up the cliff)

After that, we headed into Raglan, a cute little laid-back surf town (wait a minute......), and went kayaking and swimming.

(geologists at the beach.....)

(limestone cliff blocks that had fallen into the water)(paddling among the limestone cliff blocks)

Next day, we headed into Auckland, dropped some folks off at the airport, then rented a car and headed back south.... Stay tuned.

A different kind of Valentine

2009-02-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

I celebrated Valentine’s Day with my new love, ‘Bea. I know, we’re not supposed to love material possessions, but I’m hoping you all won’t judge me harshly. After all, do we ever really have control over love? We only met formally a couple of weeks ago, but it was love at first sight. Now, I can’t wait to get out of bed everyday just to see Bea and head to school together. I owe Mel for our meeting, and heard about Bea for weeks before we finally got together.

(Yeah, Bea's hot.)

The timing has been a little hard, as it often is, what with the rainy season finally coming, but we’re working through it and even making long-term plans. We've planned a long ride together this summer that I'm sure will really bring us together......

We celebrated today by watching the Tour of California come through town. Missed the boat on getting into the mountains to see them on the Bonny Doon road climb, but Pete said they were able to see Levi Leipheimer chase down the pack. When we saw them roll through town, he was in the lead with Thomas Peterson close on his heels, and the rest of the break and the Peloton a little ways back. And let me tell you, the support cars have a whole lot of fancy bicycles on them.

(spectators exhibiting alternate uses for spandex)

(the leaders: LL on the right and TP on the left. You might have to click on this photo to see the bigger version. What do you mean you can't tell???)

(the rest of the break. We're told there are other famous cyclists in the bunch. Can you find them?)(the Peloton. Trust me on this one)

If you'd like more useful news about the race, check out this news post, or if you're curious about some of the hazards of Santa Cruz Mountains road, check out this youtube video....

Breaky-break

2009-02-05T23:22:00.000-08:00

So, I managed to fly back to Seattle in the midst of the big snowstorm. In the time I lived there, I NEVER saw snow on the ground in town. Touching down definitely reminded me of winter break in Minneapolis, not in Seattle. BUT, it is awfully pretty out there with snow. BUT, it is much more of a logistical headache, so there was a stronger element of being cooped inside with cabin fever than snowy times in Minnesota.

Spent some nice time cooking, eating, watching movies, playing and catching up on sleep with the family (the usual break activities). We managed to make it in to town to see the Nutcracker ballet, which I think is the first time I've ever seen it live. The Seattle version has sets and costumes designed in part by Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are), so the production was a visual feast. Audrey is apparently getting old enough now that she kind of remembers me from last christmas, and it was fun to get to be her new favorite playmate for a day or two. Ah the fickleness of 3-year-olds. They have many best friends.

(What do you do when you've finally tired the kid out?)

(you play with her toys, of course!)

After christmas, it was off to Alaska, to see folks and ski. And it was flippin' freezing up there. I was introduced to the newest women's ski fashion craze (Bryn is always on top of these things): the puffy skirt. That's right. Like a synthetic puffy jacket, except its a skirt. I scoffed and teased and then wore Bryn's second skirt out skiing, and my rear was appreciative. Multiple days of everyone's eyelashes and hair freezing from their breath, and some nice meals catching up with all the folks. Even some new year's resolutions: finish my PhD* (there, i said it, its in print), take more risks (don't worry Mom, I don't mean the life-risking risks).

*or within a couple of months of finishing

(puffy people dressed for fireworks)

(Tomas, Jessie, Bryn and Louis contemplate the opening huck)

(dawn patrollers out. I think we were actually out at dawn, which of course means nothing up there in the winter. Note Bryn modeling the puffy skirt. Photo courtesy of Carolyn Rosner)

Prepare yourself

2009-01-27T21:45:00.001-08:00

Ok, I promised I’d post more over break when I did some traveling. AND, you’ve probably all noticed that there has still been the same old picture of a sad crayfish. In fact, I know you’ve noticed because I’ve heard a few complaints…..

BUT, before we can move on to the exciting break stories, I can’t just skip over the eventful second half of fall quarter. I will try to go quickly however. In fact, just pretend you’re at a horse race, and read the rest as if it there is an announcer following the action.

Wendy’s wild night of trampolining and karoke, heading into thanksgiving, lots of grading, quick, made a pumpkin pie, touch football in the park. Beautiful T-day. Eat, eat, eat lots of food, Pascal’s tur-duck-en, tryptophan naps.

(the great sing-along)

(happy eaters)

(that is, I mean was, one glorious tur-duck-en)

(really, we could be playing anything. Rest assured, it was football)
(My favorite part of the meal.....)(Thomas takes his nap shift, while Dai looks like he's ready for his)

More grading, grading, lab planning, elementary school kids with bottles of colored water and fish costumes, one more job application, last lab, grading, done with TA’ing FINALLY (forever???).

Cram last minute data analysis into a week, make a poster, drive to San Francisco, join 15,000+ (I’m not kidding) geoscientists for a week of anything-we-can-slap-geo-onto-the-front-of, annual thirsty bear and lefty’s (with notable party crashers? Dai? Rychard? Beaver sauces? Unclear). One nice, calm, weekend at home. Fly to Seattle during the “let it snow” party in the Pacific Northwest.

(The old guard at lefty's, presided over by CRowe)

(Slugs and former slugs amass at Lefty's. Can you spot the non-geo "ologists"?)

(Look! Here's one! Oh wait, this is an "onomer," not even an "ologist")

(I don't know. I think I arrived to late to understand this one. How did they decide who got to be "hot dijon" and who got to be "sweet honey?")

Whew. It went by fast, sorry for so few stories……….

Bandit the Crayfish

2008-11-17T22:51:00.000-08:00

The night before Rachel and I went to the elementary school, we brought the crayfish for the lesson back to the house. One aggressive crayfish had a tub to himself, because he didn't play well with the others. The rest were in a high-sided mop bucket.

I left them in the living room, and took the lid off of the lone crayfish's tub. I'd only put the lid on to keep the crayfish from slopping out into my car, and figured he needed air for the night. I may or may not have done this a few hours after hearing Rachel's childhood story of crayfish escapees in their car. I've got no real excuse other than blatant absentmindedness.

The next morning, as we got ready to load up, we decided to check on them. You know when you just KNOW something has happened, before you have any proof? Well, this didn't really take any ESP skills but, sure enough, the lone crayfish escaped the tub in the night and was loose in the house. Our handy information cards told us they can only live for 10 minutes out of water, so we did a quick look, found no escapee, then hoped we'd have a half a day before he started stinking.

2 hours later, after teaching, the search began in earnest. After staring behind the dishwasher, I was hopeless that we would ever find this critter. Who new there were so many dark hideyholes? While mentally preparing to break the bad news to the housemates, I heard a scratching sound. Finally, a sad, slow, dust-covered crayfish shuffled out from behind the recycling. Dust on his antennae, dust on his pinchers. He almost looked sheepish.

We named him Bandit.

November? Really???

2008-11-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

(Going rogue?)

Somehow, October passed by in a blur of TAing, computer time and music. And election nonsense of course. I'm sure I'm not the only one who attended a halloween party with multiple Palins, a couple of husband Todds, and, oddly enough, a few pregnant Bristols (only one of whom was actually pregnant). The pumpkin was even carved in Sarah's honor, and thanks to the "voting booth of horror" I cast the only vote I will ever cast in favor of the Palin family.

(Dai expresses his opinion of my vote)

And while I can't seem to account for October with the "normal" things, there has been plenty of good, live music to make up for it. Hardly Strictly Bluegrass of course, but I've seen a bunch of cheap and great live shows at a seemingly unlikely venue called the Crepe Place. Who knew a restaurant that specializes in beer and thin pancakes stuffed with all good things would have such good taste in music and bring such unlikely groups? We Saw Sean Hayes and These United States play, and Trampled By Turtles is coming through in December.

(Hardly Strictly Bluegrass for hardly strictly few)

November holds promise for entertainment of a different kind. As part of a "communicating science" class, we are working with a local elementary school to teach short science lessons to 3-5 graders. I have the bulk of my lessons coming up, and am excited to see what will become of 30 3rd-graders let loose on a tub of cray fish. I also thought it would be it would be a bigger juxtaposition to teach 8-year olds in the morning, and 20-years in the evening, but mostly I just wish 20-years would get as excited about learning about density as 8-year olds do.

Anyway, posting will continue to be sporadic for the next couple of months, but should pick back up with the holidays and winter quarter. Traveling starts again; I just found out I'm giving a talk for a conference in New Zealand in January!

And a few more halloween pictures, just 'cuz:

(Marge and Moe. Homer was at the (you guessed it) keg.

(Two California Raisins and the lamb of God)(Somebody got a little too into character....)
(Who knew those grapevine skills from high school soccer would be so useful?)

My Personal Government Bailout

2008-10-22T23:22:00.001-07:00

Well folks, in a time of economic uncertainty and government bailout, the folks at the most auspicious of all government science funding agencies (the agency-who-shall-not-be-named) decided to bail me out. Yes, the proposal I submitted on my birthday will be recommended for funding! WOOHOO! I'm gonna say it again. WOOHOO!

My advisor scared the living daylights out of me in my office, and then merely said, "So, we should do the happy dance," and started dancing. It took me a couple of seconds to realize what he was getting at, and in the meantime I looked at him like he was from another planet.

Needless to say, this feels SUPER validating, since this is the real deal. It kind of makes me feel like a real scientist! And maybe means this quarter will be the last time I TA??? Now I really AM counting my chickens....

Another political departure

2008-10-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm taking the slacker's route on posting, but unless you'd like photos of students firing projectiles into tubs of sand and flour, or of me staring at spreadsheets, I haven't got much to post. The quarter has started in earnest and I'm TA'ing, again. And unfortunately for you faithful readers (but good for my sanity), it is not a field-based class.

Anyway, to keep you entertained, I'm posting a link to a video, in anticipation of tonight's debate. I also recommend you check out other videos this group has made, especially "swing(er) states."

Sadly, I'll be teaching lab and will have to catch the debates later on the old interweb.....

Planned unplanned time. Yar.

2008-09-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

Avast and shiver me timbers, September be slippin’ away. We be facing yet o’nother National Talk Like A Pirate Day in a few wee hours, so I thought I’d start a practicin’

The fair port ‘o Santa Cruz has seen many a visitor in the last fortnight. The scurvy knaves, Sarah and Stephanie, came down from the afar isle o’ Berkeley, and we played at the beach,

(No fun at the beach or ye'll walk the plank!)

threw the discs, (Aye, a confusing hole. No one found the refrigerator)

ate up greek food and ran obstacle courses on the playground. All trainin’ fer bein’ a buccaneer.

Q: How much does a pirate pay for corn?
A: A Buccaneer!

And the next weekend, the landlubbin’ parents (what is pirate for parent?) sailed through, and we ate,

(Yar, the mighty Cap'n Snell with his most fearsome weapon, the veggie peeler)

paddled the mighty seas in search o’ the birds,

(The swarthy birders debate)

and they went home with plenty ‘o Santa Cruz' finest booty (and a bottle of rum). Yar. Much swashbuckling done by all, and no one had to walk the plank.

Q: What does a pirate say on his 80th birthday?
A: Aye matey…..

September madness (also known as canning/harvesting/picnicking/holy-crap-I-only-have-3-weeks-to-do-everything-I-said-I’d-do-over-summer season)

2008-09-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

(The front yard harvest)

September in Santa Cruz is a glorious thing. The weather is beautiful, the fog disappears for a bit (before the rain rolls in for winter), and the produce goes crazy, so everyone has been busy making the most of the last few weeks before students reappear and the pace of life jumps up a few notches.

(Dai captures the Dinner Harem on film. How does he do it?)

It is harvest season, and as the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But I don’t have lemons, just a whole lot of asian pears. I’ve never heard of pear-ade (I’m sure it exists by now). So instead Rachel and I made a day of canning other pear products.

(Rachel on quality control duty)(if only I knew how to juggle....)

I’ve never canned anything in my life. My only training came about a month ago, when I helped Sora can various peach foodstuffs (salsa and jam). I will admit to being very inspired by how hard it didn’t seem, and by reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I highly recommend it, but be prepared to start spending a lot more time in the kitchen. She can even inspire a person to want to make their own cheese. I’ll save that adventure for a later date however.

(the stove, hard at work)

The grand tally came to ~10 quarts of pear chunks, 6 pints of pear jam, and about 3 pints of pear puree. Oops, I think I just gave away Christmas.
Things I learned:
1: the house gets really warm when you have the stove on all day in September.
2: Hearing the POP that tells you the cans sealed is very satisfying.
3: Having a few cans that DON’T pop is even more satisfying because then you get to quality-control the goods (pear jam is really good on waffles).
4: Pear puree tastes just like applesauce, but you don’t have to add any sugar.
5: And last but not least, you sleep really well after a day of canning, assuming you left the skylight open to let out all the warm air.

Good? Or Good Enough?

2008-09-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

(Glimpse of a rare sunset while at the lab)

I spent last weekend and week back in the lab down south. After comparing notes on the state of our studies with a student I once crashed with, I’ve come up with a new way of thinking about finishing projects. Research is kind of like limits; I mean the math kind (I know, I know, bear with the geeky analogy). When I learned about them, I was told to imagine standing a few feet from the wall. Go half the distance between you and the wall. Then go half the remaining distance. Repeat until you finally – oh, nope, you won’t reach the wall that way.

This project feels a little like that. Hence the concept of Good, or Good Enough. It seems like the most successful researchers are the ones who can identify when a project is good enough, they write it up, and move on. Sounds easy enough, right? But as a project evolves and changes direction, it feels hard to just let it be finished, despite every other part of me that wants it to be done. Everything takes longer than I thought, so then the project must be extra good because it has taken so long, and then Improvement #1 returns something unexpected, and trying one more thing will make the project even better… Devilish logic.

(the science magic in action in the windowless basement lab)

At any rate, the week in the lab went quite well, in fact it was probably the best trip I’ve ever had. Data looked good, my samples were clean, and my pseudo-advisor encouraged me to apply for one of the postdoc fellowships they offer! Yay! That brings the tally of applications/proposals for the fall up to two, and I need to finish off this dataset and paper (I’m starting to sound like a broken record with that goal). And see how much I can get done before fall quarter starts and TA’ing begins again. But having things at the next step to apply for does a lot for helping with the feeling of Good Enough.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2008-08-22T11:53:00.001-07:00

(Sarah shows us how relaxfest is done)

Finally took a REAL vacation. You know, the kind that doesn’t involve so much activity that you need another vacation to recover from the vacation. And the kind that wasn’t attached to a work trip. It was great. Sleeping, walking around seeing things but not too many things, reading books, swimming, thinking about running and mostly not actually going (excuse: too humid. reality: too lazy), watching other people be active (ie, watching the olympics), cooking dinner with friends and catching up, hearing grandparent’s stories, enjoying grandparent happy hour on the back patio.

And just long enough in each place to not get antsy, and just long enough away from home to be happy to be back and ready to be busy again.

Spent the first weekend of vacation in northern Pennsylvania at Sarah’s family cabin on a lake. The weekend was complete with a New York excursion to see Ithaca and its gorges and learn new car games (silos and graveyards, anyone?),

(Dai, Kate and Calla for scale)

(more, beautiful shallow marine shelf rocks, apparently Devonian aged. I saw HCS!)

plenty of lake time with Frisbee diving,

(click on the picture if you want to see Calla and Sarah's game faces...)

(good thing that wasn't on land. Something would have snapped.)

Mid-week I spent with the grandparents in the DC area and enjoyed having time to read the paper, read my books, go for a couple of half-hearted runs in the neighborhood and catching up on the old stories. We also went out to Great Falls on the Potomac and saw the obstacles that prompted the original GW to build canals.

(Grandmama and Granddad check out the falls.)

(Great Falls)(Canal remnants)(Beautiful heirloom tomatoes at the Fairfax farmer's market. Couldn't resist since I was reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracal at the same time and had just gotten through the description of the Virginia farm produce)

The following weekend I spent in Durham, North Carolina with Nate and Chrissy and the newest Williams: Gwyn. She’s cute, she’s “dangerous” and got her parents solidly wrapped around her finger. She’s got a little work to do on the cats, however. I got to help start a Porter brewing at Nate’s work

(Brewer Nate and his machines)

and spend time in thick, green vegetation. Nice change of pace from Brown California in August.

(BIG lily pads in the Duke botanical gardens. Only missing a giant bullfrog)

(VERY old type of metasequoia. Apparently typical from 70 to 15 million years ago. This one was grown from fossil seeds!)

(Chrissy and her dangerous progeny, Gwyn)

Meanwhile, back at headquarters….

2008-08-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

(Our asian pears)

While I was away, the garden grew; some parts better than other. The basil and tomatoes look great, and I’m holding out for the day when I can make a tasty pasta meal from homegrown basil and tomatoes and fresh made pasta from the Pasta Lady at the farmer’s market.

(first cherry tomatoes!)

I don’t know how long the basil will hold out, but I keep hoping if I just pluck the ends just before they blossom, I can delay the harvest. Me against nature, a battle I usually lose. The sunflowers out front are a slightly sadder story; the snails have found them, but they seem to be trying to bloom, regardless of not having any leaves anymore.

I won’t mention the peas. I don’t think they get enough sun…..

(the best of the bunch. No kidding. I replanted them in a last ditch effort to give them more sun. We'll see...)

The recently planted cucumbers and kale look promising though. Yay for the long growing season out here! Perfect for the procrastinating gardner.

Since being back, it has been a slow transition back to the research life. Lab work and outside activities have been the primary occupations. Mel and Nadine convinced me to sign up for a metric century in the Santa Cruz Mountains the other weekend. I had two weeks to get ready and Mel kindly lent me her very nice cylcocross bike. Crafty, crafty Mel; she knows the way to get someone addicted. The ride was fantastic, and other than slightly sore bits the next days, I felt remarkably ok. There were a couple of stiff climbs, though and at one point I looked at Mel and told her I was pretty sure I could run up the hill faster than I was pedaling. But beautiful views and A LOT of food made it worth the while.

Last week has been spent finally grading everything from summer field, which was a slow, painstaking and somewhat mind numbing process. I’d rather not look at a strat column again for awhile. But we’re done and it is back to lab work, paper writing and an upcoming vacation to the East.

Summer Camp for "Adults"

2008-07-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

The parallels between summer camp and summer field are many; perpetual outdoor living in an isolated setting, grappling with adversity, and of course, plenty of costuming. For years, dress-up day has been a tradition for the last day of mapping, but this group enjoyed a few extra dress-up days, usually related to kitchen duty. The cooks were instrumental in providing a costume closet to go along with themed dinners, but the real pièce de résistance was a magnificent hair extension. Found among the boxes of stuff from last year, the cooks attached it to a pole on the study tent. By itself, it looks like a muskrat. On others, it became a wise guru’s beard, a two-toned mullet, or Genie’s high ponytail.

(Genie Matt granting wishes)

The most elaborate theme dinner was Thanksgiving with the Ferguson’s – UCLA came by for dinner, brought the beer and participated in pudding wrestling. I don’t think that kiddie pool will ever be the same.

(Melatite and K-T boundary as troubled teen and Janis Joplin)

To keep the students from getting burned out on mapping, there are a couple of unrelated field trips thrown in; this year’s theme was mining. Since eastern California and Nevada are hot beds of interesting mineral assemblages (Q: what is a pirate’s favorite metamorphic assemblage? A: Skarn!), there are a lot of abandoned mines and mining towns.

(fractured xenoliths in the skarn outcrop)

So, we looked for minerals, everyone wanted to bring home their own pieces of smoky quartz, garnet and vesuvianite and we checked out Goldpoint, a former mining town that has been bought and is slowly being converted to a tourist destination. Apparently, they just filmed the movie “Blood River” there in case you’re curious.

(obligatory white van caravan in Goldpoint)

(old bugs, old town)

And finally, folks finished up mapping, had a fabulous dress-up day complete with gnomes and many in drag, and they spent 2 days in camp finishing off the maps, cross sections and reports.

(see? gnomes)

(Mel contemplates faults while waiting for someone to write on her Wall)

Overall, this was one of the best TA experiences I’ve ever had, in no small part due to how incredible this group of students was. Fun, friendly, hard-working and smart; can’t ask for much more than that!

(one shot devoted to my favorite sed structure of all time, Hummocky cross stratification!)

Week 1: The Warm-up

2008-07-13T20:29:00.000-07:00

(overlooking Hwy 168, astride an ancient reef)

We hit the infamous Poleta Fold belt on June 18th and did our best to conquer daunting regions known as Confusion Canyon, Van Gogh's Ear and the Meat Grinder, just to name a few. We were not alone; UC Santa Barbara and UCLA were out at the same time, which was fun but it certainly created some new and interesting challenges. Try finding a quiet place to visit the little Geologist's room while the hills crawl with students and there are no trees.....

The 1st week was a chance for all of us to get our field goggles back on by measuring and describing the old Cambrian-aged Poleta Formation,

(up they go!)

then mapping it's outcrop pattern in "Little Poleta."

(Corina and Scott find the fold hinge. It's like finding a pot of gold...)

(diligent mappers get back to the outcrop)

Little did they realize how fondly they would look back on Hell Hole once they got to Big Poleta. But, they rose to the challenge, mapped and moved, and earned their first day off.

(victim of hell hole or just another gratuitous dead-animal-in-the-desert shot?)

A chunk of us spent an ambitious day off climbing Laurel Mountain, on the edge of Convict Lake. We were seduced by the description of the climb as a geologist's dream and we weren't disappointed. Laurel Mountain is the top of an incredible exposure of metamorphic rock, similar in age and original lithology (ie, shallow marine shelf rocks) to the ones in the Poleta Fold belt, but MUCH more metamorphosed (check here for more dramatic photos of the face than I have).

(eensy-beensy geologist in blue shirt for scale, near the bottom of the photo)

(still a lot of rock to go)

It took us about 3 hours longer than we expected, and the near-run down the mountain through vegetation covered hillsides to get back to the van left us pooped with shredded shins. I definitely moved a little slower in the field the next day.

(happy at the top)

(pooped at the bottom)

Stayed tuned for week 2....

Haven't melted yet...

2008-07-02T11:54:00.000-07:00

But we do worry a little about catching fire. Almost everyday has been hazy, so we've had great sunrises every morning.

Just a quick post; internet is inconvenient, but I'll update the stories and pictures when I get back to Santa Cruz on July 10th.

So far highlights include regular costuming in the Poleta fold belt (the cooks have gotten us off to a good start), in particular the Poleta Genie. Daily swimming in the Owen's River, an epic climb up Laurel Mountain on our last day off, mineral hunting and a visit to a Nevada Ghost town...

Up coming of course is the fourth of July and dress-up day in the field, which ought to be good, considering how much this class enjoys being in costume already!

Floating into summer

2008-06-12T23:06:00.000-07:00

To finish off the self-indulgent week and weekend and to officially say goodbye to spring quarter and hello-oo, summer, Rachel took us all rafting on the American River. A raft guide in her former life, she fearlessly corralled 8 of us yammering grad students into a boat and got us all to follow instructions - really, that is quite a feat.... And looking through the pictures, it seems we spent as much time as possible OUT of the boat. Fresh-water swimming is not an easy thing to come by in Santa Cruz, and we were all waxing poetic about the days when it seemed that all we did was swim.

So bring on summer and may you all swim as much as possible.

2008-06-10T23:30:00.001-07:00

Ok, back from the hectic hiatus. The last week of May was a bit like a sprint finish after running a marathon. Somewhere in there I finished a big proposal, finished grading, had a birthday, a visit from my friend Micha and a wedding. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Submitted the proposal on my birthday, which was a weirdly nice present. Extremely satisfying sense of accomplishment and extreme entitlement for taking the rest of the day off. And the last hours of polishing and editing are kind of fun; there is the light at the end of the tunnel and the whole thing has finally come together (versus the feeling over the weekend: Crap! Too much! No time!). Micha pulled into town and we spent the rest of the beautiful afternoon on the beach with the BBQ and a bonfire.

Spent the rest of the week getting grades finished and catching up with Micha, which usually means a lot of eating and music. And early June is a beautiful time for California consumables... We made treats for my housemates for salvaging my data; turns out Jonsson/Cooksey care is far better than apple care and you can pay them in baked goods.

(Micha hard at work, enroute to treats; I didn't know it was possible to OD on strawberries, but fortunately the effects wear off in a day or two. When half flats of california's finest are only $15 and the farmer "accidentally" spills an extra basket in our flat, how could we say no? Yes, I realize I'm ruined for wherever I move next.)

(finished products: Itatian fruit tart, vegan carrot cake, some german version of a nectarine tart and a whole lot of strawberries)

(Fish taco treats for ourselves!)

Death of a hard drive

2008-05-23T09:50:00.000-07:00

All kinds of exciting things are going on out here. We had the last field trip a couple of weekends ago, I've been editing a proposal, end of the quarter is coming, so that means I was overdue for a hard drive failure. So, the critical bits are intact, some things are missing, but mostly I realize how much I rely on having my own computer and the flexibility it gives me. Currently limping along on the department laptop and computer lab and annoyed with Apple Care....

Then there is the wildfire ~20 minutes from here. It was super windy yesterday, so this little fire that started yesterday morning grew quickly, but weather is better today (fire-wise) and just smells smoky. I walked out of the house this morning and had a flashback to late fall field work in SE China; they were burning the fields while we were there so every day had that acrid smell. Not such a happy situation for the folks in the mountains though. It sounds like there is a decent amount of property damage already, some evacuations and school closures. Here is a link to the Summit Fire info in case you're curious.

I'll post more in early June, once things are a little less hectic....

climate and bicycles

2008-05-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

"When it rains, it pours," "if it's not one thing, its another," everything comes in threes" all speak to that familiar phenomenon, where it seems like events converge and seemingly unconnected things become connected. So, I'm just going to take a moment to revisit to recent topics I've posted on since recent updates just converged for me today.

A week or so ago, I went to a public lecture given by a climate scientist talking about climate models and model validation. He concluded the talk by mentioning why, despite the alarming forecasts, he was still optimistic about our future as a species. One of the questions he was asked alluded to a recent article by a group of notable climate scientists calling for an immediate return to atmospheric CO2 levels of 350 ppm. We're currently a little shy of the 390 ppm mark, so that is no mean feat. And why? Well, according to the group, if we don't get back to 350, we'll cross some critical tipping points in the climate system that mean dramatic (possibly fatal) changes for our species. So the questioner finished by wondering how the speaker could still be optimistic?

So, after my mom also recently mentioned allusions to this article, it seemed like I had to read it. In case you're curious, the approachable synthesis of the article is a piece by Bill McKibben, but if you want the real article you can download it off of Jim Hansen's website; called "Target CO2; where should humanity aim."

On the heels of this, I also looked into an article in the Sentinel (the local paper) about one of the cyclists killed in the last year on Santa Cruz's streets. I provided the link not so much for the article itself, but for the response to it. Scroll down and you'll see over a hundred comments to the article that consist primarily of back-and-forth rudeness and name-calling between motorists who hate cyclists and cyclists who hate motorists.

So how can the speaker still be optimistic? If the local solutions we can all participate in cause so much divisive behavior, where is the room for optimism? That's tricky. I find some hope in the recent and rapid transformation of public opinion and media focus regarding global warming. I found another kernel of hope in the McKibben article, which also promoted a new organization just starting, called 350.org, designed to raise awareness for this new target. Give it a look! And I'll stop preaching. Well, maybe not. But I will get back to posting about geology galor (last field trip for the quarter this weekend!) and my vague attempts to become a gardener. This last topic ought to be quite entertaining.....

Oh, Turbidites!

2008-05-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

(Sed/stratters near the top of the section)

Saturday we headed to one of my favorite field trip locations, Pebble Beach (NOT the famed golf course) and Pigeon Point. This beach is home to a fantastic set of tilted turbidite deposits, so the students get to walk upsection while walking across the beach. It also represents a nice study in long-shore currents since the pebbles that give the beach its name come from an isolated exposure of Franciscan rocks north of San Francisco Bay.

(beautiful convolute bedding)

For those of you not familiar with turbidite deposits (what??), they are the result of underwater landslides and debris flows. These particular turbidites were deposited during the Cretaceous to Paleocene (circa 65 millions years old). We tried to convince the students that one of the many fantastic things they could see in these rocks were trace fossils made by the rare, long-necked snorkling dinosaur that paddled around, and used its long neck to reach down and scavenge off the bottom. They didn't buy it.

We did all buy into the story about the "doomed pioneers." Apparently this is the term for little shallow marine critters that ride the rocks down the slope in these flows and continue to burrow through their displaced sediment homes, fully unaware of the fact that they are in WAY over their heads (ok, that bad pun was intended) and therefore doomed to die. I'd never thought about the fact that it seemed a little odd that these deposits can be quite burrowed.

(Honey comb weathering adds to the whole picture...)

(Bryn, look! California has turbidites. You should come see the flame structures....)

Pigeon Point is the second stop for the day and is full of jumbled rocks that represent large-scale slumping and folding of the same kind of turbidite rocks. In this case, the landsliding and mass-wasting are of such a huge scale that entire beds are ripped up and folded very shortly after they've been deposited. The students are supposed to wander around and figure out which way is "up." No one leaves fully convinced.

(Wow!)(yes, that is one, single sandstone bed)

And then we all stopped in Davenport for pie and hot chocolate on the way home.

Spring Redux

2008-04-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

(Patrik enjoying the fruits of other people's labors)

I don’t want to jump the gun on categorizing 2008, but now that we’re almost in the 5th month, seems safe. Redux, second chances, revisit, rehash, renovate, but not recoil, redoubt, respite.

I’m TA’ing Sed/strat again this spring, which was the first class I ever TA’ed and it is the first class I’ve now TA’ed twice. So, this experience and anticipated summer (TA’ing summer field: the second class I ever TA’d) has me revisiting my identically structured but much different 1st year in grad school.

And the end result? WAY better as a 4th year. Despite the angst over my future, it is nice to have a chance to go back and do something again, but from an entirely different perspective. And to get a chance to do things better. So far so good; the quarter is flying by, students seem mostly happy and I’m enjoying the experience a lot more than I did my first year. And after giving my 4th year talk last week, I realized I've passed one more “milestone” to the end. In theory, the next official talk I give to the department will be the defense!

(Instructing squad standing around....)(sed/stratters hard at work on a fluvial section)

But, while TA’ing and the race to the June 1st NSF deadline has kept me busy, this spring has been generally amazing. The weekends feel like late May in Minnesota (really my favorite time of year; have I ever mentioned how much I love spring?) and everyone and everything is out of their winter shells. Our CSA has started delivering strawberries and lemons in addition to the pounds ‘o greens. I spend Thursday mornings out on the Bay, rowing with Linda and taking a sailing class. We saw whales last week! So, here’s to wondering what else the year of the redux has to throw my way.

(Calla cleaning up in a game of suzy sticks)

Ice is Nice...

2008-04-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

Ok, as promised, a (long-winded) post about the arctic and its rapidly dwindling sea ice.

My advisor recently attended a workshop that brought climate modelers and observationalists who study “warm climates” together to talk about that state of the science; his job was to talk about my data related to temperature reconstructions for an extremely warm period of time 55 million years ago. This particular event is used as an analog for modern day global warming, because the time scale of the warming was so rapid ( ~100-200 thousand years in duration). However, geologic metaphors being what they are, this particular event started at a much warmer baseline than at present. In that world, there was no ice at either pole, and this presents a challenge for climate modelers, because models are built upon the climatic relationships we see and understand today.

Anyway, the modelers at work on this problem have historically had trouble getting the models to match the observed data in certain aspects, most notably getting the arctic to warm enough, and the equator to NOT warm so much. For the most part, it is understood that as ice disappears, the role of the ice as a reflector of solar radiation decreases, while the role of the ocean as an absorber of solar radiation increases. As more ice melts, this feedback continues, with decreased sea ice leading to increased rates of warming. This is oversimplified and lacks other feedbacks, but that’s the basic idea. But what happens once you lose the ice?

Back to Paul’s scary anecdote. So, he said, one thing that DOES seem to be coming clear is that arctic warming happens in a step-wise manner. That is to say, something funny happens when we lose all the sea ice. Like most things in life, warming doesn’t happen at a uniform rate; it appears that once the ice goes, a whole lot MORE warming occurs and fast. The more detailed aspects of this are still debated (ie, which feedbacks are most responsible? Is it just sea ice? What role do clouds play? What about the thermal structure and transport of the atmosphere?), but that seems to be the general consensus. And that is a big deal! We really don’t have a good sense for how an ice-free world works. The last time this happened was ~ 35 million years ago.

Ok, so what’s the big deal with that? Melting of the sea ice doesn’t directly raise sea level; it’s hanging out like a big ice cube, and has displaced as much water in solid form as it does in liquid form. And yes, there is some sea level rise predicted strictly from thermal expansion of water as the oceans warm. However, if the rate of warming picks up specifically in the Arctic, the already precarious Greenland Ice sheet will start looking a lot more precarious. And when that puppy slides into the ocean, that’s a lovely 7 meters of sea level rise. And it the sea ice extent decreases sooner than expect, than the Greenland Ice Sheet will likely go earlier than expected as well. Right now, estimates suggest we’ll be ice-free in the arctic sometime between 2060-2080 (again, there are many estimates for this, including earlier dates). That sounds so doomsday, doesn’t it? I’m starting to learn why people who have relatives who are geologists often describe them as crazy…

If you keep track of the global warming/climate change headlines in the news, you’ve probably already heard some aspects of this before. But, we also don’t have all the feedbacks associated with the stability of the Greenland ice sheet nailed down. So, adding together all the things we still don’t understand about sea-ice feedbacks, with all the things we don’t understand about continental ice sheet feedbacks SHOULD make us all nervous that we haven’t made any stronger policy decisions about greenhouse gas emissions, both nationally and internationally. But, it seems to have a strange effect on some people, and they suggest that because we don’t know FOR SURE what will happen, we should just wait. Hmm. You wait. I’m buying some land way north, and away from the beach.

Adventures in dog-sitting and bicycle commuting

2008-04-08T23:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, two anecdotes about recent activities. Ok, one is an anecdote and the other is a sad commentary on bicycle commuting in this town.

I dog-sat for my advisor's pooch this weekend while he was at a "warm climates workshop." Remind me another time to tell his anecdote (ok, not an anecdote, but a frightening fact) about arctic warming. He has an affectionate, sweet and enthusiastic (if somewhat neurotic) German Shepard who goes by various names, but we'll go with LD (little dog - think "Little John"). In the past, LD doesn't let you sleep in much, but I thought I had it all figured out. After he goes out first thing, pull the covers over my head when he comes back in. On first pass, he couldn't stick his nose in my face and lick me. So, instead, he walked around and jumped on the bed and proceeded to bat at the back of my head (still under the covers) until I couldn't take it anymore. I think he thought I was dead. So I didn't sleep in Saturday morning. The best part of this was while explaining this story to Sarah, Dai came back to the dinner table mid-story, looked confused and said, "Do we need to have a conversation about the kinds of people you should date?"

In other news, while sitting at the stoplight today at Bay and Mission, the cyclist in front of me turned around, gave me a nod, and then asked me if I'd seen the accident. "What accident?" I said. Apparently, a cyclist was killed early today at that intersection by a quarry truck. Same place as a fatal accident about a year ago, and the scene of many a non-fatal accident. What I find weird is that Santa Cruz is such a "bike friendly" town. The climate is great for it, bike lanes everywhere, campus and local public transportation do a great job of moving bikes, so you can at least ride downhill home (even if you don't want to climb up the marine terraces TO school). But everyone I know can name at least one occasion where they've nearly been hit and know of at least two people who HAVE been hit. I can think of three folks in our department alone who have been hit by cars, as well as my housemate. So, this prompted a conversation about how to make drivers more aware of cyclists, and our own personal lists of suspicious and neurotic behaviors that have developed as a result of mistrust of drivers. Do we make the whole process of being able to drive, harder (ie, driving is a privilege, not a right)? Do we make all drivers spend at least one day on the road in a bicycle so they know what it is like on the flip side? Do we all install giant compressed air horns on our bikes to let them know what we think when we are nearly flattened?

Juicy Tibdits

2008-03-31T21:38:00.000-07:00

(garnet sands in Andrew Molera State Park)

Since I took spring break during finals week and spent spring break working, I got to enjoy quiet campus, quiet town, and some kind of flower-pheromone-induced euphoria. Not trying to rub it in, all of you still in the snow/rain/cold, but it was a beautiful week.

Snuck down to Big Sur on Saturday afternoon for some bratwurst-roasting, rock-tossing,

beach-walking,

(Rachel investigating the Franciscan rocks outcropping at Andrew Molera)

(some poor somebody has one cold, wet foot)

poison-oak-avoiding fun.

As a midwesterner, I find Poison Oak distressing. This stuff takes over, especially in Big Sur. In the spring, you can walk trails that are little more than a tunnel through cut-back PO. I feel bad for the folks that have to cut it back. I think I'd wear some kind of chemical hazard suit.

How do you decide how to dress for the ride to school? When the cat stakes out the pilot light, it is time for an extra layer.

Skiin', eh?

2008-03-24T22:25:00.000-07:00

(Bryn just outside Sapphire Col hut, checking out our descent path)

I spent spring break in the Canadian Rockies with Bryn and Louis. Incredible snow, pretty nice weather and the usual assortment of laughs made for a good trip. Of course, no trip of mine is complete without some (usually self-induced) antics, and this one was no exception.

To start with, it was relatively remarkable that I actually made my Denver to Calgary flight, since I, uh, didn’t exactly make my original flight out of San Jose to Denver. Somehow or another, in the mental checklist to go on a trip with Bryn and Louis (Pack? Ski boots? Beacon? Shovel? Probe? Stamina? Appetite? Endurance for Pain?), passport didn’t make it on the list. Is it just because those Canadians are so darn friendly? Or perhaps I’ve spent too much time so close to the border (Ely, Seattle, Priest Lake ID)? Or because the last time I went to Canada, I drove and only needed a driver’s license? Or simply that I just wasn’t thinking? I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

To make a long story short, I have VERY, VERY nice friends and got one to drive my passport up to the airport. Then, got rescheduled onto a flight out of San Francisco and in a bout of EXTREME luck (and some of the usual state of affairs at airports these days) even scored a free shuttle ride to SFO from the airlines because they had just cancelled a flight and had to schlep a bunch of folks up to SFO. And somehow made it onto my original flight from Denver to Calgary. I think I’ve used up a bit of airport karma (to quote Genya) so it is good I don’t have any flights in the immediate future.

On to skiing. We headed to the Roger’s Pass area of Canada’s Glacier National Park. There are numerous huts at various distances and elevations, so the trip was a combination of nights in huts and snow camping. We started the week in flat creek, snow camping for 3 nights since there is only a cabin for wardens (the Canadian equivalent of park rangers). Alas, the location of the cabin was wrong on the map, and we ended up with our camp just uphill from the cabin. We discovered this when the helicopter nearly landed on top of us, and ten minutes later, a whole train of wardens skied by on the way to the hut. Oops.

Bryn loves the snow! Louis loves smoked salmon!

Spent Wednesday & Thursday night in Wheeler Hut, and of course discovered more folks with small world connections to us, between the NOLS/Widji/Santa Cruz links. When I wrote the tag line for this blog, I didn't really realize how true it was. Sometimes it feels like I don't really meet new people, just people I can't figure out how I hadn't already met!

Anyway, we day-skied from Wheeler up to Lookout Notch on Thursday, then Friday we skied up to the Sapphire Col hut (a whopping 4000 ft of elevation gain, as my thighs and rear can attest...) and then skied out on Saturday.

View down Asulkan Brook, on our way up to Lookout Notch. Note the windswept glacial moraine in the far edge of the snowfield in the foreground. According to the Louis bag of knowledge, there was a glacier there when they put in the Trans Candadian railway, so not long ago..... Now there is just a moraine. And sweet, sweet rocks. (another view of the moraine)

(descent path from Sapphire Col, on our way to Lily Glacier)

One tired Katie in Sapphire Col hut. Apparently I drifted off, only to awake with that weird feeling of people watching you, and saw Bryn and Louis staring at me. I guess I'd been making funny whinying noises while drifting off... I think it was about 6:00 PM

Signs of Spring

2008-03-09T22:11:00.000-07:00

Spring means the end of winter quarter, sunshine-induced euphoria and ramped-up motivation (for me, anyway). I found some euphoria today on a wonderful Sunday afternoon hike with Sarah, a friend from my Seattle days who now lives in Berkeley. We had sunshine, good birding and and some speculations on mountain lion-encounter behavior. Kind of looks like that kid is being used as a shield....

The extra hour at the end of the day made for a nice drive home on the 1 and should come in handy for getting home this week, since some punk recently stole my bike light.I found some extra motivation in a couple of places earlier this week. I spent Saturday helping judge a science fair that will send 3-12 graders from the county off to state. Now, it has been awhile since I was a 4th grader and pretty long since I spent quality time interacting with 4th graders, but I was impressed! It was really fun to see the logic process at work, and to see the creativity in the way the kids approached problems. I worked with the environmental science group and global warming is definitely at the forefront for most of these kids (oh, how it makes my heart go!). And of course, their enthusiasm was hard to resist. Now I remember what got me down this road....

Motivation source number 2? I had some anxiety over data analysis that had the potential to shoot down my last two years of work, but instead turned out quite well-behaved.
And we're about 2 weeks out from the end of the quarter, so I'm ready to call it and put winter to bed.

Something that would help with the spring motivation would be banishing the winter self-doubt. Is it too late to give up something for lent? If so, I'm giving up self-doubt. Maybe Karma will help it join my bike light in someone else's life. And in the mean time, I'll be looking forward to that other sure-fire sign of spring. Spring Break!

More sampling monkey-business

2008-02-25T22:29:00.000-08:00

I seem to have a bad habit these days of flying whilst storms brew. Instead of the airline reminder email, I need only wait for Paul Fortino's mass-campus email warning of a winter storm that may or may not close down campus. Anyway, this weekend it was a quick trip to Pasadena for the "last samples" for a project that has been underway for ~2 years. Things I've learned in that time:

1: Never say "these are the last samples" because then you go through the dataset, you find the, umm, not-so-good data that needs culling and realize the complete set of replicates is not-so-complete anymore.

2: Never volunteer to run your samples overnight while others take the day shift. Just not worth it on so many levels and fortunately(?) I learned that early, but the hard way.

3: It sometimes rains in southern California. That is why I have no photo log like I promised Grandma. Since there is no immediate end to my southward trips, this will happen at some point. I promise.

4: There are some interesting things to fill the weird ~2 hour gaps between sample processing. Like foreign films on the outdoor, grassy ampitheater. Best enjoyed with a therm-a-rest. Or the bellydancing show I saw Saturday night by the "Bellydancing Superstars." Apparently, they've been touted as the next "Stomp."

5: The old geochemistry axiom "more data is not always good. Quit while you still have a story" is slightly true.

6: If you tell people on the airplane/supershuttle that you are a geologist, you'll get lots of interesting questions. The supershuttle driver today told me geology is "his favorite thing to watch, after the news." I'm not sure I followed that logic, except maybe he watches a lot of the discovery channel?

7: I know now exactly how long it takes certain specific, trivial tasks as I keep a timer going on my samples in the interest of mulit-tasking. It takes 10 seconds to walk between one science machine room to the other science machine room, and ~4 minutes to get to and from the oven room and about 30 seconds for a pee break. Just in case you were wondering.

Overall, it was a productive weekend and that much closer to finishing, dunt-dunt-dunnn.... Chapter 1!

2008-02-18T22:30:00.000-08:00

(On top of Anderson Peak)

A general cheers to holidays in honor of hardworking souls that give us all more time to play. Spent the weekend before working up a proposal and will spend next weekend in Pasadena, so I took the whole thing, guilt-free. Yay! My friend Paul, of Colorado hutness-fame, came down and we joined Kena, Hwakong, Mike and Robert for a long weekend in Benson hut in the North Lake Tahoe region. We had excessive amounts of sunshine and got in lots of turns. And of course ate a lot of food. Even some extreme sledding. Fortunately my tailbone weathered this round a little better than last year's round of extreme sledding. It helps that the snow was pretty slushy (see the comment about sunshine). And Paul, being of public policy ilk, admirably put up with the rest of us engineering/sciency types.

Gearing up for the first turns of the day

Check out our handiwork!

Bagging the peak

Paul "saving face"

We've decided that he has a future in male modeling. The instinct on his impending face plant was to "save face," resulting in a turtle-style stomach slide instead. Way to look out for your career, Paul! Anyway, while my arms may lack the strength to pull myself up the ladder to bed, I feel rejuvenated and set for the week (and coming weekend).

Super Dooper Political Departure

2008-02-05T23:37:00.002-08:00

(image shamelessly stolen from another blog, but I laughed at the warning sign they added to the original image......)

I love every part of voting. None of this mail-in ballot stuff. I like the idiocyncrasies; for instance, two precincts report to the church in the middle of The Circles (my neighborhood). Both precincts vote in the same room, but the room is set up as two mirror-image stations. If you go to the wrong one, they make you leave and enter through the OTHER door 50 feet away, into your proper precinct. I like that they give you a sticker to wear around all day proclaiming to the world that you voted. The only thing that could make it better is if they brought back the old voting machines that have the switches and the big lever to pull at the end. Or stickers like the ones they give out at the blood bank: “Kiss me, I voted.”

The other fun part is that this will be the 3rd state in which I’ve voted for president, and each state has an entirely different approach to the primary. Minnesota does it Caucus-style, Washington has both a caucus AND a presidential primary (woah!), and California is all primary.

And of course, for each of these states, there are small differences in how each party approaches the primary. For WA, the parties weight the portion of delegates picked from each event differently: dems delegates are based entirely on the caucus results, while the repubs distribute the delegate votes between the caucus and the primary. And WA residents are pretty feisty about being able to vote for which ever party they want to, regardless of their official affiliation. Needless to say, the parties are not fans, and this issue is currently under debate. In Cali, folks with Independent, Democratic or no party affiliation can vote in either the Independent or Democratic primary but to vote for the Republican primary, you have to be a registered Republican. There was an interesting snippet on NPR the other evening about the rationales behind these stances.

Of course, all of these options exist because there are so many opinions on what is the fairest, most inclusive, most accurate approach. But, as far as personal enjoyment goes, I have to go with the caucus. If you’ve never participated in one, I highly recommend considering that when you make your next out-of-state move.

So here’s wishing you all happy electing, whatever the flavor. Go get ‘em!

Vitamin D kick in the keister

2008-02-01T09:48:00.001-08:00

We’ve had about 2 weeks of gray and rain, and it even made the cat depressed. Though I think cats have a sneaky way of LOOKING depressed and cuddly, just so you’ll pet them more. My housemate Patrik’s suggested solution to the weather was that we should all hogpile the cat on the futon and not move until the sun comes out. And sure enough, by Tuesday night, things felt a little desperate. Apparently, it is taking its toll on everyone else out here as well. But I woke up to blue sky through the skylight the next morning and all I could do was run around the house yelling “Yesyesyesyes!” with a sh**-eating grin on my face. Hallelujah!

Not much to report –

running in the rain (getting muddy is always good). And of course, rain brings out sightings of Bicycle Smurf (all of my rain gear, for some odd reason, is blue...) while the annual cocktail party last weekend livened up life just a little in spite of everyone’s rain-induced funk.

Nicely done, ladies (Calla really stole the show with those glasses)

some of the old grumblies making an appearance....

Soon sleeping the sleep of the just

2008-01-22T23:03:00.000-08:00

I'd be asleep already but I ate too much and need to digest first. Back from 4 days in the lab. After spending 3 days in the home lab to be ready. I'm tired. I'm a little behind. Someone said it is only the 2nd week of the quarter. That seems impossible. When I drove home today, there was snow on the side of Hwy 17. Strange. But there is revelry ahead. I'm excited for that. Check back when I have my verbal skills up and running again.

a little steamrollered...

2008-01-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

I think Quarters have a tendency to behave like the bookends of March - either lamb-like and midquarter crunch sneaks up before you know it or lion-like. Or, as with this quarter, it's like staring down one of these:

Monday night I found out I can have time on the science machine at Caltech this weekend, which meant a dramatic overhaul of my week to be ready with four days worth of samples by Thursday night. Monday night I also read a piece called "Women in Science," which basically offers up an alternate reason for why there aren't so many women in science. But if you are also a grad student, don't read it before bed. I had trouble sleeping. Anyway, the collision of these two events (trying to rearrange my life for the week with the little nagging doubts of my current path in life brought to the front) made me feel, well, I felt a little sorry for myself. On the bright side, I did see an incredible shooting star that seemed brighter than Venus and took at least 30 seconds to cross the sky [gross exaggeration: it was really only 20] on the midnight ride home. That helped.

Thing is, it doesn't seem like it should feel so taxing, but I think the root is that, while I'm grateful for the time, I have to mentally gear up for these trips. I really don't look forward to 14-hour days in the lab with no human interaction. For four days. The hard part here is the lack of interaction as opposed to the long days. My phone takes a pretty heavy hit on these trips. I never realized how much I need some kind of human interaction in the course of a day until grad school.

Related to this, I want to make a shameless plug for a book I read over break called "The Female Brain." No, it isn't a cheezy pop-psychology book. It frames a lot of the different aspects of women's lives in the various chemical and hormonal concoctions going on in our brains. I was really surprised at how much I liked this book. Thanks Sarah! So, if you're a woman, you should read it. If you're not a woman, but like women, interact with women, can't hide from women, you should read it. I hear walking around with this book is a pretty good chick magnet too.....

Fruits of the storm

2008-01-13T22:47:00.000-08:00

Given that the storm dumped 10+ feet of snow in the Sierras, I couldn't turn down a chance to swap my Sunday for Friday, and headed to South Lake Tahoe for some skiing. No sense in letting those hard-earned ski boot calluses go to waste! We spent Friday at the resort practicing our turns (thanks to some free/discounted passes) and successfully found those lost thigh muscles. Saturday, we skied up Waterhouse Peak (or faux Waterhouse peak to be completely honest), and the skies cleared at the top just enough to see beautiful views of the Sierras and Lake Tahoe. And a couple solid face plants at the bottom helped me find rarely-used neck muscles. And I got one more chance to hang out with Kena before she heads to Kenya, then Laramie.

The lake is the flat blue patch...

Happy Skiers (Kena, Mike and Robert).

Lots of mountains. Lots of granodiorite.

Conveniently enough, the trip also helped me with my homework. We're supposed to make up one question for each assignment for my order of magnitude estimation class and then solve it and in the course of conversation, the minimum thickness of ice needed to support human weight came up...Perfect!

Stormy Weather

2008-01-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

Just to spice things up, I'll tackle the holidays in backwards order, starting with the flight home from Anchorage. I left Thursday morning, with the original itinerary including a long stopover in Juneau, a flight to Seattle that was supposed to leave me sleeping in SeaTac and an early Friday AM flight from Seattle to San Jose.

What REALLY happened was a "free" rountrip flight from Anchorage to Juneau and back, and nearly a second roundtrip from Seattle to San Jose and back. In Juneau, our plane never arrived due to mechanical trouble, so they stuffed us on a flight back to Anchorage, and then on a direct flight at 1:00 Friday AM from Anchorage to Seattle and got in with 45 minutes to spare for my final leg to Cali. All was calm until we tried to land in San Jose. Turns out I managed to fly in during the worst storm we've had since 2002. Good timing. We circled, we attempted to land, and then the captain said, "we'll give it one more try, otherwise it's back to Seattle." Fortunately (?) we landed, and then the adventure to get back to Santa Cruz began.

Original pickup bailed since Hwy 17 northbound was already closed. Second driver, a friend making the trek from Oakland, bailed due to high winds blowing semis over. As luck would have it, I ran into my next door neighbor, who was there to pick up his sister. After her adventurous landing, we stuffed into the pickup and crawled over Hwy 17 home. Sometime after that, they closed Hwy 17. Needless to say, I was relieved to get home. Spent the rest of the weekend cooking, eating, and sneaking out during breaks in the weather to run and peek at the surf.

I spent post-Christmas/New Year's in Alaska, skiing with Tomas, Eleanor and Luc, who are friends I know through Bryn and Louis. Got some turns in, ski toured to some huts along the Resurrection trail system for a few nights and even got some skate skiing in, so I got a solid dose of winter. Also, lots of laughter and plenty of bruises from the rounds of Euchre (mental bruising only), Semi-Awesome Ball (still a little fuzzy on why it isn't Awesome ball, but I was told clearly it was NOT), crab-walk kickball and Nail 'Em. Sorry no pictures. I forgot my camera. And the other pictures are likely of folks demonstrating the concept of "see food" or a poor beany baby chicken way out of his element.

Spent Christmas in Seattle with the family and Carla (old friend from Minneapolis) came and spent the holiday with us as well. We got a light dusting of snow so I can say we had a white Christmas.
I was pleased to see my 2.5 year old niece has taken to the pumpkin hat I made her when she was born.
Since I've designated myself the aunt that will make knitted projects she'll grow into, all seems to be going according to plan. We'll have to wait another year to see the red jacket I make her LAST year for Christmas. Right on schedule.

Christmas pics: Carla trying not to laugh at my attempt to read upside-down

OK, she is really cute!

The whole clan embracing unrestrained eating

So, let Winter Quarter 2008 begin. And the official New Year's Resolution is to eat as much chocolate and cheese as possible. Or to put my money where my mouth is (literally and figuratively). Or both?

Light at the end of the tunnel...

2007-12-18T09:55:00.001-08:00

I spent most of last week up in the City at the yearly geo-fest. This is the big meeting where 15,000+ geo-nerds descend on the city and talk shop. The meeting is a lot of fun in some respects (Christmas time in Union Square, seeing lots of old friends, hearing about the latest science) and thoroughly exhausting in others. It usually happens during finals week and the meeting is just TOO big. And it grows every year. How many geo-geeks are too many?

It is nice to be back in Santa Cruz; it is raining (finally) and the last real hurtle is getting the grading done. We diligently spent the weekend and yesterday grading the final projects. Hope to finish some time tomorrow???? Then Seattle on Friday. Yay! Looking forward to sleep, family, the smell of many tasty baked things, sleep....

Tis the Season

2007-12-02T21:25:00.000-08:00

For decorating the palm tree.
We didn't get very far with our tree decorating last year (one strand of lights and about 3 balls). Seemed better to just decorate the slightly sad-looking living room palm. I think it looks happier now. Especially with the cardboard and tinfoil star tucked in the top.

For unrestrained eating.
The next time someone asks me what I'm training for, I will tell them I'm perpetually in training for the season of unrestrained eating. Otherwise, I'd have to turn down some of the many opportunities for dessert/turkey/friends' miscellaneous family delicacies/multiple days of eating in the City during AGU. Yum.

For rain?
We haven't gotten much of that yet. This could be a problem; many areas still have official water restrictions and it is already December. This doesn't bode well for the upcoming ski season or, more importantly, the snowpack and reservoir recharge status out here.

T-day and a wonderful home weekend

2007-11-24T13:49:00.001-08:00

Just got home from Turkey day in Chicago with the Peterson extended family. I realized I didn't take any photos except 15 tries at the snow-coated tree in the backyard. As is tradition, it seems to snow on the way to Thanksgiving, or the way home. This year it was on the way to. I also realized I rarely see snow falling much, so this dusting seemed like a novelty. Hmm.

Lots of good food, Mom's birthday (which falls, every so often, on T-day), lots of talk of the state of the farms, the state of the Bears (which is usually bad?), the state of the Cyclones (also usually bad?), the occasional random geologic question for Katie ("they built a hospital in eastern Iowa that runs off geothermal power. What do you know about this?") and the usual life questions for Katie ("when are you going to get a boyfriend?" When are you going to get a real job?") to which I usually laugh and say that the answer is the same for both: unclear.

The weekend before T-day I finally spent at home and enjoyed a sunny Saturday sleeping in, and spending time with friends. Sarah and Rachel and I went up to the park to slackline, which Sarah and I have done extremely inconsistently for the last couple of years. We saw a couple of kids at the park who stop by every time we're there and are fascinated. They made us realize how long we've been going though, because the first time Cate tried it out, her little brother was too small to try, since he could only just walk. Now, they both charge down the line.

Shortly after, Cate abandoned the line to climb the tree.This little guy has a big old smile on his face!

Then it was off to celebrate Dai and Sora's half birthday and Wendy's whole birthday by having a "the 90's are the new 80's" party. This was an interesting idea; most of us can free associate for this category, since we were in high school in the 90's. So, there was a lot of flannel, Green Day, Naughty By Nature and imitation Doc Marten's. The obvious trouble is that we aren't really far enough from the styles, in fact most people's costumes were old clothes dug out of the closet, supplemented by the thrift store, which led to scenarios like this:

Patrick: Hey! That's a nice flannel.
Katie: Thanks, I got it at the thrift store this afternoon.
Patrick: Really?
Katie: Yeah, you should see if it fits...

Patrick: Hey it fits! Can I keep it?
Katie: Sure...

Maybe still too close to home? Anyway, that's about it. About 2-3 weeks left in the quarter, AGU and a paper to write.

Field Trip recap (aka where have all my weekends gone?)

2007-11-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

I've gotten used to hearing "it seems like forever since I saw you" around the department during midweek. But, we took the last field trip for the quarter this last weekend, and I'm going to be in town for 9 days in a row (if you do the math, that has to include a weekend!) But, that doesn't mean the field trips haven't been fun. Here is a quick recap, with emphasis on the most recent weekend, since I can remember that one the best...

We had a couple of Saturday trips to the beach: Point Lobos and Ano Nuevo. Point Lobos is always spectacular. The area is part of a state park with some incredible rocky coastline and (as I know now) some great folds and faults. The top photo is a nice view of the students doing their best to ignore the gorgeous surroundings.

Ano Nuevo was sunny, beautiful and windy, with one geology tour sighting. How can you identify a geology group at the beach? They always face the wrong way:

The view for a normal beach-goerOur class....

The culminating project for the class is to map an area just outside of the old, mostly abandoned mining town of New Idria, and they do this in the course of 2, 3-day field trips. So, this requires logistics that include mass grocery shopping, hauling port-a-potties, long field days (rain or shine), beer and music around the campfire and a victory stop at the Panoche Inn on the way home, which is a cross between the Salty Dawg Saloon (Homer, AK) and the Chainsaw Sisters Saloon (Ely, MN).

The caravan resting at the Panoche Inn after the first successful weekend. That idyllic scene changed to a more comic scene as toilet paper from one of the toilets became a fluttering streamer behind the van as we drove. The vehicular equivalent of walking out of the bathroom with TP stuck to your shoe? I'm sure if vans could be embarrassed, it would have been.

Anyway, these trips are great because the students get so much better over the course of that first weekend. The overwhelmed, slightly panicky looks when first asked to draw a contact line on their map give way to debates with lots of emphatic gesturing among field partners about the orientation of faults into the hillsides. In the second weekend, they are exposed to more complicated structural scenarios and finally finish off their maps with an instructor-free afternoon.

First meeting with the Yokut Formation
And a more advanced view back to their mapping area.

And miscellaneous shots:
QuasiHilde: demonstrating mapping-in-the-rain techniques or serving up a platter of shrunken students? You decide.
When forced to decided which side of the creeping fault to be loyal to, most went Westside..
Evidence that full geodork-dom has set in for these students. Note the offset in Chris' birthday cake. The transform to official geologists followed with many bad puns over the weekend and excessive singing-while-mapping of songs with lyrics changed to bad geology puns. Case in point, the new song Lodo for the Lodo Formation, sung to the tune of (yeah, you guessed it) the Kinks' Lola.
Marshmallows sacrificed to the weather gods to keep the rain at bay Sunday.

The District (well almost)

2007-11-08T23:26:00.000-08:00

Continuing on with catch-up goal... I took advantage of my first field-trip free weekend for the quarter and went to DC to visit my grandparents. A pile of United miles and my parents also visiting might have played a small role as well.

So, I caught up on some sleep, graded some papers, ate lots of Grandmama's excellent food and enjoyed the family. Pretty relaxing. The excitement mostly came from the cancelled flight out of San Jose, which ended as well as it possibly could. They threw many of us on a direct flight out of SFO and while I got to DC 3.5 hours later than I was supposed to, I did get to watch the new Harry Potter as a result.

On Saturday morning, we went into the city to see the Natural History Museum. The last attempt at this failed because the basement had flooded during 3-4 days of intense rain that flooded the basement of many of the Smithsonian museums and some Metro stations. I haven't been to the museum since I was a kid, and figured it was high time to stop in again. We saw a special nature photography exhibit; among other things was a nice set of arctic photos with skinny polar bears and some pretty skinny-looking glaciers. Then off to "Geology, Gems and Minerals." Mom liked the Esterville meteorite (we always drove by the crater during visits to NW Iowa) and I like the musical seismic stations, that make a sound everytime there is seismicity somewhere in the world. After that we met up with Malea, her boyfriend Eric and her dog Areck (spelling?) for a sun-filled fall Sunday lunch (the theme of the weekend seemed to be food). Sorry no pics, I didn't have my camera.

This weekend it's off to the field for the last time this quarter, which is good because I think the recent in-and-out of town is taking its toll on my ability to figure out the days of the week. I tried to put the trash out on Wednesday night, and only when I got the cans to the curb and realized there were no others, did I realize it was actually Tuesday night. My housemate then informed the next morning, that I must have gotten the month wrong too because it isn't my turn for the garbage. Oops.

Halloween

2007-11-05T23:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm getting a little behind. I'll start with Halloween, since I'm already behind on field stuff. I love halloween, and they do a pretty good job of it down here. Regardless of the day of the week, main street shuts down and the whole town comes out in costume. If nothing else, it's a good excuse to tap total strangers on the shoulder and ask to take their picture. (top photo was the New Idria field pumpkin. Hilde asked for suggestions on how to make it scarier; I think the bags under the eyes made him look resigned to trying to scare.....)

Ze French (and not total strangers; among them are some applied mathematicians/statisticians).

Pascale and I are Singing In The Rain.

We thought this guy is supposed to be Prince??

And a couple of goodies from Halloweens past. I don't think anything will ever top the halloween my first year here...

The famous jellyfish of Santa Cruz. All in all, a brilliant costume (Halloween '04)

Jem and the Holograms. That pink hair was the bane of my existence for the next couple of days, but making the guitars was a ton of fun.....(Halloween 04)

Sora, Kena and I are not in costume. We really are mad scientists (Halloween '06).

Quake

2007-10-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Last night, there was a 5.6 quake on the Calveras Fault, NW of San Jose, which counts as the biggest quake I've felt in since living in earthquake territory. It rattled the house, set the hanging coffee cups swinging and made us realize we don't have the shelves in the house bolted. It rumbled long enough for my housemates and I to look at each other and say, oh, it IS an earthquake, not just a truck driving by. But, the power stayed on and everything was quiet afterwards.

WWWD?

2007-10-25T22:37:00.000-07:00

My friend Malea, who has been diligently politically active for as long as I've known her (and is now her career), sent many of us current and former Minnesotans a wonderful piece written in honor of the late Paul Wellstone, on the 5th anniversary of his death. I just wanted to pass it along, as we head into primary season, because the piece expresses a very timely sentiment. I remember the day I heard about the plane crash. I heard the voicemail from Mom telling me the news as I walked into the house and at the same time, heard Seth and Joel (two other Minnesota to Seattle transplants) asking me if I'd heard. I felt a long ways from home just then and had trouble explaining to people at work why it seemed like such a loss. So, I'm happy to share another person's much more eloquent synthesis of Wellstone's unique and effective take on the role of a politician.

As long as I'm on the political departure, I read an interesting study recently, forwarded by my advisor, on the role that fear plays, mostly subconsciously, in our voting habits. Very intriguing and quite frightening, but it puts a lot in perspective with regards to the last two elections. I can't post it, but if you're interested, let me know and I'll send you the pdf.

Never fear however, the blog will be returning with the usual fare of entertaining field stories after the weekend. We have our first 3-day field trip to the big mapping area, New Idria, and any time you go on a trip that requires caravaning with porta-potties in tow, there are bound to be some good stories.

An auspicious number

2007-10-19T10:08:00.001-07:00

Sora pointed out the other day that this is a milestone you reach approximately 27 years and 5 months into life... Excel helped us figure out that, for me, that day is today.

And those other awards...

2007-10-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

And of course, they also announced this year's Ig nobel awards. I was most intrigued by the study cataloging the many critters that live in our beds, but have opted not to read it before bed in case of psychosomatic itching. The study into the adverse effects of sword swallowing is not bad either. Not quite as good as some of my past favorites: one study that shows our inability to notice a woman in a gorillas suit when we're focused on other things (2004 winner), and a cure for the hiccups that makes me grateful I have other tricks up my sleeve (2006 winner).
I also like the woodpecker study (2006 winner), though I learned of this first through Calla and didn't know it won an Ig nobel award. It turns out that woodpeckers have interesting muscular and skeletal adaptations that protect them from brain damage. AND, at least in the case of the pileated woodpecker, it turns out that they hammer their heads into trees, not to feed, but as a form of communication or territorial display. Calla's take on this was she no longer feels about telling it to shush when one wakes her up at 6:00 AM. And who says science isn't fun?

Go Al!

2007-10-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

Just a quick (albeit late) post to congratulate Big Al and of course the hard-working IPCC climate scientists and politicos on their Nobel Peace Prize. I'm glad the folks on the Nobel committee have insight enough to see the connection between climate and peace. Given the thread of editorials (even here in liberal coastal California), it is clear not everyone has made that leap yet.

Summer's last hurrah

2007-10-11T21:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, I feel like I can let go of summer, now that I had one last gorgeous weekend outside. I'm TA'ing for the field geology class this fall and we had our first field trip Saturday, to the exotic locality known as the "campus meadow." We wandered all over campus, and our brave students learned how to accurately locate themselves on a map while avoiding common field hazards. These included the meat cleaver, the random exercise equipment from the weight room, the temptation of the harvest festival at the campus farm and disgruntled cows. You know, the usual fare.

Geidy picking up some mad orientation skills Trying to get a little extra respect through sheer intimidation (ie, the cleaver in action)
I spent Sunday in San Francisco, where I caught one day of Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. I can't say enough about this show; every year, Warren Hellman (of mayonnaise fame) spends a bunch of money and puts on 3-day bluegrass festival in the middle of Golden Gate Park, with some incredible acts, entirely free to the public. We planted ourselves in front of the Banjo stage and enjoyed Hazel Dickens, David Grisman, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, and of course, Emmy Lou to finish out the day. It was sunny, we had cold beer and free music.

Kena, Hwakong and I are hardly strictly happy! When you find two empty PBR cans and a free CD waiting on your windshield, you know you had a good day.
Just in time; we had the first real rain Tuesday and they're calling for more.....

Fall quarter in full swing

2007-10-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

So, the quarter is in full swing (we're in the midst of our first full week) and I'm slowly getting back in the swing of having a scheduled life again. But, it's been nice to be home, though not much to write home about. I've caught a couple of nice sunsets on the commute home.

It has also been the week of eating. My advisor's mom is in town and they cooked up an amazing Italian food fest the other night, and Sora's mom is in town and is cooking up a Korean food fest tomorrow night. There was also a large orb weaver spider that built its web across the front porch, and was feasting on a large bee. My photo of this did NOT turn out; I think I'm grateful for that.

(the view from the top of the bike path on campus, looking south across Monterey Bay to the Monterey Penisula)

The cave, part 2 (and a bit more fieldwork)

2007-09-24T23:26:00.000-07:00

I headed back to Nevada for one last gasp of field work before the quarter starts. I've been trying to coordinate with a grad student, Peter from UNLV who works on rocks in Sheep Pass Canyon. However, other, slightly more rational folks than I, don't work in Nevada in the middle of July. So, once again, I got on an airplane and flew to Las Vegas. Remember the picture of Paul and hammer in front of cool conglomerates interfingered with limestone? Of course you do! Same section, but much more goal-oriented this time around. The grand goal was to get samples through the 1 km+ thick section in four days. We almost made it; I think we made it through ~700 meters of section. Poor weather that dumped early snow in the Sierras mostly just rained on us all morning Saturday. We tried to wait it out, but left when we realized if it continued, we wouldn't be able to drive out the road. While it did cut short the field work, the rain was useful for a couple of things: I realized I need to re-seamseal my tent, and my raincoat needs to be re-waterproofed. Also, I got to use my pick to scrape mud from the tires, to improve traction down the road, and it always makes me feel better about flying with bulky, heavy tools if they serve multiple purposes.

Sunday, Peter's friend Mike joined us and we went caving in nearby Whipple Cave. I've been in a couple of caves before, but nothing quite like this. The cave formed in fractured Cambrian limestone, and most of the passageways are the result of dissolution along these fractures. The opening is a hole in the ground, so you have to rappel down into the cave, and then ascend the rope to get out. Though the gear is a little different, the basic idea for both rappelling and ascending are the same as climbing, so I finally got to use the skills I learned for climbing out of a crevasse. Actually quite fun. We spent a good three hours seeing all that we could of the cave, and then headed back to Las Vegas and I headed home.
Entrance to the cave: Happy, happy!
Edges of empty pools; I've seen a few pictures on the internet with these pools full.
This kind of stalactite formation always reminds me of the stylized paintings of steep, Chinese hillsides with draping trees and mist.
Popcorn "formations"

The Oregon Coast

2007-09-17T16:49:00.000-07:00

I spent a long weekend with my parents on the Oregon Coast. They rented a place in the town of Yachats (pronounced "ya hots"). They're looking for a replacement for the north shore of Lake Superior, and I think they enjoyed the coast. I gave them a hard time about dressing alike, but I guess that's what happens when you've been married for almost 40 years. My friend Jean visited from Portland for a couple of nights and we reminisced about rugby songs and caught up on the last couple of years.

Vacation time with the parents always involves seeing things so we drove up and down the coast,stopping for cool coastal views/phenomena, lighthouses,
bird watching and stopping to smell the flowers.
Good geology too; I liked how the basalt at Cooks Chasm weathered back in rectangles because of the parallel-trending parts of the rocks that were composed of slightly different basalt. They would break first, dictating the initial fracture that the surf would slowly chip away at.

I bored mom and dad at Seal Rock with an impromptu game using cross-cutting relationships to put together a story about the coastal sandstones, Columbia River flood basalts and some conglomerates. It would be a fun little field exercise for a geology class. Now, if someone wants to give me a job in Oregon.... Even a nice little lake along Hwy 101 that reminded me of northern Minnesota. Good weekend.

I know I said no more driving....

2007-09-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

So, I'm getting back in the car tomorrow, to meet the 'rents on the Oregon coast. So I'll get a little bit of vacation. Then back in SC for a day, then to Nevada for one last field work hurrah before the quarter starts. Then no vacation until Christmas, nose to the grindstone, pedal to the medal, burning the candle at both ends, you get the picture.

And more transience. I'm coming to grips with the transience. Considering how much advance planning I don't typically do, I feel like I'm starting to see how the next 2 years map out. It evens seems possible that I'll spend more time away from Santa Cruz than in it. But that is jumping off the bridge before I get to it.

Anyway, I'll post some Oregon coast pictures when I get back. In the meantime, we had an unprecidented number of people in the lab, working away today, and were entertained by this episode of the This American Life called "Running After Antelope." which is mostly the story about a man chasing antelope. According to Kena, this man's brother (referred to throughout the story) is a big-whig in the animal morphology world - Kena's students are often entertained by hearing about the lizard that can't breath when it runs. Give it a listen if you have samples to weigh out or plants/rocks/animal parts to crush. Or any other brainless activity to do. Or want inspiration for a new training regime (the campus deer, perhaps?). We were all rooting for the guy to catch the antelope.....

The Cave

2007-09-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

So what have I been up to, you may ask, now that I have all this home time? Data processing, tying up loose ends and getting ready for a real vacation (woohoo!) and some more field work (see, fooled you! I'm getting back on a plane AND in a car). But that isn't very fun to write about.

I've also been cleaning cobwebs. The spiders seem to be out in force, in a way I've never seen. Getting into the backyard through the gate is often a gauntlet of 4 or 5 spider webs with big spiders in the middle of them. I know I'm supposed to like them, since they eat other bugs that tend to eat us, but I'm just really not a fan. They're kind of shifty. I can't think of a time a spider bit me (or tried) in broad daylight. But let the cobwebs collect too long in the skylight and I wake up with lots of bites. See? Shifty.....

You don't really want to hear about my recent cobweb cleaning obsession though. The most interesting thing recently was a lunch time excursion with Kelsey and Nadine to the cave near Porter College. Campus is underlain in places by marble, which has influenced the topography in the area (sinkholes, caves, etc. are common features of "karst" topography; think Puerto Rico and the giant sinkhole that houses the radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory). It was an interesting building challenge the school has had to overcome and the campus also has old quarries that were dug for the lime. The department sends undergrads there for one of the classes, but I hadn't quite managed to get there yet.

Anyway, the cave was fun, people have made odd figurines out of the clay that coats the floor and it makes for a fun lunchtime break. And now I can say I've finally been to the campus caves. One more thing checked off the list of things to do in Santa Cruz before I graduate....

Entrance to the cave:
Clay dinosaur figurine, and a tiny figurine at the bottom clinging to the ledge for dear life. You might have to look hard, above Kelsey's hand....
Tree roots lining the floor of the cave. My favorite part.

Oh, and

2007-08-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-26T17:04:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-08-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-08-08T15:44:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

(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

2007-08-06T05:16:00.000-07:00

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?

2007-08-01T21:52:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-01T21:17:00.000-07:00

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

All roads lead to Denver

2007-07-28T21:18:00.001-07:00

My faithful field assistant Tracy flew back to Santa Cruz from DIA on Wednesday morning (the 25th), so we hightailed it back across I-70, and again camped out at the Governor's mansion. I had intended to take off quickly for the midwest, but found out that a major convergence of CC geo/annual hut trip (aka WIFNAC) folks were all going to be in town late in the week, so I stuck around for a couple of days of computer/planning time and and catch up time with many old friends. Deborah Roth (who I haven't seen since my college graduation) and Nate and Chrissy Williams were all in town, and Ben had friends arriving, so I've logged some quality summer fun, including disc golf, an incredible happy hour thunderstorm (who needs TV when there's lightning?), and a few good hours of lounging and catching up on everyone's lives; new jobs, getting married, residency stress, making exciting new wordworking puzzles or just the same old.
So, fun and games are done, I've put the internet and phone to good use calling USDA soil centers and will be taking off tomorrow morning for the Midwest. The best image for this next leg is probably an old Family Circus cartoon, where Billy maps the most convoluted route possible to his neighbor's house. I'll be doing that in a car between Nebraska, Iowa, southern Minnesota and South Dakota. For folks in Minneapolis, I think I'll be there in a week and a half??

Utah, again

2007-07-28T11:43:00.001-07:00

We just couldn't get enough of the great state of Utah. After Denver basin sampling, we took off for the Book Cliffs region of Utah (just off I-70) to try to find a sea level datum for my project (and before any of you point out that Utah is not actually at sea level, ala "katie, you're going east, not west," I mean sea level during the Cretaceous). We didn't find too many samples, but we DID see some great great rocks via some "road" side geology (roads that mostly mean driving up dry washes), and a few other entertaining sights. We also got a lot more rain, and thunderstorms, which made for beautiful sunrises.
The watchman for the Neslen Formation
My favorite sedimentary structure, Hummocky Cross Stratification
Mudcracks and raindrops...
Our swimming hole, called the Green River

A little press!

2007-07-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

Christina Pince, a science reporting intern for KUNC, the public radio station in Fort Collins, Colorado, joined us for a day in the Denver Basin. She was interested in all manner of stories regarding the work going on in the basin, and in the end, she is airing a story on the climate/paleoclimate work being done on the basin, which is the primary involvement I have with the project and the Denver Museum folks.

In case you're curious, it will be airing on KUNC during Morning Edition and All Things Considered on Friday (the 27th). Christina told us at 6:35 AM, 8:35 AM, and 3:44 PM, but the website says 5:35AM, 7:35AM and 3:44PM Mountain Time on their "this week at KUNC" blurb, so I'm not sure.

Also, I don't think it is a part of the national broadcast; I think it will be part of the local radio segment of the programs, so you'll have to go to the station website, and connect to the listen live link , or search KUNC's archive later to hear it.

Denver Basin

2007-07-24T09:26:00.000-07:00

We spent the 14th through the 17th working on rocks from the Denver basin; two small outcrop sections and one session of sampling from a core they drilled through the basin a few years back. The outcrops were out near a ranch on the plains east of the Front Range. Bijou creek cuts an escarpment down into the landscape, so as you look out across the area, you can barely tell any topography exists, but as you get closer to the edge, near the house on the ranch, the ground falls away in front of you revealing a funny escarpment exposing a 10 meter thick paleosol and a pretty little slot canyon through Paleocene-aged rocks (~65 to 55 million years ago) and down into the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (aka the KT boundary @ 65 Millions years ago). For those of you who don't remember this point in earth history, the KT boundary marks a large meteorite impact and the death of the dinosaurs.
So, it was a change of pace, as we were focused on a single, thin outcrop, so we dug a big trench through the escarpment in a couple of places and took samples. All the while, it was castration time on the ranch, so every few minutes while we were digging we'd hear the most anguishing cries from off in the distance. Either that, or it was the cries of love-sick cows, as they moved one of the bulls during lunch time.
We took our first day off of the trip after two days on the escarpment, when some of our collaborators were at work on some unrelated sections. On the 17th, we headed to the giant Denver Federal Center, to work on the preserved core that is stored at the US Geological Survey, in a warehouse that looks remarkably like the scene from one of the Indiana Jones movies .

Now, if you thought sampling pits made boring photos, core shots are even worse.
But, sampling is a lot faster when you don't have to dig a pit, and we got to take a tour of the National Ice Core Laboratory (basically in the same building), which is where they store and study the ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. Ice cores are extremely useful for paleoclimate studies; the gas bubbles trapped in the ice record past atmospheric CO2 concentrations, oxygen isotopes in the gas are used to get at past temperatures, and you can date them pretty well by counting the layers.
The only problem is that the record currently only covers the last 800,000 years. So, we walked through the freezers, some dressed more warmly than others, into temperatures around -30 fahrenheit (eyelash and booger-freezing temps, if that helps). It was good, because we enjoyed the 100 degree temperatures outside for a good 10 minutes after that!
We also enjoyed a free trip through the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and saw the big Titanic exhibit (according to our entrance tickets, Tracy and I were both first class male passengers that survived the sinking), and a great IMAX film about the role the bayou wetlands play as a hurricane barrier and how their disappearance played a major role in the massive damage Katrina inflicted on New Orleans. Great music too.

Sample Happy in Utah

2007-07-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

I've got a little catch-up to do. We finished up in Utah; after about 10 days of getting up at 5:00 and staying out for about 10 hours each day, digging lots of pits and collecting a ton of samples (almost 70 from Utah alone! My rubbermaid bin is nearly full), we headed to Denver for the next leg.

It was a little sad leaving our little valley in Utah; we were used to the sights. The two guys always leaning against the back of their pickup chatting on our way back to camp, the crazy bearded guy riding down the canyon road everyday, and friendly people everywhere.

The drive from central Utah to Denver is, of course, a geologist's heaven. Interstate 70 is pretty amazing, and this is the first time I've done that drive with another geologist in the car and the "roadside geology of Utah" book. The San Rafael Swell (shades of my sed/strat class in college), the Morrison formation and tons of dinosaur localities and then Glenwood Canyon and views of the Great Unconformity heading into Denver. Tracy had never been on I-70 through Colorado before and had her face pressed to the window, oohing and aahing the whole time.

We're now living the high life in Denver, and sampling the Denver basin, which is east of I-25, between Denver and Colorado Springs. We're staying at the Governor's Mansion in Denver (aka, Ben Hamilton's house), and coordinating the sampling effort with folks from the Denver Natural History Museum and some of my previous collaborators from other projects, so it is fun to be in the field with a group again. We've also been able to sleep in a little, and it isn't so hot, so we finish the day feeling tired, but not quite so trashed as in Utah.

Tracy and I had fun digging a big trench in THE paleosol in the Denver Basin yesterday, and more of the same today. Tomorrow we'll take a day off, and then Tuesday sample the big core they dug a year or so ago in the basin and maybe check out the Museum. Likely we'll head back to the west for one last week before Tracy heads home and I head to the Midwest. Hope all is well with all of you!

Pictures:
early morning on the outcrop
Apparently Ephraim is a scandinvaian hotspot. Every store is an Anderson's, Olsen's, Jensen's or Larson's.
How did they know we needed a backhoe? The forest service left this for us in our campsite in UT one day.
Rare photographic evidence that I'm actually on this trip. Beautiful Navajo cross-bedded sandstone in the bottom right of the picture.
The San Raphael Swell, looking east.
Nutella and Brownies give small women the strength to dig deep pits.

Sweet, sweet soils

2007-07-06T19:25:00.000-07:00

Fossil soils that is. (Paul and Tracy at the top of Axhandle Canyon)

Quick recap: spent the 27th through the 2nd in Nevada, drove to Utah on the 3rd, scouted sections on the 4th (and saw fireworks in Moroni) and 5th, and started measuring and collecting today. So far, it is even hotter here in Utah than it was in Nevada. We've been swimming in a nearby reservoir at the end of everyday; we get up at ~5:00 AM, to get as much time when it is still cool. Our brains are a bit heat-addled by 3 as temperatures have been in the hundreds (yesterday was 110 I think), so we try to finish up by then when possible.

The sections here are great, though most of my pictures are strange shots of pits we dig with a small whiteboard with the locality number on them. Beware of asking to see field photos. BUT, there are some beautiful canyons. So far Axhandle Canyon (aka Axle Rose Canyon, and he sings us out of the canyon) is our favorite. A few of our very own arches....

Ok, time for some geeky geology photos:
Paul and hammer displaying cool conglomerates that are erosionally overlain by limestone, where the front edge of an alluvial fan is interfingering with a lake. fossil soils forming a cliff in Axhandle Canyon. We will be taking souveniers for the mass spec tomorrow.
An arch framing, yes, more fossil soil.
Sheep! Ok, so they're not rocks, but Tracy and I were entertained this morning.
And, a sweet, sweet soil. Just imagine the LARGE number of photos like this at the end of the trip. Slideshow anyone?

Nevada

2007-07-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

View of Ruby mountains (center) on road out of field site)
Just a quick update post. After the workshop, Paul and I drove to Salt Lake City (the 27th), picked up Tracy (field assistant), and drove to Nevada. This was the first of the change in plans, due to changes in plans of folks we were supposed to meet in Utah. So, we spent the last few days checking out some rocks near Elko, and I now have the first self-collected rock samples of my Ph.D. Yay!

We're off to Ely - Nevada that is, not Minnesota. I don't even know if they are pronounced the same. There are some good potential rocks there, and that gives me time to try to track down contact info for people who can grant me access to the rocks I want in Utah. Apparently, one canyon I want to get into is blocked by some persnickety ranchers. I need to call them and hope that Tracy and I can work some magic and get in there.

Anyway, things are going well, we haven't melted or set the sage brush on fire with our rig, we've seen lots of suicidal jack rabbits (a dirt road with ~15 flattened bunnies in a 4 mile stretch??), cows and the beautiful Ruby mountains.
1st Nevada home, Ruby Mountains in the the distance

Wonky? No Wonky?

2007-06-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

For Fault Rocks (and anyone else wondering): definition of wonky, according to some free internet dictionary.

won·ky (wngk)
adj. won·ki·er, won·ki·est Chiefly British
1. Shaky; feeble.
2. Wrong; awry.

I think I picked up this term in Seattle, but the blog title phrase comes from the Noatak River trip I took with Bryn and Louis back in 2005. I'd forgotten about this story until Bryn and Louis retold it (mostly for the entertainment of others) when I was last in Alaska.

The catch 22 for people with a coffee addiction is that you need the coffee to start being functional in the morning, but you have to be somewhat functional to get the coffee into your system. This is especially true in the backcountry.

So, one morning on the trip, I was attempting to pour the functionality elixir into my mug and Louis pointed out that the mug looked a little wonky (I had infected them both with this word during the course of the trip). All I could manage to do/say in response was yell "No wonky! No wonky!" at my coffee cup. It is one of those trip stories that is really only funny to the people on the trip (or those who have seen me try to function without coffee), but the general sentiment seemed to capture a little of the day to day struggle in life. You'll never reach a fully No Wonky state (and really, who would want that? The wonky stories are usually so entertaining), but you still try.....

In a rut....

2007-06-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

This one is for Mom. Mom's small obsession with wagon wheel ruts became clear during multiple family vacations driving out west. We stopped at all kinds of Oregon Trail sites and saw ruts in corn fields, sage brush, as a part of highway rest stops, you name it.

I came across this Oregon Trail site on the Snake River plain in SE Idaho during the drive to Powell yesterday; the Massacre Rock historical site. Apparently about 10 Trail goers from 3 or 4 different wagon trains were killed during attacks here over the course of a couple days. Despite the slightly macabre association, there ARE nice rocks to look at, with Snake River canyon volcanics as the backdrop.

The top of the ruts was about even with the top of my head.
Just up the road is another site, called Register Rock, where many Trail goers carved their names in the rock; this is nicely surrounded by a giant chain link fence, in the middle of a picnicking park.
I've been told there are ruts here in Powell and that we may see them during the workshop field trip in the Big Horn Basin on Tuesday....

Outta Here!

2007-06-22T15:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, field vehicle is loaded, computer is backed up, I've made more Landsat images in the last 36 hours than I care to think about, and I just deposited the equivalent of half of my salary from last year into my checking account.

I think I'm ready to go. Finally!

Mileage contest

2007-06-15T21:43:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Santa Cruz and getting ready for my June 22nd departure for the West. I recently tried to estimate the number of miles I'll drive, for a proposal budget, so here is my challenge to you:

The closest mileage estimate to the actual number of miles I drive wins something. I don't know what; a souvenir from the Corn Palace maybe? Your very own paleosol carbonate? Email or post your estimates.

I don't guarantee an unbiased contest and I'm not above being bribed.

To help get started, I drive straight to Powell, Wyoming, stay there for a few days, and the head to Nephi, Utah on June 27th, by way of Salt Lake City to pick up my field assistant. That is ~1600 miles.

Squeezing in some porch time in Santa Cruz:

End China

2007-06-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some last photos: random rock shots for the geologically inclined, and some more tourist shots from Beijing.

Salt pits in the Qaidam basin:

Some good-looking ripples

The modern china conflict: construction vs. history

I like these guys:

Dallying in Dunhuang

2007-06-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

So, Brian and Brad returned to Golmud on the 8th, we drove to Dunhuang yesterday, and will head out tomorrow. It is hot and dry here, on the edge of the desert and the air feels thick. Maybe thats just the influence of phlegm...

The drive through Qaidam is pretty incredible. It is this vast basin with small peaks along the perimeter. I've never seen alluvial plains on this kind of scale. The peaks look as though they're being swallowed by their own sediment. The geologic equivalent of drowning in your own tears?

I'm feeling much better, slowly getting over the cold and finding ways to kill time in Dunhuang. I'll probably check out the buddhist caves this afternoon; last night we had a great dinner in the night market and entertained ourselves haggling for things we didn't really want to buy.

Anyway, I'll have a day to kill in Beijing and then back to the States on 13th.

A good pun...

2007-06-07T00:53:00.000-07:00

Just to pass the time, and because I love puns, here is a great one that presented itself on the road a few days ago. There will be a picture to go along with it.

We drove by three monks walking down the road, on their way to Lhasa. Each one was pushing a little hand cart in front of him.

Did we just see the Dolly Lamas?
(Photo by Pete Lippert, Pun by Brad Ritts)

Slightly broken

2007-06-07T00:19:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Golmud, a little earlier than expected (supposed to be back on the 10th). The four of us in the field crew were managing the elevation change fine (minus the usual wheezing), but I came down with a cold on Monday. Worse was the cough that came with it. I spent the day in Toutou He resting, hoping maybe the cough would get a little better, but colds just don't improve when you're sleeping at 15,000 feet. And there is a good chance the cold will escalate into something worse, like pneumonia, bronchitis or AMS. So, I rode back down to Golmud with Lau Zhong Zhifu (one of the drivers), who hadn't been dealing well with the elevation.

So, that's it. Pete is with a solid crew, so he'll get lots of samples to bring back to stuff into a mass spec back in Santa Cruz. I'm kind of bummed. It is hard to think about all the time and money that other people put in to get me there, essentially for nothing. The early days in the field were initially to check the outcrops and plan the later half, so all the sample collecting is going on now. It isn't much fun feeling useless, but I guess that is kind of how it goes out here too. Anothere reason to be grateful my field area is right in my backyard.

At this stage, I'm playing the waiting game to find out how I will be getting back to Beijing and eventually home. There is a chance I'll get back early, but who knows. In the meantime, I'm sleeping a lot and set my self little mini-adventures (where is a phone to call the US? where is the internet?) to keep myself entertained. There isn't a whole lot to see in Golmud....

Ganbei!

2007-06-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

Here in Golmud, the jumping off point for field work. Yesterday (the 1st) I flew to Dunhuang, met the crew (Pete, Brian and Brad, and our drivers and interpreters), got in a jeep, and we drove to Golmud.

Today, we celebrated my er-shi-chi (27th) birthday with a trip up to Kunlun pass (there is a big monument to the Kekexili nature preserve and the man who spearheaded the effort to save the Tibetan antelopes from poachers - if your curious, see the movie Kekexili, Mountain Patrol, it is filmed in the area I'm in now).

Highlights:
I logged my highest elevation ever: ~15570 feet, set in India in 2001. Kind of cheating since we drove most of the way to that elevation, but nonetheless, the slow, slow slog the additional way up was suitably wheeze-inducing. I guess that is to be expected going from sea level to 15000+ in less than two days. Mostly feel fine, minor headache and thats about it. Diamox is useful....

Second hike of the day (the theory being we would get our blood pumping high and sleep low for one more night - Golmud is ~8000 feet) sent us up a nice glacial outwash valley, and there was plenty of great geology for us all to geek out on, including the glacier.

Dinner and Piejo (beer) - we had special birthday dumplings, a number of great dishes, a goat leg for each person (yum!) and batter-fried eggplant with sweet & sour sauce with sprinkles for my birthday cake. And many shouts of Ganbei (cheers!. I also learned my chinese numbers (well, only 0-7 and 27) playing a table game involving toothpicks.

We're off to the actual plateau tomorrow to get started so there will likely be no posts until I get back to Golmud or Beijing (~10-12th). Although, now that the amazing Lhasa-Golmud train is running, who knows. One constant in China is how rapidly things change.

Beijing (but not for long)

2007-05-31T03:39:00.000-07:00

So when I can, I'll post pictures, but when I get home, I'll post them to the entries after the fact, so check back if you're curious.

I rolled into the city last night around 5, and one of Professor Wang's student met me at the airport. Olympics preparations are well underway and you can see stadiums peeking out at you from all over the place. I'm staying at the same place Pete always stays (it is all organized through our colleauges at the China University of Geosciences - Chinese geologists get their own University!), so he gave me the inside line on the important places. Pete is another grad student in my department; he brought me on to this project, which is his thesis work, to collect and analyze all the geochemical samples.

One is this internet cafe. Pete's description was of a hole-in-the-wall entrance, stairs leading down to an internet cafe. What he didn't say is that the stairs open into a room that has a huge bank of 100+ computers (bigger than I remember the UW computer bank in the library being), complete with high school-aged boys playing the kinds of computer games that seem like they could suck weeks of your life away in a single sitting.

I spent the morning doing a few errands. I stopped into a grocery/convenience store to buy some snacks for the early flight to Dunhuang tomorrow, and heard a muzak version of that terrible song from the movie Titanic playing over the loud speakers. I felt like I could have been back in the Safeway at home; it is good to know some things in life are universal.

This afternoon I went to the Summer Palace for a little sightseeing; the sky seemed like it was ready to open up the whole time, but it never did more than spit and the Palace and gardens were beautiful.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting on a plane and flying to Dunhuang, where Pete & Co. are picking me up and driving straight to Golmud. I think we'll be there for a day or two, to acclimate as much as anything else.

Book suggestions?

2007-05-24T18:14:00.001-07:00

Hey all, this is a quick request for book suggestions. I'm going to try to hit the store this weekend or Monday for some *light* reading for Tibet (and later I guess). So, email me or comment with a book or two you've read recently and highly recommend.

Minneapolis!

2007-05-21T09:30:00.000-07:00

I had a great weekend back in the old hometown. The guise was my high school friend Sarah Swenson's (now Wineke) wedding. Somehow, the timing on this trip worked out better than I could have planned; Lundi's sister's wedding was this weekend so she was back from LA and Alison and Jon were in town visiting so I got to see the whole Anders clan as well.

Highlights:
Seward garage sale days - Growing up in Seward is a little like growing up in a small town surrounded by a city. During garage sale days anyone in the neighborhood with stuff to sell has a garage sale. Think of it as one-stop shopping for frugal treasures while running into people whose kids you went to school with for years. Ilana did an admirable job haggling (although, the reality of haggling is a little weird in Minnesota); I should take her with me to Tibet since I’m pretty terrible at it. I used the sales as an excuse to wander through the old neighborhood, and voyeuristically case my childhood home, now under new ownership. Dan asked me a couple of weeks ago if it is weird to go back with no home to go to; he hasn't been back since Mom & Dad moved to Seattle. I'd say yes, but it is nice to think of a new set of kids hanging from the rafters in the attic and leaving hand prints all over the stairway.

BBQ'ing at the Anders' - complete with the usual Rudy comments about mudballs and "that red-headed kid", Mattie the dog trying to kill the neighbor's cat and just generally, spending a beautiful May evening out in the back yard.

First project samples! – I picked up a whole selection of mussel shells from the Bell Museum collections this morning. I had hoped this would mean a free trip to the Bell Museum on the U of M campus, since I haven’t been there in years. Instead it meant a free trip to the invertebrate collection in the basement of the ecology building on the St. Paul campus.

The Wedding of course – Sarah looked happy and terrific, and there was plenty of dancing and bowling; the reception was in Coffman Union (U of M) and the downstairs has bowling lanes, a few of which were reserved for the wedding. It was nice to hang out with folks I don’t get to see much. I’m not sure how it works, but though we are rarely all in the same place at the same time, we manage to just pick up where we left off.

Umm, looks like we had fun....

The Summer of Katie in a Car

2007-05-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's the rough schedule of my life from now until September. For those of you out west or in the Midwest, have a peek and see if/when I'm going to be in your neck of the woods. I can't promise I'll have had a shower recently, but I may stop by...

Aspects of this are hazier than others, and I'll add details as the summer evolves:

Late May:
5/17 - 5/21 Minneapolis! (Wedding shenanigans; don't worry, not mine)

June:
5/29 - 6/13 Tibet! (Geologic shenanigans)
6/13 - 6/21 Santa Cruz (frantic field work planning shenanigans)
6/23 - 6/28 Powell, Wyo (Scientific coring shenanigans)

July:
6/29 - ? NV, then UT, then CO (sample collecting, LOTS of driving)

End July-Early August:
dates? NE, SD, IA, MN (more but different sample collecting, more driving)

August:
8/19 - 8/25 Cologne, Germany (Goldschimdt geochem conference)
8/25 - ? Santa Cruz (sleeping, eating, running and not getting in a car)

Back to the roots

2007-05-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

A prairie home companion felt oddly relevant this morning. For the midwestern contingent, I hope you all caught the parent-phone-call sketch and the monologue in the second half of the show. It pretty much covered all the bases for me, made me laugh and I'm excited to be back there in a couple days. Save some lilacs for me, I'll be there soon!

Global FOO

2007-05-02T00:09:00.000-07:00

In the course of a conversation with Sabe & Tom (college friends), we got on the subject of the terms "Global Warming" vs "Global Climate Change". Global Warming is an accurate term, at least in the context of the average global condition, but it doesn't really reflect differences in local and regional climate response to global warming (like the fact that Europe will likely get colder as a result) - hence, the term "global climate change." But, this term (to me anyway) makes it sound as though the current situation is a strictly natural phenomenon.

So, here is a new term, complete with an easy acronym: Global _ing Ourselves Over. Fill in the blank.

Catchy, accurate, what more could you want? Thanks Tom!

Fat and happy

2007-04-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

Once in awhile, you wake up on the right side of bed, and are completely happy with your life. I woke up on the punchy/feisty side of bed, which is always a good way to start. The best is when there is nothing in particular that makes the day this way; on days like this, I feel like I wake up and put on a different pair of glasses and just see my life a different way.

I had a wonderfully productive day, got things written, went out on a limb with my ideas and it went well. The days are longer, and Mel and I went for a 7:00 PM run in the redwoods behind campus; it reminded me of the after-dinner runs I'd take between trips at camp. Everything smells great, and the air has just a touch of cool weather but is still warm. Then I rode down the hill from campus, and remembered as I rode through the meadow and looked out on Monterey Bay, that someone pays me to work on a PhD in this place. It is also biking season so I get excited to ride everywhere, just because it smells good outside, and the night isn't so cold, so I enjoy the night time rides home when the stars are out. I finished off the day at Sora's house for a giant dumpling dinner. Nothing beats riding into the driveway of a friend's house, seeing a kitchen full of friendly faces and smelling Dai's fried Japanese dumplings wafting out of the windows. He is taking off this weekend for 3 months of field work, so the house was bustling, making dumplings and sushi with lots of eating and drinking and laughing. Home now, fat and happy and ready for sleep.

The bartering system

2007-04-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

So, now that I travel as a student, I've become entangled in the whole black market underworld of grad school.

The grad student black market (for me this has happened because of the whole instrument/sample collection/field work monkey business) has grown from the fact that grad students barter time, car rides (mostly to the airport), couch space, and, well, anything (within reason) that isn't money, since we don't have any of that. This black market goes on rampantly within departments but extends to other schools as well. However, geology is a small world, so these connections usually send me home with a new, freakish list of small world connections stories.

Case in point is the arrangement I have for my Pasadena visits. A Caltech student stayed with my labmate Kena while looking for a place to live while she took a science writing class at UCSC. So Kena arranged for me to stay with this woman the first time I went to Caltech.

Anyway, eight days later, I would say she had amply repaid her debt to Kena. However, I am rapidly accumulating debt to the Caltechians since I typically stay with them when head down there. I'm sure the day I try to hand in my dissertation, some Guido-esque character will hunt me down for my outstanding debt. He probably hangs out with the same woman who checks the margins on your manuscript and tells you that you are not, in fact, a doctor yet because your margins are an 1/8" too wide.

So, if you need a couch to sleep on, or know someone who needs a couch in Santa Cruz, send them my way......

Intro, I guess

2007-04-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

The immediate goal for this blog is to keep track of the next five months or so; I've got a lot of travel and field work, so I thought I'd try this out as an alternate option to mass emails that I usually don't end up sending. After that, I guess we'll see.

I've discovered I like keeping track of my friends through their blogs (a very handy procrastination tool), so maybe this will help me reciprocate some.

So, to start with, I got back from Alaska a few days ago, where I was a part of a group of six doing an Easter ski traverse. The original goal was to get to the top of White Princess, a peak in the Delta Range, which apparently is in the easternmost part of the Alaska Range. We didn't make it; strong winds and some snow took the peak out of reach, but we laughed a lot, had chocolate easter bunnies and managed a fun day ski in the area, up a gully and down an alder grove.

I came home with a very tan face (to which I get the frequent response: "wait, I thought you went to Alaska..."), and poison oak (?). I'm still a little puzzled about that last one. The most likely option is some of the evil itching oil traveled with me from Santa Cruz, but the alternate idea is I'm just allergic to alders.

Next up on the calendar is Pasadena; I leave tomorrow to run some samples and if all goes well, I'll take those results to Germany at the end of August.