Quarter Collage

(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

(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

(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

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

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

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……….