Roundup

Sorry. It's been forever since I've written.

This summer was mostly spent in The Field. It was actually pretty tedious.
A clast from an undated debris flow "colonized" with obvious pedogenic features like root mottling and oxidation halos. Not that I actually know what that means. Pencil for scale.

A channelized sand and adjacent cut-bank. Hammer for scale.

A chert/quartzite conglomerate in channelized and cross-bedded sandstone. Hammer for scale.

Blah blah blah. Staff for scale marked in 20cm increments.

The reason it was so freakin' tedious was because I had to dig out my outcrops with hand tools.
The final sum was 250m of stratigraphy all hand-dug. I had a strong back by the end of summer.

The other reasons it was so friggin' tedious was because of rain and mosquitoes. And rain. And rain. And rain. And unholy buzzing hordes of mosquitoes.
Oh, and forest fires.

But it turns out the perks were pretty nice. Yeah, we had a wet summer. Yeah, the mosquitoes pushed the limits of my sanity. But man, that scenery...

Things could get kinda lonely out there. A cop rolled up once to check out the truck and didn't see me way up on the outcrop. We ended up chatting for 20 minutes about geology before a single-car rollover pulled him away. He was probably as bored and lonely as I was.
These two dudes on Segways got me excited. Who's the bigger nerd, me or them? I chewed on that for awhile. And look! The paint-striping truck! Whew-wee, high times baby.

I hired on my friend Adam C. to help me rappel some outcrops. Like this one:
We hiked in about 200lbs worth of crap, only to finish way ahead of schedule and dump out most of the water we hiked in ... which we replaced with buckets of samples anyway. Adam is in far better shape than me--he's summited Denali three times--so I was super happy to have not only a climbing guide but a porter as well.
Oh, and of course it rained:
I was at the bottom of some cliff when Adam yelled out and then wouldn't reply. I couldn't figure it until a few seconds later when dime- and nickel-sized hail started pelting me. Good thing we had helmets.

Sometime in there I managed to tear away from the field and go to my friends' wedding in Portland. It was two days before Joe C's ... ah well.
I stayed with the ever babe-tacular Megan 1.0.
And drove Zippy.

And took slow-shutter photos of the wedding dancin'. They came out pretty well, I must say.

Zippy and I drove home listening to In Rainbows. It was a wonderful trip.

Sometime in September I drove a friend to Laramie where we attended a Big Oil job fair. I stayed with EEB and ate honest-to-god Indian food. We don't have that in Missoula. J and I ended up touring a rig somewhere near Rawlins, WY--aka the end of the earth.
Fittingly, the roughnecks had nude pin-ups. They didn't swear or scream at each other though so we were kinda disappointed. A couple of weeks before, another Big Oil company took us on a tour of some local caves just for fun.Alas, Big Oil doesn't want to hire me. Yet. They're not hiring many people at all, actually. I'm still not sure whether to be frustrated or relieved.

Then I returned to Oregon for a conference in October. I stayed with the same people who'd gotten married. Danizzle was the first person I met in Oregon back in 2004. She and Mark put me up for a few days and showed me around town when they weren't working.
Their ridiculously cute kittens love me, so I didn't eat them.

Then there was Halloween.
Yeah!

Then I returned to Laramie! Follow so far? Big Hole, Oregon, Laramie, caves, Portland, and now Laramie again.
Laramie isn't too far away from Denver, where the USGS has a Core Research Lab. I stayed in Laramie and commuted to Denver during the day to look at tiny little well cuttings from a 1980 exploration well in the Big Hole. East Coast driving skills thankfully returned quickly in Denver traffic.
Data. Gonna have to work on that color balance a little.

I once again stayed with EEB.
EEB's dog is a walking, barking stomach. He'd roll out in to the living room at 3 a.m. and start emitting horrible dog smells. I took it as a sign of mutual respect.

The drive home was fantastic: clear and warm, which is pretty unusual for eastern Wyoming in early November. The elevation is something like 7000 feet. The skies were just amazing.
Sunset peeked through snow showers over the Bighorn Mountains. That's a place I gotta go explore sometime.

Whew, and one more trip: a late-season Geology Club tour of my field area.
Conditions were "marginal".They pushed the van out several times while I helpfully laughed and took photos.
So we ended the day and hit the hot springs instead.
And that's about it. To sum: Laramie, hot springs, mosquitoes. I'm also teaching Physics and Astronomy to K-8 teaching majors. This from the guy who failed PHYS 2306 three times. Given all the intense traveling and intense-er-er teaching, I'll be happy when the semester ends.

User Interfaces

Whatever happened to buttons? My first experience with the iPod was less than wowing. Same with the iPhone. This isn't a rant against Apple products per se, but it is a rant about what I see as the fetishization of technology; I'm tempted to include the iDrive here, but since I've never used it I would have to rely on hearsay.

The novelty of these things wears off quickly when you realize you need to walk around distracted by the ol' hand-eye coordination needed to navigate menu-driven interfaces. I suppose it's a necessity for large volumes of data (e.g. mp3 collections), but it doesn't seem efficient. I see it all the time on campus: someone walking with their head down as they examine some small screen and carefully touch some smooth surface.

I like buttons whose texture, shape, position, size, and sound (underrated but important) intuitively convey some functional meaning. Cars epitomize this. Think about it: how many times have you had the seatbelt halfway on as you also clicked over the vents to defrost and hit the radio scan button? You're already swiveling around to clear your mirrors and back out of the parking spot. Or another: when you were in high school and reached in to your backpack to fast-forward through your Walkman/CD player?

This isn't meant to be anachronistic. The iPod holds an epic amount of music. Your iPhone is impressive capable. But queuing a bunch of music in the car or dialing a new number at a party is a mess. The trend towards these interfaces is irritating; I suspect it stems more from technological flash than utilitarian substance. But hey, if that's what people buy...

A West Coast Tour

If you're short on time, just hold the page-down key down and don't blink. It actually works.

I dragged a German undergraduate on a roadtrip in the days before his flight out of Missoula. Phil's only stipulations were to see the temperate rainforest and San Francisco. Pff, is that all? We prepared Jiggles for the arduous journey ahead (i.e., filled the gas tank) and were on our way.

[Disclaimer: some of these shots are his.]

We started out along the Rocky Mountain front on our way to Glacier NP. The weather had been marginal but was starting to look better.

Glacier itself was pretty good. We hit Many Glacier first. In 15 minutes it switched from biting cold rain to brilliant warm sunshine. Ah, mountain weather.

St. Mary was brilliant the next day. We drove up as far as we could go, but Logan Pass was still closed due to "The Big Drift". This being my second time in the park, we made time for a quick waterfall hike.

The flowers were out.

But we left the park in a hurry. We had to make Seattle. And we did, driving through a drenching shitstorm. Seattle turned out to be the worst waste of money and time on the whole trip. Our expensive motel was ideally located downtown, but every bar within walking distance was overpriced and full of fauxhawk-sporting doofuses. Fauxhawks on 40-year-olds inspires the punching urge in me. At 2 a.m. we were woken up by parties on either side of us. Or rather Phil was woken up; I was so out of it that I pretty much slept straight through.

Two bonuses: while downtown, Phil got to witness some drunk dude yelling at his friend, "I am a straight-up HUSTLAH! I got money in the BANK!" He didn't realize people outside of movies actually spoke like that. Bonus 2: sushi made by real Asians. I don't think any of them were Japanese, but it was close enough for Phil.

And we were off! Olympic NP beckoned. First stop: Hurricane Ridge. Actually the first stop was Port Angeles, where we found a sixpack of Miller Highlife tallboys for $4. But then we went to Hurricane Ridge.
Sometimes the sightlines were a little short.But not always.
And the flowers were out.
If you don't like wildflowers, you're just plain weird.


The next day was spent at the beach. I've never had a sunny day at Olympic.
Phil took an involuntary swim in the Pacific.There were even wildflowers at the beach.

A major theme of the day was skipping the infinite supply of perfect stones in to the surf.

We visited the Hoh rainforest the next day along with more beaches.
We also found a sea-stack shaped like a boner. Outstanding.

We headed south, briefly stopping in Portland on our way to a night in Eugene. The ass-hats who bought my house have planted a little garden in the front yard and have a sign up sanctimoniously bragging about it being pesticide/herbicide-free. 1) I never used any, but somehow managed to keep things nice and usually undead. It's called "pulling weeds" and "watering" you stupid fucks. This is so obviously a cover for your lazy asses. What really drives me crazy is that people there probably believe your bullshit. 2) You worthless shitheads probably planted your garden in leaded soil--even after you saw the lead-paint test results I provided. I am apparently the only guy in Eugene who ever got his house tested for lead paint and, not only that, didn't hide the results from you during the buying process. I'm sure you are slowly poisoning your family. Words are inadequate to describe the magnitude of my dislike for you.

I feel a little better now.

Oh, and it was also nice seeing Joe and Megan.

Then we went to Redwoods NP.
The lighting in the forest made for some cool shots. The combination of enormous ferns and enormouser trees never got old.

Another theme of the "wet coast" were foreign trees growing out of dead stumps and logs. They made for some weird and occasionally Giger-esque viewing.

And we kept going, down U.S. 101 and then to the coast on California 1.
We stopped in some gucci little town for lunch, found the slightly less-gucci eatery at the edge of town, and I had the best burrito of my life while we watched Brazil vs. South Africa with a crowd of Mexicans. It was an excellent break from landscape scenery.

Phil wanted to see San Francisco. I wasn't so enthused about it: pricey, unfamiliar, and hilly (Jiggles has a gigantic clutch and no hand-brake). But we stopped in anyway.
Done. We pressed on to Big Sur and listened to NPR's Michael Jackson coverage on the way out of town.

Every campground we passed was full. Full, full, full. We drove on through the evening and in to twilight in our futile search. Phil noticed a small road going up in to USFS land in the coast range, so we tried it out. The drive up wasn't promising, but once we got above the marine layer/clouds we had one of the best views ever, anywhere.
The photo doesn't really do justice. Phil had bought some salami and we had fresh sourdough, so we sat out at night eating sandwiches and watching satellites pass overhead.

We continued down the coast after some "field showers" and our standard delicious breakfast of ClifBars and warm water.
Look at this last photo closely. It's like something from Captain Planet.

We stopped to watch some Elephant Seals.
They were either asleep or fighting. Just like grad school.

We hustled to meet my sister-in-law in Malibu, but found time to explore a little red dot on the map called "Nippomo Dunes". We crested a dune and Phil said, "You don't need to leave this country. Everything is here." Well, sorta. But yeah, it's a big country. I like it very much.
But enough beach time. On to Malibu.

Heather met us at an ocean-front eatery called Neptune's Net. Trav had taken me there before. It's a pretty spot and the food is good. Afterwards, Jiggles explored the low gears in an effort to navigate to Heather's place in Hollywood. When I say "Hollywood", I mean physically ON Sunset Blvd. I had no idea. It's ridiculously nice and she put us up for the night. We woke at 4:45 a.m. and went out to breakfast. It was a good idea, since we did Hollywood to Missoula in 18.5 hours.
And just like that, it was over. Phil is in Miami and will soon be home in Potsdam. I'm staring down eight straight weeks of mosquito-filled field work. And Jiggles is bathing in fresh engine oil.

Still Kickin'

Sorry. It's been awhile. The old camera died, the old new replacement is sorta good, and the newest replacement for the old new replacement is only slightly better. And I'm busy too.

I cruised off to Oregon for a few days over Spring Break. Food and beer were high on the list of shit to do. Megan and Tony let me crash on the couch.
Cafe Siena: the Mexican Breakfast is the end-all and be-all of breakfasts.


I stole Kobe and spent my 30th birthday at the beach. For once, it was a birthday with sun. Not bad. I didn't think I'd miss the ocean as much as I did.
Good boy.

It was also nice to see some of the old haunts. Kobe and I rolled up Spencer Butte on a sunny day. It's amazing to smell the ocean that far inland.
The trail up. The walk up never disappoints, even when it's clouded over.

Other places, though, had irrevocably changed. Like my house.
The fence is new. Hmm, how are my Japanese Maples doing? And the rhododendrons I nursed back to health? And the lilacs?
Oh my God. They've killed everything. Those fuckers killed everything. The one goddamned thing the house had going for it is overgrown and half-dead. All that work... What kind of lazy shitheads shell out for a pricey fence but don't water the lawn in the dry summer? Those fucks. I hope they get lead poisoning and the plumbing finally goes to hell. At least it's not mine anymore.

Shit hit the fan in April. Travis got married in Denver in May during my finals week. I don't have any pictures, but it was good and fun and small. He's in Ranger School now, which lends perspective to what real stress actually is. But my semester finally ended. I won a bunch of grants--enough to almost fully fund my thesis work. That's really really good news.

I started field work in the Big Hole Valley in May.

The weather started off well, then changed. I've gotten rained out for several days now.
Why not geology in the rain? Well ... it's hard to measure stratigraphy on wet 30-degree slopes that are made of 50/50 swelling clay and rounded cobbles.

But I'm slowly making progress. Normally I dig out my outcrops for a day or two, then go in and measure the stratigraphy.
Digging takes time. It doesn't help when BLOODTHIRSTY HORDES OF MOSQUITOES do their best to find every gap in my DEET coverage.

Maybe faint cross-bedding? Can you see mud drapes? Maaayyybe???

Soon I'll take off for a week with a German undergrad in tow to show him some of the better parts of the West, then it's on to seven straight weeks of field work. I hope the mosquitoes die down a bit while I'm gone.

Bullshit Detector

Time for a rant. Had to get some of this off my chest though.

"My ideal guy is ... "
I'm going to ignore everything you say for the next two minutes. Your chances of finding a biodiesel mechanic with a PhD who runs an animal refuge in his spare time are slim at best. But good luck with that.

"Animals are just people with fur."
Because cuddliness is an important moral consideration.

"I'm so happy to be single."
My thoughts on this are best summed-up here. Also, you're a moron.

"Results may vary."
This is why I've pretty much cut dairy out of my life. Stupid pills.

"If only we ... "
Yes, because despite your black-hole-like ignorance on whatever substantial topic we're discussing, your solutions to the world's ills are stunningly insightful. Problems are best addressed from a black 'n white worldview, because black 'n white is intellectually convenient--and we all know how important convenience is! You really ought to be in charge of something big and important--possibly an independent finance bank.

"Men don't care about women."
The market for boner pills proves that, yes, we men do care about women. Albeit in the most selfish manner possible, but y'know, whatever.

"What America needs ... "
... are presidential candidates who stick to the script. Good grief. In several instances over the last two years the Bullshit Detector has pegged so hard it broke the needle. Thank god the election is over.

"You drive a truck!"
This apparently increases my sex appeal by ~15%. Trucks are especially effective in University towns if they're plastered with environmental/band stickers but the driver looks really grizzled and tough and has a beard. 'Cause, y'know, he's like obviously tough but also sensitive in a manly sort of way. He drives a truck!

"BUY MORE AND SAVE MORE!!!!"
Orrrrr ... you can save even MORE by not buying at all! Holy shit!

"I thrive on adrenaline."
Really? When's the last time you started a fist-fight? And why are you always asking me to slow the car down? How long have you been living in this adrenaline-filled fantasyland where you're all edgy and stuff?

"Grad school sucks."
Not as much as real life.

Whewwwww ... sorry. Had to be done. I'll post some trip photos next time I take a trip. Which is hopefully soon.

The Greater, Whiter North

It's cold in Canada. Especially in winter. So I decided to go to Edmonton for New Year's. And yes, I know it's February already.
That's pretty much what the whole country looks like. It was very odd to drive through all this and imagine how much warmer North Dakota must be.

What I like best about Canada--besides the scenery--is that it's full of honest-to-god Canadians.
Look! Freaking Canadians. Doing Canadian stuff. With Canadian accents. Speed limits? Yeah, those are in kilometers per hour. I imagine Canada's birth started with asexual reproduction of America followed by passage through a whirling vortex of hockey, metric units, Tim Horton's shops, ice age weather, and Manhunter.

Unfortunately, due to a combination of factors, I didn't take many photos. Without proof, you'll have to take my word that I did all of the following: made an involuntary, um ... coprolite precursor in the snow at -15F; nearly got my clock cleaned by some guy (honestly, I didn't know she was married); saw the world's largest baseball bat, cowboy boot, and indoor mall (complete with several rollercoasters, shooting range, pirate ship, dolphins, seals, and a waterpark with a wave pool); drank expensive Canadian beer using bizarro Canadian money; watched Hockey Night in Canada; and actually walked around in -25F weather during the DAY. Even the hardy Canadians were complaining how cold it was, though they still made fun of me for dressing like the Michelin Man. They also were confused that my car didn't have an engine block heater--'cause c'mon, don't they all? (Jiggles still starts up at -22F fortunately.)

Anyway, God bless 'em. They're nice people.

If You Don't Think This is Hilarious...

... it's probably because you're far, far more mature than I am.