I Still Do Stuff Sometimes
But it's mostly geology.
After a 15 year skiing hiatus, I finally shed the fear that my knee would catastrophically explode across the bunny hill and managed a couple of days this year in January and Ferbruary--enough to whet my appetite, but not enough to satisfy it. It all came back to me surprisingly easily.
Discovery has easy slopes and low crowds, but it's an hour-and-a-half away. Boo.
It also has nice views of the Pintlers and Sapphires.
On the other hand, Snowbowl is visible from campus, only a half-hour drive, and has the best bar in Missoula. But the green courses were designed by a sadist: Great Flaming Leap of Death, The Crippler, Bayonet To The Groin, Vertebrae Pulp, 9.8 m/s^2, etc. I got better but it was still a challenge.
The Lovely Ladies of Geology helped me down the slope so I kept the Daft Punk jokes to a minimum.
The panoramas of Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley are worth the possibility of arthroscopic surgery:
Campus is toward the left and Missoula is obscured by the trees a bit.
I finally decided on a thesis project. No one believes me that scenery was not a consideration.
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I'll be working in the Big Hole Valley looking at Tertiary gravels.
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See? Rocks.
Spring Break was a geology field trip to the exotic Oregon coast. For about a week we stood in cold wet winds and the colder, wetter Pacific Ocean looking at ripples, scour-pits, dunes, and outcrops. It would've been a bit more tolerable if it hadn't hailed and snowed on us for eight of the ten days. This was the one clear day we had:
A major non-geological highlight was a beached sperm whale on the Washington coast.
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Yum.
We also took a field trip to the Madison Valley this weekend. It resembled a cross between South Dakota and northern Nevada.
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Not everyone had snowshoes though so we had to cut it short.
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And finally, Spring has officially arrived.
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Other sure signs of Spring:
School ends in four weeks, then I'm off to field camp.
After a 15 year skiing hiatus, I finally shed the fear that my knee would catastrophically explode across the bunny hill and managed a couple of days this year in January and Ferbruary--enough to whet my appetite, but not enough to satisfy it. It all came back to me surprisingly easily.
Discovery has easy slopes and low crowds, but it's an hour-and-a-half away. Boo.
On the other hand, Snowbowl is visible from campus, only a half-hour drive, and has the best bar in Missoula. But the green courses were designed by a sadist: Great Flaming Leap of Death, The Crippler, Bayonet To The Groin, Vertebrae Pulp, 9.8 m/s^2, etc. I got better but it was still a challenge.
The panoramas of Missoula and the Bitterroot Valley are worth the possibility of arthroscopic surgery:
I finally decided on a thesis project. No one believes me that scenery was not a consideration.
I'll be working in the Big Hole Valley looking at Tertiary gravels.
Spring Break was a geology field trip to the exotic Oregon coast. For about a week we stood in cold wet winds and the colder, wetter Pacific Ocean looking at ripples, scour-pits, dunes, and outcrops. It would've been a bit more tolerable if it hadn't hailed and snowed on us for eight of the ten days. This was the one clear day we had:
We also took a field trip to the Madison Valley this weekend. It resembled a cross between South Dakota and northern Nevada.
Not everyone had snowshoes though so we had to cut it short.
And finally, Spring has officially arrived.
Other sure signs of Spring:
- 35 degrees and sunny = shorts + frisbees
- only five more months 'til ice-fishing season is over
- squirrel-on-squirrel action all over campus getting me hot
- air is less painful
- raccoons feasting on sudden windfall of thawed barf
School ends in four weeks, then I'm off to field camp.
1 Comments:
You are a jerk for making me want to go snowboarding.
And also for other reasons.
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