Summer Solstice

Summer is sublime. I have a profound dislike for sitting down, being indoors, and wasting daylight. And not having daylight to waste. If I have a map and the sun is shining, I'm in search of adventure. Since arriving in America, I have had 16 hours of sunlight every day compared with 9 hours in Christchurch.

To my running, biking, hiking soul, that means I've had twice as many days; it's no wonder I feel like I've been here weeks and weeks and weeks. My well-used map of State College is covered in highlighter and my head is full of mental waypoints of my favourite rocks, trees, creeks, houses, overlooks and restaurants.

If summer is sublime, the solstice is ethereal. On Friday night after work, I rode my bike to Mt Nittany and climbed to the summit to watch the sunset. On Saturday morning, I rode my bike through downtown State College:

past grand collegiate columns:

and for hours along an old railtrail and miles of forest tracks:

Yes, I did get completely lost. However, I've found that if I stand at the side of the road looking lost long enough, someone will tell me how to get home. They did. The road was gorgeous:

After all that, I got home before lunch, read more of my new used Tom Robbins book, and went to the lab to work on my data for 3 hours. At last I was rescued from the AC, DC, EMRs and electronic hums. Bryan, Marco and I went to Rothcote State Forest for a late afternoon swim in Whipple Dam:

With fresh watermelon in hand, we ended the day at Professor Derek Ellsworth's summer solstice soiree. Nestled in forest against the base of Mt Nittany, his house was host to a bring-a-dish bbq complete with the most delicious spit-roasted spring lamb that I have ever had. We relaxed on the lawn eating, drinking and laughing until the sun set and the children started catching fireflies. Their glowing bioluminescence was nature's fireworks, and the warmth of summer was rivaled only by the warmth of American hospitality. Joy. Friendship. Sunshine.

Love in Lancaster

I rented a Hyundai, tuned into Car Talk and drove to Lancaster yesterday. Stunning scenery lined the road, and I was filled with fahrvergnügen driving fast down a 4-lane American highway. Never mind that I forgot my wallet at Alamo; my friends were 90 miles away and I couldn't wait to meet their beautiful baby boys. I couldn't wait to talk about families and pregnancies and nutrition and breastfeeding and careers and all the aspirations we had 10 years ago in Sewanee.

It was awesome; Melinda made delicious food (blackened Salmon salad, roasted organic chickens). The boys were full of cuteness and curiosity. We wandered around Jones park, found trees and sap at James Buchanan's arboretum, saw turtles and rabbits and baby ducklings. Baby Martin could not possibly have been more adorable:

And Owen's passion for all-out adventure and exploration was both entertaining and refreshing. Thankfully, though, I didn't have to chase after him. My friends Tracy and Melinda are fantastic mothers, unashamedly breastfeeding their babies on the park bench and attentively engaging them in the wonders of the natural world.

I think we could have talked for days, but all-too-soon I was back on the road to State College. Intellectual conversation was replaced with lyrics like "just when it couldn't get hotter, I fell in love with the farmer's daughter." Awe, America, families, babies, deciduous forests, road trips, I love you.

John's Birthday, Jersey Shore

One of the great things about being here is that I can visit my brother and his family! Happily, I escaped the lab again yesterday and headed up to Jersey Shore, where my brother John is the pastor at Crossroads Community Church. I soaked up the ambiance and embraced the Christian fellowship. What a welcome switch from the intensity of academia! Afterwards, we all headed to John's beautiful PA-styled house for a delicious lunch of homemade guacamole and all foods Mexican-American. Yum!

I love my niece Emily (a sporty nature girl after my own heart :-) and my nephew Cole (who loves doing neat experiments, like melting different sized chunks of ice to see the size of the water marks). Last time, Cole and I had all sorts of cool conversations about doing science experiments. Here's a picture of Emily and her cute dog Obi:

And Cole with his friend Jacob comparing Pokemon cards. I remember doing the same thing with football cards when I was his age. Must be an important prelude to collecting scientific data.

After lunch, we sang Happy Birthday to John and had cake. I really liked the strawberry pie that Suzie made with freshly picked summer strawberries. It was SOOO nice to sit in the sun and be in the company of my family.

Morning on Mt Nittany

I've been feeling really dizzy this week from the toxic combination of epoxy and molycote, so I took the day off and rode my bike to Mt Nittany. Mt Nittany is a cute little 2000 foot mountain that overlooks State College, and it's a lovely rolling 40 minute bike ride (on Bono) from my house to the trailhead.

It was a warm, humid morning and I was the only person on the trail, which climbs about 650 feet to the top of the mountain. After an early morning rainshower, the leaves were glistening with water, and mountain laurels dressed the understory with Pennsylvania's state flower.

I enjoyed using my dendrology skills to identify the different trees. It was neat to see the mixture of southern species at lower elevations and northern species at higher elevations. There were also some mountain azaleas still blooming.

Along the ground, I caught glimpses of the Appalchian columbine.

And no trip to the mountains is complete without rocks. I was thrilled to see that the same rock that caps my beloved Sewanee domain outcrops atop Mt Nittany: a crossbedded sandstone.

I approached the bluff thinking, well that would be a great place for a snake. Sure enough, when I clambered over the edge, a Northern Racer greeted me from a crevice. I don't know which was more alarming, the snake or the premonition. Although he looked pretty harmless and I stopped to take a picture, I wasn't about to do any detailed geology:-)

Long Days in the Lab

It's a good thing the days are long; I can spend hours in the lab and still have time to run and bike. I'm posting a photo of the final view of a jacketed rock sample about to go into the pressure vessel (a place where we put huge confining pressures on the rock to simulate the conditions it experiences at about 2 km beneath the Earth's surface).

And here's the monster machine which applies the pressures. It's called the biaxial shear apparatus or "biax" for short. There are a lot of buttons and knobs to learn to use!