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!

Some SC Sights

Still no people photos, but I do have some State College scenery to show off! The awesome guys down at Freeze Thaw Bikes made me a fresh ride from spare parts in their basement. The bike is single speed, various colours, has 2 different sized wheels, and rides like a dream. Rolling terrain surrounds Penn State, and this bike glides up and down the hills with ease. The past couple of days I have explored the Millbrook Marsh Nature Centre, Walnut Springs, 2 golf courses, numerous neighborhoods, and the Slab Cabin run. I've enjoyed the forests, creeks, and wildlife, especially the squirrels.

My townhouse is in a great location; I only have to walk a few minutes North to downtown and the geology building, and it's only a few minutes East to great running trails in Lederer and Walnut Springs parks.

I really love looking at maps. When I see a new spot, I can't rest until I see the sights and get the lay of the land. With all this exercise, hopefully I'll soon be able to concentrate on the experimental results rather than my next adventure.

May in the USA

So I'm back in the land of plenty... plenty of planes, Mexican food, research grants, and free espresso. Not to mention abundant sunshine, flowers, mammals, new running trails, exuberant people, and cool experiments. After a short trip to Madison, Wisconsin for a structural geology conference (lots of arm waving, like the statue outside the state capitol):

I am happy to be settled into life in Happy Valley, the home of Penn State University. I have a really cute room in a townhouse with two postgrad girls, and it's only a short walk through charming downtown State College to the geology building.

I'll post some more pictures of the lab and views from the roof soon, but suffice it to say that I think it's nearly paradise. Today, I built my first experiment by putting pieces of Alpine Fault rocks between these blocks:

Tomorrow, we'll shear the pieces of rock under huge pressures and see what they do. We are also going to measure how fast water flows through the rocks. Hopefully, we can use these numbers to predict how the rocks will behave during an earthquake. Stay tuned for oh-so-exciting pictures of the deformation apparatus as well as some of the views from the roof and maybe even some people photos:-)

Happy Birthday Belle

I always think about babies in the autumn. Last year, embroiled in this PhD, we decided to get a puppy. I spent many days reading about breeds and looking through internet posts of new litters before finally deciding on a German Shorthaired Pointer. Much of me wanted to re-home a dog, and we visited several dogs needing adoption. However, with Anna and her friends, I wanted to know the complete history of the dog and its temperament before committing to love it forever. Eventually, we made our way to the Twaddle residence, where we met Stella and Bruno and their litter of 10 little GSP puppies. We chose the middle-of-the-pack puppy and brought her home on Mother's Day, 2009.

Our dog Belle was a terrible puppy, and for many months I wanted to give her back. She jumped on Anna, nipped Anna, wee-ed on the floor, chewed up everything in sight. When you calculate how much a dog will cost, you take into account Council registration, the puppy price, food and housing, vet bills, spaying. Well, add up all of those figures, then double the amount to reach the true total. Our dog has chewed up hundreds of dollars worth of toys, garden equipment, tools, you name it.

And yet, it's all been worth it. I love having a dog; she finds things, protects the family, genuinely tries to be part of the pack, happily plays fetch for hours, wags her tail when we get home, loves being scratched, is patient with Anna, never fails to initiate conversations with strangers, and is always keen for a run. Belle adds so much to our lives. I have read some books about children who grow up with dogs, and statistically they are more social, more outgoing, and have better body-language skills. I know it has been great for Anna to have me cleaning up after the Belle (rather than her) and getting cross with Belle (rather than her) and just giving Anna the space to be Anna. Only children can have their joy squelched by their over-attentive parents, and I want Anna to have the time and freedom to develop her own ideas about things.

So, while James and I bemoan Belle, chase her, try to heard her into the car and away from seagulls, Anna giggles. When we go on car trips, Anna gets to squeal about having to share the seat with a stinky dog. When I am walking up a creek on the West Coast, I can grumble about sore feet because Belle ate my insoles. It is so liberating to complain about the dog rather than hurting feelings or moaning about world politics!


In closing, I recommend reading a review of The Wolf in the Parlor: the Eternal Connection Between Humans and Dogs by Jon Franklin. In it, the author makes a well-researched scientific argument for his audacious premise that humans and dogs have developed a symbiotic relationship. I kind of like that idea. So, Happy Birthday, Belle, I'm glad that you're One of us.

A Family in the Field

As much as I love carrying Anna, she's almost 5! Still, there's only one way to get her up a wild West Coast creek, and that's in her "baby" backpack. Anna promised that she'd wear her boots and help me collect rock samples if I took her into the field to look for faults. Well, you can see how long her boots lasted! While I collected fault rocks, she splashed in a little rock pool, made a bed on a mossy cushion, found forest fairies, and learned to leap from boulder to boulder. She loved her days in the field, but she has agreed that it's much nicer to stay home :-)

We stayed up the creek until 8.30pm and met numerous native birds on the way back to the truck. I really like the large flightless wekas, which look a little like wild brown chickens. They are cheeky birds who often walk up to see if you have anything that they can steal or eat. It may be the massive amounts of poison DoC put in the native forest last November to control of the invasive pests (like rats and possums), but for some reason the native plants are really flourishing. In turn, the bird population has boomed.

While Forest and Bird and the Department of Conservation tote the benefits of 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate), the debate against poisoning rages on the West Coast. I personally am tired of seeing "poison" signs and skulls and crossbones plastered on every fence post the length of the coast. We are not allowed to take dogs in the forest and are cautioned to watch children at all times. It's not back to nature, it's warfare. I would love to hear any comments from chemists about this compound; it is dumped aerially by the ton into our forests every year, and frankly, I've had enough. I am all for traps, but aerial drops of pesticide are foolhardy.

Now, I will return to being my normally perky self. On Sunday, we went to the beach at Hokitika to observe the high tide mark left by the tsunami generated by the M8.8 Chile earthquake. Here, you can see Anna and James standing next to the waterline left by the tsunami waves. The photo was taken at high tide! Luckily, New Zealand was spared extensive damage because the waves arrived during low tide.

West Coast Bliss

The West Coast is my piper. I constantly long to march up streams to the tune of rushing water, rumbling gravel, cooing wood pigeons and laughing kea. I first fell in love with its primordial podocarp forests when I spent a semester abroad in 1999, and I remain passionate about the place to this day. In less than 30 km, the Tasman Sea gives way to rushing rivers, glaciers, the Alpine Fault, and 3000 m mountain peaks. Not only that, but in summer, the evergreen forest comes alive with bright red rata flowers.

For 6 days, I traipsed up rivers looking for the Alpine Fault, collected rocks, and carried them home to analyze in the lab. Along the way, I met interesting fellow geologists, marveled at sunsets in Okarito, and drove a spiffy 4x4 up braided river beds. Thankfully, said 4x4 waited until the end of my trip to have a transmission meltdown, and I made it home safely to spend James' birthday with our extended family in Moeraki.