Some Rough Cuts

Spring Break 2010 has taken the Droser lab up the California Coast to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I shot some video footage of the beautiful creatures and plan to edit these clips, as well as other shots from then entire trip, into a longer video journal but take a look at these in the meantime:

Australia

Sunrise in Adelaide

Nilpena Station: the Shearers' Quarters

Moonrise over the Smithy

My field locality: Tennis Courts

Bed 4: "Mop Bed," bespattered with mop-identifying post-its

Excavation at West Tennis Courts

Jim testing out the furniture masons' wares

Dust Storm!

Sunset in the dust storm

Emmy, stylin' her most recently acquired item of high fashion ("rescued" from the Leigh Creek park)

Double rainbow!

The Cairns rainforest: Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree...

Cairns, viewed en route to the Great Barrier Reef!

On July 2, 2009, the Australian Expedition – Mary, Lidya, R.J., Emmy, Ian, Mary Elizabeth, Matt and D.A. magically condensed their luggage and set off. Although R.J. (and more importantly, his precious burden of laminated photographs) was stopped at security on the suspicious charge of having a watch in his backpack rather than on his wrist and, alas, no one discovered a stuffed isopod during the post-deplaning tidying session, we successfully made it through two flights, SUV and trailer rental and a treacherous system of roundabouts, full of cars driving the wrong way, to arrive two days later at the Princes Lodge, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. Our respite was brief, however, and soon we were racing through the most super of Adelaide’s supermarkets, maniacally snatching goods off shelves and dazedly consulting shopping lists.

The next day we embarked on the six-hour drive to Nilpena Station, pushing to arrive before dark (in order to avoid the crepuscular kangaroos – the Australian equivalent of hitting a moose or cow). Through Port Pirie, Port Augusta, Hawker and at last the Flinders, we sped on and arrived with the last of the light. After hauling bag after bag of groceries into the tiny Shearers’ Quarters (Nilpena is a traditional sheep ranch), we finally organized and stuffed into place the last of the cans, greens, dairy, bread, dozens of bottles of wine and massive pile of GORP ingredients and collapsed into bed, only to awaken in a couple hours, as the jet lag caught up with us and vindictively pounced.

We spent our days outside in the elements – ranging from three-layer (“mild”) to six-layer (“uncontrollable trembling” – especially when the wind howled) weather. A couple times, mulish blankets of thick clouds or startling downpours drove us out of the field and into Leigh Creek to resupply and descend upon the bewildered owners of the small-town post office with sheaves of postcards. But otherwise, battling the dust storms and the bitterly-cold winds, cursing the faux sun and working frantically during the few brilliant, cloudless days, we excavated, scrubbed, picked, gridded, mapped, measured, latexed, drew, photographed, prospected amongst the float and endlessly observed the panoply of the Ediacara Biota. At dusk each day we returned to (of course) gin and tonics and a very welcome hot dinner, courtesy of D.A., downloaded each day’s worth of photographs (I accumulated nearly 5 Gb of mop-related photographs by the end of the trip) and sometimes watched movies on the South Australia Museum’s big screen, with Mary’s projector – classics like Mama Mia and Short Circuit (“I am standing here beside myself”). We tasted quandong milkshakes, celebrated Ian’s birthday and the carnivores sampled the Parachilna Hotel’s “Feral Platter” – emu pate, camel sausage and other similar delicacies.

Time passed quickly, and soon we were racing to tie up all the loose ends in our fieldwork, give the house a thorough beating to (very temporarily) free it from its thick coat of red dust (I easily reached my lifetime quota for silica consumption and pack up. We sojourned in Cairns for a few days of decompression - visiting the rainforest by way of historic train, snorkeling and scuba diving in the Great Barrier reef, wandering the gigantic organic farmer's market, basking in the strange and wondrous humidity the whole while. But soon it was time to go home. On our last day we arose before dawn, caught our flights to Sydney and L.A. and, several hours earlier (!!) returned to daily life: Riverside in August.

Its not everyday you cut yourself on a shark tooth...

Greetings to the Droser Lab! I hope the Sierra trip was a good one this year and that you're getting settled into the routine of a new semester. Its strange not to be starting that with you.

As the subject suggests, things are going well with me in DC. I have been finding interesting fossils in the parks, although getting used to eastern geology again is quite a switch. My field sites are now along creeks, roads, or in the case of C & O Canal along rock faces blasted or drilled off more than a hundred years ago. I love the green of the city, but I have also been experiencing the ticks and chiggers that come along with the green.

Right now I am writing up reports about what I've found in the parks and making recommendations for future monitoring and protection of these sites. My internship has been extended through the fall, so I'm going to stay on and do some interpretive programs about what I've found for the parks to use. I'm looking forward to the change of pace.

Well here's a picture of me looking at one of the canal locks--they are neat because they're all built of local stone and you can see the same sedimentary structures, sometimes better exposed. And for a change of pace, jousting at a Renaissance fair I went to recently with my park service housemates.

In the east fall is coming, and I'm enjoying the crisp air. Hope you're not being blasted with too much heat in CA!

Drifting Along Splendidly

Things have been continuing at a fine pace, and the weather has cooled down a lot. Here are some new photos of the workers at their worksite.

(Mis)Adventures in the Desert

Things don't always go as planned when you're living in the middle of nowhere. Yes, our campsite is beautifully desolate, and the only sounds we hear at night are the wind rustling through the juniper trees and the ground squirrels trying to eat our dried oatmeal, and we are most definitely in the back country, but we are also 15 miles from the nearest highway and 60 miles from town. This means, of course, that when your car breaks down, you are completely stranded.

This happened to us last Monday. We'd put a full day of work in and were prepared for a nice evening of letter writing, scrabble and star gazing. We drove back to camp and parked the car in its usual spot. I decided it was time to wash my hair (probably for the first time in a week, I was so excited!) so I went to the tent to change out of my field clothes. While I was in the tent, I heard a giant explosion, so loud that I though the propane tank may have exploded! I ran out to see what happened. One of the tires on the car had blown. I guess we had punctured it on the road and it didn't actually pop until we got back to camp.

I started changing the tire, loosened all the lugs and started taking them off. Things were going fine until I got to the very last lug. I started turning it and it froze. I put all my weight behind it and the lug started bending. I knew there was no way I was going to get it off, so we moved on to plan B.

The only thing for us to do was hike to the highway. We packed supplies (water, food, flashlights, clothes) and started walking. We started our hike at 4:30 in the afternoon and didn't reach the highway until after dark. I was trying to make good time because I knew that once we reached the highway, we'd have to hitchhike into town and I was worried about trying to catch a ride in the dark.

It was surprisingly easy for us to catch a ride. After a few cars drove by, a hippie and his 7 year old daughter picked us up. He told us some crazy stories and when I thanked him for the ride, he said he was glad to pick us up because we refreshed his hitchhiking karma. Apparently he'd be having trouble catching rides lately.

Eventually everything got sorted out. We got the tire fixed and things have returned to normal.

Running Scared

Ants do like oatmeal. They don't like Roy Orbison.

Adventures in Ibex!

Work has progressed rather slowly this week. Excessive heat and afternoon thunderstorms have limited our work time to the mornings, and much of our chalking at Hintze's section L was washed away. Frustration runs high but I've re-evaluated my plans and I think I've figured a way around the problems. We can into Delta a day earlier than planned to get new supplies, including flagging, which won't be washed away by rain.

We had some more adventures with wildlife this week. While playing scrabble one evening, I noticed a little snakey peeking out at us from beneath a juniper tree. At first we thought it was a rattlesnake, but we discovered that he had no rattle! I know now that he was a gopher snake. Here's a video of him making his way slowly through our camp:



When packing up our tent to head into town, I discovered a scorpion hiding in the corner! This was probably the most terrifying event of the week, as scorpions are the only creature I'm actually nervous about. I have no idea how it got in our tent or how long it had been there, but I'm glad neither of us got stung. Here's a photo:



A golden eagle followed us down the road for a couple of minutes one morning. It was huge and glorious! We also saw a couple of packs of pronghorn antelope. Katherine got a picture of some of them:



Today is Pioneer Day, a glorious Mormon holiday that celebrates the arrival of Brigham Young and the original Mormon settlers to the Salt Lake Region. I realized yesterday that this holiday also marks the 1 year anniversary of my move from Ohio to Riverside. Here's a photo of Katherine looking a little bit like a pioneer: