Before we get to my most recent trip, an update of previous items.

-An Azerbaijan student is staying at my house for a few weeks. He works on the same area that my advisor’s other PhD student works. That should be interesting.

-Mongolia is still up in the air. It looks I will be going in some manner, but the time, cast, and length are still unknown.

-Even though classes are over, I still have a ton of work. I have final tomorrow, paper due Friday, and my advisor pushing me on figures for the NSF proposal.

So, what do the Wyoming Cowboys and Nebraska Cornhuskers have in common?

They both were schools along I-80 that we passed on our trip. The reason for the trip?

Steph, Alysen, and I were taking Hogan (Steph’s dog) and Merlin (Alysen’s sister’s cat) to Ohio. We were meeting Steph’s sister near Omaha. Hogan was just staying for a few months while Steph is in Europe, and Merlin was going to live in Ohio and be a barn cat. Merlin’s pic is taken moments before he decided to pee everywhere, including all over Alysen’s pants. He practically filled a cupholder. But, this was not the only incident.

In our hotel (in Rawlins, WY) the first night, Merlin found the litterbox, scratched a spot, and went to the bathroom, but he but was hanging of the side, so he copletely missed. At least the intensions were good.

The next morning, we woke up to snow and cute bunnies. The drive that morning was rough, but we made it to our destination by 6PM CDT.

This is a funny sign we saw at a gas station.

This is our cabin. It was very nice, in fact, the whole rec area was great.

Here’s our jolly group: Hogan, Angie (Steph’s sis), Matt (Angie’s bf), Steph, and Alysen.

Merlin was not pictured there, he had his own activites. By the way, Hogan and Merlin don’t get along too well; Hogan loves Merlin, but the feeling is less than mutual.

Nebraska was fun, but the best thing they had to offer, by far, is in Cozad.

That’s right, a giant Elephant in front of El Paraiso “Authentic Mexican” Restaurant wearing a sombrero. Words. They should have sent a poet. This, just might be, the greatest single thing ever. Well, besides this.

Matt’s Stick Death

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I don’t want to alarm anyone, but Mongolia may be off.

My advisor just got an email stating that prices are up 70% from last year, without any explination… included in this is a “tax” of 15% of our total. This means instead of $6-7k (cost on the ground, no airfare), it would cost $10.5k+. Not acceptable. She sent a email stating our max that we’d pay, and our displeasure in the hikes. Basically, this means that we might have to work through someone else (e.g. Ivanho Mining) or I may not go this summer and just do sample prep.

In other news today: tragic mix-up in Cleveland. Many people killed…uh… also, I got rejected by GSA. That makes me 0/4 with 2 left. Sucks to NSF, SEPM, WEST, and GSA. C’mon AAPG and SEG!

While watching the draft this weekend for a record LOW of 10 hours, I was doing this:

This is a GIS project for my thesis. In the lower left is the Altyn Tagh Fault, and in the upper right is our field areas around the East Gobi Fault Zone. They may connect in some way… The dashed faults inbetween may help that. I had to draw the geology on there with a different shapefile for each unit. That sucked. GIS is like AI except less logical (but more powerful).

Matt’s Stick Death

P.S. Free Violent Femmes concert on campus tonight! See y’all there!

In just a few hours, one of my favorite events of the entire year starts…



Yup, the NFL draft. As most of you know, I am a football junkie, both pro and college. This time of year is very dark, cold, and lonely without it (though this year, for some reason, it’s not quite as big of a deal). This year is special because my Dolphins have the #2 pic (highest pic EVER, at least since I’ve been a fan) and Alex Smith from the mighty Utes (above) may go #1 or (gasp…) #2 to my Dolphins.

So, it saddened me so to hear Andy might have lost some pics. So, in a moving tribute to Andy, I present a gank of my all-time favorite Andy-derived pics.



Even though it’s tourture, I still love this pic of a 4×4 Animal-style. But that’s nothing…



That’s what I like to call a dozen-by-dozen. Makes the Good-Morning burger look like a pile of puke.



And this, of course, is a pic of Andy himself, with Tom Dibblee (famous mapping geologist in SoCal). I can’t remember which one is which.

Matt’s Stick Death



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Crazy weather here lately. On Thursday, I saw Stomp, and it was cool, but it got hot (upper 70s) for the first time this year. It wasen’t that bad except the theater was not in summer mode, so it turned into a giant sauna, which made the show much more uncomfortable and sweaty.

I asked Alysen to turn the oven to cold, and she did, and it worked too well. Yesturday (Friday) it was snowing. Crazy.

By the way, I finally got a pic from Steph of te cop that pulled us over… Meow.

So the other day I saw a window with an ad for this company.

You think that they would have looked carfully at that…

Matt’s Stick Death

Oh my god, they killed Matt!

P.S.

One month!

I had to post this. We have a new public transprotation campain (for TRAX, our light rail in the SLC), and I find it kinda ironic how this particular ad looks. Quit Stalin’ and check it out what she’s reading.

Seems like more than a coincidence…

We got about 3″ of snow last night. Crazy, and I thought it was spring.

Matt’s Stick Death

People may have their views on the SLC, but let me ask you this: What’s in your skyline?

At the same time, you have to deal with unplesentness. For example, on campus this week, an awareness campain has tried to educate some of the ignorant with signs like “Gay is real” and “Transgender people are real.” Some idiot has altered some of the signs to read, “Gay is a real choice.” This is what happens when evolution is stymied, people that deserve to die without procreation keep pumpin’ out the kids, making the world a hateful, dark, and deteriorating place.

So, with the SLC, I guess you take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have, my opening statement. Sit Ubu sit, good dog.

Anyways, on to much happier subjects. Monday was Alysen’s Bday. It was very happy. Over the last week or more we;ve been attached at the hip and grinning from ear to ear. I do all that annoying stuff that I hated in the past and thought I’d never do. I can’t help it, she’s got me all disconbobulated (in a very good way).

Lately, I’ve been busy. And, I know what you’re thinking, but no, Alysen is not a factor. It’s just school and thesis work. The great thing is I just take all that wasted lonely sad time spent watching TV, playing video games, and spacing out — and spend it w/ Alysen.

This is where I’ve been spending a good chunk of my time: 105 in the Mines Building, the crushing room. I’m into my thesis min seps. I’m mostly gonna be picking Biotite, Muscovite, Kspar, etc. in mylonites to date fault movement as part of my thesis. Since many of you have done similar activities, I thought I’d give y’all a tour.

We don’t have central compressed air, we only have this thing that smells like motor oil. It takes a few minutes to ‘warm up’ and push out air, but if you wait too long, it makes a high-pitched squeek and looses pressure fast.

This is our rock crusher. It is very loud and shood fall apart… wait for it… now.

We have many sieves. The problem is no one (I mean NO ONE) uses the lab correctly. Everything is dirty and dusty. I spent a full day just trying to get the major surfaces free of dust and grains. All of these sieves have decades of stuck grains from who knows what.

So I have selected a few and have taken them under my wing. After hours of work, they are clean. It also makes every sample run better, because grains are much easier to remove from the mesh after 20 minutes than after 20 years.

By the way, an artist’s blending tool is the greatest thing ever to pick sieves. Safe, durable, and cheap (only $1-2)! When they’re dull, just resharpen. But honesty, they hardly need to be sharp, it’s more the flick and puch, rather than pick, that does the job.

Can anyone read any of that writing?

Here’s my little list going. I’m supposed to do 20 by the end of the week. I’ve done 4-5. Not good. So, if you’re looking for me, I’ll probably not be in my office, I’ll be crushing/seiveing/picking to my heart’s content…

Death Valley & Owens Valley Field Trip 2005

This year’s trip, run through the UofU G&G dept and AAPG student chapter, was organized by yours truly. It was a blast, and is certainly in my top 5 field trips ever. It’s not quite up to the level of the Cascades trip in 2001, but close.



As an aside, is it a good idea to put a bottle opener on the state van keychain?

Cast:



Erich (mineral exploration prof) on the Lone Pine scarp,



Toshiko (geophys ugrad) enjoying the culture of Nevada



My Dad (who joined us out in the field for part of the trip)



Jenny (geo MS in mineral exploration) in Balerat Ghost Town



Megan (geog ugrad) doing some rock climbing



Steph (geo MS in barite deposition) showing off her strength in Panam Crater



Katrina (geo MS in earthquake seismology) living up to her namesake campground: Lazy K







and last, but far from least, my new girlfriend Alysen (geo ugrad). Yeah, you heard me.

SUNDAY March 13

We left the SLC at ~9 AM (I told people 8, and figured we’d not actually leave by then. I was right.) The goal was to drive to Shoshone, CA and go hotspringing in Tecopa that night.



Well, the first few hours of the trip went smoothly. But somewhere near Toquerville, UT our tire failed. It did not go flat, but the tread fell off. We smoothly came to a stop and called AAA. We were able to make it to Pahrump (who’s high school mascot is the Trojans… tee he) for dinner on the spare, after a 1-2 hour delay.



Surprizingly, the town was packed. We waited a while to eat. It was good, not Terrible.



Well after dark, and too late for Tecopa Hot Springs, we headed to Shoshone for the traditional campground. However, even though I got email permission to camp there, the campground was closed off.



This forced us to park outside by the road and hike the few hundred yards to the spot. A small inconvience only. Much more inconvienent was the howling windstorm the inundated us all night. I slept barely, Katrina and Steph got immeasurable sleep. Worst wind I’ve been in second only to the Old Woman Mountains field trip in 103C. By the way, when I woke up, I saw an extra vehicle parked by our spot, which freaked me out. Turns out it was my dad.

MONDAY March 14

In order to be safe, we decided to drive back to Pahrump to get a new tire, so we wouldn’t be on the spare and so we would have a spare in case something else happened. That took another hour or two away from our trip.



The desert was very green, as has been widely reported. Here’s Shoshone…



…and here’s the road into Death Valley.



Everyone was certainly enjoying the senery.



And the right angle for that perfect picture was just a strech away.



We were practically doing cartwheels over the vegitation.



I’m not saying I didn’t like the flowers, but there was something else in DV that was an order of magnitude more amazing.



If you had to think of things DV is famous for, what would you think of? Cow skulls? Hot temperatures? Lowest elevation in North America? Where would “gigantic brown-water lake” and “wave-worked beach deposits” rank?




In DV, there is a fucking HUGE lake?!?!!?? I know that they got a lot of water this year, but this is unbelieveable. The lake is dozens of square kilometers. A quick look at a map shows that it’s probably the size of the San Fernando Valley. These are some pics from Badwater. The lake exended from well South (~10 mi?) of Badwater to about 5 mi north. Think this lake is hypersaline? people that waded in it had their legs coated with salts.




Just to remind you, here’s what it looks like the other 99.9% of the time (pics from last year).



What I can’t figure out is: Badwater, the lowest point in DV and the country, was NOT underwater. In fact, it had the normal few springs and that’s it. They were more productive, but not by much. I thought the information center would be well underwater!



Our next stop was Devil’s Golf Course. It was also dry, though the salty mud was wet underneith the uppermost mm.



There certainly was a high girl/guy ratio on this trip, which made our group stand out, except when we were in So. Utah.



Our next stop was the Mesquite Dunes.




Of course, by now there wasen’t even a light breeze. We couldn’t see them in action, but it still was cool.



That night we drove to Wild Rose campground. It is out of the way but well worth the 30 min drive. It’s at 4000+ feet, a good moderation between the really high campsites and the valley floor sites. We had a short-lived sagebrush campfire.

TUESDAY March 15



Here’s our lovely campsite in the light.

Our plan this day was to head down the Panimant Valley and check out Goller Canyon (a famous snowball earth site).



We stopped at a little ghost town on the way.




And just as amazing and rare, PV had another seperate but large lake, except this one was blue (still very salty).



Goler was certainly the longest stop of the trip (4 hours). I wish we could have hiked more, but this was a whirlwind kinda trip.



Here’s a small fault between the Noonday Dolomite and the Kingston Peak Fm. The cave was lined with slickenlines.



Here is the Wildrose member diamictite of the Kingston Peak. Looks cold to me…



Next, we went to the Trona Pinnacles. These are Pleistocene tufas.



After the pinnacles, we went to Ridgecrest to shop and pick up some wood at my house. Therefore, everyone got to see my pad, which was cool.

Since it was getting dark, would could not make our scheduled stop at Fossil Falls and had to go straight to Lone Pine to camp at Diaz Lake.

WEDNESDAY March 16



Diaz Lake was a nice campground, right at the foothills of the Alabama Hills.



It was very pretty. Plus, it had voyeristic benches.



Our first stop was the 1872 Lone Pine Fault scarp. As you can plainly see, it’s about 2.1 Alysens in height.



At this point, my dad left our little adventure, and we took one last group pic. Megan “happened” upon that sign. I’m so jealous.

Speaking of illicit activity, I had a first—I was pulled over. I hate the question, “So, you realize why I pulled you over, right.” Does he want me to say, “Because I’m a coke mule for the TJ mafia?” I really had no idea, except for that I was nearing a speed reduction zone and possibly had gone over the “line”.

He got us for lack of seatbelts. Luckily, he only cited us for one (instead of the correct 5) and it should be a $40 ticket. I certainly was respecting his authority, but many of the gals were not. Of well, that’s just one more thing that I can say that I’ve done. He pulled overanother poor sucker immediately after us.



Our next area of interest was Bishop. I knew it snowed a lot this year, but this was ridiculous. We could not get to Inyo Crater or Obsidian (Glass Creek) Dome. So, we went to Panam Crater, since it was (relatively) not far from the road. Sometime on the way, BOTH of the blinkers stopped working on the van.



Let me tell you, a 1/2 mile hike in the snow is no easy task. But we were determined to see something, and Panam was about our only option. Here, Alysen is hot (of course she is) so she decided to cool down the old-fasioned way: snow angel.



When we finally made it, we realized it was worth it.



The view alone was well worth it, but all of us collected a ton of rocks. For those of you that did not have a class with Jon Davidson, Panum Crater is a rhyolitic volcano associated with the Mono Domes and the Long Valley system. It’s last eruption was in the 14th C. In the background is Mono Lake.



That evening, instead of camping at our normal spot, we decided to just drive and drive, and we eventually made it to the lovely city ofLovelock, NV and the just as Lovely Lazy K campground. We at least had a shower.

THURSDAY March 17

Happy St. Paty’s day! Of course, we started the day by listening to Flogging Molly.



Not much to show for this day. We made it home by 4 PM. Here is Toshiko enjoying her last Capri Sun “in private.” By the way, she loves Capris Sun.



When I got to my house in the SLC, I saw this. I guess they were installing a new hydrant, the sight of it all freaked me out at first.



Yes, a lot of things went wrong and not as planned, but it was a great trip. Awesome people, amazing sights, and someone just might have accidentally learned something. Hopefully, this can be an annual event.

The race is over.

Tomorrow, 8 AM, we’ll be off to DV/OV. I’ve heard that scientists are finding plants they’ve NEVER SEEN BEFORE because of the vast SoCal rains.

This year’s pics should make last year’s look like a pile of puke!

I had to post this, the latest from my advisor:

“See if you can decipher this, we’ll have to make some decisions.. cute that Minjin is finding me a travel buddy to get to Russia, huh?

[Opens with a joke, that's different...]

[This section that I took out that goes here was about details of summer plans. The next part blew me away.]
By the way, I think you would be perfectly capable of doing the field work yourself. I’m just trying to think of how I can be most useful as an advisor.

Also, the more I think about this, the more I want you to have another American with you. One possibility is a prospective PhD student who is coming to visit on March 24 or 25. I have mentioned the possibility to her on the phone, but we can meet her and judge from there…

Why don’t you think these things over and let me know if you have any preferences or ideas…”

For lack of better terminology, What The Fuck? I must really be out of high school by now. This is quite a 180. I don’t know what I did, but I’d certainly prefer the possitive reinforcement. Plus, she’s gonna buy me a new version of NEWMOD (clay modeling program) for my thesis. Great! The old DOS version that we own here would have killed me.

Be back next week with loads of pictures!

Matt’s Stick Death

Happy hiking.

P.S. Two words I can see: FINISH LINE

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So, I also took the Simpsons Triva Quiz. And guess what, I got a 99%. I think that means I got them all right, because there were only 30 questions. As the website said, S-M-R-T. Is this more embarassing or should I be proud?

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I one week’s time, I and a select few will be somewhere near Ceder City, aproaching Shoshone and Tecopa Hot Springs. Again, open invatation to anyone who wants to join and learn some cool geology on our DV/OV trip.

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And guess what? Our own JenGa, summer field TA Jen will be in the area at the same time on a U Iowa trip! So we might get to hang with her too! She’ll be great for snake protection.

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One of the U of U people who are going on the trip is Alysen.

Alysen’s long awaited housewarimng party was yesturday. She just moved out of the parent’s place (in Murry, about 1/2 hour south) to the SLC. She was the hostess with the mostess, because this party was one of the best I’d been at for a while.

One reason is these 3: Steph (geo MS), Liza (Socio major at SUU and Alysen’s sister), and Joe (paleo MS). So, if you know Fernando, Liza is his female equivalent. Same attitude, same musical taste, same major, same world view, same everything. It was ridiculous. Joe, on the other hand, is one of those kind of people that likes nothing more than to ruffle your feathers, and will only progress further if it is effective. Well, Joe and Liza basically argued and offended each other all night (in a fun way), and it was fun to watch.

Here’s Alysen and Cathy(?) Cindy(?) Chris(?) (some short name startting w/C). They both work at a pool in Sandy (3/4 hour south) and hate it. Alysen, by the way, is a double geology/chemistry major.

Proceed to random drunkeness pictures (taken by drunk people):

So, it was fun. I’m definately tired because I’ve been up really late (~3:15 AM average) the last two nights and still have to be at school at a reasonable time because I have a lot due. For example:

20 min presentation on deep sea fans Monday (have not started)
3 page essay on subduction erosion Monday (2 paragraphs)
Intro to my thesis proposal Thursday (little done)
Outline to my paper on tectonic extrusion Friday (have not started)
General getting ready for Death Valley/Owend Valley trip

On that note, I should get to work. But, before I go, another enstalment of the award wining Matt’s Stick Death

Today’s enstalment features our very own Kristen! Is that cool or what?

P.S. Good-bye Bouges, we’ll miss you.

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