The Next Adventure

2011-08-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

A couple months ago I shared Conan O'Brian's 2011 Dartmouth commencement speech on my Facebook page. I felt the need then to spread it around because I was impressed by not only its humor, which I expected, but by it's message, which was both profound and directly relevant to my life the past few years.

Conan said in his address "There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized." I know this is true because this happened to me.

When I graduated Dartmouth in 2007 I thought I had the next phase of my life completely laid out in front of me. I was in a Ph.D. program in Madison, WI, and I had moved there with my girlfriend of the past two years. My worst fear was that I would somehow mess up this perfect plan.

To abbreviate a tragic story, I messed it up. My funding was cut and I was forced to graduate with my Masters degree in December 2008 after just 3 semesters. I had neglected my studies my first year, and in my rush to finish that last semester, was forced to neglect both my future and my friends.

To quote Conan quoting somebody else: "Nietzsche famously said "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger." But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you."

In January of 2009 I found myself unemployed in a staggeringly poor job market and living on my now ex-girlfriend's couch. I applied to probably 50 different jobs and internships at ski areas, the Student Conservation Association, the National Park Service, and a few other random places. For that month I heard nothing back and was left to wonder at night as I slept on that couch what had become of my life.

Then, good things started to happen. I got one offer, to work as a visitor services intern at Guadalupe Mountains Naitional Park from March through May, and then another, to work in Yellowstone National Park as in intern through the Geological Society of America's GeoCorps program during the summer.

Later that year my friend Sarah was able to help hook me up with a job and place to live for the winter in Vail, CO. While working in Vail I convinced my Yellowstone supervisor to rehire me to work there for another summer, and I also applied to grad school again and was accepted at Arizona State.

Conan, speaking of his own time in between leaving the Tonight Show and debuting on TBS but mirroring my feelings towards my time off from school, said "it was the most satisfying and fascinating year of my professional life. To this day I still don't understand exactly what happened, but I have never had more fun, been more challenged—and this is important—had more conviction about what I was doing."

This Thursday I will begin my second year as a Ph.D. student in Volcanology at ASU. Yellowstone and Vail, like Dartmouth and Oklahoma before them, are now places that I feel have become a part of me. Living in those two places directly changed my outlook on life and I would not be the person I am today without the influence of those experiences.

January and February of 2009 were the most depressing weeks of my life and marked the end of a dream I had been following for many years. I was forced to follow a new dream, one I was creating and shaping as I went along, not always with a clear idea of where it would lead me. In the end I did return to graduate school, but in a program better suited to me and with the experience and drive necessary to succeed.

I would not be where I am today, or who I am today, without having lived the through the disappointment that consumed my last months in Madison. Knowing now the path I followed after I left Wisconsin and where it led me, if given the chance to relive my time there, I would gladly let disaster befall me again, just to be able to experience the three years since.

To end his commencement remarks Conan said "Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen." I couldn't agree more.

Road Trip 2011: By the Numbers

2011-08-08T00:28:00.000-07:00

I got to Tempe on Saturday from my latest epic summer road trip. I really am fortunate to be able to have so many amazing trips like this, props to grad school and the nomadic periods of my life I guess. Instead of writing a boring trip report though, I think a simple list of intriguing numbers, a la Sports Illustrated, will be an entertaining way to recap my journey:

4700: Miles driven
109: Highest Temperature recorded while I was in OK
106: High Temperature the day I returned to Tempe
-57: Net Indian Casino winnings
32: Lowest temperature experienced (there was ice on the picnic tables in camp one morning)
32: Total Days
11: Days doing field work
4: Days playing ultimate
4: Days hiking
8: Days on the road
31: Total Nights
14: in a tent
2: in my car
4: on the floor
2: on a sleeper sofa
5: in a hotel bed
4: in my own bed
29.4: Average mpg for the whole trip
19: Total number of 14ers I've climbed, after climbing Bierstadt and Evans on this trip
13: Games of ultimate played
10: States visited (AZ, UT, ID, WY, MT, CO, KS, OK, TX, NM, in that order)
6: National Park Service Units Visited (Cedar Breaks, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Fossil Butte, Rocky Mountain, Petrified Forest)
2.3: days/shower ratio
8: days/shower ratio while in Yellowstone
3: Bear sightings
2: Wolf sightings
1: Pairs of boxers worn for the 2 weeks in Yellowstone

ASU Field Camp

2011-05-29T18:45:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow I leave for my next adventure: TAing ASU's field camp in Payson, AZ. Should be a great opportunity to refresh my field mapping skills as well as get out of the Phoenix heat for a few weeks. I'll be back in mid-June, hopefully with some good stories to share.

M.U.T. Ultimate: A 3 Part Series

2011-05-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

III. M.U.T. @ PADA MOSH

PADA MOSH this past November marked the 7th time Mike's Ultimate Team, a.k.a. M.U.T., has gathered to play ultimate together. While I have only been back to Dartmouth once since graduating, these yearly gatherings have turned into my de facto mini college reunions, and also a chance to play great ultimate. M.U.T. entered this weekend on a 3 tournament and 20 game winning streak. And you could consider it a 4 tournament winning streak since M.U.T. was the only team to show up to the cancelled Frozen Disc of Death in 2007. It's really amazing to consider how far we've all come as ultimate players from when we first got together. None of us were the players we are now when Mike first pulled us together, we were just friends who loved ultimate. But now members of M.U.T. include all-region players, club and college nationals qualifiers, and multiple team captains, presidents, and coaches. It's amazing not only how much we have each improved over the years, but also that nearly all of us continue to play at the highest levels that we can.

In addition to PADA MOSH serving as a mini college reunion at Mike's place in Philly, we were putting our winning streak on the line against the toughest competition M.U.T. had ever faced. Saturday was cool and slightly windy, and we breezed through our first two games, and comfortably beat a talented Swarthmore alum team that would go on to win the B bracket. After playing primarily with the Pimpdags and random pick up mixed teams in Colorado and Montana the past couple of years, I was again amazed at the ease with which we play good ultimate together. There was no real strategy or focus on the game, we'd just go out, play hard, then return to the sidelines and continue joking around and catching up with each other. Eventually we'd find ourselves at the soft cap up a few breaks. It was effortless.

Sunday was different, it was colder and much windier, and our usual underseeding by the T.D. had us playing our first game against tourney favorites Horned Melons, who had their own stock of nationals players. M.U.T. would be subbing competitively and thinking strategically this game, and though I was less than thrilled with my play so far that weekend, I was excited to reprise my Dartmouth role of zone offense hammer catcher.

I made the most of it too. I sat out the first couple points, letting our better players try to get us an early lead with an upwind break, but it didn't happen. We went down 3-0 and then had an O point going downwind. If we let the melons get another upwind break we'd essentially be out of the game. So I self-called myself and stepped onto the field, telling myself it was time I made a play and stopped sitting around letting our nationals players try to win the game for us. M.U.T. wins because every single one of us is good, not just because we have a couple all-region players on our roster.

Sometimes life gives you opportunity to immediately back up your own bravado, and this was one of those fortuitous moments. The Melons came zone to prevent a good downwind punt, and Crew quickly found himself trapped on the sideline as I found myself with about half the field to myself playing the cross-field wing. Crew wound up and threw the most incredible blading hammer I've ever seen in my direction. The wind was pushing against the flight of the hammer and as the disc flattened out it was pushed back to midfield. I took off sprinting to intercept it's path and I remember thinking it resembled a jet skimming the ground as it flew downfield. The disc was moving too fast for me to run down, so my only hope was to cut its path at the perfect point. As the disc crossed in front of me I bid as high and as far as I could, and with a loud 'thunk' it stuck in my hand. Being fully aware of conservation of greatness, I quickly dumped the disc to Mackey and a couple throws later Mike hit me with a scoober for our first point of the game.

I immediately took a sub and received just as many 'sick catch' comments from the Melons as from my own team. Some older guy came up to me and said "I've been watching ultimate for years and that's the best catch I've ever seen". The game was even from there on out, we scored all of our downwind points and our upwind line was able to get a couple goals to tie the game at 10s with hard cap looming. However, with their back to the wall, the nationals-caliber players on the Melons did what they do best and scored an up wind O point to go up 11-10. Hard cap came on during the next point, but we weren't able to score our upwind O point and M.U.T. finally lost, 12-10.

The winning streak ended at 23 games spanning 5 tournaments. The Horned Melons would go on to win the semis by 6 and the finals by 4. We would win our consolation game and get 5th place by forfeit. We knew though that our quarters game was the game of the tournament, and had been played at a different level than any of the other games that day, and that was something to be proud of.

I can't wait to do it all again.

M.U.T. Ultimate: A 3 Part Series

2011-05-25T13:51:00.001-07:00

Part II: Hey, just so you're not surprised, we're really good.

The next time M.U.T. got together was in November of 2006 to once again play in Dartmouth's Frozen Disc of Death. To the crew that played at Ow My Knee in 05 we added Socks, Mackey, some more Wellesley women, and of course Colin Mahoney. This tournament is still one of the absolute best I've ever played in, which means a lot to me since I was the TD. All of M.U.T. was crammed into 17 school, pasta jamming and watching 'Stick It', the party had a bonfire and good beer, I had hot chocolate and gummy bears at tourney central, and the weather was awesome.

M.U.T., made an appearance at M.i.U.T., Mike's injured ultimate team, as many of us were dealing with some rather big injuries. Ralph had some wrist thing wasn't supposed to throw, Seth had some shoulder thing and wasn't supposed to huck, Fishie also had a shoulder thing, Jersey and Socks had knee things, and Tyke had torn her ACL a few weeks prior and couldn't play at all. That didn't keep us from continuing to have fun though. I donned the penguin suit for the first time and time outs involved various forms of cuddling or games of chicken.

Oh yeah, and we won the tournament going away. I had seeded us 4th out of 16, behind the Dartmouth Alums and Dartmouth 07/08 teams that I thought would be our biggest competition. Unfortunately we didn't get to play either of them as they lost in bracket play, giving us a tough game against Enough Monkeys and their zone that we barely pulled out thanks to the handling skills of Mike and Socks. We went up big on UMass in the finals and spent our last few points trying to get the huck connection from Colin to Snitch completed, which we finally did, giving us M.U.T.'s first tournament win.

Months passed and most of us graduated and moved on, in my case I moved to Wisconsin. That didn't stop Tyke and I from flying out to meet up with Socks, Mike, Seth, Min, Ralph, and Fishie to play at Wildwood in July of 2007. This tournament saw the first ever M.U.T. jerseys and frequent trips to swim in the ocean between games. And of course we won again. Sort of. We went 6-0 and were about to play the finals when some people had to leave to catch flights, so those of us that remained finagled our way into a tie for first which involved Seth and a guy from the other team co-carrying the trophy and yelling in celebration. I think we got to keep that trophy though. Anyone know where it is? Do you have it Mike? You should. Our winning streak was again almost halted in the semis of Wildwood when we found ourselves down 2 with the hard cap on. Thankfully Wildwood has 2 point goals, so after the pull we worked the disc backwards into our end zone and Mike hit Seth for the 2 pointer to tie and force universe. Of course we scored on universe.

The bond of M.U.T. was so strong in the summer of 2008 that M.U.T. returned to play at Ow My Knee despite the fact that the team's namesake was unable to attend. Joining us this time were Min, Cabo, and Kell. The later two who showed up 2 hours late Saturday to much rejoicing as it upped our male roster from 6 to 8. Due to confusion with a Canadian mixed team called MUTT in the score reporter, M.U.T. came into the tournament seeded 25th of 32 teams. We tried to talk our way into a higher seed from the TD, but he wouldn't budge, leading to Mackey's phrase directed at the TD and any team we played that weekend "Just so you're not surprised... We're really good". Those were indeed prophetic words, as aside from another tight game with Enough Monkeys, we rolled our way into the semis, winning every game 13-5 or thereabouts. Unfortunately for me I hurt my knee in the first game on Saturday (oh the irony) and didn't play much. After a decently close game in the semis, we were playing 7 Express in finals and the game went to universe point with M.U.T. receiving. 7 Express was so concerned with Ralph cutting deep that two girls followed her under, leaving Fishie wide open to catch a huck from Seth and win the tournament on a 3 throw point. Celebration obviously consisted of a giant cuddle puddle.

M.U.T. Ultimate: A Three Part Series

2010-11-09T09:26:00.000-08:00

Part 1: Origins

This series of posts concerns the creation, by one Mike Zargham, my roommate for 3 years at Dartmouth who not only is one of my best friends but also introduced me to a number of my other close friends, of Mike's Ultimate Team. During freshman and sophomore years at Dartmouth, while most of our Dartmouth teammates were getting to know each other, Mike was taking full advantage of the awesome ultimate social scene to get to know people on other college teams at hat tournaments, leagues, and tournament parties. Mike did such a great job of this that by sophomore summer he could assemble enough friends to form a team to attend a mixed tournament near his home town of Troy, NY, and thus was born M.U.T. in June of 2005 at Ow My Knee in Albany, NY.

The first incarnation of M.U.T. included representatives from Dartmouth, Cornell, Wellesley, Vermont, Chicago, and Amherst. Most of us were rising juniors, though some were rising sophomores or seniors. If memory serves me correctly we stumbled in our first game to a very beatable team, then lost to a good team, and then discovered we all knew how to run a sick 1-3-3 zone and hosed our next two opponents by at least 10 points each. Our first game Sunday was a similar romp, and then we lost by a respectable score in the quarters to eventual tourney champ and rising mixed power house Slow White. Equally important as our early success was the attitude we carried into our games. Everyone wore a skirt on Sunday. We played Twister during timeouts. We challenged our opponents to swords fights for the pull. We had hula hoops and a big stuffed dragon. It was more about fun than ultimate, we just happened to be good at ultimate too.

Members of that original M.U.T. team that were in attendance this past weekend at PADA MOSH include myself, Mike, Seth, Ralph, Tyke, and Fishie.

We had so much fun together that M.U.T. reconvened again that fall to play in Dartmouth's Frozen Disc of Death. I was at Geology Field Camp somewhere out west at the time so I wasn't there, but I believe results were similar with much fun being had and a similar .500 record.

With me back on campus in the winter of 2006 and dating a fellow member of M.U.T. (one of at least 7 current or former couples to be a part of M.U.T.), we pulled together a small crew to play in the indoor 4 Corners tournament in Burlington. I had completely forgotten about this until pulling my thoughts together to write on this subject, as my only memory of playing in this tournament was not doing well and getting really angry at myself for doing something stupid. But this event is important as it included an epic snowstorm drive to get to and from and marked both the first time Socks and Mackey played with M.U.T. and also the last time M.U.T. would lose a game until this past weekend in Philadelphia. Coincidence? Mackey will tell you it's not.

Lab

2010-09-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

So I am a TA this semester, and I'm teaching intro to geology lab, i.e. Rocks for Jocks. I don't actually have any jocks in any of my 4 sections, but this did happen:

I was walking to lunch a week ago when I passed a booth set up outside an off campus bookstore/general store. There were a couple girls sitting behind a table and a few guys surrounding them and talking to them. Then I heard a girl's voice say, "hey, that's my lab instructor!"

I turned around and took off my sunglasses to look at the girl sitting at the table who had just spoken and I recognized her.
"Oh, yeah, I am your lab instructor," I said, walking up to the booth. "How's it going?"

"Good," she replied. It was at this time that the awkward outside of classroom student-teacher interaction feeling became overwhelming.

"So," I started to say, "what's with the-" I was going to say 'booth', but it was mid-sentence that I noticed the sign I was standing next to. It read

"Playboy Girls of the Pac-10 magazine signing. Meet the ASU playgirls!"

I looked at the sign. Then back at my student, sitting behind the table, pen in hand, with a guy waiting next to her holding the girls of the Pac-10 Playboy issue. I looked back at the sign. Then I looked back my student (or lab-ling, as I have taken to referring them).

"Oh," was all I managed to say.

She smiled, then asked "So, can I get an 'A' now?" A long awkward silence followed as I stood mouth slightly agape in awe of the awkwardness. Everyone in the area was starting at me, both girls, the guys waiting for autographs, and the girls' handlers/bodyguards.

"Uhhhhhhh, no comment," I said, and quickly walked away.

So yeah, I don't have any ASU athletes in my classes, but I do have a Playboy model. I think I win.

Road Trip Notes

2010-08-11T17:54:00.000-07:00

I made it to Tempe last Sunday and am in the midst now of new graduate student orientation, unpacking, and climate shock. I knew it was going to be hot here, but I've dealt with hot before. I think it was the summer of 1998 in Oklahoma where we had 30 days in a row of 100 degree weather. But that doesn't even compare with the consistent heat of Tempe, and as always, it's the little things that get to you. Like the fact the cold tap water here is scalding. Makes sense when you think about it, but boy is it an inconvenience. If I want to drink cool water I have to make sure to keep water in the fridge, and to take a shower that's not hot, I have to wait 10 minutes for the water cool off. I still haven't touched the hot water knob on the shower.

The drive out here was nice. I stopped by the Guadalupe Mountains to say hi, and also stopped by Saguaro National Park to get the most out of the last month of my National Parks Pass. The visit to Saguaro led to one of the funnier conversations I've had with my parents recently:

Me: I'm probably going to stop by Saguaro National Park tomorrow
My Dad: Where's that?
Me: Near Tucson
My Dad: It is? I'm not seeing it on the map.
Me: Yeah, it's right in Tucson.
My Dad: That's odd, all I'm seeing is something called Sa-gu-ro.
Me: That's it Dad, it's pronounced "Sawaro".

Sigh.

I spent at least half my drive making it through Texas, which allowed me to observe the three annoying habits of Texas drivers:
1) Texas drivers rarely drive slow, but when they do, they make sure to do it in the farthest left lane available to them.
2) When you attempt to pass a Texas driver, it reminds them that no one is allowed to drive faster than they are, and they speed up to make sure you don't pass and then proceed to return to their preferred speed
3) The preferred vehicle for a Texas driver is a Dodge, Chevy, or Ford truck large enough to steamroll a Prius. The preferred passing location of a Texas driver in this type of
vehicle is a double yellow on an uphill.

Electric Peak

2010-08-04T18:12:00.000-07:00

Finally finished the video about the 4th of July backpacking/skiing trip I went on.

My next 10 Days

2010-07-30T12:06:00.001-07:00

Moving from Yellowstone to Arizona in a hurry, but making sure I use my National Parks pass in the process. New student orientation starts August 9th.

Monitor Peak

2010-07-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

Monitor Peak is in Montana, a few miles north of Gardiner. It's prominently visible from Mammoth but is less noticeable than it's taller neighbor to the southwest, Sheep Mountain. I saw Monitor Peak every day pretty much the last two summers, but never really was aware of it until I realized there was a trail going all the way around it. In an 18 mile day I could hike up the southwest valley, around the north side of the peak, then down the eastern valley. It would be a short off trail tundra walk to the summit from a saddle to get amazing 360 views of the Absaroka Mountains.

Or so I thought. This isn't a common hike at all, so there's very little information about the mountain. So boy was I surprised when I got up to the tundra and saw that the very top of the peak looked like this:

I've never been so close to the top of the mountain only to turn back. I investigated the base of the summit block and found a way to start up.

Then I saw this:

and my ascent was over. I could probably have climbed up that, but I didn't like my odds of getting down. Definitely class 4, maybe 5.0, and I don't do that solo when the consequence of a fall is 40 feet of air to jagged rocks on the side of a mountain 8 miles from the nearest trailhead. I could've thrown a rock onto the summit from where I turned back.

Still, if the summit had been more accessible and I had made it to the top, this hike would've been much less of an adventure. It's one thing to go hiking and find great views and solitude, it is another to push yourself to a point where you find your limit, and return safely knowing you made the right decision. I enjoy mountains that I can climb, I respect mountains that I can't.

Wildlife

2010-07-12T19:52:00.000-07:00

So Yellowstone is known as THE place in the country to see wildlife in its natural habitat, and last year I thought I was pretty lucky in terms of seeing stuff. Multiple grizzlies, a wolf pack, moose, etc.

Aside from the wolves, this summer summer has completely eclipsed last summer in terms of animals. The bears are especially out in force this year. I've seen multiple bears all four weekends I've been in the park so far, though luckily I've been able to continue my streak of never having seen a bear while on foot. A coyote while biking to Lone Star Geyser last summer is the only predator I've seen outside of my car.

I saw 3 grizzlies in one afternoon without even trying. On the day I went skiing in the Beartooths (i.e. not trying to see wildlife, just driving across the park) I saw elk, bull elk, bison, bighorn sheep, coyote, pronghorn, deer, marmot, pika, moose, 3 different black bears, and a grizzly bear. I even saw the grizzly chase one of the black bears.

My parents managed to see multiple bears both days they were in the park last week, again without really trying to see wildlife. They were either just driving to Mammoth or driving to the trailheads for our hikes. I've been taking advantage of finally having a camera with a working zoom lens. It even takes HD video, a feature I will be showing off in future posts with a couple ski videos I made.

In other news my job here continues to go well, and I am finally going to get paid tomorrow. The delay is because it took forever for my background check to go through. Actually, I still doubt it has, I only got cleared because I cleared the FBI criminal record check. So if you still have a form from the government asking about me, please say nice things and return it promptly.

Also went on a hike to Pine Creek Lake near Livingston this past weekend. One of my top five glacial valleys ever. The other four would probably be Zermatt, Cascade Canyon/Solitude Lake in the Tetons, Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, and Cascade Lake in the Indian Peaks Wilderness near Boulder, CO.

Speaking of Top 5's, Electric Peak two weekends ago is probably in my top 5 favorite mountain climbs ever. Other 4 would be Longs Peak, Crestone Needle, Schwarzhorn near Grindelwald, Switzerland, and der Shlern in the Italian Dolomites.

I Must Be Crazy

2010-07-02T21:01:00.001-07:00

To avoid the 4th of July crowds this weekend in Yellowstone I'm going on a backpacking trip with some co-workers to climb Electric Peak.

That's not the crazy part.

The crazy part is that while looking at the peak a few days ago I saw a large snowfield on the north face near the summit. I'm going to bring my skis and try to ski that thing. Meaning I'm hauling my gear 10 miles and 4,000 vertical to get there. That's the crazy part. We'll see how it goes. Best case scenario I get 1,000 vert of skiing in on the 4th of July.

Last Hurrah

2010-06-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I went skiing in the Beartooth Mountains of Wyoming. It was my 101st ski day for the 09-10 season. It took 2.5 hours to drive there from Mammoth and find a good place to make some turns, but it was worth it. I ended up skiing what is locally known as the Gardner Chutes and one of the more popular places to ski on the pass. I took 4 runs, each somewhere between 500 and 700 vertical. It took me about 30 minutes to hike back up after each run and about 1 minute to ski down. The conditions were at best thick potatoes, but it was boot deep, untracked, steep, and mid-June. I'll take it. I'm tempted to go again, but the drive is just a little too far and the conditions just a little too poor to really justify it. So instead I think I'll stick to exploring Yellowstone further and trying to find some summer.

Also in the area was a crew from Toy Soldier Productions, a Montana-based ski film company. They were in the middle of building a huge kicker next to the slopes I was skiing on. Unfortunately the jump was so big they couldn't finish it in a day, so I didn't get to see them session it. From watching the trailer on their website I missed out too, those guys are sic. If the Beartooth session makes the movie trailer, I'm likely buying their film: Come Find Us.

This coming weekend I'll be taking Roo out for its 1st birthday celebratory drive- a tour of the remnants of the Island Park caldera in Idaho that was created by the eruption of Yellowstone volcano 1.3 million years ago. I put over 23,000 miles on Roo in its first year. Not bad.

Blog Fail

2010-06-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

So yeah, about this winter, it happened. I wrote nothing on here about it. I thought about doing so a lot, but usually decided not to because the stories I wanted to tell might have incriminated either myself or my employer. Well, maybe not incriminate, but give light to things that really shouldn't be just floating around on the internet. Can't be too careful with that internet. There are photos from the winter up on Facebook at least, and I'll post a favorite here as well.

Of course, I still did a lot of normal, fun things this winter too, but by December blogging had more or less been removed from my mental checklist of things to do when really bored. I went on a hut trip, played a lot of indoor soccer, skied 100 days, and went backcountry skiing around Vail. If blogspot lets me, I'll post the video I made about this winter (it's long).

And now comes the self-promise to post more, as this is a really good way to keep in touch with a lot of friends, mostly through uploading these posts as notes on Facebook, though recently I've been using my Facebook status for that purpose since I know not near as many people read the notes. Still, this definitely remains the forum of choice for details.

Speaking of details, here's what I'll be up to in the coming months and what my future posts will about (or what a long-distant future post will be aplogizing for not covering).

June & July: Back in Yellowstone working as a geologist. Going to finish the project I started last summer and hopefully get a journal article out of it. Watching the world cup and maybe even winning a league basketball game this year (which will probably only happen if the team that always wins lets me play for them).

August and every month after that for the foreseeable future: Graduate school at Arizona State to get my Ph.D. T.A.'ing, doing research, and trying to work in as much ultimate, soccer, hiking, and skiing as my schedule allows.

That's me and my awesome skis, Rossignol Phantom SC97's. Unfortunately I broke them about a week after I took that photo. Fortunately, I got them waranteed and have already received my new replacements, 2010-2011 Rossignol S97's. Sweet.

I broke 3 pairs of skis this winter: the Rossignols (cracked sidewall from cliff hucking), Atomic Tele Skis (too weak for my weight and skiing style, I ripped the binding off mid-turn), and Rossignol SC 80's (hit a rock at A-Basin in May a week after buying these as used demo skis from the shop I worked at). I replaced the tele skis with Dynastar Mythic Riders, which rock. I'm hoping to get a mismatched pair to replace the 80 I destroyed, fingers are crossed.

The Next Adventure

2009-11-21T17:50:00.000-08:00

So this winter I've finally done it: I'm living and working at a ski resort. Specifically I'll be the guy renting you your skis at a shop in Vail Village. I've been working there two weeks so far and am excited for the season to begin. So far we've just been organizing and cleaning up the place, getting ready. I'm also looking forward to taking advantage of the gear discounts I get because I work there. Upon seeing my skis, all of my coworkers have told me I need new ones, so they're on the list. Along with boots, goggles, avy gear (prope, beacon, and shovel), and gloves. I already bought telemark boots and skis.

This past Friday was Vail's opening day, and despite having the day off, I didn't get up on the mountain. Nor did I go today. There's only one trail open and according to friends who did go everyone in the Vail valley was up there, so I figured I can do without the crowds. I'll finally be skiing tomorrow, and probably the 4 days after that, as there's still not much to do at work and my boss said we're welcome to take alternating ski breaks.

Provided I don't get bored I'll equal my number of ski days from last season (a respectable 18 considering I was living in Wisconsin) before December is half over. The real question is, can I ski 100 days this season?

States and Ultimate

2009-10-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

A while ago I realized I've been lucky enough to do a lot of traveling, and also play in a lot of ultimate tournaments, so I made spreadsheets to keep track of it and aid my memory. I love spreadsheets. Here is the summary of the data, including the District of Columbia:

States I've been to: 50 (all except Alaska)
States I've driven across: 45
States I've slept a night in: 46 (no WV, MI, or MS)
States the Jeep made it to: 47 (no CA, AK, MI, or HI)
States my Subaru has been to: 16 (in just over 4 months)
States I've lived in: 8
States I've climbed the high point of: 15
States I've skiied in: 9
States I've played ultimate in: 31

Ultimate tournaments played: 76 (over 6 years)
Most Tournaments played in one year: 20 (2008)
Career Winning %: 59.3 (262-180)
Finals Appearances: 12
Tournament Victories: 7 (3 with M.U.T., 3 with Dartmouth, 1 with Madison)
Teams Played For: 23 (not counting hat tournies)
Most tourneys with one team: Dartmouth A (24), (2nd is Pimpdags with 12)
Callahans: 2

I thought this was all interesting at least.

Concert

2009-10-23T12:41:00.000-07:00

I'm not much of one for concerts. In fact I've only been to 4 in my life: A Beatles tribute band with my parents when I was in middle school (awkward), Michael Franti & Spearhead last winter (awesome), Dropkick Murphey's this past fall (my ears still hurt), and one this past weekend. A lot of my friends like going to concerts, probably because they're from places where cool bands like to play, like New York, Boston, or California. If I was a from a place where Dave Matthews plays every year, I'd probably have gone too. Unfortunately the only big names that ever seemed to play in Oklahoma were Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Faith Hill, and the like.

Until this past weekend. In a scheduling decision that still baffles me, the Black Eyed Peas were opening for U2 (U fucking 2!) at OU's football stadium on October 18th. Both of these bands are on my relatively short list of bands I would be willing to see in concert, so of course I went and also made a special trip to Colorado to bring Mar along too. My parents, as providers of the tickets, were also present, a situation that actually wasn't as awkward as you might think provided that I didn't look at them while I was dancing and singing along to 'My Humps'.

BEP especially played a lot lip service to their presence in my home town, with Wil.i.am frequently uttering phrases such "What's up [pause] Oklahoma!" and "it's so great to be here in [pause] Oklahoma" as if he himself couldn't quite understand what he was doing in this state. U2 was a little smoother in their location mention, referencing their 1983 concert at OU's basketball arena a mile down the road. "It took us 26 years to make it that last mile" Bono said at one point, which sounded sweet at the time, like we were all part of U2's odyssey as a rock band, but could also be interpreted as 'it took us 26 years before we were willing to come back'.

Poking fun at my heritage aside, this was an amazing concert. The crowd of 60,000 was rowdy and knew the lyrics when asked to sing along, and both bands flat out rocked. I was a little worried about how the BEP's would sound given the heavy use of computer sound effects in their music, but they sounded great, getting me jumping up and down and yelling the lyrics as they sang "I gotta feeling', and setting most of the girls (especially including Mar) in the stadium screaming as Fergie let the guys rest and sang "Big Girls Don't Cry".

Of special note was the stage, which cost over $30 million, looks like space ship, and it nicknamed 'The Claw'. After U2's opening song, Bono paused and greeted the crowd saying "how do you like our Mothership?". U2 clearly has played a lot of concerts on this stage, and knew extremely well how to use all the features of the stage's ability to play in the round to make it feel like each section in the stadium was close up to the band and being played to specifically. My favorite two songs that U2 played were probably "Beautiful Day", which allowed to Bono to fully utilize his emotional, arms-spread-to-the-sky style of singing (that and the stage turned blue! See below), and "Sunday Bloody Sunday", which is simply one of the best songs ever and was amazing to hear live.

Finally for those of you interested in seeing what this concert is like, their performance at the Rose Bowl this Sunday is being streamed live on youtube and U2.com.

Obama in Yellowstone

2009-10-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

This would be a better post had I actually written it soon after President Obama visited the park back in August, but whatever. I'm also not quite sure what counts as free information to give out in terms of the logistics of a presidential visit, so I'm going to be careful...

The week before the president visited was a rather hectic one at Yellowstone as every division collectively messed themselves preparing for it. Even geology got involved, as my supervisors were placed on a geyser emergency team for the visit and put on stand by in an undisclosed location to be ready in case something went wrong (Old Faithful doesn't go off?). They also were nice and removed the rather suspicious-looking temperature loggers (a small circular base emitting a radio frequency with a 2 meter wire extending from it) from any pool the President would be near.

The most entertaining part of the preparation was hearing what the wildlife people had to deal with. As anyone who has been to Yellowstone knows, there are a lot of bison there. These bison don't give a crap about cars and will stand in the middle of the road and just stare at you. Well, apparently it is a major security issue if a presidential motorcade has to make an unscheduled stop (i.e. to avoid hitting a bison), so there were park rangers put in charge of keeping the bison herds away from the motorcade route. How they did that I don't know, I got the feeling while I was in Yellowstone that a bison wouldn't move even if I was bumping it with my car.

Additionally the president's family was going to have a picnic lunch at a location where two ravens known for stealing picnic lunches liked to hang out. The bird people were told to 'get rid of them'. Ravens are smart though. Imagine trying to catch something on the ground that can fly and knows you're trying catch it. Don't know how they pulled that one off either.

Finally, both of these issues ended up being irrelevant as Obama ended up flying in to Old Faithful instead of driving and the picnic was for the staff while the president ate indoors at a lodge. All in all the president was in the park for maybe 3 hours. Just a bit less than the reported average length of a visit to the park (I don't get that stat either). Instead of being annoyed though at the much ado about nothing issues created by the president's visit, my supervisor came away very impressed with the professionalism and quality of the work done by the secret service in preparing the park for the president to visit. Those guys don't mess around and know exactly what they're doing in a very elaborate system. Apparently there are multiple advance teams of agents leap-frogging each other in advance of the presidential visits and also a small fleet of aircraft carrying motorcade vehicles around the country, so that everything is ready before Air Force 1 is even in the region.

As for me, I spent the day Obama was in the park staying as far away as possible. Traffic was already bad enough without having to deal with an Obama-jam. The bison and elk jams were already annoying me enough.

The National Park Service

2009-10-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

It was very interesting the past 6 months getting to see how the National Park Service operates from the inside, especially since I got to observe it at two very different national parks- Guadalupe Mountains and Yellowstone.

The largest conflict I saw the exists in the management of a national park is balancing protecting the park resources with creating a good visitor experience.

An example of this from Guadalupe starts off like a joke: "How many park rangers does it take to plant a cherry tree?"
The back story is that rangers at Guadalupe are trying to recreate the orchard that existed at a preserved ranch house in the park that now serves as the park's cultural history museum. Trees would provide shade and show visitors how early settlers cultivated in the desert. The answer to the question: 6. 3 to transplant the tree, 1 one to operate a backhoe, and 2 to watch and make sure no potential Native American artifacts were dug up or damaged. Conflicts of the resource vs. visitors were rare at Guadalupe though, mainly due to the management of the park as a wilderness area, which dictated rather strictly what could and could not be done within the park boundary.

Yellowstone is a different story. A good anecdote from there comes from Mammoth. What many people don't realize is that the Park Service is more than just the big wilderness parks we've all heard of (Grand Canyon, Yosemite, etc.), but in fact includes nearly 400 different sites, most of which have a purely cultural significance (Battlefields, monuments, memorials, and the like). Therefore a majority of park service employees, and to a smaller degree park management policy, have very little to do with wilderness. One of the park policies I've seen crop up a couple times is one that dictates any human artifacts more than 50 years old within a park must be preserved by the park.

In Carlsbad Caverns this means rangers are responsible for preserving a pile of trash (empty cans of beans, loose wire, broken light bulbs) left by guano miners in the 1930s. In Yellowstone is means the lush grass of the parade grounds the army created at Mammoth in the early 1900s must be maintained. This grass provides an artificial food source for a herd of elk that hangs out in Mammoth nearly constantly. I saw the herd probably 4 out of 5 days, in numbers from 20 to over 60. In the fall this herd attracts multiple bull elk during the rut that are very aggressive and often chase visitors who get too close or damage cars or other property.

This is obviously a concern for the park service. A visitor who got chased across the parade ground at Mammoth by a horny bull elk is probably less likely to return, and there are two main ideas on what to do about this: 1) Get rid of the food source. Kentucky bluegrass is not a natural staple of an elk's diet. Get of the grass, get rid of the herd. This is suggested by people in the Yellowstone Center for Resources. 2) You can't get rid of the grass, the park is required by law to preserve it. Instead you have to have park rangers haze the elk (make very loud scary noises, poke them with sticks, make them chug beer, etc.) until they get annoyed and leave.

So one option involves breaking a law while the other involves annoying the crap out of a herd of wildlife, which seems counterproductive to the park's primary missions of preserving a natural environment. Given these options, it's easy to guess what the park is doing about this situation: nothing.

This is but one example of many situations where cultural resources, natural resources, and visitor services clash. Visitor services also pose a problem:
"We want to build this facility here so it's close to this must-see sight"
"But your proposed building is literally on top of a geyser cone"
"So?"
"Really? That needs further explanation as to why it's bad?"

Part of my job this summer was to help my supervisors (the park geologists) research and write reports on the geological hazards associated with proposed developments in the park. I'd elaborate, but I'm not quite sure what I'm at liberty to say, especially online. Lets just say the similarity of some of the projects to the hypothetical conversation above makes me shudder a little, and if you're interested in hearing more, I'll tell you if we talk in person.

The good news in all this is that as long as the resource people, the scientists, provided solid data and evidence, natural resources generally won the argument with the visitor services developers, as least in my limited experience. Additionally, the wilderness is much better off, even with damage done by visitors and development, than it would be if it wasn't a park at all. From what I heard the Wyoming state wolf management policy remains (paraphrased of course) "if you see a wolf, shoot it". Sigh.

Frisbee Free Agent

2009-09-23T15:43:00.001-07:00

I wanted to title this post "Ultimate Sl*t", but figured that would give my blog some unwanted attention.

As was obvious from the previous post, I was in Canada recently, meaning my position at Yellowstone is over. Now begins a month of visiting friends, applying for jobs, studying for the GRE, researching grad schools, and of course, playing ultimate.

Where I'll be/where I was
Sept 12/13: Big Sky Mixed Sectionals with the Bozeman Bozos
Sept 14-20: Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks
Sept 21-22: One last trip through Yellowstone and Grand Teton
Sept 26: Avon, CO hat tournament
Oct 3/4: Hucktoberfest with Mad Udderburn in Whitewater, WI
Oct 10/11: Potentially Central Club Regionals, spectating and learning to use twitter
Oct 17/18: Black Eyed Peas and U2 in Concert in my hometown!
Oct 24/25: Fright Flight in Ft. Collins, CO with an Avon/Breck group.
Nov: Frozen Disc of Death in Hanover, NH, with M.U.T. gotta keep the win streak going...

My new car (now designated 'Roo') will be racking up the miles, but it should be a good time, provided my job search, GRE studying, and grad school investigations go well. More on that later.

Observation

2009-09-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

This thought occurred to me as I was being interviewed by Canadian customs on my way to Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta:

You are at an interesting stage of your life when the questions "where do you live?" and "what do you do for a living?" are difficult questions to answer.

Luckily customs still let me through, albeit after I gave them a short autobiography.

Tonight I'm off to Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park, after that it's back to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons followed by Colorado. Hopefully I'll still have money left. Canada was expensive. The exchange rate isn't what it used to be.

Tetons

2009-09-07T18:15:00.000-07:00

When south again for my 4 day Labor Day weekend, and this time went hiking as opposed to playing ultimate.

No mountain since the Matterhorn has induced such compulsive picture taking as Grand Teton did during my hike on Saturday. I think my total for the day was around 100 photos. I did the Paintbrush Canyon to Cascade Canyon loop from the String Lake trailhead. It's 20 miles and 5,000 vertical feet, and one of the most spectacular hikes I've ever done. I topped it off my scrambling up a small peak next to the pass the trail crosses to I can that I've been on top of a Teton. I was amazed by the number of other people doing the same day hike too. I figured I'd be the only one nuts enough to do that long of a hike, but apparently the Tetons attract a lot of crazy hikers. I even ran into 3 women doing the entire 35 mile Teton Crest Trail in one day.

Jackson Ultimate

2009-08-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I played in my second ultimate tournament of the year, in Jackson, WY. Being on the move and working in remote places like I have been this year has really limited my tournament attendance. By this time last year I had already played in 12. But what I'm lacking in quantity this year I'm making up for in quality.

My first tournament was Poultry Days back in June in between working at Guadalupe Mountains and Yellowstone. Tyke got me onto a Madison team and it was simply awesome. Great food, camping at the fields, watching team USA vs. team Canada, and as always throwing numerous hucks to Tyke that appear to be ill advised but almost always work because we know each other that well. The over-arching highlight of the weekend was the realization that I am a good ultimate player. I hadn't played competitive ultimate since club regionals last October, but I more than held my own playing on a good team against good competition. I know I'm not elite open club good, but I'm good enough to know I can play, and play relatively well, at about any other level, which is nice.

The Jackson tournament was my introduction into yet another regional ultimate culture, this time ultimate in the Rockies. The tournament was attended by teams from Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho and was a mix of competitive mixed teams trying to make nationals and teams formed by local pick up scenes that wanted to attend a tournament. From what I can tell the attitude at mountainous tourney locations such as this is much more about traveling to a sweet place, hanging out, and partying than playing serious ultimate, which is fine. All I wanted to do was have fun anyway.

The team I was playing with, a combo group out of Bozeman and Missoula, fully embraced this attitude and went all out with a hippie theme complete with giving everyone on the team hippie names such as Dandelion Dream, Lunar Moon Unit, Sundried Tomato, Prius Herbgarden, River Sprout, Morning Glory, and Cord of Wood, among others. Mar, who had come up to visit for the weekend, and I were initially skeptical of this theme and it reinforcing stereotypes, especially after the team played it's first few point barefoot. Soon after that though everyone cleated up and we realized they were all pretty good. A few of them had even won mixed nationals last year playing for the Flycoons out of Missoula.

Despite this tournament being less competitive than Poultry Days, I had a much harder time padding the stat sheet here than I did there, which I attribute to the style of play. Poultry Days I played with Madison guys and we were all on the same page offensively, at Jackson I didn't know their system and Mar and I both were constantly being looked off on under cuts, double cutting, or cutting when the thrower wasn't working. It was frustrating at times. The Montana group liked to run a vert stack with 3 handlers and basically handler weave until someone opened up deep. Cuts were called on the line like "we're looking for so and so deep followed by so and so deep", so mention of in cuts or breakside or anything. This made getting the disc rather hard for someone who specializes in in-cuts and breakside flow cuts such myself. Still, I made it work, and by Sunday I was opening my deep game and made some plays. It was also great to play with Mar again, though as always we need to work on our connection. I was 0 for 2 on hucks to her during the weekend. At Poultry Days I was probably 8 for 10 or something when looking to Tyke deep.

Best part of the tournament was probably the party. It was outside at a mexican restaurant/bar and started right after games were over and ran until long after Mar and I left at 10:30. Copious amounts of mexican food, good local beer, a good local band, and good weather. Couldn't really ask for more.

Oh, and we went 3-3 on the weekend.

July

2009-07-27T15:39:00.000-07:00

July is going by fast too...

As opposed to my time in Guadalupe, my time here is rather structured and doesn't lend itself as easily to themes for posts. I'm going to wait a little longer before I write a 'living in Yellowstone' post, but in the meantime here are the highlights from the past few weeks.

-I am now fully involved in two different projects here, one using GIS and ENVI and another using matlab and infrared imagery. Both are interesting topics and actually have the potential to be journal articles, or at least GSA abstracts, according to my supervisors.

-Work is very reminiscent of grad school. I share a small, windowless office with 2 other geocorps volunteers and spend most of my days indoors working on my projects. It's a little frustrating being stuck inside all week when I'm working at Yellowstone, but I still have the weekends and occasional side projects to get outside and see the park.

-My parents visited two weekends ago and we had amazing luck viewing animals: wolf, coyote, elk, bison, and grizzly bear all in one day. I also enjoyed the 4 evenings of free good meals

-This past weekend I went to Maine for Zargham's wedding. It was great to be back in New England and see a bunch of my friends. I also got to hang out in Boston for two nights and see other friends who weren't at the wedding. Every time I go back I always get homesick to a degree, I realize how lucky I am to have such an amazing group of friends and I wish I could spend more time with them out east. But soon enough I'll remember I live in Yellowstone and realize life isn't so bad out here. Especially I can convince some people to visit.

Coming up in the next few weeks I'm looking forward to continuing my exploration of the park towards the canyon and west thumb areas. There's still so much I haven't see here, I'm beginning to think I may not even complete even my short list of 'must do's'.

Enjoying the Simple Things

2009-07-05T19:36:00.001-07:00

Two weeks into living at Yellowstone and I'm already a bit jaded.

"It's just a *(&^*!$ buffalo! There's no reason to park your car in the middle of &*^! the road on a &*^!@# holiday weekend so your wife can get that perfect photo! You're going to see 100 more of the $%^!&* things today!"

So while I the above quote is a very common thought as I drive through the park, I am making special note of the little things that make me very happy, and make me realize that I am lucky to be able to live and work here. Things such as:

-getting out on the trails and being the only person to see a mother elk prodding her calf up a hill into the cover of the forest.

-driving in the rain through the mountains. Especially I have Michael Franti playing on my iPod.

-Barreling downhill on my mountain bike, going 2.6 miles in 15 minutes, to emerge at the trail head 50 feet from my house and getting inside just before the daily thunderstorm hits.

-Getting to wear chest-high waders and play in a lake for an afternoon and call it 'field work'.

-The fact that when you're doing field work near sulfur vents, you can fart as much as you want and no one will notice.

Yellowstone

2009-06-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

June is going by fast...

I'm in Yellowstone now, and am enjoying my first weekend off after my first week of work. My schedule is pretty cool, we work 9 hours days but then get every other Friday off, so I'm looking forward to having all that time to explore the park. I've spent my evenings so far pouring over maps and 12 weekends isn't even going to make a very large dent in the amount of things one can do here. This place is huge.

I'll write more about my job when I actually know what I'm doing, I'm still getting introduced and feeling out my projects. I did get to go on a couple field assignments this past week, which was fun. We were mapping some lake and stream features with a GPS, though the tourists kept asking us if we were tracking wolves. This park was set aside for the thermal features, but has really become much more of a wildlife park I feel. And the wildlife doesn't disappoint either. In my first week here I've seen Moose, Bison, Elk, Black Bear, Coyote, Badger, Osprey, Big Horn Sheep, and Sand Hill Cranes.

I had a great drive to get up here too. Stopped by a couple NPS sites in OK and NE and otherwise got accustomed to driving my new Subaru. More posts to come as I get more settled, this is going to be a great summer.

The Jeep is Dead. Long live The Jeep.

2009-06-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

I knew this day would come. I knew it was getting closer and closer with every mile I drove, but the inevitability of the Jeep's demise did nothing to stop me from becoming more and more attached each time I loaded it up, ready to set off on our next adventure. If it is possible to love an inanimate object, I loved The Jeep. That vehicle was as much a part of my college experience as any building at Dartmouth, or any dorm or apartment I've ever lived in. It was the perfect car at the perfect time, and I will miss it dearly.

This past winter the Jeep had a terrible time starting in the cold and altitude of Colorado. There's a chance I might be in Colorado this coming winter, and I knew the Jeep didn't have another cold season in it. The Jeep would not see 2010. This put the cost of repairs for it on a very short leash. This past week at its latest oil change the inspection turned up $500 worth of fluid flushes and leak fixes, and that was enough. The Blue Book value on the Jeep is about $800. I took it for a drive on Wednesday to get it over 190,000 miles, and then my mom and I traded it in for a new Subaru Forester. The Jeep was 15 years, 8 months old. Old enough to drive itself under adult supervision.

The Jeep was born in Colorado in 1993. It had an exciting early life with numerous trips to ski areas, off-roading in the Great Sand Dunes, and road trips to the Dakotas and Pacific Northwest. It spent the years 1994-2003 primarily in Oklahoma as a commuter vehicle, escaping briefly a few times a year on road trips to Colorado and New Mexico. In 2001 I learned how to drive in it. In 2002 I became the primary driver of the Jeep, and drove it to school every day of my Junior and Senior years of high school. It allowed me to commute to the other high school in town to take a class not offered at my school, and was often taken to lunch since it could hold 5 people a lot more comfortably than my best friend's Civic.

The Jeep surpassed 100,000 miles in September 2003 as my Mom and I drove up for my freshman year at Dartmouth. Sophomore year I took sole possession of the Jeep. The Jeep almost met its end in April 2005, but I convinced my mom to fix the transmission for 3 grand as opposed to buying me a new car. My sophomore, junior, and senior year at Dartmouth the Jeep attended nearly every tournament with Dartmouth Ultimate. It went on spring break. It hauled a pong table. It moved nearly the entire capacity of 311 Mid Mass in one trip. It drove between Oklahoma and Dartmouth 10 times while I was an undergrad. It carried me through snow covered roads on the way to Killington, Stowe, and the Dartmouth Skiway. It took me down to Boston to visit Tyke God only knows how many times. The Jeep could hold all the food, cones, and other supplies necessary to host a frisbee tournament for 30 teams. I'm willing to bet 4 out of 5 people who see this post have ridden in the Jeep for at least a few hours.

The Jeep moved with me to Wisconsin. It went over 150,000 miles in Madison in June 2007, and quickly became legend amongst the Pimpdags, especially those who spent 2 hours in it sitting in the parking lot of a porn shop in the middle of nowhere when the serpentine belt broke on Spring Break. It did the most serious off-roading of its life on the Como Road in August 2008 in Colorado. The Jeep spent its last weeks residing in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, before embarking on its last road trip ever to bring me back to Oklahoma.

In its life the Jeep made it to 43 of the states in this country, and reached the highest point in 6 of them. And the Jeep's life is not necessarily over. The Subaru dealer will sell it to a smaller auto shop, where it will be either scrapped for parts or sold to a new owner. My hope is that someone sees the Jeep as I have seen it, and it gets to live out the rest of its days on a ranch, or helping a teenager learn how to drive and maintain a car, or I can only hope, somewhere, anywhere, where it can face the west, the orange light of sunset glinting of its red hood, and imagine the mountains that must lie just past the horizon.

The Jeep is dead. Long live the Jeep. R.I.P. October 1993 - June 2009.

The Five Coolest Things I Saw in the Guadalupe Mountains

2009-06-10T22:17:00.000-07:00

My internship at GUMO is now over. I departed in glorious fashion, giving my geology patio talk to 4 people at the visitor center in my last half hour work. One of the interp rangers asked me as I was leaving that day if it felt anticlimactic, but actually, thanks to that presentation, and how smoothly it went compared to the first time I gave it, my end felt quite climactic and conclusive.

I have some time at home now, so I'll write a couple wrap-up posts before heading off to Yellowstone next week. Today, the subject is the coolest things I saw, by which I mean singular moments, not certain sights.

#5: On my 17 mile hike of Bush Mountain I stumbled upon 2 Barbary Sheep. Barbary Sheep are similar to Big Horn Sheep, but are actually from Africa and were imported for hunting in the early 20th century after the native Big Horn went extinct in this region. The on-alert pose for a Barbary Sheep is a classic, majestic, thrusting out of the chest with the head held high, but I couldn't get a picture of it because they quickly dashed off into the oak thickets near Bush Mountain before I could get my camera out.

#4: While hiking the Bowl one weekend I saw my first and so far only rattlesnake, a black-tailed rattlesnake to be exact. It was sitting on a stump next to the trail and saw me first and started rattling. I had never heard that sound before, but anyone would know that sound when they heard it. I jumped a couple feet in the air and quickly backed off to a safe distance. The snake still thought I was too close though, and kept rattling and sitting a striking posture, allowing me to get a great picture from about 10 feet away.

#3: One day the park fire crew decided to do a prescribed burn in the park along the ridge next to the highway. I was off that day and was returning from Carlsbad at night when I saw the mountains glowing with flame in the darkness. It was an eirie sight to see the park on fire as I stood outside my house. Apparently the burn took a little longer to put out than was predicted. My friend in the fire crew said she worked 16 hours straight that day.

#2: On the night of the full moon in May one of the park employees had her annual mother's day bash at her ranch house near Dell City, TX. I stayed there until 1 am and ate 4 plates of the best BBQ brisket ever while meeting the locals and watching the moon rise over the western escarpment cliffs. I got back to the park at 2:30 and managed to sustain the will power to take a one hour nap before getting up and setting off on the Guadalupe Peak trail at 4am under the full moon. I summitted just before 6 am, in time to see the run rise from the highest point in Texas. I took about 40 pictures in 15 minutes before taking a 2 hour nap. All in all I had the top to myself for 4 hours.

#1: In mid May we had an abnormal amount of rain for 3 days straight. That was enough to flood McKittrick canyon for 2 days. The waters washed away entirely one of the steam crossings on the canyon trail, which was closed for 3 days. It was spectacular seeing the stream full of water after hiking it when it was dry so many times. Talking to the rangers who have been in the park for a decade or more, flooding of this extent only happens once every 3-4 years.

White Sands

2009-05-20T14:58:00.000-07:00

The rapidly decreasing length of my internship (only 2 1/2 more weeks!) has encouraged me to focus on checking off the cool sites near here that I want to see before I leave. Granted, this 'weekend' (i.e. today and tomorrow, my days off) I'm hanging around GUMO and Carlsbad and catching up on sleep, but last weekend I went on a mini overnight adventure to White Sands National Monument.

I started my weekend on Wednesday, leaving GUMO around 9 and stopping in Carlsbad to replace my Camelbak mouthpiece (a mouse has chewed through my old one a week earlier). After that it was on to Cloudcroft, NM and the Sacramento Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest. This was a really cool place. The forest here is higher than at Guadalupe and much thicker and larger, with no remnants of desert plants like Yucca or Agava like you see in the Bowl at GUMO. It was also about 15 degrees cooler than the desert, which was nice. I stopped by the Bluff Springs waterfall, Sunspot Observatory, Osha Trail, and discovered the Trestle Rec Area at dusk, which was unfortunate because that was probably the coolest place I found, and I didn't have near enough time to explore it. I ended up running the 2.5 mile trail to see the old railroad trestle to beat the darkness and catch sunset at the overlook near the parking area.

After that I had a great dinner and proceded to a national forest campground to spend my first ever night camping by myself. It could've gone better probably. Given my wild imagination I quickly spooked myself in the darkness and spent maybe 30 minutes sitting next to the Jeep drinking a beer before diving into my tent and falling asleep as quickly as I could. Hearing Elk snorting nearby didn't help my situation, as I quickly tried to think of what mood a bear would have to be in to make that sound. My stupid mind settled on 'starving'.

The next day I got up early and drove out of the mountains down into the Tularosa valley and White Sands National Monument. I met their resident SCA intern and then headed out into the dunes on the 4.6 Alkali Flats trail. If you ever go there, definitely hike this trail, but use sunscreen on all exposed skin. The sunlight reflecting of the white sand makes the sun exposure like skiing without all the protective clothes. I scorched my shins. The Jeep and I also enjoyed driving on the unpaved, compacted sand roads.

My next stop was a spontaneous decision to visit the White Sands Missile Range headquarters. The museum had some cool displays and artifacts, but this place is still and active testing ground so there were some interesting restrictions on taking photos. I could take photos outside, which surprised me actually, but I could only take them of the missiles on display while I was facing West. I kept looking around for the army private who would tackle me if I turned towards the East, but I didn't see him. I also was not allowed to take photos of any part of the base besides the missile park and was especially not allowed to take photos of the entrance.

The adventure continues as I drove down to El Paso, arriving around dusk to explore the roads around and within the Franklin Mountains. I got some pretty good views, and then decided to drive through downtown where I proceeded to get slightly lost and come closer than I wanted to accidentally going to Mexico. Though I breifly considered purposely going to Mexico when I saw a stadium full of red-clad fans watching a soccer game just across the Rio Grande in Juarez. Thoughts of swine flu and the recent drug wars quickly pushed that idea from my mind though.

I spent enough time wandering around El Paso that I drove the 90 minutes back to GUMO in the dark. My sunset views of the western escarpment will have to wait until another day I suppose.

Hey, Where'd Everyone Go?

2009-05-06T16:08:00.001-07:00

I'll revisit the community of people I live with this week. It's been nearly a month since I first wrote about my seasonal housing mates and I'm happy to remote that as we got to know each better, initial judgments and prejudices were forgotten. Now I just have to learn not to judge people immediately, and potentially not to judge people until I've talked with them multiple times, I'd expect the same of other people trying to get to know me. The more I talked to people here the more interesting they became. I found out a couple of my 10 person social circle went used one of their days off every week to go to Van Horn and take an EMT class. Others have worked at GUMO for years and have a lot of interesting stories, like the Law Enforcement officer who once caught a Brown Pelican in the park. It had been blown here from California by especially strong winds. I also found out a couple of them lived in Carlsbad most of the time, further shrinking my park housing social network.

Unfortunately, as soon as I got to know everyone better, a wave of people left. And by wave of people I mean 3. But 3 is a lot when you're starting with 10. The most recent 2 to leave were a couple who headed to Montana a couple week ago. The guy was my housemate, so they were always in our house cooking or hanging out. With them gone I pretty much have the place to myself. My other housemate hangs out with a good friend of his the whole time. Their departure felt like more than 2 people though. They had been at GUMO a while, so knew everyone well, and were well liked. People would come over and hang out with them, and social gatherings of 4-6 people were pretty common. With them gone those people don't come over anymore. My group of friends that I could potentially hang out with on a given night is now down to 2, and while its nice to have so much space in my house to myself, it feels lonely sometimes. Also not helping is that when my housemate departed, he took with him his collection of DVDs. Evening entertainment has since been limited to reading, and possibly studying for Yellowstone or writing the journal article on my Dartmouth senior thesis. The satellite TV is still around of course, so maybe I'll become interested in the NBA playoffs at some point soon.

On the other hand, I'm getting to know those 2 remaining people very well, and talk to them most nights for at least an hour or so, which is fun. More people should be arriving this month, but then I'll be leaving soon after that. Things are settling into a routine a little bit, but that's not a bad thing, especially when that routine involves hiking in a national park most days and playing basketball every day after work while the sun sets over the mountains.

The Cave

2009-04-29T15:55:00.000-07:00

One of the more interesting things I've slowly been noticing since I arrived here is the relationship between Guadalupe Mountains National Park and Carlsbad Caverns Nationals Park, known to each other in NPS shorthand as GUMO and CAVE (technically NPS shorthand dictates that the first two letters of the first two words in the park name be used, i.e. ROMO for Rocky Mountain, but they made an exception for the caverns, which would've been stuck with CACA, which is ironic given the amount of bat guano in the cave).

The two parks share a non-profit and probably 25-50% of their visitors. While working in the VC at GUMO, I often find myself related cave tour info and opperating hours to visitors stopping in on their way to the caverns, which is the destination park for tourists in the area. People on vacation to the region usually allow a day for each, and come down to GUMO to bag Guadalupe Peak (which I've decided is the most popular trail in the park, surpassing even our .4 mile paved nature trail).

In playing ultimate and going on a special employee only cave tour one night I've talked with quite a few people who do my job (interpretation) at the cave, and I've come to the conclusion that I am so glad that I work at GUMO and not the cave. The cave people (ha!) are stuck underground out of the sunlight all day, generally walking the same 3 miles of paved trails through the natural entrance and big room every day over and over again. I still haven't been on half of miles of trail that Guadalupe has, and I bet even the spectacular formations of the cave get stale after a while.

The cave rangers also have to deal with a ton more people. Carlsbad Caverns is rightly a destination national park, offering sights found nowhere else in the world. Compared to the cave, the Guadalupe Mountains are just that, mountains, and there's plenty of those around. I'm glad most of the tourists stick to the cave, I love my job at GUMO, but I couldn't do it at the cave. I can't really see myself leading tours of 50+ people every day. I'm just not that friendly, and frankly, I'm a little weird, I cringe at the thought of knowing that the little jokes I'd try to insert into cave tours to primarily entertain myself would likely bomb horribly, creating terribly awkward situations. I'll stick to talking to 1-4 people at a time on the trails or behind the VC desk at GUMO.

I'm also glad I don't have to deal with the volume of stupid tourist questions that rangers at the cave deal with. The worst I get is the indignant look of frustrated surprise that people give me when I tell them that no, you can't drive to the top of Guadalupe Peak. Some of the ones cave rangers get asked include "what time do you open the gates to let the bats out?", "do you plan on expanding the cave at any point?", and the comment "thanks for air conditioning the cave, it's really hot out today". I think I'd snap having to deal with that.

Of course, the cave rangers do have their perks. The constant 56 degree temperature in the cave makes for comfy work environment during the 100 degree summers here. Come late May I might just have changed my opinion on working in the cave. The rangers there also get to apply for special use permits for the many caves in the park, and they're allowed to invite their friends along. I was lucky enough to be included on one of those tours a couple weeks ago when 7 of us when down the natural entrance at dusk while the bat flew out to go visit Hall of the White Giant. To get to the hall requires about 45 minutes of crawling, squeezing, and climbing through passages that start right off the natural entrance trail, through you wouldn't know it was there. The hall itself contains a 20 foot stalagmite (the White Giant) and a ton of soda straw formations. We couldn't continue on, but if you did, the second largest chamber in the park, the Guadalupe room, is further down some more narrow passages. The park only lets 8 visitors a week sign up for this tour, so I felt lucky to get to see it, especially with park personnel on their off time.

A week ago I went to the cave to take advantage the free entry I receive thanks to my GUMO employment and see the main sights for the first time as a geologist (I had previously visited in 2001). Pictures included below.

The Bashful Elephant, on the Kings Palace tour

The Big Room from the far end

The Hall of Giants

NPS Sports

2009-04-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

Despite living in the middle of nowhere I have been able to continue my participation in team sports here. When I arrived I was relieved to see a basketball hoop in the parking lot by the seasonal housing, a way to get some exercise without having to run laps on the access road. I go out there and shoot around pretty much every day, sometimes for up to an hour. Most of the time it's so windy I have to aim 5 feet to the right of the basket to have a prayer of making the shot, but shooting around it more about the time I spend out there than my shooting percentage. It's a great way to relax after a days work, though it's not like I need to de-stress or anything given all I do is hike and talk.

In any case, I was shooting around enough I got my jumper back. I found this out while playing 2v2 against some guys on the fire crew last week. For the first time in 4-5 years I was able to break down a guy off the dribble, and pull up and make a shot. And the fire crew guys were decent too, it's not like I was schooling chumps. Now the fire crew is trying to put together a team to go and challenge the best 5 Carlsbad Caverns has to offer. I'm looking forward to that game.

Speaking of schooling chumps though, I've also found a pick-up frisbee game. It's Park service employees only, and we play once a week in Carlsbad. I'm usually the only one who drives all the way from GUMO, but I've had company a couple times. It's by far the lowest quality pick up I've ever played. There's no stall count, no real understanding of the rules (tons of picks, no calls), and turnovers are so prevalent that playing 4v5 isn't looked at as a disadvantage. No one aside from me has a forehand or has played organized ultimate. I'm like Blake Griffin playing against a highschoolers. Despite all that though, I love it. It makes my week. Something about playing the sport of ultimate just washes away any bad or troubling thoughts and lets me simply run around and have fun. Plus as always the people who play are really cool, and it's great to get to know people outside of my 10 person social network at GUMO. Cave people and the cave itself are all very interesting, but that's the subject of another post.

Home Sweet Government Home

2009-04-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

The Jeep, my house (my room is in the near corner), and the rest of the seasonal housing complex.

My basketball court with a view. I probably shoot around here, ignoring the 50 mph winds, at least 5 days a week for some exercise and what's turning into some highly-valued me time.

It's been an exciting week here at the Guadalupe Mountains. One of my favorite perks of being an employee (technically volunteer intern, but same difference) here is getting to carry a radio around when I go hiking. The park is so small that all the divisions (interp, maintainence, law enforcement, fire) use the same radio channel, so I get to hear all the park goings-on. It's like listening to NPR if all they did was sporadically report boring or offbeat news. Here's the week in review:

Tuesday: The park mules get a workout hauling a 300 lb man who broke his ankle down from the high country

Wednesday: A morning wildfire (only 140 acres) gets the park personnel moving early, reports of engine location and fire status fill the radio waves for two hours until the fire is out. The event ends humorously when the GUMO fire engine gets locked inside the ranch where the fire was. Apparently the rancher though having his own personal fire fighters was worth the potential kidnapping accusations.

Thursday: A car flips on the highway near the park, GUMO EMS and law enforcement respond. Interestingly enough the driver of the flipped vehicle is nowhere to be seen. He is eventually found a mile down the road smoking a cigarette.

Friday: A cow gets loose and it takes the entire morning for two LE's (Law Enforcement Rangers) to figure out which ranch it belongs to how to get it back inside the fence.

Saturday: The local highway patrol officer sees fit to stop a car for speeding every 10 minutes, leading to awkward conversations for me while hiking Guadalupe Peak. I would be talking to some people on the trail, and the next thing I know someone's driver's license number and criminal record are being relayed loud and clear from my backpack. Probably not information for the public domain, but, I have to keep the radio on and loud enough so I can hear it should someone try to contact me, so there's not much I can do.

Sunday: A report comes in of an unconsious woman sitting in a vehicle on the side of the road. After 20 tense minutes of scrambling the local ambulence, it turns out she was just asleep and the 911 caller didn't bother knocking hard enough on the car window to wake her up.

The other great perk of working here is being privy to the key that opens everything. Even as a lowly intern, my one key has opened every gate and building I've tried it on, and I'm apparently welcome to use the key to access somewhere whenever I want. So, if you want an exclusive tour of the park including sights visitors can't access, stop on by and I'll show you. If I'm doing roving interp that day it'll even count as work.

As for the perceived bureaucratic downside to working for the government, I haven't really noticed it. Sure it took maintainance nearly a month to replace the clothes dryer that broke just before I showed up, but it seems the park service in general is a pretty laid back, if not the most laid back, branch of the federal government. I'm also low enough on the totem pole here (i.e. at the bottom) to not have to deal with some of the forms and regulations required of the higher ups that can give them a bad rap.

All in all, I'd recommend the park service, it seems no more uptight than any other workplace I've heard of my friends working at, and while the key to your office lets you access the storage closet, the key to my office gets me into a historic 1930's ranch house in a pristine wilderness canyon.

A Cast of Characters

2009-04-06T16:39:00.000-07:00

I've been at Guadalupe Mountains National Park (or GUMO in governmental shorthand) almost 3 weeks now. I continue to love the fact I get to hike for my job about 40% of the time, though now that I'm getting to know the trails, I'm finding myself told to work the desk at the visitor center to answer questions more. Fun fact, if you call up the national park on any day not Monday or Tuesday, there's a decent chance I'll be answering. I work the desk another 40% of my time, with the other 20% spent doing odd jobs for the natural resources division or preparing for a 10 minute park geology presentation I'm supposed to be giving at some point.

In my last post I talked a little about the people I'm sharing the park housing with. This whole park is run by a staff of no more than 40 people, including all maintainance, law enforcement, interpretation, and natural resources personnel. Most of the senior rangers, or anyone with a family really, live in Carlsbad and commute the hour back and forth every day. That leaves the seasonal volunteers and rangers (usually either retired couples or younger single people) in the park housing. I counted the other day and found that within this subset I have a total of 9 potential friends, meaning that, including me, there are only 10 people remotely close to my age who live in park housing. I've met all of them now and get along with them all, thankfully.

On the other hand, none of them are of the long-term friend type for me, and in most cases seem to get along with other people within the 10 person subset better than me. Still, I've had some great conversations with them so far. The park service attracts people from all types of backgrounds, but these people all generally share a common personality type, that type being they are people who love living in a wilderness area a long drive from anything. This personality quirk helps bind an otherwise diverse group together. This subset of 10 includes 6 men and 4 women, I am the 2nd youngest, most are late 20's to mid 30's. There are 2 maintainance, 3 law enforcement, 3 fire, and 2 interpretation (that's me) among us, and our varying schedules (everyone has different sets of days off since the park is always open and busiest on weekends) make hanging out difficult. The lack of activities besides drinking or watching TV also limits the social ability of our group, which can often devolve into rounds of shots of at 10pm because 10pm is a lame time to be going to sleep. I am fine with an occasional night of moderate to heavy drinking, but the frequency with which I have witnessed these boredom-induced nights of shot-taking is beginning to raise my concern that a bigger issue exists among my potential friends. After the last two weeks of introductions and trying to be sociable and friendly, I am going to be having more solitary nights from now on.

The national park service is a great racket for work. I've met some people who work at Carlsbad Caverns as well, and many of the younger seasonal rangers at the two parks have spent their recent lives hopping from park to park, holding temporary positions and working and living in some of the country's most amazing locations. As soon as this possibility of employment occurred to me, I had dreams of ski instructing in the winter and working in the national parks in the summer. Not a bad life at all, and the rangers I've met who are doing it can't say a bad thing about it.

The relative ease of the work, and the workers contentment to simply live in an amazing place, however, has led me to be reintroduced to a type of a person I have not interacted with since high school; the person without a strong career drive or an ambition to succeed or excel at something. These people also work for the government, and view those coworkers with ambition skeptically, as those people are nearly always douchebags who care more about their next job than the one they are doing now. Employment in the government for those who want a raise seems all about by-the-book compliance and brown nosing your way into a higher GS pay grade, and the type of person who loves to live in the wilderness rarely loves living by the book as well, creating a void between senior rangers and seasonal rangers that is easily detected, even in just the 3 weeks I've been here. The downside to this is that my ambitions and life dreams of a Ph.D. and scientific research have rubbed members of our 10 person social herd the wrong way, and I have felt vibes of anti-intellectualism directed my way, or inklings of resentment as they see my masters degree as proof that I think that I'm better than them. And the thing is, there's a part of me that does, a part of me that has always viewed with a certain degree of shame a person whom I thought had no desire to fulfill their potential.

All negatives aside, the people I share my park housing existence with are funny, entertaining, unique, and enjoyable to spend time with a majority of the day. I am learning to simply enjoy the company of other people without judging or comparison, and I hope that they are understanding and forgiving and do the same for me, because I'll admit I can be an asshole sometimes, but I'm working it. I am using this experience to my advantage, and trying to learn from my fellow and older seasonal housing residents what living to one's potential actually means. Or what have a successful life implies and how it can vary not only from person to person but within oneself over time. This is a group of people vastly different from me, but yet with many similar basic desires, and I look forward to continuing to hang out with them. The point of this sabatical from academic work was to see what else is out there, and already just 3 weeks in, I am seeing it, and for the most part, I am enjoying it.

Hiking for a day job

2009-03-24T17:24:00.001-07:00

Greetings from Carlsbad, NM. I'm here on my first pair of days off after starting my internship last week. So far I love what I get to do, which is basically answer visitor questions about the park. The location where I answer those questions will probably end being about 60/40 visitor center/on the trails, but for now I get to hike every day. I have to have the hiked the trails before I can answer questions about them, so my supervisor is sending me out on a new trail each day. This coming Saturday my job will be to hike up the highest mountain in Texas. That fact that I'm getting compensated to do this is awesome.

So far I've hiked all the easy trails and seen all the buildings in the park that people might visit, and I'm already feeling mostly competent answering questions at the visitor center desk. I've spent the evenings reading up on the region's geology, flora, and fauna. The geology is really cool, but really boring to people who aren't rock nerds like I am, but the short version is that mountain range is a fossilized barrier reef. The vertical relief today (see photo) is similar to what it was when there was water filling the whole basin during the Permian period 250 million years ago.

The living arrangements are interesting. The nearest gas is 30 miles away. The nearest grocery store is 55 miles. I have cell phone reception if I stand in a certain parking space at the visitor center, hold one arm up the pointing roughly southeast and stick a leg out towards the west. I live in a house with 2 fire rangers, and share a bedroom with one of them, but the place is spacious, and I have my own fridge (though I'd trade the fridge for my own room). The only people my age are the fire rangers, all the interpretation people I work with are older, either guys in their 30's to 50's who made a career of this and live in Carlsbad, or older retirees who volunteer. The fire rangers are all cool, but seem to have their own clique thing going, so making friends could prove to be difficult. At least I brought a lot of reading material.

The one key thing that has made the transition to living here much easier is the satellite TV. With no cell reception or internet, I'd have no contact with the outside world without that TV. With the TV, I've been able to watch all of OU NCAA tournament games so far.

More later as I get more settled in. Tomorrow I'm off to hike the Permian Reef Geology Trail, which I'm excited about. Finally, here's a couple photos of the mountains:

El Capitan and Guadalupe Peak (highest point in Texas at 8,749 ft).

Smith Spring (all the trees), with desert plants in the foreground and the limestone ancient reef escarpment looming in the background

What's Next

2009-03-15T17:47:00.000-07:00

Since I graduated in December, and really for the couple months before that, I've been looking for jobs to occupy myself for at least the next 20 months. 20 months from December being the earliest I could find myself back in grad school.

After 0 job offers before I graduated, I was starting to get worried. I was still trying hard for a ski industry job, and in January I was offered the opportunity to teach skiing at Loveland Ski area in Colorado, but there was a catch. I would have to move out there in 5 days (meaning a CO to WI to CO drive and packing) and find housing, all for the chance to maybe work full time for $9.50 an hour. I made that much in 2004 to sort boxes of rocks in a warehouse in Oklahoma. I said no.

At this point I gave up on being ski bum, at least this winter. I instead focused on applying for SCA conservation internships, which are generally offered through the National Park Service, BLM, or Forest Service. It took a couple months, but last week I finally accepted an offer to work as a Visitor Services intern at Guadalupe Mountains National Park in west Texas. I think I will spend most of my time in the visitor center answering questions, selling books, and doing other miscellaneous tasks. The other 40% of my job is what I'm really looking forward to. When I'm not in the visitor center I'll either be hiking trails or working on some geology related projects, though I don't know what they are yet.

The tricky part about this position is that it's in the middle of nowhere. The nearest internet is I think 20 miles away. The nearest grocery store/town is 60 miles away. I think the park employee housing I'll be living in has a rec room with satellite TV, and I think there's cell phone reception, so I'll have connections to the rest of the world. Still, this is going to last longer than the other times I've been removed from internet/TV/cell phone on the Stretch and in Dominica, and unlike those times, I don't know how many other people close to my age, if any, I'll be able to hang out with. It's going to be interesting, and there are going to be bad/lonely days, but I'm excited. I'll be there from March 18th to June 6th.

My luck continued last week when I offered another position for the summer through the Geological Society of America's GeoCorps program. From June 22nd to September 11th I'll be working (and getting paid!, the SCA position is volunteer; I only get a small stipend for food) as a Geothermal Resource Assistant in Yellowstone National Park (come visit!). I am really looking forward to doing this.

After that, I plan to spend the rest of September and October looking for ski instructing jobs, improving my GRE score, and figuring out which grad schools I want to apply to for fall 2010. After a couple months of uncertainty, it's nice to know what I'm doing for the next few months.

Cell Phone Disaster

2009-03-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

I think most of us are still old enough to remember life without cell phones. I remember phone trees in high school between my friends as we arranged a place and time to meet, and then promised to be there. If one of us didn't make it, we either went on without him, unconcerned, or waited a few extra minutes for him to show up, which he usually did. I remember going to Disney World in middle school with my parents, and them letting me wander off alone for an hour or so as they rested. I promised to be back by a certain time, and I was usually. Can you imagine parents today letting their kid do that without a way to be in constant contact? And to think my parents were pretty protective of me.

Nowadays we can't arrange anything without a cell phone. And I'm guilty of this too. For example, leaving for a frisbee tournament with the Pimpdags. Our driver tells each passenger what time he'll be there to pick them up. It'd make sense to be out there waiting for him right? But no, everyone waits in their room for the car to arrive, at which point the driver calls again to tell him he's arrived, and then waits as the passenger drags his crap down the stairs. If the driver is late by even a minute, straight to the cell phone, "where are you?", in spite of the fact that had the person been outside, he'd probably be able to see the driver coming down the road.

No one makes back up plans any more, "if you can't find me earlier, I'll definitely be at ____ at 11pm". Instead its "call me and I'll tell you where I'm at".

This fact of our technologically enriched lives came back to bite me in the ass a couple weeks ago in Vail. I had recently become single again after 3.5 years and Mar told me she'd show me a good time in Vail Village. She certainly did. We ended up at the main dance club and I had managed to integrate myself as complete stranger into the groups of people of dancing (my loathing of the 'dance party' attempted hook up dynamic is material for another post however). Mar and I ended up separated as she left the club to deal with some boy drama. Apparently there are drawbacks to working to the 4:1 male:female ratio in the Vail valley to your advantage.

The fact we were separated didn't concern me. We were exchanging texts about where we were and potential departure times. But then something really shitty happened. My cell phone died despite having been fully charged that morning. Attempting to maintain a signal in the basement dance club had drained it completely. Now I had no clue what Mar was up to, but I figured she knew where I was and would come get me at some point.

So last call comes around and the partygoers spill out into the streets at 2am. Mar is nowhere to be seen. I'm talking to a girl I met in the club as we walked to a bus station, and I almost ask to borrow her phone, but realize that due to the simplicity of saving contacts on my phone, I only have two phone numbers memorized anymore: my own and my home in Oklahoma. Neither is of much use to me at this moment. Mar is one of my best friends and I have no clue what her number is. In middle school I had the numbers of at least 6-8 friends memorized.

Without any way to contact Mar, I proceeded to wander about Vail village for the next hour. I probably covered at least 2 miles of ground with no sign of her. It was nearing 3am and I was approaching being royally fucked and having very realistic thoughts of curling up next to her car in the parking garage for the night.

Ironically, it was another amazing technological networking tool that saved me that night. At 2:45 I walked into a hotel lobby to warm up and saw a computer with a web browser open. I then realized there was one way I could get Mar's number: the 'My phonebook' application on Facebook. I logged on, found her number, wrote it down, and then successfully begged the front desk person to let me make the long distance call. In the second fortuitous moment of the night, Mar actually answered her phone at 3am. She had been crashing on a friends couch in his condo. We met at her car 15 minutes later and drove the 20 minutes back to her place.

This all makes a decent story, but the thing I took away from it was that I almost had to sleep on the concrete floor of a parking garage in 20 degree weather because my cell phone battery died.

And this whole thing could've been avoided if Mar and I had had this conversation as we entered the club:
Mar: If we end up getting separated, call me, but worst case scenario, lets meet outside the club at last call.
Me: Okay.

Tumbleweed Tag

2009-03-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

My ranking of the worst states in the country to drive through:
1) New Jersey
2) Kansas
3) Illinois
4) Nebraska
5) Texas

Reasoning: New Jersey has a ton of traffic, and every car is driven by someone who is pissed about the fact they are in New Jersey. Jersey also makes you pay tolls in about the distance interval it takes my 15 year old Jeep to get back up to 70 mph after stopping for the previous toll. The tolls are also very odd amounts. Once I got stuck in this lane at the booth: "toll 65 cents, exact change only". I almost rear-ended another car because I was too busy frantically searching my car for a nickle.

Kansas and Nebraska are on there for the same reason. Both are very wide, flat, states that you always have to drive lengthwise across. Takes forever, nothing to look at. Kansas is worse than Nebraska because Nebraska at least has a river next to the road most of the way if you're on I-80. Illinois is in between these two states because while it's not quite as boring to drive through (though it's very close), Illinois one ups Kansas and Nebraska by adding traffic and tolls. The Chicago area is the Jersey of the Midwest, driving wise. However, while the boring scenery + traffic pushes Illinois past Nebraska, not even that combo can beat out the overwhelming blandness of Kansas.

And Texas? Well, I just plain don't like Texas.

And really, both Kansas and Nebraska should include Eastern Colorado. In many ways Eastern Colorado is worse to drive through than either of those states. It's even more desolate, and you keep expecting to see mountains and they take forever to show up.

The one saving grace about driving in eastern Colorado (or western Kansas or the TX or OK panhandles), is playing tumbleweed tag, seen in the video above. It's so dry in this region that all you need is one good windy day and half the dead bushes in the state are blowing across the road in front of you. Tumbleweeds are the one thing that is fun to hit with your car, because tumbleweeds shatter. You nail a big one and can look in your rear view mirror and see the broken remains flailing about the road. It's fun to be able to completely and utterly destroy something with no consequences, like throwing glass bottles into the recycling bin. After a good long stretch of tumbleweed tag I'll stop the Jeep and pause to remove bits of snapped off twigs stuck in its grill. Then I'll pat it on the hood, a job well done.

As you can probably tell, I didn't have video games growing up.

Experiment

2009-03-07T15:13:00.000-08:00

I was perusing youtube a while ago and happened upon a real cool video type: the time lapse of a road trip. So on my latest trip from Madison to Vail to Norman, I tried to make my own version. Unfortunately, I don't have a super sweet camera with a timer like this guy, and I didn't want to burn too much camera battery, so I ended up with one photo every 15 minutes. I increased that at times to 20 minutes in Nebraska because Nebraska is boring. The end result I end up with is a bit on non sequitor because of that; there's no continuity between images.

Still it's decently cool, especially the Vail to Norman leg. You can see the rainstorms I drove through in Iowa and how flat Nebraska is. It's almost better as a very fast slide show where you can pause the video to look a more interesting picture longer. In any case though, I won't be doing this again. At least not until I have a better method of pulling it off. I certainly won't run out of road trips to capture.

Travels

2009-03-05T16:57:00.000-08:00

I am back in Oklahoma now, which is actually where I was when I wrote my last post, but in between I've been to Colorado twice and hung out in Wisconsin, where I continued to coach the Pimpdags and went to tournaments in Alabama and Baton Rouge. I also got to see Dartmouth in Louisiana, which was cool. Other than that, I continued my Wisconsin life as usual, played some indoor ultimate and soccer, looked for internships, made some revisions to the journal article on my masters research, etc. Nothing too interesting.

I did find the time to go skiing in Colorado twice. I skied probably my steepest slope yet (50 degrees at Breck), and have upped my cliff/cornice hucking success height to 15 feet (at Vail). Related to those events, I also purchased a helmet. Oh, and I tried telemarking for the first time. I think I caught on pretty fast and look forward to trying it again.

My main point of this post is that I've traveled quite a few (thousand) miles by car in the last two months, and when you spend that much time driving, you see some interesting things. See photos and captions below.

Near Amarillo, TX. "If you can see Jesus, you're not going to hell"

A Rural New Mexico traffic jam.

In hundreds of miles of interstate, this is the only interesting thing to see along I-80 in Nebraska, and I don't even know what it's there for. Still, it's good for looking at for about 30 seconds.

Massive ice storm in Paducah, KY, on the way to Alabama

Sunset in west Kansas near the OK border.

So what can you do as a Master of Science anyway?

2009-01-12T19:19:00.001-08:00

Changed the new name of the blog. Still describes my situation, but is more upbeat about it, which matches my current disposition on the situation.

I have a bunch of applications out now for a bunch of different stuff. I have an interview at Loveland Ski Area next weekend for a ski instructor position. I have a couple applications in with the USGS, and I'm applying for a bunch of internships at National Park Service Lands, both through the GeoCorps and the Student Conservation Association (SCA). Hopefully those options will get me through most of this year. We'll see how it goes.

On Wednesday I head off for Colorado (again) for the 13th (I think) annual Father/Son ske weekend, based in Frisco, CO. After that it's back to Madison for an undetermined amount of time. Right now I'm still enjoying the whole no responsibilities thing, but I expect to get stir crazy in a few weeks if I haven't found something to do by then.

Good Morning

2009-01-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

While probably not exactly what Kanye West intended (I'm awful at extracting the intended meaning from creative works), I've been identifying with this song recently. To me it points out the irony that despite all the hard work it takes to earn a college degree, all you really get is a piece of paper that says you finished; you haven't accomplished anything until you do something with that degree. 'Good morning' can be interpreted with optimism or pessimism, but either way you are waking up to a world you barely know, the world outside of academia. On one hand there is excitement for being free of all constraints, all protection, free to pursue your dreams and make a living. On the other hand, leaving the insulated bubble of college can give you a sudden, 'oh shit, now what' reaction. And when the economy is in the situation it is now, I can feel that pessimism creeping in when I consider the options for my immediate future.

On December 21st I graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a Master of Science degree in Geophysics. My thesis focused on using radar measurements to observe volcanic deformation, known within the geophysical community as InSAR. How applicable is this skill? It depends on what you mean by 'applicable'. InSAR is one of those things that only matters to the people within the science who use it. I can't exactly go up to a consulting firm and say 'hire me, I know how to use InSAR'. What I do have going for me is the whole Masters degree thing. As absurd as it sounds, I am now a master of science. I feel like I should be able move rocks with my mind with a title like that, but it's just a piece of paper. However, that piece of paper does represent a standard of independent thought and effort. The next months will show what exactly I can do with as a master of science.

For those keeping track at home, yes, I did complete a masters degree with a thesis in just 16 months, and yes, it was insane, and no, I did not choose this path myself. A lack of funding in my department for this spring forced a decision on me early in 2008: either graduate in December or start paying tuition again. Since my parents already put down $160,000 to put me through Dartmouth, I had no money myself, and my graduate school experience thus far had shown me that I could use some time off, I chose the December graduation. After a year of classes and relative slacking, a summer and fall of hard work, late nights, and the development of a thesis gut this past November, I met my goal of getting out of UW while I was still financially supported, leaving me here, now.

I currently plan to pursue a Ph.D. in some field of geophysics I have yet to decide on. I didn't have time to apply to schools this fall, so now I have 17-20 months with which to occupy myself before starting school again in fall 2010. Or that's the current plan. As I found out around this time last year, well-laid plans can change quickly. So much for my 5 year Ph.D. plan based in Madison, WI. Given the great uncertainty facing me currently, I've decided yet again to be a regular blogger, thinking I may be doing things worth writing about. Grad school, while made entertaining and humorous by PhD comics, proved to be a less than inspiring writing topic for me. Nobody I know besides my advisor really cares about InSAR, and that's all I've been doing for the past 6 months.

This all leads to the currently working title for this, the third iteration of my blog (the first was Dominica in 2006, the second was Jan-May 2008 as basically an ultimate tourney write-up blog): Life on Pause. I say 'on Pause', because while I'm out of school, I plan to go back, leaving me in this purgatory of needing to find a job, but not one that is a career-type which would limit my ability to quit in 20 months. In the meantime I'm going to try have fun, maybe land some internships, be a ski bum, study for GRE's, maybe do some independent research, road trip a lot, anything to keep me entertained and hopefully bring in a pay check. We'll see how it goes.

My Research has an Abstract!

2008-06-06T12:43:00.001-07:00

So this is what I am spending this summer doing:

Title: Geodetic Measurements and Numerical Models of Rifting in Northern Iceland

The objective of this study is to describe quantitatively deformation in the Northern Volcanic Zone (NVZ) of Iceland. The observations were made using interferometric analysis of synthetic aperture radar images (InSAR) between 1993 and 2000. They can be modeled as three sources of deformation in this region: a shallow deflating (Mogi) source, a deep inflating (Mogi) source, and an opening dike trending north south. The modeling assumes an elastic half-space and builds on a previous study using a superset of the InSAR data (De Zeeuw-Van Dalfsen et al., Geophys. Res. Lett., 2004). An innovative new technique to model phase without unwrapping parameters directly (Feigl and Thurber, Geophys. J. Int., 2008) is applied to estimate the model. The parameters of interest include the three-dimensional position and volume change of each source. We test the hypothesis of secular deformation at a constant rate of volume change. If validated, this hypothesis would imply that the post-rifting deformation following the 1975-1980 Kralfa eruption has dissipated on a time scale on the order of 20 years.

Pimpdags Regionals

2008-06-02T13:34:00.000-07:00

So I'm finally getting to this now that it's summer, and I'm still bitter about this tournament. I went into it focused and prepared to help lead the Pimps to their typical overachieving regional finish, treating the games just like I did last year with the Pain Train, and left disgruntled and pissed.

I should've seen it coming when we arrived. It was cold, in the 40's, with a strong 15-20mph cross-wind, and the fields were drenched from rain the previous few days. It was a replay of Nashville and a disaster waiting to happen. I'd like to think we could've handled it if it was just upwind/downwind, but we had no such luck. Our first two games were against Winona St. and UW-Eau Claire, and we showed a lack of fire, determination, or any ability to give a shit. Our best players had numerous drops and throwaways as we proved absolutely ineffective at moving the disc against a zone in the cross-wind while the other teams were making plays and ripping through our man and zone D's not so much with their skill but more with our laziness. Basically we started making excuses for bad play and gave up while the other teams embraced the weather and kicked the crap out of us. It was very frustrating to lose our first two games 15-3 and 11-7, as I while I wasn't playing great, I was running hard, but I just didn't have the throws or the defensive ability to make plays in the conditions. As the inevitable result of each game drew closer I couldn't help but make the contrast between this regionals and the euphoria (followed quickly by crushing defeat) of last year.

So with those two games under our belt, field preservation and schedule changes meant we were done for the day, at noon. So we went back to a player's dad's house in Iowa about an hour away from Decorah to relax. I took a long walk about the town, along the flood-stage river banks and then up a ridge for a nice view. I then returned to the house, got some reading done, then enjoyed a great home-cooked meal, some good conversation, and a little beer before retiring for the night. It was a nice opportunity to collect my thoughts.

Sunday brought us to the fields extra early, as our 10am game had been moved to noon without us knowing. SO we watched some of the back door games before finally warming up and playing Northern Iowa, which at the time I thought would be my last college game ever. We played to 9 since the CUT/Hodags final was going on at the same time and we wanted to watch. Despite coming out flat and without any motivation, we beat UNI, in no small part due to my determination not to lose. There. I said it, I played a good game, and eventually the rest of the team woke up and we managed to win 9-7.

At this point I thought I was done and was taking small sips of the left over beer from the previous night's keg that others had brought to the fields in milk jugs while watching the Hodags/CUT final. That was a great game to watch, lots of big plays. At this point I realized we had a 4th game, and that while most of us were relaxing and drinking beer, our opponents were warming up two fields over by scrimmaging themselves. You can guess now how that game went. I think we went down 5 or 6 to 0 before I got super pissed, intentionally tackled a guy to stop a huck, then faked an injury to get off the field on our next possession and went and sat on a berm for 3 points. Frustration indeed. We slowly started to come back, and eventually went on a 4 or 5 point run in the second half as the weather was much much nicer and we were starting to play close to potential. However, our opening play had dug too deep a hole and we lost 13-11 or so, the game winning goal scored by some tall long haired hipped skying the crap out of me. Just the way I wanted to go out. Fuck.

It was really frustrating not to peak for out last tournament, as that's what you train for all year. We had so much potential and really never used all of it except for the second half of the Milwaukee game at sectionals. I guess we played well when it mattered. Hopefully the younger guys were frustrated by this ending as well and will make sure it doesn't happen next year. All in all it was a fun year and I enjoyed getting to play with the Pimpdags, we definitely had some great games along the way.

Summer Plans

2008-05-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

So now that my spring semester is over I finally have the time to get back to updating this, starting with my summer plans. Feel free to get in touch if you'll be in my area or I'll be in yours.

May 15-19: UPA College Nationals, Boulder, CO
May 23-26: WMO @ Dartmouth
June 13-16: Cousin's weeding, Beverly, MA
July 19-20: M.U.T at Owe My Knee, Albany, NY
Late July/Early August: Trip to Norman and Colorado

In between those dates I'll be in Madison doing research for my Master's thesis. There will also be a few ultimate tournaments thrown in, but I won't know those dates and locations exactly until I know which team I'll be playing for (Madison Open or Coed).

Sectionals

2008-04-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

Well, the Pimpdags made it to regionals. Here's what I remember about how it happened:

Game 1 vs. Beloit: Beloit was stronger than they were at Huck Finn, and we were a little slow out of the gate as usual. Since this game was the first with our full team playing to win, there was a lot of figuring out what role to play to for the team during our first two games, which caused this game to be a bit closer than it probably should've. Still, we win comfortably while keeping an open rotation 15-10.

Bye: I went and watched the hodags for while, they were in full costume and throwing hammers at will against Stevens Point. I laughed when some huge guy on SP skied a couple of them for a score and then left to go watch the Slutdags (Wisconsin C) and scout the rest of our pool.

Game 2 vs. UW-Milwaukee B: This game is where we really started to figure stuff out, especially on defense, and we never relented. They couldn't figure out our sponge D and we ran it nearly every point as we cruised to a 15-1 win, narrowly missing the bagel due to a miss-thrown hitch pass off of a pull.

Game 3 vs. Whitewater: Our last game of the day, we were really excited to see how we could match up with guys. The answer: not all that well. We were complacent from our earlier wins and were not ready for the pressure Whitewater put on us. Dumps couldn't get open, the cutters got shut down in and were handing out deep, nothing was coming easy and we got frustrated and turned the disc over a lot. We fought, but couldn't put it together, losing 15-5. However, the lost was good for us I think as it made us realize what improvements to make come Sunday.

With 2nd place in our pool we were schedule to play Marquette in the quarterfinals Sunday morning:

Quarters vs. Marquette: Marquette really just has one guy with ridiculous backhand breaks. Marquette ran their offense through him, playing conservative and knowing that their guy would make the plays and throws for them, which he did. He played nearly every point to start the game, resting only on D points when Marquette had gone up a break. We stayed in it, but just couldn't shut down their offense despite the Hodags cheering us on, and we lost 13-10.

Backdoor quarters vs. Stevens Point: Now we found ourselves in must-win territory. Lose this game and our season was over. So of course we got broken on the first point of the game. Stevens Point was big and was scoring on deep looks. Over the course of the game was starting working it under them and stifiling them with handler defense, and we slowly caught back up and built a lead. I hit Bob with a pretty backhand huck for the game-winning score 12-9.

Backdoor Semis vs. UW-Milwaukee: Win this game and we were in regionals, lose and we faced a 5th-place do or die game. This was a game of runs, we went up 3-1, they went up 5-3, we tied it at 5's, they took half 8-6, and stretched that lead to 10-7. UW-M is an athletic team, but didn't value the disc well. We were getting turns but being frustrated by their D, many points we long with 3-5 TO's per team. Then at 10-7, knowing we were tired and dreading a do-or-die game against Eau Claire, we cleaned up our offense, throwing 100% throws, and kept the pressure on D to tied the game at 10's. They would score the O-point 11-10, but we would answer with chilly offense and 0 turns as we worked it up the field and scored to force universe. On universe Milwaukee moved the disc up half the field before trying a deep shot, we wolf-packed it and Calkins came up with a huge D. Then that same chilly O took over, Friedman hit a wide open Bentley on a huck, and a couple passes later Mark hit Calkins for the win, the bid to regionals, and the bookends. Everyone played amazing in this game, though Calkins and Mark get special mention, I think each of them had multiple double happiness points and huge skies to keep us in the game and keep our momentum rolling.

3rd Place game vs. Marquette: We lost 15-4. We were simply exhausted and were happy with simply making it to regionals. Some of our starters had their cleats and shirts off by half-time. I kept putting myself in, trying to have one last good point before being done, but it took forever as I was exhausted and kept making mental errors. Eventually at 14-3 Marquette came down in zone and we worked it up and I threw the score. I was done. The good news from this game is that we were slowly figuring out to mark their main handler, so if we see them again at regionals I expect this match up to go solidly the other way.

After the Marquette game I walked a field over to root on my Frontline teamates who play for Milwaukee in their game to go against Eau Claire. This was a great game with a lot deep hucks, few turnovers, and even a callahan. With no cap on Eau Claire scored the break to win 17-15 and take a bid to regionals for the first time a couple years. Heartbreaking for Milwaukee, both teams had played 4 long games that day and were probably just as tired as I was.

All in all it was a great weekend. I feel that I finally found the role I need to play for the Pimps and I relish it, hopefully we can make some adjustments this week during practice and play even better at regionals this weekend, where it looks like we'll be coming in as the 11 seed.

Wisconsin Wolves

2008-04-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

First, a quick word on sectionals. The weather won and the tournament was moved to this weekend. Weather looks to be around 60 degrees, maybe some showers on Saturday, with a light wind. All in all perfect conditions for the pimps. All that other stuff I said still stands.

I feel at some point I'll figure out how to add links to the sidebar, highlight words as links in the text, and add photos so the blog doesn't suck, but that's a summer project, so we'll just deal with it for now. Photos of stuff are on Facebook anyway.

So the subject of the post is Tyke's latest adventure, that of being a professional football player. The season opener was last weekend and I went, not quite knowing what to expect. I had gotten dirty looks from Tyke a couple weeks ago when I said I thought womens football would look like the 7th grade football team I covered for yearbook in 8th grade. After seeing the game, well, I'll say in terms of size and average football experience, the women are probably around that 8th-9th grade level, but they play a lot smarter, which would be expected.

Not that I know a lot about football, but from I saw there were very few sacks/missed blocking assignments or miscommunications between players compared to the middle school football I've watched, which at times resembled a gag reel of screw ups. The weather (snowing, windy, temp around 30) didn't help at all, and the football proved very hard to throw and fumbles from frozen hands were prevelent. Wisconsin has a good QB, so I'm looking forward to seeing what this team looks like when it's warm enough to actually throw a spiral.

In the end the Wolves lost 14-7 to Chicago, mainly due to size difference. The largest player on Chicago was a running back, and she was about twice the size of any of the Wisconsin defenders, so most of the Chicago's plays involved running this woman up the middle, where behind a nearly-as-large O-line she was usually able to gain 4-5 yards. Very hard to stop.

The highlight of the game though was Wisconsin's touchdown, which originally started out as a screen pass to the left for about 3-4 yards. At that point the WR was about to be tackled, but she decided she saw an opening back to the right, turned directly around, ran back to the line of scrimmage and began a dash across the field, allowing another Wolf to throw a viscous block, opening up the entire side of the field for the WR to beat the Chicago defense in a sprint to the endzone. The play was recorded as a 21 yard pass, but the woman probably ran 80 yards. For a second there I thought I was watching Reggie Bush. Very cool.

Tyke unfortunately didn't get to play at all, as despite being the 2nd fastest on the team she hasn't fully transitioned from no-contact ultimate to full-contact football. She's listed as Tight End and Corner back, and as soon as she figures out that whole jamming/getting out of being jammed thing, she'll be a force. Hopefully I'll get to see her wreck havoc as a special teams gunner at the next home game in May against Detroit.

Lake Superior Sectionals Preview

2008-04-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

Sectionals is this weekend, and it's interesting as I'm approaching this tournament like I approached regionals last year: we're seeded to quality to play further, but that's no guarantee, we have to prove it and play very well. It's the biggest tournament of the year and regionals is the reward.

Aside from only 5 bids for 7 quality teams, the weather is making this even tougher. Current forecast is for temps in the 30's with a chance of snow and moderate wind. There's currently no mention of rain, so as long as the fields aren't soaked from the rain this week (Tuesday and likely Thursday and Friday) the tourney is on, and we have to ready to play in bad conditions, especially after our collapse in bad weather in Nashville. The best performances this weekend will belong to teams that embrace the conditions and play through them as opposed to making excuses. As Tyke's coach always told her team, you can't control the weather, so there's no use worrying about it, focus your energy on the things that you can control: solid throws, watching the disc into your hands, running the offense right, playing hard D. Doing well this weekend is all about winning the mental battle with ourselves, if we do that the results will take care of themselves.

Still, we do have to play other teams this weekend. We're seeded 5th behind the Hodags, Whitewater, Marquette, and Milwaukee. Eau Claire and Stevens Point make up a close 6th and 7th. The format is here: http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=127&id=4487
I'm not a fan of the additions the SC made to the format, but they're easy enough to avoid. We have a relatively easy first day, 2 warm up games against teams that won't beat us, but will work us and make us realize what we immediately need to work on. Then we have Whitewater. Then we have a cross-over game that has no bearing on Sunday seeding, the odds of this game being played seriously are very low. The games of concern for the Pimpdags on Saturday are the Marquette/Milwaukee game and the Stevens Point/Eau Claire game in round 4. If we can get a chance to see some of these games it'd be a great scouting opportunity. The 3rd game of interest will hopefully see us rooting on our C-team in the 3rd place cross-over game for a spot in the champ bracket on Sunday.

Sunday: Our most important game of the whole weekend is the first game on Sunday, if we win we're playing well with confidence and are in good position to get a bid via the 3rd place bracket semis. If we lose our confidence will be shaken and we'll have to rebound quickly in a must-win game in a tougher draw in the lower brackets. I think it's possible we finish 3rd at this tournament, it's also possible we finish 7th. This will be the first tournament we will have our full team playing together, and it's going to be good.

Marquette and Milwaukee are good teams, but looking beyond RRI and raw tournament finish, their individual game results show me nothing to make me question our ability to beat them. Stevens Point hasn't played a game all year, though are usually around the Pimpdags level, here's hoping their lack of experience hurts them more than the advantage they gain on other teams having no clue what to expect. Eau Claire beat us in Nashville, yes, but the second half was 7-6 Pimps after everything went wrong in the first half, not to mention we were missing some key players. Excuses yes, but excuses that give us confidence and Eau Claire concern.

All in all I'm pumped. I'm excited to see us play to potential. Personally I've done this before and I know what I need to do: play my role, run our system, and dominate like I know I can. Stay focused. Stay calm. Play smart. As long as I have something to say about it, this will not be my last weekend playing college ultimate.

Results to follow when it's all over.

Huck Finn

2008-04-06T15:26:00.000-07:00

Tourney recap week concludes today with Huck Finn, held last weekend in St. Louis. I was originally annoyed we were left out of the power pools, but as it turns out that was a good thing, as we took a skeleton crew of 17 that included only 5 people who will start for the Pimpdags in sectionals next weekend. We were short handlers (with only 5) and even shorter on experienced cutters, but it was a great weekend of progress for the next generation of pimps.

Saturday:
This day started out with Davidman and myself taking bets on how many points we would play. The weather was windy upwind/downwind with occasional sprinkles. Our first game was Illinois B, and it was close at first before we started figuring out how to get upwind scores (and Illinois started giving us the disc) and cruised to an 11-5 win. We then lost to Wheaton, our inexperience showing greatly as there were numerous turns on miscommunications, poor throws, and drops. The same was the story later in the day against Missouri, a game characterized in my mind by a turfed backhand on my part giving Missouri an easy upwind score right as we were trying to make a run and get back in the game. Our other two wins were easy, but were also very sloppy with lots of turns. At the end of the day I had played 62 points over 5 games to 11, or 74% of the points, and our rookies were coming along nicely. While some of us went to the party that night, I stayed in, watched basketball, and went to bed early.

Sunday:
Our first game was against some group of Carleton players that went on to win the tournament. We lost 14-2, but it was fun to play against these guys and really focus on playing good defense and making throws under pressure. Our next game was against Western Illinois (who?), which turned out to be a respectable team. The collected a lot scores off of transition hucks, as our D after turns continued to be poor at best. I played every point I could in this game, and probably more than that, as an injury one of our 5 handlers and stomach problems for another forced 3 of us to play about 8 points in a row. We were playing better in this game, but exhaustion was showing among our best players, and defense was slack as times and mental errors were all too common. Notable plays in this game were me going ho feet first after catching an O2 (babytalk) to toe the endzone line for the score, and me throwing a technically perfect huck to Dave, only to have him brutally misread it, running towards the 4 defenders on the open side trying to D it instead of going breakside where the disc trailed off nicely and landed calmly in the middle of the endzone. In the end we lost 13-10, simply losing steam at the end. I ended up with a pretty good statline: 2 goals, 4 assists, maybe 3-4 turns, but I too was exhausted as the winning goal was score on me, my guy running towards the back corner of the endzone and me unable to follow. Total points played on the weekend: 90.

Coming Up: Sectionals Preview.

Southerns

2008-04-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

Back after a brief hiatus yesterday when I decided nothing happened over spring break worth writing about. Basically I tried to do work while everyone else drank themselves stupid. Recap over.

The second weekend of spring break though brought the tournament that I had been looking forward to most all year: Southerns. This was the 3rd year in a row I've been to this tourney and it's probably my second favorite after Vegas. Dartmouth men were there, Wellesley women were there, and a van containing Ian, Mark, and Lechmaier would also be there. Things were looking up.

Saturday:
Game 1 v. Middlebury: It's always fun to play against the northeast teams I know well, and I love Midd. I gave our coaches a scouting report that proved correct, Midd put it deep again and again to a couple great athletes and played a smart game that took advantage of our turnovers. They won 13-6 as we opened up our 28 man roster. Highlight of the game was Midd recognizing me and appologizing for the keg incident at regionals last year. I then put the person to blame for that in a headlock.

Game 2 v. Tulane: Tulane is a great team, lots of fun, and kept a positive attitude despite only have 7 guys and 3 guys on their roster this weekend. We had an open rotation from the start and cruised to a 13-7 victory, assuring us of holding seed in our pool.

Game 3 v. Wake Forest: A rematch for me from Southerns last year when Wake beat Dartmouth with a decent zone. I don't think Wake is as good this year. They got up on us early, but we stayed in it, down a break or two. Then at 9-7 them our zone clicked and we started getting turns. Wake had been trying to break our zone with high floaty throws over our cup, and we finally threw a tall line in to stop that. Needless to say it worked and we went on a 4 point run to win 11-9. Great game, though I feel Wake lost their fight after we tied it at 9s. The last two points for us were breaks that happened on a short field turn due to our zone: for 10-9 Wake forgot to guard me in transition and I scored an easy up the line cut from Ian. For 11-9 I returned the favor to Ian when Wake forgot to guard him.

Game 4 v. St. Olaf: This was our fourth game in a row and our starters were feeling it. We're generally a pretty deep team, but against this type of competition we go maybe 14 deep, which isn't enough for 4 games in a row. St. Olaf threw our same zone and the start of the game was notable for very long points and lots of throws gaining not many yards. Ian and I had some good teamwork on short throws in the cup to gain yards, and I believe I had a 100% hammer completion rate, but something would always seem to go wrong at some point and we'd turn it. Half was still close at 7-5 Olaf, but in the 2nd half they picked it up and we ran out of steam and got bageled. 12-5 final. I'm looking forward to seeing these guys again at regionals.

Interlude: After our game I took advantage of our last round bye and went to watch Wellesley play a few fields away. Davidman tagged along, intrigued at the concept of an all-womens college. We watched the first half as I caught up with my friends on the Whips and called Tyke to gloat that I was hanging out with her team. I then walked a couple fields over to say hi to Wellesley B and Dartmouth womens B. Next it was off to watch the Pain Train play. Unfortunately they romped their last round opponent 13-3 and I missed the whole thing. I still got to hang out with them afterwards, and it was great to see them all again and hear about how well they're playing. I also met Carson, the former CUT player who is effectively my replacement cutting on the O-line. I hate to say it, but they definitely traded up. A few hours later I went to the party for the first time in my 3 years, where I spent most of my time talking to Fishie and beating my drunk Pimpdag teammates off of her with a stick. I think my coach actually introduced himself to her twice. When she left I went over to dance with Wellesley for a while before it became time to drag my shitfaced coach back to our campsite and go to sleep.

Sunday: Our 3rd place finish in our pool landed us an upper seed in the 17th place bracket, and even greater luck as due to Eau Claire and another team going home, we were matched up against Chicago B, serving as a filler team.
Game 5 v. Chicago B: We showed up about 20 minutes before game and thank god we were just playing Chicago B or we would've lost. Highlight of the warmup was Dartmouth a couple fields away doing 'the cheer' and me sprinting through two teams' endzone drills to get there in time to scream "we are psychotic". I used this game to begin implementing my "don't turn it over, don't be a hero" handler strategy as the rest of the team goofed off. Half was 8-2 and I tried to pump us up and get us to play clean, saying we could win 15-5, or we could win 15-2. Needless to say we won 15-5. Figures.

Game 6 v. Towson: This team had a couple good handlers with great facial hair, but hardly anyone else. Our zone kept them from getting their offense flowing and forced turns upfield if the handlers ever advanced the disc. Our offense was running well and I spent my time on the sidelines watching Dartmouth play Ohio St. in the quarterfinals a couple fields over. So yeah, we ended up winning this one 15-7 as Towson was happy to hand the game to us after we got up a few points.

Game 7 v. South Florida: We switched fields to the swamp fields and immediately saw a huge snapping turtle. Poking it with a stick failed to produce a desired result, so we went about warming up after watching the end of an intense Brown-B v. Florida B game. That game however was in the consolation bracket of the 17th bracket, while we were in the semis of the 17th bracket, so we began our warm ups with the confirmation that we were indeed the best B team in the country. South Florida was an interested game, intense and good spirited. Both teams collected a lot of breaks in the first half, but we were able to clean it up better than them in the second half and rolled to yet another victory 12-8.

Game 8 v. Princeton: The finals of the 17th place bracket. I played in this same game last year and lost to a rested Richmond team (their semis opponent had bagged), so I looking for a little redemption. The early points were multi-turn battles as Princeton was putting defensive pressure on us like we hadn't see yet this season. I threw into a couple layout D's as our cutters haven't mastered running through the disc and catching at full extension. I also had a couple other bad throws as my "don't be a hero" mentality slowly fell apart as everyone was looking to throw a score just so these marathon points would end. Princeton ended up taking a 4-0 lead before we could punch one in. We actually managed to get a couple breaks in this game as well, but the O-line just couldn't hold onto the disc against Princeton's defense. Despite my throwaways I though I played a good game, my defense was definitely it's most intense on the weekend despite my exhaustion, and I had two great IO hucks for scores. I also had another rules argument for the ages, as I actually made Princeton get out my rulebook so I could prove myself right about a travel call (that wasn't a travel). In the end this was an 11-4 lost for the Pimps, but one I was proud off as it was really the first time this season I felt like I was back playing intense ultimate with Dartmouth.

Speaking of Dartmouth, they went on to win whole the damn thing, holy shit. We never win tournaments. Fishie and Cornell also won. Hopefully I'll see both teams at Nationals in May.

The drive home was more eventful than I would've hoped, but that's a story for another post.

Music City Tune-Up

2008-04-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

Tourney recap week continues today with the Music City Tune-Up in Nashville, TN. Now the team vowed never to speak of this tournament again, and I don't like thinking about it, but if you try to forget something never happened, you'll never learn from it, so here goes.

This tourney was the first weekend of spring break and we were missing some key players, notably Ian, Mark, and Lechmaier. We were short handlers, short cutters, and full of inexperience for this one, with the makings of a great tournament for the younger pimps to learn and improve. Unfortunately that was not going to happen as the skies opened up during our second game and that inexperience turned into drops, throw-aways, bad decisions, and overall misery. The fields turned into mud pits and by our last game of the day we were down to 12 players as 2 cars had returned to the hotel to ward off pneumonia. I'm not going to recap individual games on Saturday as every game was basically the same: our zone was good, but the other team just seemed to pull down some swill and we just didn't care as much as the other teams. As the day progressed I started hucking without cause as that was often a better option than a dump throw to cold shivering hands. With nothing really to play for and the desire for a relaxing, comfortable spring break overwhelming, we learned that we don't play well in the cold and wet (surprising, I know, coming from Wisconsin), and that this is a very emotionally driven team. We made a good run to almost come back against sectional rival Eau Claire, but it was quite obvious that the desire to play good ultimate is not enough to motivate this group, there are intangibles involved that the captains will need to draw upon come the series so that we can play our best.

Sunday was at least a better day, sunny and warm, though with numerous puddles left on the field from Saturday. Due to some of the most idiotic TDing I've ever seen we had a pool play rematch in a 12-team bracket for our first game.

Game 1 v. UT-Chatanooga: We had lost to them 13-5 the day before, and were determined to beat them this time, as we knew we could run with them easily. We had the fire this time, but were lacking intelligent play. I know I had a couple bonehead turnovers, and we seemed incapable of getting on D after a turnover as UTC score many times on fast breaks. Our D line couldn't guard the deep look and despite fighting hard and playing a tight rotation, couldn't get a break in the second half and lost 13-11.

Game 2 v. Tulane: This was our consolation game before heading south to Florida for the week and I was determined not to have this be the first tournament ever where I didn't win a game. The wind died down and hucking practice with Alter before the game really helped me out as I threw 5 assists on throws over 30 yards. We cruised to a 13-7 win.

Of note is that this tournament saw the debut of cutter Brett on 4 points, a quick recap of those 4 points:
Point 1 v. JMU Sat: Rainy, didn't get open in, didn't get the disc
Point 2 v. JMU Sat: Hosed my guy deep for the score on the 2nd throw of the point
Point 3 v. Tulane Sun: Got open in, hucked for a score
Point 4 v. Tulane Sun: Got open in, hucked for a score

So, obviously this is something I'd like to do more often, but for that to happen a couple handlers need to step up as right now my greatest value to the team is probably my ability to consistently get open for the dump and keep the offense flowing with accurate throws. If someone else can do that (which I think they can now that we're practicing outside), hopefully I can transition into a role of making the offense run from the cutting side of thing.

Next Post: Spring break in Pensacola Beach

Frostbite

2008-03-31T14:57:00.000-07:00

Been busy here recently, and it's not going to get any easier, but I feel writing here is a more constructive study break than getting lost in YouTube (where today, by the way, I discovered a high school friend of mine is featured in a Serj Tankian music video) or something, so this week I've decided to declare is tourney recap week, and each day I'll be recapping an ultimate tourney I've been to.

Frostbite '08: Springfield, MO.
This was a 40 team tournament with an upper division of 20 teams and the Pimpdags came in seeded 14th. This tournament was notable for the first appearance in the spring season of handlers Ian, Davidman, and Rubinyi, which definitely came in very handy as the weather all weekend was very windy. It seemed each successive round was windier than the one before, and by the time the weekend was over, we playing in sustained 25+ mph winds.

Game 1 v. Wash U: We really wanted to beat these guys after nearly dropping a game to them in fall in which we took half 7-1. We played close with them in the first half, I remember catching the first score on a half-field huck and then throwing a forehand huck upwind which nearly took off the heads of people on the sideline before Calkins made a great toe-the-line snag for the score. Unfortunately, their handlers were consistent and our zone was rusty. Wash U was able to get a couple upwinders out of half and we opened our roster and dropped a game to the 1 seed in our pool 11-6.

Game 2 v. Truman State: This game came after a bye during which we worked on our zone and I retrieved my hat from the hotel. It was another revenge game for us, as TSU has beaten us 9-6 in the fall, a game I remember well as I still have a huge grassburn scar on my hip from laying out for a score during the first half. Anyway, this was a weird game. I think we scored more upwind points than downwind points somehow, probably a result of assuming the wind would cause a turn when TSU was working upwind and really valuing the disc when we were going upwind. We had a downwind O point at 8-7, game to 9, but we our universe line turned it over, and then both myself and Friedman managed to get brutally skied on successive throws to let up the TSU upwind score. So we were forced to play universe point upwind. There were a couple turns, one completely my fault (though I got the D back on an easy intercept of a punt), but eventually we worked it up and scored to win 9-8.

Game 3 v. Missouri-Rolla: We were motivated by our universe point win and the last seed in our pool stood no chance. We won this game 10-7 in a game where the rotation opened up a bit and was only notable by the debut of our upwind and downwind lines as opposed to O and D lines.

Game 4. Minnesota-Deluth: Another game we could get pumped for, and another game that showed us what we can do when we're motivated as a team. UMD is a regional rival and many Pimps have friends they play for them, so this was personal. The game started off poorly as I overthrew a handler on a dump on the second throw of the game, giving UMD the easy upwinder, which was followed by their downwinder. 2-0 bad guys. Oops. I resolved to stop sucking and proceeded to collect multiple point blocks as the mark in our zone as UMD would not score upwind again. On their 3rd try, our upwind line figured out UMD's zone with patient swinging and amazing cup-breaking throws from Ian and Alter and never looked back. With the score 4-2 Duluth, we scored 8 points in a row to win the game 10-4. Amazing.

Interlude: Due to other craziness in our pool, our 3-1 record and punishing of Duluth was enough to give us 1st in our pool and avoid a 5th crossover game on Saturday. We went back to the hotel, showered, and attacked a chinese buffet like there was no tomorrow. We got even more satisfaction for that day's performance as during our dinner non-showered, exhausted ultimate teams started filing into the buffet after their 5th game. After some relaxing at the hotel 13 of us crammed into a minivan with myself as the DD to go the tourney party, which was at a bar downtown. Despite arriving at 10:30, there were no ultimate players to be seen and only a few locals in the bar, i.e., the place was dead. So, since most of our team didn't want to pay money for bad beer, 8 of the team piled into a bathroom stall and started passing around beers they had snuck in. This lasted about 10 minutes before they were kicked out, me following behind shaking my head in amusement. Party over. I took most people back to the hotel but I ended up spending 3 hours with my coaches in a little place called Sassy Reds. Seeing how I have purged memory of that place from my mind I can't give details, but suffice to say that was the first strip club I've ever been to, and after that experience, I am never ever going to another one again.

Sunday, Game 1 v. Kansas B: Our pool win on Saturday gave us a favorable draw and we faced a Kansas B team that had the tremendous help of a couple of Kansas A handlers I recognized from playing club. However, the wind was approaching ridiculous levels at this point, so any team could lose to any other if they lucked into an upwind goal. We almost did that to Kansas B, as an errant pull gave them the disc 2 yards from their upwind endzone leading to a goal. Our upwind line was up to the task though, and scored multiple times upwind as the downwind line's zone kept Kansas from making any progress upwind. I think I collected a couple more handblocks as we cruised to a win 10-7.

Game 2 v. Kansas State: We knew nothing about this team, but they were solid. They had one handler with a wicked low release backhand who shredded our cup going upwind early in the game before we could adjust. They got with 10 yards of the endzone, called time out, we came out with man D, but their iso beat our defender openside for the easy upwind score. The wind picked up steadily and our upwind line struggled to make progress, each time seemingly getting closer and closer, once as close as 15 yards, but with 75+ passes probably required to break the zone and score, we could never string enough together to punch it in. It's a shame to lose a game for the sole reason of 3 quick backhands through the cup and a defensive brain fart, but with the wind as it was, that's what happened. K-State never got within the brick mark of their endzone again, but all that mattered was that they did it once and we couldn't do it. K-State advances to the semis with an 8-5 win.

Still though, it was a tourney to be proud of and a tourney that kept my hopes alive of being able to cut come series time as Ian, Davidman, and Rubinyi are all solid handlers.

So About That Whole Grad School Thing

2008-02-06T14:32:00.001-08:00

Today I just had my beautiful 5-year plan for a Ph.D. destroyed. Thank you budget cuts. When I was accepted here last April I was taken on using auxiliary funds and not guaranteed future support. The idea then was that they wanted me to come to Wisconsin and that getting guaranteed funding for future years would be more or less simple after having been in the system for a year. What my advisers, to no fault of their own, did not count on was another exceptionally strong applicant class coinciding with budget cuts on both the state and national level. Now there are barely enough assistantships available to give to the students who have guaranteed support and still have a few left to give to best applicants. Fitting neither of those categories, to no fault of my own, I get left out to dry. No funding for next year, meaning I have to leave.

The current plan which I just discussed with my advisers is to bust my ass this term in order to prove to the geophysics group here that I am worthy of giving emergency funding to so that I can get paid over the summer and next fall while I finish my masters. That means in addition to taking my first engineering class ever this term, I have to do a majority of the preliminary research for a publishable paper and write a rough draft by the end of April. I don't think my bed will be getting much attention from me for the next couple of months.

So this summer will be spent writing and doing analysis for a paper, and then the fall will be spent turning that paper into a masters thesis. If I'm lucky, I'll actually be getting paid to do that, otherwise I'm working for free and most likely mooching rent money off my parents. Then I'll graduate in December. After that I have no clue what'll happen, to be honest I'll probably go get a job doing something in Colorado ski country in the winter, and the summer... gees, I did not plan on having to figure this stuff out so soon. Maybe apply for Ph.D. programs... who knows.

Time will tell whether or not this ends up being a good thing. There's a part of me that's looking forward to trying something random for a while and being out of school and there's another part that is pretty pissed I'm being shown the door here. But that's the future, right now I need to focus on actually getting enough done by December that I can actually graduate, because the only thing worse than leaving here after just 18 months is leaving here after 18 months without a degree.

Mardi Gras

2008-02-05T09:34:00.000-08:00

The Pimpdags rolled to Mardi Gras this past weekend.

First off, we were lucky to get down there in the first place. A snowstorm dropped about 8 inches of snow on Illinois while we were driving down Thursday night/Friday morning. The car I was in had a couple close calls with other cars and ditches, but we were able to slowly make our way through it, stopping every hour or so to clean the ice off the windshield. A Hodag car did end up in a ditch, and I head two ISU cars had to be towed, but otherwise I didn't hear anything about accidents, which is amazing considering the number of teams going to this tournament that had to drive through that mess.

We arrived in Baton Rouge late Friday afternoon, with enough time to enjoy happy hour at our hotel before heading into New Orleans to experience Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street, which was an amazing experience, one of those once in your life things. Apparently Hulk Hogan was there, but I didn't see him. I was too busy throwing beads at people on the balcony.

Saturday arrived with a day-saving first round bye (we had returned from New Orleans at around 3am), followed by a very tough power pool C that would end up producing two of the semis teams. There's no need for me to give a recap of each game as every game went basically the same way: the other team would score, usually on a huck, we'd try a retalitory huck, turn it over, the other team would work it up and score, we'd try to work it up, get pressured into a throw away, they'd work it up and score. With no time to work on our problems from last weekend, they perpetuated themselves this weekend. We were consistently broken and burned deep. We made bad decisions throwing deep and had a lot problems getting open for the dump. The difference between this weekend and last weekend in terms of results is that at Mardi Gras we were playing teams that punished us severely for our mistakes. We lost to North Texas, Minnesota, Georgia Tech, and Notre Dame by anywhere from 6 to 12 points. This gave us a cross over 5th game under the lights against Ole Miss, whom we had lost to 13-10 in Alabama. This time the game wasn't even that close as their one stud cutter consistently hosed us. Saturday record: 0-5, 70 points for them, 31 for us. Ouch.

Sunday was sort of better. We came out and beat LSU 13-8, which felt really good, and confirmed to us that we were a decent team. We then had yet another opportunity to play Oklahoma, but in that game the same problems from Saturday haunted us and we lost 15-10. With a .500 record for the second day and a 19th place finish, we set off towards home.

I think this tournament showed us very clearly where we stand as a team and what things we need to work on before we can compete with the teams of the caliber of those we played Saturday. We now have 5 weeks until our next tournament (I think), and with a couple turf practices and many track workouts between now and then, we should be in good shape, both physically and mentally. We'll see how it goes.

T-Town Introspective

2008-01-30T13:49:00.000-08:00

As always, the first tournament of the season gives you a long list of things to work on, and this past weekend was no different. However, I was surprised with how well we played. Everyone remembered our zone and split stack offense despite not working on it all that much in the fall. We didn't play down to teams, weren't prone to stupid mistakes (at least for a B team), and always played hard. Even if we don't improve much skill-wise we'll will a lot of games just by doing that.

Obviously the lack of throwing practice over the past couple months hurt. There were quite a few turns on drops, turfed throws, inaccurate hucks, and people trying throws they don't quite have yet. That will get better as the season progresses, and even was much better Sunday than Saturday. As long as we practice it, it won't be a problem.

The most obvious concern was team defense. If others were like me, they were having a hard enough time remembering how to guard their man let alone help out with someone elses. Still, with the Hodags depriving us of the best available athletes, we need to be able to play a strong last back and learn how to play smart defense as opposed to just running hard, which can only take you so far. As Sunday progressed we were getting burned deep more and more because we simply tired. Conditioning will help with this also, but so will learning to play as a unit.

The second major problem was handler movement. Oftentimes the handlers wouldn't look dump until stall 6 or 7, not near enough time for the wrap to be run. Other times the dump would start cutting before the handler was looking. The cycling of the handlers would get confusing as well, sometimes there'd be 4 people back clogging or the person with the disc would have no options. In the future we'll need to communicate better when to start cutting and make sure the handlers come back and set up the dump after every throw, or have a cutter recognize the need to fill a void if a handler gets out of position upfield. However, I don't remember near as many punts this tournament as at Missoui, though that may be due to our cutters always getting open and making the dump unnecessary.

Finally, one last nitpicky thing is just the timing of cuts, it seemed like we'd either have 3 people going deep or no one at all whenever a handler got an up the line cut. If we can figure that out soon it'd be great.

On a personal level I need to remember how to position myself on D and not get burned deep and work on that handler stuff, especially if I'm going to keep playing this whole D handler position thing. I also need to figure out my decision making in the context of my role on the team. If I'm someone expected to make things happen with my throws (I'll pause for Dartmouth people to stop laughing), there's a certain amount of risk taking involved. On the other hand, I can't be a turnover machine. I can remember 3 turns on poor throws/bad ideas right near our opponents endzone, and a couple more near our own end zone, those can't happen regardless of what I'm trying to do. If I'm going to keep playing some O points too I need to be able to flip O and D mindsets instantly as well. What might be a good deep look for the D line could be a horrible idea for the O line. It's almost as much about managing game momentum as it is making good decisions. In a close game with few breaks, the O line needs to play it close and not turn the disc as they're expected to score. For the D, it can be worth it to just to put the disc out there to a favorable match up on the chance it works, because if it's a turn, hey, you're not supposed to score, but if it works, then the whole tide of the game just switched.

Mardi Gras preview and write up to follow in the next week, and maybe more of that psychology BS from the last paragraph, it's interesting to think about.

T-Town Throwdown

2008-01-28T14:39:00.000-08:00

This weekend marked the start of the Pimpdags' Spring season. 20 of us or so traveled 13.5 hours south to play in Tuscaloosa, AL (http://www.upa.org/scores/tourn.cgi?div=127&id=4449). Surprisingly, the rust seemed to come off pretty quick as we remembered what playing outside and wearing shorts felt like.

Saturday: We came in 6th overall and 2rd in our pool of 4.
Game 1 vs. Homes Community College: This was a great warm-up game. I tried not to get overconfident as I watched them warm-up for the game by throwing BBQ backhands that despite the wind, never seemed to go where they were intended. They did have one guy with throws though, and despite a lack of D's for the amount of swill they put up, we took half 7-2. The second half was better as we became more comfortable running around and our legs loosened up from the long car ride. Final 13-2.
Game 2: Next up was Georgia B, another B team from a nationally competitive program. We don't lose to other B teams though. This was a close game, and like the Pimpdags, they had some throwers and some good athletes, and quite a few points were multi-turn battles. We always seemed to win the long points though, and slowly the D line managed to accumulate a few breaks and we won under the hard cap 12-8.
Game 3: After a bye filled with shouted references to power thirst (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrPIRYhdnqs), we had our first chance of the weekend against an A team in playing Ole Miss. I'd like to think we were a deeper and more athletic team (we certainly had a larger roster), but it was obvious Ole Miss' best players had been playing together for a few years as they knew exactly what they wanted and how to get it on offense and very often threw a poachy match up zone D on us. Unprepared for zone O, we spotted them two breaks to start the game. We paused to breathe a little bit and after that we usually shredded their zone in a few throws. Though we were able to accumulate a few Defensive scores the offense wasn't running on high efficiency yet, possibly looking for the deep ball a little too much, and we weren't able to come back from the initial brain fart as we lost 13-10.
Game 4 v. Geogria D: Our last game of the day was a cross over against UGA's 3rd team (long story for why it's not the 'C' team). We started out subbing normally and experimenting with our newly installed 'sponge' D and took a 4-1 lead. It was obvious we would win at this point, and we started messing around and playing way down to them as a few starters chose to sit the rest of the game out. We ended up winning 13-7 in a game that took much longer than it should've. Still, I'll generally take 3-1 for a record on Saturday.

Sunday: Our loss to Ole Miss meant we missed out on a first round bye and had to play a pre-quarters game.
Pre-Quarters: By some weird combo of point differential and cross-over upsets our opponent would again be Georgia B. I think it obvious that UGA-B was more pumped up to play us than visa versa, and as a result we traded breaks and excruciatingly long points during the first half, but we managed to go into half clinging to a 7-6 lead. Then, starting a theme for the day, we realized we could play much better, sacked up, and took it to Georgia B in the second half. The O-line was striking quickly, slowly demoralizing their D in their inability to stop us, and the D-line was making UGA-B fight for every throw, showing no mercy whenever they got the disc. Final score 11-7.
Quarters v. LSU: LSU got a bye and this would be their first game, we were pumped up and in a groove, but they had fresh legs. In the first half fresh legs had the advantage and they opened up their deep game on us and flustered our Offense with smart play. Obviously this team practices outside all year doesn't have another team robbing them of their best players every year. Our heads were down as LSU was up 7-4 at half. But then, without really saying it, every person on our roster decided that this would not be their last game of the day, that they would not lose like this, that they would not be asking themselves "what if I played harder" on the long ride back to Madison. The O line was a model of efficiency, rarely turning the disc over and not getting broken at all in the 2nd half. The D-line was simply rabid, forcing LSU to play long points and jack low percentage hucks. Then we'd get the disc and work it up the field like we were an O-line or something. Huge skys, layout D's, and gorgeous hucks abounded for the pimpdags this game as the D-line carried us to victory and birth in the semifinals, 13-11.
Semi-Finals vs. Auburn: You never want to say it, or admit it to yourself, but after 6 hard fought games 13 hours from home with a near zero conditioning base, we were tired, possibly exhausted, and it showed this game. Auburn had played one less game and it definitely helped them, as they were consistently able to beat us deep. Still, the O-line continued to be money, giving up only a few breaks. Half found us down multiple breaks again, and again we forced ourselves to play harder, making sure we left everything on the field. The D-line got the breaks back, tying the game, but then Auburn's rested D got to our O and our D continued to have problems stopping Auburn's deep game. We had a chance to take this to universe, but an unfortunate turnover (my bad) on our last O point allowed Auburn to punch in the break for the win, 13-11.

All-in-all nothing to be disappointed about, especially for the first tournament of the year. I'm excited for what we can do next weekend at Mardi Gras and in future tournaments. Specific commentary on our play to follow in a later post.

It Begins

2008-01-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

Spring Semester classes start tomorrow. I'm taking Mechanics of Materials and Seismology along with continuing research for my adviser. We'll see how it goes, as always, things will probably be pretty busy. I'm a little nervous about my first ever engineering course, hopefully I can adapt to the teaching style quickly.

Ski Wisconsin

2008-01-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

Straight Skis?.... Check
Jeans? .... Check
Rear-entry boots? ..... Check
Jeans tucked into rear-entry boots?.... Check

Apparently Wisconsin is the land ski technology forgot. I haven't seen that many people on straight skis, anywhere, in this decade. My only thought is that for some reason Wisconsin has a lot of people who ski only in Wisconsin and never travel elsewhere, which would eliminate the need to have good gear.

With that thought in mind I can begin to understand the advertising angle of the mountain I went to on Wednesday, Granite Peak. Granite Peak is Wisconsin's largest ski area, with nearly 500 skiable acres, 72 trails, and an astounding (for the midwest) 700 vertical feet. Their website was full of pitches such as "why ski out west when Granite Peak is just a short drive away?" and promised everything one would find out east or out west: groomed cruisers, a terrain park, challenging mogul slopes, and super steep expert chutes. It was enough to make me wear a hat as opposed to my helmet with the thought Granite Peak might be interesting enough without me having to attempt stupid tricks in the terrain park to entertain myself. I have admit to Granite Peak did deliver what it advertised, but yet I still felt somewhere cheated.

Never before had I seen a ski area try so hard to be something it's not and fail so miserably at it. Granted I was there at a bad time, warm weather over the holiday had ruined the good snowpack that was around when I skiied back in December, but it was cold and the area had reported 7 inches of new a few days earlier, so I felt conditions would be alright. In any case, there was no reason for this place to blanket its slopes (including its glades) with 3 feet of man made snow, which then promptly froze solid before they could groom it, leaving the trails a mix of frozen corderoy and truck-sized mounds of man made ice. The mogul slopes (there were 2, consisting of about the left 20 feet of two trails) were the same, man made ice mounds scattered randomly about with sheets of ice between them.

The super steep expert chutes were super steep and were cutes, but still, weren't really worth advertising as they were so short it took a monumental effort to complete one turn on the slope before you were onto the flats below them. As far as I can tell, they were created by spraying man made snow onto a cliff face until it froze solid and created a surface one could slide down.

On my first chair of the day I was riding with a local who explained to me "today isn't all they great... couple days ago they were running the snow guns and things were great, everything was covered with a nice powder snow...." Argh! It's man made! It's not powder! I know I'm spoiled because I just skied 9 great days in Colorado but still, you're the polar opposite of spoiled, you don't know what good skiing is, and I feel sorry for you.

In an attempt to find a middle ground, Granite Peak and other areas in Wisconsin accomplish three things:
1) With the flat slopes and everything groomed, these areas are a great place to teach someone to ski. The mountains are small, the slopes unintimidating, and it's easy to build confidence by taking someone down a black trail (about as steep as an easy blue in Colorado) on their 2nd or 3rd day. Just don't think that since you skied a double black in Wisconsin that you can ski even a blue trail anywhere else.
2) Satiate a ski fix. More or less it sucks, but it's still skiing, I can still carve some good turns, and it ever snows a ton, powder is always enjoyable. It's also 45 minutes away and cheap, and so can do the job when I have neither the time or money to go someplace better
3) Terrain Parks. Terrain parks are a great ski area equalizer, as ironically you don't need good terrain to have a good terrain park. I can practice tricks and jumps in Wisconsin just as well as I could in Colorado, which is what I'll probably spend my time doing any future times I go skiing here.

I can't wait to get back to Colorado in February. And in the meantime here ultimate season will be picking up hardcore in just a couple days, as will class and that whole grad school thing, so I'll have plenty of things to keep me occupied.

Sooners

2008-01-15T14:02:00.000-08:00

Despite being on vacation I was able to watch most of OU's Fiesta Bowl game against West Virginia at a local brewery/bar/pizzeria (there are a lot of those in Colorado, and they're all good). I kind of wish I hadn't. Offense was decent enough, but the defense, man, done in by a mobile quarterback... again. I really hope after all these years Bob Stoops comes up with a way to deal with duel option quarterbacks like Pat White, Chase Daniel, Vince Young, Brad Smith, and Eric Crouch. They've been killing us for years. That second half was just depressing, every time OU started to give me hope, WV would run for 70 yards on the next play. Nothing like having faint glimmers of hope crushed with regularity every 15 minutes for an hour.

I did get some sympathy from fellow bar goers during the game, as I lay in my bar stool (yes, laying in a bar stool is possible), my head hanging limply over the backrest. One guy was from Illinois, and so had seen USC crush his team the day before. Another guy was from Washington State and had been at the OU/WSU Rose Bowl game in 2003 that I also got to attend. So there was a brief moment of happiness as I recalled that game and reminded myself that while OU was down 48-28 or something, at least I wasn't a Washington State fan. I had even got to watch Wisconsin beat up on them way back in early September.

Things are looking up for OU next though. Pretty much all the stars are back, including Lofton, DeMarco Murray, Bradford, English, etc, hopefully Reggie Smith and Malcolm Kelly decide to stay and increase their draft stock with a good senior year. West Virginia gets to keep White, Devine, and maybe Slaton for next year too. If their defense can keep it together, look for an Oklahoma-West Virginia National Championship next year. You heard it hear first.

Along the line of unsupported factual assertions, look for the Big 12 to surpass the SEC in overall strength next year. Baylor and Iowa State will still probably really suck, but OU will be a championship contender, Texas still has Colt McCoy, Missouri still has Maclin and Daniel, Kansas will have Reesing and probably not be as good, but won't be a push-over either, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, and Texas A&M are decent, Colorado is improving, Nebraska will possibly return to its old ways starting on defense under Pellini, and Texas Tech is always good and will still have Harrell and Crabtree. If they learn how to play defense at least as good as a high school team they'll make a lot of noise too.

The Jeep

2008-01-15T13:44:00.000-08:00

On my recent ski trip the Jeep hit 161,000 miles. Damn. Never did I imagine when I was 8 and helping my mom pick out a car to replace our Subaru wagon that not only would I one day drive that car, but have it be effectively mine for a good 6 years and counting. Hopefully it has another couple years in it.

I am more attached to that car than ever now after probably my scariest driving moment last week in Colorado. The Jeep probably saved my life by being badass. I was driving down I-70, leaving Colorado, near Minturn when a firetruck pulling away from an accident around a blind curve forced me to slow down and try to change lanes. Unfortunately there a truck in the left lane, and it also slowed down, but started to fishtail as it braked. With the fishtailing truck right next to me, I had to put on the brakes, and I started to fishtail. Apparently we (and the flipped truck in a ditch ahead of us which the fire truck was attending to) had found some black ice. Then the truck spun out, and spun across my lane directly in front of me. Though I was still in control of the Jeep, I had to no choice but to swerve out of the way, either towards the median guardrail or a snowbank. I chose the snowbank. The Jeep plowed into it obliquely going at least 30, the front right wheel probably got about 4 feet up the side, I could feel the Jeep starting towards rolling over, but I was able to steer the Jeep out of the snowbank with my remaining momentum. I came to a stop parallel to the road with the right side of the Jeep about 2-3 feet higher the left up the snowbank. The truck had also hit the snowbank and was 10 feet in front of me facing in my direction. The driver and I exchanged "holy shit!" looks. About 10 feet beyond the truck was an ambulance still helping the truck which had flipped over earlier and was off the road. We were lucky.

Now for the most impressive part: After a brief moment to collect myself, I punched the accelerator down and the Jeep drove out of the snowbank. Just like that. Powered through the thing. I walked about the Jeep and found nothing wrong. I was able to drive home to Wisconsin like nothing happened. The other truck had to get towed. Damn.

I love that car.

Skiing

2008-01-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

I got back to Madison from Colorado a couple days ago. I am currently going through mountain withdrawal. I think at some point in my life I need to pull a Mar and just up and move to Colorado. Maybe after that I'll be able to move on, or I might just end up never leaving. Who knows.

Skiing was great, and on top of that I got to hang out with Dartmouth people for the first time since this summer. You just don't find people that cool in outside of the small college environment. We skied A-Basin, Keystone, Copper, Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, and Vail. I set a record for 9 days of skiing in a row. The last 6 it snowed at least a little every day, leading to near-epic conditions at Vail with my dad, Copper, and Beaver Creek, and a top 5 powder day of my life with Mar at Vail on my last day. Photos and video are viewable on Facebook (I'm too lazy at this time to figure out that whole embedding video/photo thing in blogs).

The only downside to the whole trip was that with the storms, visibility in open bowls was crap so I am still waiting to experience the Imperial Bowl at Breckenridge and a truly great day in the back bowls. I settled for Blue Sky Basin at Vail though, which isn't a step down at all. I also discovered all but the most secluded powder stashes at Beaver Creek as I was there the two days after 16 inches fell. The Larkspur lift, the glades on Grouse Mountain, and the new glades near the Rose Bowl lift proved to be money; I was making fresh tracks at 2 in the afternoon.

With the lack of parental supervision I also attempted to increase my repetroir of tricks and cliff jumps. I managed to land a 180 for the first time, though it deserves an asterisk since I was attempting a 360 at the time. I also set 7-8 feet as my current max hight for cliff/cornice jumps. I attempted 4, landed 1, and have yet to ski away from any. The highest jump I skied away from was probably 5 feet. Mar and I were having fun launching small cliffs in the soft snow during our powder day.

I'm looking forward to going back in February for the All Boys trip, which will be crashed by Mar. I'm sure the boys will make an allowance for girls who rip.

Patriots

2007-12-29T18:24:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Limon, CO. Tomorrow I pick up Lyds at DIA and head to Boulder as the ski trip begins.

Had a nice drive today, especially the last 2 hours as I listened to the 2nd half and following 2 (2!) overtimes of a great OU men's basketball victory over West Virginia. Here's hoping the football team can handle WVU next week in regulation.

So now I'm watching the Pats play the Giants for a chance to set a whole ton of records and hopefully not choke. Entering the playoffs I'm hoping that this year's explosive Patriots still recall a little about previous years Patriots; teams that did little with style, but somehow always found a way to win when it counted. Before this year Tom Brady was never a great fantasy QB, he'd throw for 150 yards and a TD, but the Pats would win.

To address the spygate thing from the season's first game, sure it gives ammunition for the increasing number of haters out there, but frankly I don't care. Yes, it was illegal and immoral, and rather silly to think that Bellicek needed to spy to beat the Jets, but it in no way taints this season. If anything, it proves beyond a doubt that this season has been honest. Maybe it casts some doubt over previous seasons, maybe, but I doubt the Pats were the only team doing it, so how many team's records are you going to call into question?

Hmmm, and New England goes into halftime down 21-16. It's going to be an interesting second half.

And finally, what a year for New England sports. Red Sox win the series, Pats are 15-0, Celtics have the best record in the NBA, both UConn and BC football win 10+ games, the Revolution went to their 3rd straight final (I'll forgive the fact they've lost all 3 times), and even the Bruins are learning from their fellow New England athletes and refusing to entirely suck.

New Years Resolution

2007-12-27T23:34:00.000-08:00

To update this blog more. Living in Madison I'm away from pretty much all of my close friends, and this a great way to keep in touch.

Right now I'm in Oklahoma for Christmas, but on Saturday I'm leaving for an epic ski trip to Colorado where I could get up to 10 ski days in. I'll also get my first in person contact with Dartmouth friends since August, which I'm looking forward to about as much as the skiing.

Okay, I'll post again soon once I've finally done something or thought of something interesting and worth writing about.

The Only Way to Travel

2007-06-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

I left Dartmouth on the 14th/15th with style. I finished packing and loaded up the Jeep to the roof Thursday evening and headed up to Moosilauke to spend the night chilling with the spring and summer lodge crews, notably Mar, Pam, Shara, Brenden, and Pete. It was great to spend my last night in New Hampshire with this group. I even got to sleep in the crew loft. In the morning I climbed Moosilauke for the 6th and hopefully not last time, this time going solo and making it interesting by seeing how fast I could go and taking the old snapper trail on the decent (I did the 7.2 mile, 2,000+ vertical hike in 2 hours and 15 minutes in case you were wondering). I then said some hard goodbyes and headed off on my latest road trip.

Since I had to pick up Emily at 11pm at the Hartford airport which was less than 3 hours away and I left the lodge at 1, I had some time on my hands. So I decided to take the scenic route and forsake the interstate for the scenic state highways and backroads of New Hampshire, Mass., and Conn. I also stopped by Hanover one last time to eat lunch and say my farewells to the green. The roads I took south in New Hampshire were beautiful. When I didn't have great views of Ascutney or other mountains the trees arched over the road, enveloping the Jeep in a shimmering green light. I had my windows open and music blaring. I have to give myself props for my "The Drive Home" playlist, it's great to rock out to.

My route took me through Amherst, MA where I was planning to eat dinner at a burrito place I remembered from a tournament my freshman spring. When I got there though I found the town green covered with tents and the taste of Amherst festival in full swing. Needless to say I took part and enjoyed it emensely. It was now 6pm, and still having time on my hands I set off for Mt. Frissel, the highest point in Connecticut in the far Northeast corner of the state. The high point is actually on the side of the mountain though, as the summit is in MA, so it's not one of the more glamorous high points. Due to some traffic though I pulled up the trailhead in the middle of nowhere backwoods of CT/MA at sunset. I set off at a run, hoping the trail was extra short and flat and that I could get back before pitch darkness set it. Turns out the trail was steep and rugged at times and the high point is on the back side of the mountain from the trailhead and I found myself standing in dark forest halfway up the mountain when I realized that despite my love of the outdoors, being alone in unfamiliar woods at night scares the crap out of me. I paused to weigh my options, and then a plane flew over, it's engines sounding a little too much like a bear growling for my comfort, so I quickly retreated to the safety of the Jeep and the 2 hour drive across CT to the airport, where I waited until 12:45am for Emily's delayed flight from Chicago.

All in all a pretty amazing day. It's hard usually to take the scenic because it takes longer, but I'm definitely making a mental note to do it whenever I have the chance.

Summer Plans

2007-06-13T13:06:00.000-07:00

So I graduated from Dartmouth on Sunday. I don't really know what more to say about that as I don't think it's sunk in yet. My diploma is sitting on the table in my apartment but I doubt I'll realize I'm done with this place until I'm heading south out of town listening to my "Drive Home" mix on Friday. I don't know when I'll be back, which is an odd thing to think about now. I'm currently packing up my life for the road trip home. More thoughts will come later as I try to keep this thing updated, but for now I'll just post where I'll be this summer before going back to packing. If you're in the area let me know, I have new spiffy Dartmouth alum address now which is bcarr07@alum.dartmouth.edu.

Until June 14th: Dartmouth
June 14th/15th: Moosilauke Ravine Lodge
June 16th: Glastonbury, CT
June 17th: Cooperstown, NY
June 18th-26th?: Madison, WI
June 27th?-August 15th: Norman, OK
Mid July Sometime: Colorado
July 26th-31st: Wildwood, NJ and NYC
August 16th: Starting Grad School in Geophysics at Univ. Wisconsin Madison.

So about that whole posting thing

2007-04-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

I've decided I'm too busy to maintain this now, especially since most of the people I'd be writing for are at Dartmouth and know what I'm up to. I'll pick this up again after graduation and use it as a means to keep in touch with people.

Right

2007-01-20T09:58:00.000-08:00

So nothing all that interesting is going on right now. I should probably transition from writing about what I'm doing to writing about what I'm thinking. That's what makes these things interesting. However, I have a bunch of stuff to read for my graduate seminar today, so I don't have time to get all philosophical about something. Maybe tomorrow. We'll see. If nothing else I'll post in a week or so about skiing and/or ultimate.

Home

2007-01-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

So after nearly two weeks at home in Norman, I will be heading back to New England later today. I am currently up late packing as the Fiesta Bowl took forever to come to it's despressing, misberable ending (fuck! fuck! fuck!).

Home, as always, was a great break from my normal hectic life. This time was slightly more stressful than normal unfortunately due to grad school apps, the GRE, and administrative shit going down with ultimate. I managed to take care of it all though and still average about 10-12 hours of sleep tonight, only waking up before noon maybe 3 or 4 times. Like I said, I enjoy relaxing when I'm here, because I never get to do it any other time.

I also got to catch up with my best friends from high school and was again confronted with the fact that for many of us, real life is approaching very fast. Two of my friends have already landed 80 grand a year jobs for fall '07, one for Exxon in Houston and the other in Seattle for Microsoft, and I have been told I need to return to Norman this August for a wedding. My best friend from high school continues to progress through the substitute teaching ranks and is looking to join the workforce next year as well. I am the lone member of our group still hoping to delay reality for a few more years by going to grad school. Hopefully. We'll see how the applications fare, I've had good luck in the past and hopefully that continues, allowing me to go where I want and be able to afford it.

Okay, one more...

2006-12-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

So now I'm home in Oklahoma. My time here will be spent doing grad school apps and hopefully GRE prep and some exercise. I went running yesterday and felt slow, though my time wasn't too bad. I'm sore today though, but maybe I'll go play some basketball.

Speaking of Grad School, odds are I will be in one of the following places for the next 6 years of my life starting in the fall:
Corvallis, OR: Oregon State
Eugene, OR: U of Oregon
Seattle, WA: U of Washington
Fairbanks, AK: U of Alaska
Kingston, RI: Rhode Island Grad School of Oceanography
Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona
Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin
and maybe one of these:
Tampa, FL: South Florida
Albuquerque, NM: U of New Mexico

Yup, now back to watching football.

Ski Tahoe.. sort of

2006-12-24T13:23:00.000-08:00

After the conference ended my dad flew in and we drove to Kings Beach for 4 days of skiing at Lake Tahoe. Or least that was plan, the weather didn't really cooperate. For our first day at Squaw Valley there were effectively 2 lifts open with a couple trails each on about a 12 inch base. Fortunately the stuff that was open was pretty interesting, with lots of slaloming through small tree and rocks sticking up through the snow. I practiced jumping 3 to 5 ft. cliffs and learned that's its not smart to follow the Squaw Freestyle Team when they ski off into the trees. I ended up getting cliffed out and had to hike back uphill for a bit.

The second day was at Alpine Meadows, which is right next to Squaw, and we luckily had about 8 inches of new snow. That gave us one pretty nice powder run before it all got skiied out. The rest of that run didn't go all that great for me. I got one of my poles stuck in a tree and snapped it in half, and then also ended up stuck in a creek for about 5 minutes. The rest of day went better. Or, since that's not saying much, the rest of the day went well.

The third day was at Heavenly, and it reminded me of eastern skiing. Heavenly was much more restrictive in opening their terrain, so while there was enough cover on some trails for them to be open at Squaw, the ski patrol at Heavenly had pulled 130 tickets in one day off of people poaching closed trails. So the only trails open where groomers on man-made snow. Quite a few lifts were open, but each lift only had one trail open, and it was really crowded. And windy. And icy. The views were nice though, and there was one steep trail open, which was fun to ski. For me at least, it was decidedly not fun for the person I saw fall about 2000 feet down the slope because it was so icy he couldn't stop.

Fed up with the lack of open terrain and wanting to give our poor ripped-up skis a break, we went snowshoeing on the 4th day. I knew a place near Emerald Bay where I had been on the stretch, and it was very scenic and snowy, definitely a nice change of pace.

On the trip home we stopped in San Fran for a while to eat and Christmas shop in the Ghiradeli square/Fisherman's warf area, so I finally got to see the golden gate bridge.

Highlight of the trip home: Winning $20 in a slot machine at the Las Vegas airport.
Lowlight of the trip home: Not getting home until 3:30am! That sucked.

AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco

2006-12-24T12:59:00.000-08:00

The conference was definitely a very cool experience. I spent most of my time perusing the Volcanology posters, and I think I learned a lot. I also managed to talk to numerous potential grad school advisors from different schools. A postdoc at the menlo park USGS office (and a member of the Volcano Hazrds Team, my dream job), took me under her wing and introduced me to every prominent volcanologist she could find. It was awesome. Have you ever seen that documentary about the geologists who go to the Phillipenes and predict the Pinatubo eruption in 1991? No? Well fine, but I met those guys, including the current director of the National Volcanic Disaster Assistance team. How cool of a job title is that? I think I may have gushed a little bit to this guy though, saying how that sounded a group of super heroes or something, you know, like... Volcano Team! Assemble! ha ha... yeah, that led to an awkward silence.

I also hung out with some Dartmouth people, ate Chipotle for lunch, and presented a poster of my REU research. My poster presentation went well, it wasn't well attended, but I was able to answer the questions a couple people asked me, and no one questioned my intelligence, so I walked away happy. In addition, thanks to the expo of geology related stuff going on during the conference, I now have lots of useless, cool-looking free stuff, including a foam rock I can throw at people.

Finally, I have continued to notice in cities that as bluetooth technology gets better and smaller it gets harder and harder to tell whether the person waving their arms wildly and yelling on a street corner is crazy or a stock broker.

So about the Black Hole

2006-12-12T21:24:00.000-08:00

that was the last 4 months or so with out posts. That would be REU work picking up, a nomadic month of August, and fall term at Dartmouth. All went well.

Speaking of the REU though, I am currently in San Francisco at the Annual Americal Geophysical Union Conference to present my results. This would be a lot more exciting if my results were: "Dominica's gonna explode!" as opposed to "inconclusive", which is the truth. Oh well, my poster is pretty at least. Tomorrow will be my first day to tour the poster sessions and see if I can't introduce myself to any potential grad school advisors. More on how that goes in the next couple of days.

So, a couple highlights from today:
-Emily having to drive 3 loops around the Logan Airport departure terminals because America West wasn't a listed airline and we had to keep asking where it was
-Me failing at gambling in the Las Vegas airport because even the nickle slots didn't accept coins. Who lays down even a buck to play nickle slots when you're on an hour layover?
-Me, in the thralls of starvation, buying a $12 sandwich in the San Fran airport as I was walking to get my bags.

As for the future of this blog, I hope to update every week or so, now more with rants and random things that happen as opposed to what I'm up to, since most of the people who might read this will likely be seeing me regularilly and therefore will know what I'm up to. So, look forward to such things as: the hotornot.com experiement write-up, me bitching about the club sports system at Dartmouth, me skiing Tahoe, a rant on injuries in ultimate, and other random stuff likely related to ultimate or skiing.

An injury haiku

2006-07-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

Played soccer barefoot
Tried to emulate Zidane
Tore off calus. Damn

and you thought your night was bad...

2006-07-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

Time: 1:20am
Place: Northwest Quad Dorm
WTF!: Fire alarm
Right as I was about to turn off my computer and go to sleep the fire alarm goes off. Then it stopped, and then it went off again. I exchanged a few confused looks with other people in the hallway before we decided we should go outside. I threw on some clothes and proceeded to stand outside for 15 minutes or so before we were given the all clear to return to our rooms. The fire alarm had simply malfunctioned.

Time: 1:45am
Place: Northwest Quad Dorm
WTF!: Fire alarm %$!!!$#%*$# again!
This time it sounded more serious and didn't shut off. Figuring we'd be told immeditated to return to our rooms, I left the building wearing only shorts. Once we had gathered outside, we were told the fire alarm was broken, that a mechanic was on the way to fix it, and that we would have to stay outside until it was fixed. At least it was a warm night.

Time: 2:45am
Place: Northwest Quad Lawn
WTF!: Thunderstorm
I had been outside an hour, laying on the grass and intermittently talking and sitting in enraged silence with the other geology REU students. This entire time I had been watching lighting and darker sky move slowly towards it. At this time, with maybe 200 people outside, the storm hit with pouring rain and winds that pushed it horizontal under the overhanging roof we were hinding under.

Time: 3:15
Place: Northwest Quad Dorm Lounge
WTF!: Hard as concrete carpeted floor
Clay, Shannon, and I had gone into another dorm around 3am and were attempting to sleep on the floor in a bightly lit room when we got the call finally that we were allowed back into our rooms 90 minutes after being evacuated. They hadn't fixed the fire alarm though, but rather had decided that someone at the front desk had to push the reset button on the alarm system every 10 minutes to keep the alarm from continuously going off.

Time: 3:30
Place: Northwest Quad Dorm
I finally drifted off to sleep for a nice 5 hour respite before waking up to go to work.

Fayetteville Summer League

2006-07-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

After the pretty good competition at pick up and the tournament over the weekend, I have to admit I came away from my first summer league games a bit frustrated. There were a lot of people new to playing organized ultimate, so actually playing an offensive set was not really possible. I am also probably the most solid handler on the team. I say solid as opposed to best, because there are people who make better dump cuts, or have better throws, but I think I have the best combo of throws, cuts, knowledge, and a holster on hucks. Our team also has 12 guys and we were playing 4/3 coed at times tonight, so playing time was sparse. In our 11-9 second game win, I think I played maybe 6 points. My highlights included a sweet 50 yard backhand huck for a score and a sky catch for a score. Lowlights included some pretty lazy defense and a couple rather sloppy low release backhands that I made very hard for the receiver to catch (one was caught, the other was dropped).

So, the question is what can I get out of this? Since our team is full of cutters, I have resigned myself to handling for the team, so I'll be working on that, noteably trying to make the offense run through me and then having consistent throws, smart successful hucks, and no turnovers. Handling was even frustrating tonight though as the inexperience players would make horizontal cuts in front of the disc and then clear out right next to the handlers, so at times we had five people behind the disc, making it kind of hard to get open for dumps. Hopefully that'll improve as our team learns the game more. As for now I still have pick up on Thursday and Sunday and practice with an open team on Wednesday to work on my cutting.

The Sticky Fingers Classic

2006-07-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

I got to play in an ultimate tournament this weekend which was a ton of fun. Originally I was going to pick up with a team based out of wichita, but they ended up having enough guys, so I picked up with a local group of University of Arkansas students and recent alumni. I had met some of them on Thursday at pick up, so it was slightly less awkward. Like most college ultimate players, they were a fun bunch. They were also very tall, which was also very fun. I'm not used to playing with people who are 6'5', so it was nice to be able to have that huck and hope option that tended to work more often than not.

Our first game was against another local team who's members continued to show up in various states of sobriety throughout the game. We went up on them big quickly, and I came out strong as well, throwing 3 scores and catching 2 in the game. However, the other teams studs showed up in the second half and before getting drunk, brought them back and they ended up winning on universe point 13-12. Our next game followed pretty much the same pattern, we went up big early, decided we didn't need to play anymore, the other team caught up, but this time we got our shit together and pulled off the win. Also in this game I tried to do a layout greatest and failed, succeeding only in landing on a pile of rocks and brusing a bone in my thumb, my kneecap, and taking a chunk out of the skin on my knee.

Our third game was against tourney favorites and actual coed team, Ups. Since they're trying to make nationals, they're pretty good, though were having a fun time and drinking beers as well. We tried to keep it close with hucks to our tall guys, but lost 13-8 or so. The fourth game we decided to take seriously since we wanted to finish the day 2-2. We were so serious about it we split up into O and D lines. I got some entertainment from this as without telling them anything about how I play, just from watching me they had me playing as an offensive mid cutter (the exact same position I play for Dartmouth). The game was tight. We went up a couple breaks, but then they broke us back to take the lead. That sparked us again as we finished the game on a run and won by 2 or so in hard cap.

That ended day 1. I thought I had played pretty well, especially since my bruised knee had been slowing me down most of the day. My cutting was good, I didn't have any drops, and I had maybe 2 throwing errors. I was really tired though, and that showed on defense at times as I'd get lazy. I need to work my endurance (as I've already said) so that I have the energy to continuous play good D as opposed to just in spurts. The party that night was at the apparently infamous Karl Doege's house. Good beer and the usual antics (wrestling, fireworks, really really drunk older people, and hook ups) were on tap. I ran into a couple OU guys I know and talked to them for a while.

The way the 6 team round robin format worked out, we had to play the same team (the team I was originally going to pick up on) twice to open up play on Sunday. One for our last pool play game and again since we were both gauranteed to be the 2 or 3 seeds in a 4 team playoff. The other team had been about as drunk as mine the night before, so we decided to just play one half of our first game to warm up. We won that 7-3. The next game was serious and they went up on us 6-2 before we brought it back to tie it at 10s for universe point. This point was my signature play of the weekend, as I came from no where in the endzone to catch a stall 9 desperation hammer that was thrown to space. I then preceeded to kick spike the disc.

Unfortunately though, that win sent us to the finals which was occuring at the same time as the world cup final. To cheers of "World Cup!" our motivation to win or even try in this came quickly evaporated and we lost again to Ups 13-6 or so. I then rushed to watch the Azzuri win the world cup, which was awesome.

As for my play on the weekend... I thought it was decent. Good considering I hadn't played since Class Wars in early June. I was tired though on Sunday, more tired than I think I should've been even though we only had 8 guys (tourney was 4/3 coed) and was 90 degrees and humid. I'm also realy sore today and my hamstrings are making me dread even the smallest flights of stairs. Still, I threw maybe 5 scores on the weeked and probably caught 6. I had a couple completed hucks, and a couple other attempts that were decent but just not quite on the money. I didn't have any drops, but did have a few throws in my direction I feel I could've put more effort into to try to get as opposed to watching my guy D it. My cutting was also pretty good, though it suffered from me being tired and our offense being a clogged disaster at times. Defense always needs work, and specifically I need to work on pulling the trigger to layout and playing a full point at 100% intensity. The good thing is that I have at least 4 summer league games to work on all this stuff, so we'll see how it goes.

Summer Workout Program

2006-07-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

As I have learned previously, trying to maintain a rigorous schedule of training while seperated from the Dartmouth Ultimate Team, at least for me, not only sucks, but just isn't possible. My motivation admitedly is a little lacking. Therefore my plans to stay in shape this summer shouldn't really be looked at as a workout program but rather as a "workout program". My two main goals are to improve endurance and improve my throws, so priority number one is to play as much ultimate as possible. So far so good on that one, as I've found outlets for ultimate 4 nights a week while I'm in Fayetteville and 3 nights a week for when I'm home in Norman. On the other nights I may try to go for longish runs to get my endurance back. That'll pretty much be it until school starts back up. I may try to do some of the ultimate workout depending on how competitive I get with Emily who is currently on week 4. I can't have her outrunning me....

I've been at the University of Arkansas for two days now, and both days I've managed to go out and exercise a bit. Yesterday I ran to the park where pick up is and did 15 5/10's in between practicing hucking. The 5/10's felt good, the hucks did not. Forehands especially need work. The run home was uphill in the evening heat and was rather excruitiating and very slow. I'm blaming the 5 pounds of camelback I was carrying and assuming that if I run unhindered I'll be fine- or at least that's my story. As I was returning to the dorm I ran into the rest of the REU group and went with them to the gym where I did some rock climbing, which was fun. There's a sweet overhang problem there that I am determined to send before the end of the summer. After climbing I did some crunches. All in all like 3 hours of exercise, I was pretty tired.

So today was my first time to go to pick up ultimate. It was a lot fun and it was great to be out playing again after a month off. Considering the month off I think I played rather well, though it's hard to guage given the lax atmosphere of pick up ultimate. I had a pretty sweet layout catch and some good sky D's, plus some solid continuation throws and cuts. Of note were two drops on difficult, but easily catchable throws, so as always after a while off, I need to get my hands back as they are probably my greatest asset. I had two forehand huck attempts as well, and while one was completed, they both sucked. So reclaiming the long throws will be the immediate goal.

I get to play in a tournament this weekend on a shortsided team, so hopefully I'll have lots of opportunity to work on stuff as as well as run a lot and improve my fitness. Should be a lot of fun.

Metaphysical Question of the Day

2006-07-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

Pre-Script: Since I leave Dominica today, the use of this blog as a means to relate my travels ends, at least until I do more traveling. However, I plan to keep updating the blog mostly with things I find funny, interesting, or about ultimate. So, if that interests you, please keeping checking back. If you're only interested in hearing about what I'm doing in paradise... yeah, I'm leaving. Sorry.

Back to the point at hand: Having some downtime this morning while the others are getting money in Roseau, I have decided to entertain myself, and hopefully others, by relating a couple IM gems I've had recently. The first is dealing with stereotypes of Wellesley girls. I had just established with Emily that Shannon and Jesse thought Wellesley girls were either elitist lesbians or sluts who stole MIT men. Emily, while not agreeing, certainly undertood where the girls were coming from, and then commented to me that it's funny Wellesley girls get labled both as lesbians and man-stealers. To quote myself:
Me: That is funny Wellesley has both those lables
Me: What would be funnier was if it was the elitist lesbians who were stealing the men.
Me: Though that brings up the question of what use the men would be to the lesbians?
Me: Perhaps as ottomans....

So, MIT guys, watch out, you might end up as an ottoman.

and the other: Last night I was again throwing ideas out to Emily about things we can do together in August...
Me: Climb Mt. Washington
Me: Go see Junior Worlds in Boston
Me: Visit Fishie
Emily: She won't be there
Me: Won't be where? We'll go to where Fishie is.
Me: How can Fishie not be where Fishie is?

Indeed. That's an interesting question. Is it actually possible to not be where one is? In my upcoming two day absense from the internet, I leave you all to ponder that.

Time Spent as the 3rd Wheel

2006-07-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

Tonight is our last night in Dominica [tear]. Currently we are spending it packing as opposed to raging. As our month in paradise comes to a close, it's interesting to reflect on the changes in group dynamic that have occured. A few days before we flew here, we had never met each other and aside from meager attempts at small talk were very quiet. It took island life and having nothing to do in the evenings but talk (and a certain amount of Caribbean rum) to really loosen us up. The first couple weeks when Henry and Glen were here we generally hung out and talked after dinner every night. We got to know each other and made fun of the lame Texas A&M people. Stories were told. Fun was had.

The addition of the CSUSB people and the departure of Glen added another wrinkle. Glen's consistent Gin and Tonic induced post dinner chill sessions were gone, replaced at times by harder drinking and at other times by awkward silence as we all stared at computer screens. Occasionally a CSUSB girl would drop by and talk for a bit, but generally the group of us gave off too cliquish a feel for her to stay apparently.

Anytime a group is together for a while I feel they tend to slowly divide into smaller circles. With 6 people that's not really possible, though I've noticed we've tended to spend more time alone. I tend to be on my computer, crusing World Cup or Ultimate Frisbee news and talking to Emily. Matt tends to talk to his girlfriend on the phone, go to bed early, and play computer games. Shannon I think hangs out either in the general area with me and a couple others or with the girls from the other group. Clay has been reading a lot and going to bed early. Richard and Katelyn are hooking up now, which while great for them, has put a damper on hanging out, as they are constantly trying to be alone and everyone else gets this unwelcomed or 3rd wheel feeling. None moreso than me I think, as I usually stay up the latest after them because I'm talking online. I can definitely tell that around 11 or so, they're just waiting for me to leave. So I can tell that after this long in a place with nothing to do in the evening that we're wearing on each other, which is really to be expected.

What happens when we get back to Arkansas will be interesting. I don't really know how much longer the Richard/Katelyn thing will play out. Richard and Matt will be home essentially. I will be close to home and playing ultimate 3 times a week with Fayetteville people. Shannon and Clay will still be thousands of miles from home in a strange area. I think that we'll continue the trend of having more individual time, but there will be more do to, so we'll notice it less, and then enjoy the time spent as a group hanging out more. We shall see.

Boomer Sooner

2006-06-30T18:45:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day of field work. All of our sites are picked up and we have collected all the data we came here to get. Given all the technology and lack thereof we were working with on the island, we had surprising few set backs. As our work winds down, we've been tagging along with other REU group here as they drive around and do 'real geology'- as in look at outcrops and test the water at hot springs. We've seen a ton of hot springs all over the island, culminating in seeing the biggest one, the Boiling Lake, on Wednesday. It's not quite Yellowstone, but then at Yellowstone you're not allowed to walk anywhere you want and put your hand in a sulfur vent to see if it's hot (it was). The end of our boiling lake also included an awesome swim during a pouring rain in a 10 foot wide, 50 foot deep gorge which had about the cleanest water I've ever seen. Photos of all that are up on facebook.

A funny reoccuring theme in my life recently has been people proving stereotypes right. Like hearing the Wellesley girl sterotype from Shannon and Jesse (the MIT girl) and relaying it to my girlfriend, expecting her to defend her school, only to have her go, 'eh, they're pretty much right on'. I've always been careful about not falling victim to believing them, but then again, I'm also gullible, so I tend to lose that battle. There are of course, those instances though where I'm like, well, I suppose that label exists for a reason. One of those instances was after the boiling lake hike. Starting up the trail as we were ending our hike around 3pm was a large group of people, several wearing OU plastic ponchos, who turned out to be OU alums. Among them were a couple teenage girls wearing skirts and flip flops, an older couple in collered shirts and white shoes, and a five year old. I naturally stopped one of them, a middle-aged dude, to introduce myself as being from Norman. We had a short conversation which ended with me asking if they were going to see the gorge, about 5 minutes up the trail. He responded they were probably going to go up to see Boiling Lake. Boiling lake was 3 hours one way up a muddy, very steep trail. No friggin way. None of them was carrying water. As I walked away shaking my head I passed one of them walking with his head down going "we're gonna get soaked, oh man, we're gonna be soaked.... look at them [seeing us, fresh out of swimming in the gorge], they're soaked..." and an older woman taking about a minute to go 10 feet because she was trying not to step in any puddles and get her white sandles wet.

Gees, way to prove every stereotype about my home state true. Oklahoma, I salute you.

65% Fun, 35% Terrifying

2006-06-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

I went snorkling today.

Those of you who don't understand the significance of that don't understand my pathological fear of deep/open water. I really can't explain it, I yawn through airplane turbulance, traverse steep scree slopes without a care, but get me out of sight of land or in sight of coral reefs, I freak the shit out. I am basically the world's biggest landlubber, even if I'm in a plane, if I can't see land I start panicing and thinking we're going to drown at sea. When I fly overseas I leave my window shut. Along with never going on a cruise, that seems to solve the problem.

Coral Reefs are another thing. They're full of things that I can't see that can bite and/or sting me. Cliffs? Whatever, I can control whether or not I fall. Put me in a place where I just have to hope unknown things don't attack me? Yeah, to say I get nervous is an understatement. My fear of reefs stems back to an unfortunate trigger fish/panic attack incident in Hawaii in 7th grade. I haven't snorkled since, until today.

As the post title indicates, I mostly enjoyed it. When I was able to borrow goggles I wasn't too afraid because I could see everything and make sure nothing was attacking me. I even dove deep and swam in 5 foot wide cracks about 10 feet down to get a better immersion experience. I saw all the corals I've seen in aquariums my entire life, along with cuttlefish, a seasnake, an eel, tons of fish, crabs, and underwater hot springs. It was really really cool.

Unfortunately, when I had to give up the goggles, I knew all those things were there, but couldn't see them. I could only assume they would immediately try to attack me. This led to some freaking out as I was afraid to put my feet down on any rocks and am not a good enough swimmer to tread water endlessly. Minor panic attack insued before I sucked it up, opened my eyes underwater and endured the salt sting long enough to scout out a good landing zone. This process would be repeated everytime a wave knocked me off my perch, and everytime I was able to obtain and subsequently had to give back goggles.

All in all, it was a cool experience and I'm looking forward to next time when I have the foresight to obtain goggles of my own.

It's a Small World

2006-06-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

When you're driving all over an island that is only 290 square miles and populated by only 80,000 people or so, you're bound to start seeing the same people over again. After nearly 20 days on Dominica, the whole country is beginning to feel like a small town. Every time we drive through Roseau we see the same set of bums, usually in the same palces, and we have even taken to giving them names. The Wall-Walker, The Clapper, Flap Man, the one-armed man, and Moses Patrickson seem to be a majority of Roseau's homeless population. Recently I've also been seeing two mormon missionaries every day. We're also seeing the same cars again and again on the same roads. We know because of the names on the windshields. Tiger Boy, Centipede, Blue Within the Law, King of D Jungle, and The Original Shadow Warrior are among our favorites. People are beginning to know us too. When we tell people we're geologists, most already seem to know we're from Arkansas and are studying the volcano with GPS. Word apparently travels fast here.

In other news:
-Glen left the island today. Leaving us in the trusy hands of Richard, the masters student. He then promptly gave us the majority of the next 3 days off, telling us to go hiking or tag along with the other group of people here
-Speaking of the other group of people here, the other group of people are here. They're the other half of the REU and are based out of Cal State San Bernadino. They seem alirght, especially the prof, but I'm glad I'm in the Arkansas group. The new people seem to be a mix of extremes. There's one girl who grew up in urban New Orleans, one who is California Valley Girl, one who is a sterotypical MIT sorrity girl (she was running laps around a tree in the courtyard today for exercise), and the guys are both non-traditional undergrads in their late 20's.
-There were two 4.0 earthquakes in the northern part of the island on Monday. We couldn't feel them from where we were, and they're unlikely related to a volcano possibly acting up, but it's still cool to get a physical reminder that this place is active.
-I returned to the creek of my previous adventure and walked back to the waterfall yesterday. It was so much nicer since the water was clear and two feet lower. I didn't have that feeling of impending death hanging over me and I was actually able to enjoy the scenery a bit, as well as shake my head in disbelief when I looked up at the slope we had climbed up earlier in the week.

T is for Tourist

2006-06-20T10:41:00.000-07:00

We've been here two weeks now, and for that two weeks I spent a decent amount of my time wondering what would happen if we ever got caught in one of the trenches on the side of the road. Today I discovered the answer: one hell of an impressive flat tire. Richard swerved to avoid an unyielding sedan, put the front left tire in the ditch, and I watched as it almost istantly deflated. It was no problem to change the flat though, as no less than 6 Dominicans stopped and helped us put the spare tire on. Richard, Katelyn, and I pretty much just watched them do it.

Before today we had two straight days of heavy rain. Probably another 10 inches or so. Due to the threat of landslides on the roads and that none of our sites needed to be moved, we were stuck at the Springfield Plantation both days except for a short trip to Roseau on Sunday to watch the world cup for a few hours. That didn't stop us from having adventures at all, as Richard, Katelyn, and I decided to walk upsteam in the flood-stage creek near here yesterday to look for waterfalls. We found one, but it also meant we couldn't go upstream anymore, so we ended up climbing out of the creek up a steep mud-soaked "angle of repose" as Richard put it. I led, clinging to rotten bamboo stalks and digging my hands into the dirt and hauling Katelyn up at times with a spare leg. It was fun, plus, since we weren't driving, I needed my daily dose of feeling like I was about to die.

So today was our first day back in the field checking up on sites. After the first site checked out fine, Richard said "wow, we're on schedule... this is when things start to go wrong." Indeed. Five minutes later... encounter with a ditch... flat tire. Tuesdays here are also cruise ship days, when a cruise ship pulls into Roseau and floods the island, including our home at Springfield Plantation, with tourists. I kind of feel bad for them, they don't really get to see the island at all, just all the crowds and tourist trinkets for sale that their presense creates. I also don't like them much, as they're all here currently, and we're all used to a certain amount of solitude. (I do realize that I am being a huge snob)

The Rain Is Back

2006-06-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Last night and into today another tropical system came through and dumped about 7 inches of rain on us, swelling all the rivers and cancelling our planned slog up Morne Diablotins. I was told this at 6:30 or so, and promptly went back to sleep thinking "our activity of the day was just cancelled, I can sleep in". What I should've though was that "people are going to be up extra early and wanting to get going on other stuff". Needless to say I got woken up at 8 and was told peple were sitting in the trucks waiting for me. Oops.

Our first stop on our days work was to take down a site on a high ridge. Right as we're approaching the ridge it starts raining. I put on my rainjacket. Five minutes later when we reach the site it's the most torrentially downpoor I've ever seen. All the neighboring ridges were obscure by sheets of rain being pushed horizontally across the sky in visible waves. In thirty seconds of this I was just as soaked I as would've had I just jumped in the ocean. Even my goretex boots somehow managed to fill completely with water. Then there was a flash of lightning followed immediately by thunder. My Oklahoma roots kicked in and I realized I was standing on an exposed ridge next to a metal tripod. I told the two others with me I was not working like this and returned to the truck. They realized my logic and followed me, leaving the site to be taken down later in the day.

Needless to say all the rain made driving even more death defying as in addition to crazy drivers we had to deal with small landslides blocking half the road and creeks overflowing across the pavement. Lots of the vehicles here also have names written across their windshields, which at times can be pretty funny. I've seen "Why Me? Lord", "Mr. Cool", "Davey", "Righteous", "2 Legit 2 Quit", and "Batman". I've also decided that driving here directly applies to Murphey's Law. The worst possible vehicle to come around a corner will always come around a blind corner at breakneck speed at the least opportune moment. So far the worst vehicle award goes to a cement truck. That one almost threw us off a cliff. Otherwise today we just almost died a few times, mainly by sedans going 60 and not yeilding right of way on one lane bridges. People here are nuts.

ScudBucket?

2006-06-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

So we're at dinner tonight and the conversation is flowing from pets, to pet dying, to my homicidal lizard, to Richard's horse dying, to horses in general, to movies with horses in them, when Richard comes up with a gem:
Richard: "oh, yeah, and was that movie with the horse, um, what's his name...um scudbucket?
[pause]
Me: You mean Seabiscuit?
Richard: Yeah, Seabicuit. Not scudbucket
Me: Wow.

Dinner here has consistently been amazing. Our meals are cooked by the Springfield Plantation people, and while the food is predictable, it's always good and consists of a meat, starchy thing, beans, salad, and amazing desert. The only miss item so far has been a gray rectangle of starch something that we have so far only been able to describe as 'bean loaf'. Before arriving, I was told I needed to eat the local delicacy 'mountain chicken', which is actually a chicken-sized frog. However, it was apparently such a delicacy that the frog is now endangered. I have to say that's a cultural experience I am glad to be missing. The most exotic thing I've eaten here so far is Goat. I'm not really a huge fan I have to say, but it beat the 'bean loaf' vegetarian option kaitlyn is always eating.

The livestock is also all over the place here. Cows, goats, donkeys, and chickens all graze along the side of the road as we speed by. Some aren't on leashes and we have to dodge them as we drive into town. On the back roads we sometimes have to get out and herd the goats off the road or pull on their leashes to get them out of the truck's way. The baby goats are really cute though... and delicious.

I can see clearly now the rain is gone...

2006-06-15T19:16:00.000-07:00

We had our first clear day today. It was amazing. Both Morne Trois Pitones and Morne Diablotins, the highest two volcanoes on the islad, were free of clouds and perfectly visible. They are amazing mountains and look like what you'd draw when you were little and drawing a volcano- incredible steep sides convered in lush jungle. All that's missing is the eruption column coming out of the crater. We get to climb Morne Diablotins on Saturday too. I'm looking forward to it because it'll be the first time I climb the highest point in a country. We're also hauling up over 100 pounds of GPS to try to set up a site on the summit, so it should be interesting. If we succeed, it also means we get to climb it again to take the stuff down next week. The hike up Morne Trois Pitones is apparently only a couple hours, so hopefully I'll get to do that too.

The people here are amzing so generous and nice. Most of our GPS sites are on private land, and we've just been driving up and setting up our equipment no problem. Occasionally the land owner will come up and ask what we're doing, but once we tell them we're geologists and are studying the volcano, they're glad to have us there. I guess they appreciate the possibility of at least being warned about when a burning cloud of ash is about to destroy their house. The only run-in that has drawn some concern is with Manuel, a tall, ripped, farmer dude carying a macete who yelled at us "what are you going on my land!" as we were setting up a site. We thought we had explained everything, but then yesterday we found the site had been knocked over. Who knows...

We have tried to return the locals generosity by continuing to pick up as many hitchhikers as possible, today serving as a school bus essentially for the town of Portsmouth. I think we had 8 kids in the back of the truck at one point. We also tried to give a ride to a farmer who didn't need one, so Richard (driving) pretended he had stopped to ask what the farmer what he was carrying. It was a green kind of spherical, kind of really dented looking mini soccer ball sized fruit thing with little soft spikes sticking out of the skin. The farmer said the name, explained how to eat it, and then just gave it us. He probably could've sold it for a few bucks, but he just gave it us. Since I couldn't understand the name, I have since dubbed it spikey fruit, and will be eating it soon. This country is awesome.

Behold GoreTex Man!

2006-06-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

Covered from head to foot in polysynthetic fiber, neither rain, nor snow, nor swimming pools can penetrate his impermeable outer layer! He is GoreTex man!

So. Yeah. A tropical depression hit the island today and it's been non stop rain all day. I've never seen is come down so hard for so long. No thunder or lightning, just heavy heavy rain. Until today it hadn't rained all that much. We'd have occasionaly 5 minute downpours, but that would usualy be followed by 2 hours of sun until enough evaporation had occured to fuel another downpour. The oddest thing is that half the time when it's raining there is mostly blue sky. It's like it's so humid here rain just spontaneously forms above our heads.

We've been here a week now. All of our GPS receivers are up and running at their second location, and we've done some scouting for new sites. In a couple days we will again be changing locations. Until then it's long days in the trucks trying to find suitable bedrock outcrops for new sites.

Some notes from the first week:
-After a bad experience with 50% alcohol by volume 'Rhum' from Guadalupe (it tasted like liquid pain) I have found good Dominican Rum. Everyone at Dartmouth is invited to a 'drink Brett's foreign alcohol' party at 17 school in late September.
-I am now in possesion of a card that gives me permission to drive in Dominica. Now all I need to do is learn how to drive a stick shift. These people have no clue what they're getting into.
-Like most Dominicans, we have begun picking up hitchhikers whenever we see them. Generally they're prety cool people who just don't have cars and hang out in the bed of the trucks as we swerve our way across the island. Yesterday one of them when we dropped off came around to Glen, who was driving and introduced himself:
Hitchhiker: Yo, thank you for giving me a ride, my name is ____, but just call me Solidarity...
Glen: Solidarity? Cool..
Solidarity: yah mon, one love, peace.
And he walked off. So awesome.
-We tried to watch the world cup yesterday at a hotel in Roseau, but they had forgotten to tape the game when it was on live. They didn't really appologize, but rather shrugged it off in a 'shit happens' kind of way. I was annoyed. Apparently I'm not laid back enough to be in the Caribbean.
-A group of 19 Texas A&M students was here and left yesterday. They were here on summer school and were quite studious. We managed to heckle them a lot for being lame and not hanging out and drinking with us. Their last night was crazy though as 3 weeks of pent up alcohol abstinence was released and they raged until 2 or 3 in the morning. I was they finally cut loose because they drank the bottle of 'Rhum' that I didn't know how to get rid of because I sure as hell wasn't drinking that shit.
-Tomorrow our TA Henry leaves so that he can go to a conference. In another 10 days or so Glen is leaving too, meaning Richard will be in charge. Should be good times. On the 19th Dr. Alan Smith arrives with his REU group from Cal State San Bernadino. I'm looking forward to it because Dr. Smith will be giving lectures about all the pyroclastic deposits, which will be cool to know, plus useful for my hopeful senior thesis.
-Today was essentially a rainout. Tomorrow we are again scouting for new locations. The day after that we repeat the cycle of changing receiver locations for two days.

A Night in Roseau

2006-06-11T21:09:00.000-07:00

Last night we decided to have a night out on the town and go to a disco in Roseau. We never got to the dancing part however, because things didn't really get starting until 2:30 or so, when we had to leave in order to get up at 7am today for a long day of field work. The only other time I've seen things starting that late was in Rome. We got into town around 11pm and went to a jazz club where we were the only customers. I tried the odd local cocktail of coconut water and vodka while listening to the bar tender and a friend play the hell out of a piano and trumpet. They were seriously good, if they were in the U.S. they'd be getting paid to play at places.

From there we migrated to the party location, which at 12:30am was dead. No music, no people, nothing. At this time all 8 of us were all there, and we continued our rounds of mixed drinks and beers. More people began to show up and the music started, and Henry, Glen, and Matt left. This left myself, Clay, Richard, Shannon, and Kaitlyn, the 5 night owls/drinkers/partiers/young 'uns of the group. We upped it with some shots and more beers, but eventually sleep and the upcoming day of hard work won out and we headed back probably just as they party was getting started.

This trip is the first time in my life the color of my skin has made me a minority, and it was never more apparent here. We were the only white people there, had claimed a corner of the patio to ourselves, and the locals were giving us a wide berth aside from the occasional reefer or drunk who would stumble over, try to hit on the girls, get shot down, and then leave. The night did however lead to some interesting quotes, whic are as follows:

Clay: (to Henry who was holding a camera) Now Henry, I don't want any drunk pictures of myself after this night...
Henry: That's okay, I won't be drinking

Clay: (listening to the live band play a reggae song) Is this Bob Marley?
Henry: No, he's deceased

Brian the Dominican Stoner: mumble mumble mumble
Richard: (smoking Brian's joint) What?
Brian: [first introduces himself to the two girls, noticably passing over Clay and myself] So, do you have boyfriends?
Girls: [silence]
Brian: Hey, do you guys have any cocaine?
Richard: No
Brian: You don't? [walks away mubling] whitey don't have no crack... [mumble]
Glen: Hmm, that went well.

Outside the Bubble

2006-06-10T06:37:00.000-07:00

Ah, the glories of an off day. I got to sleep in (8am!), mess around on facebook for a while (photos from Dominica are up on my profile), write blog entires, and soon we'll be off to go check out a local swimming hole, go shopping in Roseau, and learn to drive a standard transmission. We may even have time to go to a local bar and watch some World Cup action. Tonight could be interesting as well, we're going to a disco party which starts at midnight. I'll likely be kicking myself Sunday morning when we have to get up at 7am to go set up/take down more GPS sites.

This summer is my first time in two years outside of the Dartmouth bubble. Yeah, I've been off campus a couple times, but always with Dartmouth groups. Not since freshman summer have I been the only Dartmouth person around. It's interesting. Mainly it has hardened by belief that every Dartmouth student is ecentric and crazy. It's odd that no one automatically laughs and/or understands whenever I saw "pwned" or "I'm the juggernaught, bitch!" (the got a couple weird looks) or Yidit or blitz or rosham. And that's not even attempting to bring ultimate into conversation, which requires a whole other list of vocabulary words. I find it odd that while I normally consider myself quiet and reserved, in this group I'm the outgoing, funny one with consistently the best stories and conversation skills. I won't class clown because I'm not that funny and our TA does a pretty good job of that one himself. I think this says tons about the Dartmouth experience and how it allows everyone there to really go out and have a spectacular time at college, both educationally and socially. I've realized it's a place where every student can be themselves without concern of what others think about them. Plus, at least in my case, this environment also builds up a self-confidence that enables the students to continue to be who they are when they leave the bubble. This is what I was hoping to find at college, and I'm glad I was able to find it; and I'm glad to hopefully be spreading the reputation that Dartmouth guys (and gals) are pretty sweet dudes... who like to hang out. See, there's another one no one here gets.

Who? What?

2006-06-08T19:03:00.000-07:00

Seeing as how I'm essentially telling the story of my Volcanology REU here, I may as well introduce who the 8 of us are and what we're doing on a small carribean island. The REU is based out of the University of Arkansas, and so 4 of the 8 are from there:
Glen- The professor in charge. Cool guy, typical geology prof, like gin and tonics, lived in Puerto Rico for 10 years, knew a kid I made friends with at the National Geography Bee in 1999.
Henry- Ph.D. grad student, long hair, kind of looks like a pirate, especially when weilding a macete. Is pretty much in charge of the project- knows where all the sites are, knows how the equipment works, etc.
Richard- Masters grad student. Cool guy. Likes partying/chilling, a field geologist who takes the time to looks at rocks with me while others are setting up GPS units. Got hit up for $40 worth of whiskey in San Juan
Matt-UArk undergrad honors student. Actually a physics major here to work with the GPS equipment. Not that interested in rocks. A bit nerdier than the others, always carries a pencil in his ear (he took a shower and put the pencil back behind his ear before leaving the bathroom), doesn't laugh at my jokes (not to say that he should be).
The other 4 are all undergrads at different places:
Shannon (Mt. Holyoak) - Plays field hockey, has more of an engineering interest and did a weather-related REU last summer
Kaitlyn (Michigan Tech)- The only non rising senior among us (she's an '09). Also leans more engineering. Pretty cool person, plays ultimate when she can, though it's kind of difficult at a school that's 75% guys and is under snow most of the year (M. Tech is in the upper peninsula).
Clay (SUNY Genso)- The person I've gotten along with best so far. Cool guy, yeah, I get along with him.
And then there's me, the late arrival from Dartmouth. (hi!).

So that's the group. What we're here doing is GPS geodosy. What that menas is that we set up highly accurate (fractions of mm's) GPS units all over the island, and then compare their position to the positions recorded at the same site in previous years, and see if the site moved. This allows us to hopefully locate and track rising magma in the volcanic system beneath the island because rising magma will actually push up the overlying crust, deforming it a few mm's, which is enough for our GPS units to see. The project is still young though, so a lot of our time will be spent finding and setting up new sites for future research groups to use. Should be a cool project to work on. Basically it means all our time on the island is spent outside hiking around and setting up sites.

A Night in San Juan

2006-06-07T20:30:00.001-07:00

Before arriving in Dominica we had to stop in San Juan, Puerto Rico. With no field work to do yet, we were able to have a night on the town courtosy of NSF. Our program director, who had lived for 10 years in Puerto Rico, took us to the old part of town to a restaurant he described as 'the hot spot to be' -The Parrot Club. Since it was Monday night it wasn't took crowded and the 8 of us enjoyed an amazing meal. I had some kind of chicken kabob BBQ rice&beans thing that was incredible. It took me forever to eat it because I kept stopping to tell everyone else how good it was. Best part of the meal though was trying different cocktails, making sure I stayed a half-step behind our increasingly giddy program director. I enjoyed a margharita, mohito, and rum & coke, all exceptional. The other students did the same.

After a brief walk around old San Juan to see the fort and city walls, we returned to the hotel where our professor, one TA, and one student went to bed. The remaining 5 of us went out to meet a friend of one girls in the program. We met a mexican restaurant/bar which featured a live band playing bad 80's rock covers that would randomly take 15 minutes breaks during which loud base-heavy rap music was played. Both girls go to Mount Holyoak, which I found interesting as I have a Wellesley girlfriend, so we bonded over this rather random not so much of a commonality. Our conversations involved me feeling awkward in all-girl dining halls, what I feel is the overuse of the posessive term 'boy' by Wellesley girls, and the different reputations of the remaining all-female seven sisters schools. I learned that Smithies are either 'preppy' or 'lezzie' (or both actually, it was loud at the bar so I couldn't really hear), Mount Holyoak are the partiers and Wellesley girls were either bitches or too good for the other two schools (or both). I didn't really protest as I didn't want to argue with people I barely knew, plus I could understand their side and found it funny. The girl's friend was is San Juan to see her boyfriend, who had actually broken up with her 2 weeks prior, leaving her with a plane ticket and really nothing else to do, so she came anyway and seemed to be enjoying herself; she introduces us to 3 Puerto Rican guys during the course of a couple hours; an obvious symptom of what I have come to describe as the all-girls school student "ooh! boys!" syndrome.

The shock of the night came when we received our bill. Somehow 5 of us had managed to accumulate a $120 tab with any of us getting drunk except one girl who's an '09 and really skinny so doesn't really count. My bill for 3 beers was about 12, which I expected and the other assortment of mixed drinks were overpriced, but expected. The kicker, which sadly fell entirely on our TA Richard, was Whiskey. While rum is very cheap in the Carribean, apparently whiskey is not. Richard's whiskey and coke, follwed by a doulble whiskey and coke, followed by a round of whiskey shots he ordered us all set him back roughly $60. Poor guy, he never saw it coming. It probably didn't help that I was pointing and laughing at him at the time.

Dominica

2006-06-06T19:47:00.000-07:00

So I now find myself on a small, volcanic carribean island of about 290 square miles. It is pronounced, as I found out today, with the second 'i' stressed so as to sound different from the Dominican Republic. The island has already impressed me. The topography is very steep, with the roads winding precariously close to 300 foot plus cliffs. The highest points on the island are over 4,000 feet, and as far as I could tell, there is not a gradual slope to be found.

My tropical adventure began before the plane even landed. As we dropped below the clouds Dominica and its steep sea cliffs surged into view. The plane continued it's approach slightly inland, and right when the treetops on the ridges seemed about to touch the landing gear and I though we were about to land, the plane banked steeply to the left and dove into a valley, the floor and sides no more than 200 feet away on any side. After customs and immigration, it was time to drive across the island to our home for the next month, the Springfield Plantation, a science research station a few miles uphill from Roseau, the capital.

First off, Dominicans drive on the wrong, or British side of the road, and the very sinuous roads are barely two carwidths wide at any point and are borded by 2 foot deep ditches to help runoff from the common torrential downpours. This makes driving here (or even riding shotty, as I did) a rather adrenaline-inducing, white knuckle affair. I'm glad our rental trucks are stick shifts so that there is no chance of me every being forced to drive here.

The Spring Plantation is pretty sparce in relative to our hotel in San Juan last night, but will make a good home base for the 4 weeks we are here. There is wireless everywhere, great food, and a bar, so my basics needs are accounted for.

Tomorrow is our first day in the field and my first attempt to deal with trifecta of bugs, humidity, and thick jungle vegetation.

Introduction

2006-06-04T22:57:00.000-07:00

So, why the hell am I doing this? I don't know really, possibly an urge to keep from writing mass emails to friends whenever I'm away for a while, possibly to keep friends with whom I never email up to date, possibly just a medium where I can record the random thoughts that pop into my head, though more likely this is simply a whim that sounded like a good idea at 1am the morning before I catch a flight to Puerto Rico.

Later posts, and by later I may mean 10 minutes or 10 days depending on my mood, will provide details of what's going around me along with some deeper or hopefully entraining thoughts. But for now I'll let this post's only purpose be to explain the name: Flying Piece of Schist.

Simply really, I gather that's what I'd get if I was to combine the two biggest time consumers in my life: geology and ultimate frisbee. Which I have to admit, wouldn't be a good conbination, you can't play ultimate with a rock (well, technically you could, but I'm not that much of a masochist) and throwing a chunk of metamorphosed ocean sediment certainly won't help me understnad it better (in most cases). So there you have it. It's make no sense, but at least it's more entertaining than "Brett Carr's blog".

Kind of like this post.