June 18, 2004: Hourly Pictures

Today was our last full day with my colleagues, and it began with an extended hike around the island. My SO and I were determined to try to photograph (and catch) some of the few grasshoppers that we had been hearing and seeing on the island, so we kept hanging back from the group to try to spot them. Eventually we heard some from afar in a large open area, so we told the rest of the group to go on ahead while we hunted. We ended up spending at least 30-45 minutes tracking the grasshoppers before we finally got close enough to photograph them, since they were incredibly cryptic, and when they flew it was often for a very long distance (we watched one fly 200+ feet before entering a stand of trees).

After lunch the other members of our group decided to take yet another trip to yet another island, but my SO and I were exhausted from the busy week and decided to stay behind to spent the afternoon reading and sleeping. We woke up just as the group was returning, walking like zombies up the dock platform. That night I sorted through my pictures and gave a "best of the island" picture show.

Today has some of my favorite hourly pictures from the trip. The driftwood textures (1200) came out as I'd hoped, and my picture of the sunset through the trees (2100) is my favorite recent sunset picture.

Today also has a good example of the tides in the area: the 1300, 1815, 1910, and 2100 pictures are all of the same location (though with varying camera angles). This little bay used to house the dock for the island, so at low tide the island was inaccessible.

Last, look at the 1100 picture to see some of the lichen 'forests' that were growing on the island. Lichens are slow-growing creatures that are mutualists, a combination of a fungus and either an alga or a cyanobacterium (depending on the species). Typically (in the southwestern US, at least) lichen are found in thin layers on rock, so I was excited to find them growing in carpets 2-4 inches high over much of the island.

Our hourly pictures from the day are below. (This text was written after returning from the trip).


06-18-04: 0815


06-18-04: 0900


06-18-04: 1000


06-18-04: 1100


06-18-04: 1200


06-18-04: 1300

06-18-04: 1400 - Reading
06-18-04: 1500, 1600, & 1700 - Sleeping


06-18-04: 1815


06-18-04: 1910


06-18-04: 2030


06-18-04: 2100

06-18-04: 2200 - Picture show / talk in progress


06-18-04: 2245

June 17, 2004: Hourly Pictures

[And we're back to Canada for a bit here, as I try to get re-started posting the hourly pictures ... hopefully I'll finish them someday.]

Today we took a boat to Nanaimo and toured the city a bit before visiting the local college (Malaspina). Unfortunately it took more than an hour to get a rental van once we were in Nanaimo, and then another hour to drop the van off, so we did very little actual exploring of Nanaimo other than eating lunch in a downtown dockside cafe (which had undercooked fish and chips, even after sending them back, so it gets no mention here). After getting lost on Malaspina's campus (see the 1400 picture), we met some Malaspina faculty and got a nice tour of their aquaculture program facilities. One of the neatest things they had were some sturgeon they had been culturing; they had fry (<6 months old), 3 year old, 13 year old, and 25+ year old sturgeon (the 25+ year old ones are the parents of all the others). Very neat to see.

Our hourly pictures from the day are below. (This text was written after returning from the trip).


06-17-04: 0800 


06-17-04: 0900 


06-17-04: 1000 


06-17-04: 1100 


06-17-04: 1200 


06-17-04: 1300 


06-17-04: 1400 


06-17-04: 1500 


06-17-04: 1600 


06-17-04: 1715 


06-17-04: 1800 


06-17-04: 1900 


06-17-04: 2000 


06-17-04: 2100 


06-17-04: 2200 

Some new referrals

While I was off gallivanting across the country I missed a few new referrals to my site:

• A German message board post linked to me as a reference clarifying the multiple ovulation media story that was circulating a while ago; how flattering. In reading the post (with my SO's help, as she speaks some German) I'm struck by how similar German and English are. Take, for instance, "Zervixschleim", which sounds very much like "cervix slime" in English, which is pretty close to what cervical mucous actually is.
  


• ShortNorthMama has a similar reaction to the Bush Yakuza ad as I did, and linked to me for the "photoshop play by play". Thanks to ShortNorthMama, I guess I'm now officially an anime junkie (which would shock my friends, as I've probably watched the least anime of any of them).
  


• Wolverine Tom, a geology major, has added me to his blogroll, and seeing as he has a great post about the animals of Death Valley, I think I'll add him to mine.

In other news, I've now had more than 5,000 unique visits to my site. Thanks to everyone who's visited and commented here!

[Note: my apologies to anyone whose referrals I've missed; my referral log only keeps the most recent 100 visits, so I missed a lot while on my recent trips.]

Blogging and knitting

Jill/txt, in searching for a metaphor to describe why people might blog, settled upon blogging as knitting, a metaphor I rather like.

""Blogging is about doing just a little each day, and building something over time," I say in the interview, "rather like crocheting or knitting." You can follow a pattern or make up your own, you can talk about what you're making with your friends, and the level of ambition can be as high or low as you like. Sometimes your creations won't please you and you'll unravel them or just hide them in a cupboard. Other times you'll be surprised at how beautiful it turned out."

I should really put down the vacation yarn and pick up the science and education yarn a bit more often, but that will happen soon, as the semester starts up in a few weeks. In fact, Thursday was my first day back in the office, so the reality of the approaching semester is already settling in.

States visited

Seeing as I've been on three trips in the last three months, it seemed like time to update my states visited list.



create your own personalized map of the USA

Summary of the states in 235 words

Having just returned from my first ever cross-country drive, I thought I'd provide a brief summary of the various states I drove through, motivated in part by the 1,000 word summary of the Silmarillion.

California: Plane flight. Traffic. More traffic. Even more traffic. Ooh, rocky mountains covered in pines.
Nevada: Hmm, no more pines. Shrubs. Dry shrubs. Even more dry shrubs. Neat examples of habitat zonation, though.
Utah: Wow, flat. Anyone need some salt? Big Mormon city. Pretty canyon [Logan canyon].
Idaho: Dry. No more pretty canyon. Cool mountains over there.
Wyoming: Oh hey, here are the mountains. Now these are canyons, and these are mountains. Cool, hot springs. Oooh, even cooler mountains.
South Dakota: More shrubland. Pretty tree-filled valleys. Hey, there's a face in that rock. Oh look, more faces in that mountain over there. Motorcycles ahoy!
Minnesota: Corn. What looks like soybeans. Pretty tree-surrounded farmhouses and barns.
Wisconsin: More corn. More soybeans. Ooh, neat rivers.
Illinois: More corn. More soybeans. More trees. Ack, big city! Big building! Stupid trafficky toll roads costing money.
Indiana: Ahh, no big city anymore. Pretty lake. More corn. More soybeans.
Ohio: More trees. Gee, what do you know? More corn. More soybeans. Eep! 35mph turn on the interstate! [I can't think of "Ohio" without hearing it pronounced as done by Campbell and The Nails in "88 lines about 44 women"]
Pennsylvania: Oooh, now these are trees and forests. Hey look, another lake.
New York: Grapes?!? Oh look, a waterfall. Oooh, old fort. Tall lighthouse. Another pretty lake. Even more forests.
Massachusetts: Rolling hills covered in forests, how cool. Is that an airport?

Apt. 11d is now 11D

Laura has moved out of her old apartment and blog, Apt. 11d, and into a house in the suburbs and a new blog titled 11D. I wish her the best of luck with both, and also a happy birthday.

As a side note, check out the permalink URL of her birthday post, and compare it to her post title.

Tangled Bank #9 is online

This week's edition of the Tangled Bank is now available, hosted by Pharyngula. There's 12 great submissions, so read and enjoy (though none of them are from me due to my recent cross-country drive).

I'm home ... finally

After a three-hour drive to Boston, a three-hour wait in the airport (my mom overestimated the drive time and security line length), an hour and a half wait on the tarmac, and a six-hour flight, I'm home. (For those who are mathematically disinclined that's a total of thirteen and a half hours.)

I flew on Jet Blue, and was pleasantly surprised by a number of things. Since I've had a few flights recently that didn't serve any food at all, I stocked up for the long, hungry journey, only to discover that Jet Blue does provide snacks in-flight. I'd brought a ton of reading materials, so I didn't watch the free TV too much, but it was nice to be able to take a break from my reading at times (of note is that regular headphones work with Jet Blue's jacks, and they encourage you to bring on your own high-quality headphones if you desire). The TV monitor also doubled as a flight-progress indicator that provided near real-time information on position, altitude, and speed.



They cycled between three different maps: the one shown above, one that showed detail of the state we were currently over, and a third showing an even closer view. It was a very cool feature, though one does wonder if the size of the plane is actually to-scale ...

Today I had a very pleasant security screening experience. To start off, I was the only person in the entire screening area (other than security guards). There was no line, and nobody behind me. The guards politely recommended that I take off my Birkenstock sandals, but did NOT insist, unlike other security personnel I've encountered. When my sandals caused the metal detector to go off, the guards just had me put my sandals onto the x-ray machine belt and go back through the metal detector again, and when I didn't set it off they let me go on my way. I have nothing but compliments for that security screening team.

I've got more to write, but it's going to have to wait for later as I'm quite tired from the trip and I want to go spend time with my SO, who is sitting right next to me. It's just wonderful to be home ...

Postcard to Pharyngula

A sign takes on much more significance when you know what it leads to:


This sign marks the exit from I-90 in Minnesota that leads to my fellow biology blogger PZ Myers's hometown of Morris. It's too bad that Morris is a 3+ hour drive from the interstate, as I would have tried to drop by if it were closer ... but at least I waved.

[Note: I drove through Minnesota on Wednesday, August 4th. Many thanks to my SO for resizing and editing this picture for me from home.]

It's Sunday ... I'm in New York!

Today my mom and I finished the major portion of our drive, making it to her new home town of Albany, New York. Of course we're not quite finished driving yet, as on Tuesday we'll head to Boston for my flight home, but it feels like we're done with the drive today.

Making things a bit less welcoming is that the condo my mom is buying has still not closed escrow, so she's going to have to stay in a hotel for at least a week while that transaction finishes. Considering that it was a 45 day escrow to begin with, and that the close has been pushed back almost two weeks beyond that, she's understandably frustrated.

Most of the past few days have been spent driving, as we headed straight from Rapid City, South Dakota to Niagara Falls, New York. We then took a day off from driving and toured the Niagara Falls area a bit (which I'll write more about later), and then drove here today. My mom's definitely been getting tired of the drive, and I've been told by others that I should have expected to get weary of the drive, but I've been loving it. There's so much to see: changing scenery, pretty towns, agricultural fields, beautiful forests (especially in New York and Pennsylvania), neat biological and geological phenomena, and lots of other cars. How could you get bored when there's so much to see?

It's Tuesday ... I must be in South Dakota

I'm in Rapid City, South Dakota tonight as my mom and I continue driving east across the country. We decided to take the scenic route across Wyoming, using US 89 north through both Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park. We made a few stops in each park on the drive, but didn't spent too much time at either place. However, I couldn't pass up going to a few hot springs, mainly so I could see some thermophilic Archaeans (which I didn't even know existed last time I went to the park). While I was walking around the pools admiring the colorful bacteria, a little girl complained loudly about the smell (of sulfur) to her parents and then said, "If I smell it anymore my nose is going to fall off!"

After Yellowstone we headed east on US 14 through Bighorn National Forest, which was the nicest surprise of the drive so far. The road went through some stunning rocky canyons before giving us a magnificent view of rolling hills receding out to the eastern horizon more than 5,000 feet below us. I'll definitely have more to say about this drive once I can put pictures up; it's one of the neatest I've ever done.

Today we explored some of the Black Hills National Forest, visiting both the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore National Monument. It started pouring rain at Mount Rushmore, so we didn't get to see everything there, but at least we saw the faces in the rock before they were obscured by clouds (which was very neat as well).

The area here in South Dakota is filled with bikers thanks to the quickly approaching Sturgis motorcycle rally. My mom is somewhat annoyed by this, but I think it's darn cool. While driving around in the last day I've seen touring bikes, cruisers, show-bikes, some three-wheeled bikes, bikes towing trailers, cars towing trailers full of bikes, packs of riders everywhere, and more leather and black t-shirts than I've seen in my entire life. I've never ridden a motorcycle on the street (though I have in a training course), but seeing all these cool bikes makes me want to grab a helmet and buy a touring bike to travel the country on.