Drove Cross - Country (again)

RAINDROPS ON WILDFLOWERS, BIGFORK MT

I've gotten some (justified) flak from a few people about not keeping my blog updated. Well, To be honest, not much particularly blog-worthy was going on. Until now. So here is the update -- I have some free time in Montana before my field work gets really rolling and I guess I am caving in to peer pressure. So here's what's up:

Last time I posted it was March and I was in Texas. I survived. Now it's June, and I'm in Montana enjoying spring in the northern Rocky Mountains -- we are having a wet one though so the streams are all completely blown and I will have to wait even longer for good fishing -- but there is lots to do in the meantime!

I suppose it would be best to get the basics of what's happened in the last few months nailed down before going into all the little fun stuff with pictures and all. Here is the three-point synopsis:

1) Enjoyed work in Texas, lined up a full-time job for after I finish my degree in MT
2) Had a great drive from TX to MT, spend a bunch of fun time alone in the desert
3) Started field work for my M.Sc. thesis on Flathead Lake in MT, it's goin' good.

Here is the Long version:

TEXAS

HOUSTON RODEO AT NIGHT

My inner workaholic was loving things down in Houston: In addition to working working very full-time for a Fortune 500 company, I completed one and a half college courses online, had two more grants come in for my M.Sc. work, wrote my M. Sc. Thesis proposal and got it approved by the U of MT faculty, managed the U of MT AAPG student chapter from out of town, filed my taxes, had the pleasure of hosting my baby sister and a college friend of hers for a week, and very much enjoyed played a few rounds of golf with an old friend who happens to live in Houston. It seems like I was more or less successful at everything except the golf. I shared a house with a sarcastic old man, we got along great.

My day job down there basically consisted of sitting in front of a bank of computer monitors in a tiny office with no windows lots of floors up in this big corporate-looking office building with glass all over the sides of it. (I did get an opportunity to visit a drilling rig on a gas field north of Houston, which was sweet -- photos here). I had a lots of data to work with, and my project required me to pick up some new skills on the fly, so the learning curve was steep which made me happy. Despite the lack of sunlight I found the work enjoyable and satisfying and was pleased to be able to line up a full-time job with the company for when I finish my M.Sc. work here in Montana. And while I'll admit that the prospect of living in the same place for more than a semester or two is daunting to me, I am glad to be able to focus on my academics without wondering what I will do with myself after I finish. It also seems like most people eventually get a window.

The gorgeous blond in the photo above is my baby sister. She and a friend came down for their spring break on account of the fact it was March in upstate New York. And they wanted to go to the rodeo, so we did! Rodeos in Houston are a clash of cultures -- all these people wearing cowboy boots get out of minivans and walk through this parking lot that has a carnival in it until they get to a giant air-conditioned stadium where they can buy eight-dollar nachos and watch other people run around and tackle cows and stuff through their binoculars. There is country music an everybody cheers when the marines march a flag around the stadium. Rodeos are entertaining, too -- it actually is pretty fun to watch all the different events, and people sure are friendly -- I got called "partner" a bunch of times by old guys with mustaches who I never met before. As you can see, I bought a hat. My sister and her friend bought turquoise jewelery and assorted girly stuff. There are more rodeo pictures here.

HEADED NORTH

SUN-BLEACHED BRANCHES BELOW CLIFFS, GRAND GULCH, UTAH

Anyways, after spending a few days waiting because a mechanic broke my car while he was changing my brakes, I was able to load all my stuff up and drive away. I headed west at first, got lost outside of San Antonio for about an hour, and then spend a night in the Texas Hill Country where I was treated to what may the wildest thunderstorm I've ever tented in. Then I drove through west Texas where I tried to visit Caverns of S0nora only to find that they were full of school kids until later in the afternoon, which was too long for me to hang around. So I kept pushing through Pecos and into New Mexico where I went through Carlsbad and Roswell. In Roswell you always feel like something is watching you, but it's just the little cameras on the stoplights which are everywhere in that town. Anyways I made it to Villanueva State Park where I spent the night. After that I got some groceries in Santa Fe and kept going to Farmington. Then it got dark and I got lost and ended up going south when I wanted to go west, which landed me in Gallup by the time I saw a sign telling which road I was on (100 miles out of the way). So I go a room in Gallup and then drove through Arizona, which was beautiful, on my way to Grand Gulch in southeast Utah where I spent three days and nights backpacking, which translates to exploring old Native American ruins, planning your moves from one spring to the next, trying to find ways to beat the heat, and hoping not to see any mountain lions or rattlesnakes. It was awesome. Afterwards, I was exhausted, so I went pretty much straight back to Montana spending only one night along the way in Pocatello, Idaho. Pics of the drive and the hike are here.

BACK UNDER THE BIG SKY

BIGFORK MONTANA ON A CHILLY SPRING DAY IN JUNE

Upon arriving in Missoula after my fourth cross-country move in a year, I unloaded my stuff into the lovely apartment of a generous friend who is looking at bones someplace in the desert west of here all summer, and met up with my geo grad crew for some necessary storytelling over a few beers. After a few days I got motivated to organize stuff for my fieldwork, and when my field assistant showed up we loaded up his truck and drove north to the eastern shore of Flathead lake, which is mostly just a bunch of woods clinging to the side of a mountain but there are also a lot of cherry orchards, with some rich people's houses and a few trailer parks mixed in for good measure.

During the day we drive around looking for places where the geology is exposed. We spend a lot of time poking around roadcuts, gravel pits, construction sites, and stuff like that. We pretty much try to drive every single road looking for exposures, and will also be bushwhacking to likely spots in the mountains. I am supposed to make a map of the surface geology and interpret the glacial history of the area shown by the red blob in the northeast corner of the right-hand map above (the map on the left shows the location in Montana of the one on the right). So far things are going pretty good -- we found a brewery and some geology that I am hoping might be cool enough to publish a paper on (time will tell), and we have only been chased by dogs twice.

FIRST-CLASS CAMP COOKING

As usual, I am enjoying camp living. We set up in a campground just south of Bigfork, and we've done some great open-fire cooking. Our dutch oven cracked in half, and we don't have a grill to put over the fire pit or anything, but honestly the old skillet has been producing some great stuff with only one major grease-fire incident so far, and that was bacon so of course there was a grease fire. It got about four feet high so I was glad it was in a campsite and not on a stove inside anywhere, but once we pulled the bacon out it was pretty cool to watch.

Anyways that's all I have time for today. On June 17th I move into the apartment where I will live for the coming school year. We are renting a small house very close to campus -- I'll try to put a photo up on my next post, whenever that is. It will cost more than where I lived last fall but I think the convenience of being near campus will be worth it and help me to get the huge amount of work in store for me finished by May. Regardless, I will be glad to be able to unpack some of my stuff and settle in a little bit, It's now been three weeks of suitcasing.

March

Hi folks. There are no pictures (sorry). This post is more of a rant than an update on my life.

First off: Come on, Spitzer. I am trying to show some New York Pride down here after the Super Bowl. You are embarrassing me.

Second: I hate March. If you are from upstate New York, by the end of march it has been winter for four months. I'll admit that winter has its perks: skiing, snowshoeing, and all of the other things you so on brisk clear days where the wind cuts at your cheeks and makes you feel alive. But in March all the snow either goes away or turns brownish-gray, and slush falls out of the sky for what seems like weeks. Everything floods and freezes. All exposed earth turns into sticky goop. There will sometimes be like two nice days in March. So since you are done skiing, you are thinking about fishing. The promise of trout season keeps you alive. Some signs of March include:

1) You had to buy two new fly boxes because you had no place to put all the incredibly complicated, completely unique, and totally useless flies that you tied... yesterday night instead of sleeping.

2) You honestly wonder how on earth you could have been stupid enough to get as old as you are and STILL not be a professional fishing guide yet.

3) You know which fly you are going to use first, and where.

4) You catch yourself thinking about replacing your car with a pickup... with a cap, and a hammock in the back...

5) You already bought five new leaders for the season, but have now decided it would be better to braid your own.

6) You catch yourself thinking you are smarter than the fish (ha! Fool.)

7) You had to start a new bookmarks folder on your web browser for USGS stream gauges.

8) You think the weather will be nice the first weekend in April in upstate New York.

9) Your co-workers can't wait for trout season to start (because they are so sick of hearing about it from you).

10) You know how many hours it will be until you are on-stream...

Honestly, if I could re-write the calendar, I would delete March. Now some of you might say that then we would have an extra long February and April to fill the space... which might be true. But it's irrelevant -- eliminating march is a matter of principle.

I can always tell its march because I start to feel anxious and cooped up. Every year. Some years it gets really bad. Every year at college I wanted to quit at this time of year. And every year since, I've wanted to quit my job at this time of year. Quit and do what? I don't know. Who cares. Hibernate, maybe. That's what everything else with fur does.

In fact, I vote that we as a society all hibernate. Like, I mean do nothing. We all just drink beer and pig out sometime in February, and put on a whole bunch of weight and don't feel bad about it, and then we pretty much hang out during the lousiest time of year and stew about how life is no cake-walk and just fall asleep if we don't feel like doing anything, and wait for springtime to come so there can be new life all over the place and we can get a fresh start on things.

Actually, I am pretty sure that is in the bible and it's called Lent. Before it comes Fat Tuesday, and afterwards comes Easter. Lent is not optional, folks, it's written straight into the orbit of the Earth: For the last forty days of winter, everything will suck, because you will be all cabin-feverish and trout season is not here yet. Speaking of which, it is also no surprise that Easter always lands in late March or early April.

You see, back when they were deciding on that stuff, their math was not so good and calendar use was not widespread, so the beginning of trout season was not so set. But everybody knew when it was. So they just put Easter then - it makes total sense: the first day of trout season is the "writing on the wall" for the winter blues. Salvation from the stewing mess of our own thoughts, which have been bouncing off the insides of our skulls in total disorder for months, trying to convince us that thinking about stuff is productive. Those thoughts need to be ordered, we need to get back to basics and go just DO something fundamental... like how about stand in a river and try to outsmart something with a brain the size of a pea. Now we can stop just thinking about fishing-- casting off the stale and stifling bonds of our own small-mindedness to go and do what we were created to do! When trout season starts, we can stop daydreaming and start remembering our respect for our pea-brained friends: they are wiser than they first appear, and commonly prove us to be the fools. But anyways, when they picked the easter day, they were aiming for a day which was culturally the most symbolic of new life and of breaking the rule of sin: the first day of trout season.

But I of course am in Texas, where there is no trout season. I live in Houston, the petro-metro... it's basically a strip mall the size of Rhode Island. It is flat. The nearest mountain is a thousand miles away. The streams are all man-made, and they have no trout (only alligators). Environment is not a focus for most people, because the land is so boring that it actually looks better with a subdivision on it. I will have to wait until May to play with trout this year...

Alive in Texas

TEXAS HAS GOTTA BE AROUND HERE SOMEPLACE...

The wheeled contraption shown above was seen last week in Alabama, headed south towards Tuscaloosa on I-59. Contrast the graduate student from the northeast, who packs all of his belongings into a small car for a long-distance move, with the Texan, who apparently needs to supplement their bus with a state-themed trailer while driving around for fun. Anyways, after wintering in the northeast, the good ship Silver Subaru has completed another successful cross-continental voyage. She found port this time in Houston, Texas, where I, the nomadic American bachelor troubadour geologist, now live. I am here to serve my internship with the Oil and Gas industry so that this summer I can return to Montana and live in a tent, working on my Masters project,which I just heard has received full funding from the USGS -- your tax dollars at work! Isn't life amazing?

Highlights of the holiday break since the previous post include more time with family and friends, and especially the opportunity to catch up with some folks I haven't seen in a while all over the northeast. Nothing beats catching up with folks in person -- I only wish I had the time and resources to track more people down!

Before heading south, I made a trip to Boston to connect with some people and get one last whiff of north Atlantic air before going away. On my way I stopped in Williamstown to see friends and family, which is always a treat. The hospitality of my friends everywhere always amazes me, and this trip was no exception! I was well-fed on pancakes and strong coffee and constantly entertained by their tribe of kids, who seriously tested my plastic lightsaber fencing skills. I think if the kids get any bigger we will break the swords. And on the family end, I was able to help my grandparents with getting a lot of the electronics in their house up and running. In return, I received grandma's cooking. Good trade.

FUNNY FACES MAKE BREAKFAST TASTE BETTER!

In Boston I was lucky enough to stay with a high school buddy and see several friends from college who needed visiting and catching up with. And after getting my whiff of the salty sea air, I began walking the docks back towards the city when my nostrils caught something else -- something pungently sweet and quite familiar, comforting really. I couldn't put my name on it at first but it got my attention so I backtracked, and there it was again. It was pitch -- one of the boats must have had its timbers or its lines sealed up with it. I smiled and remembered how hard it was to get that smell off of me after spending a couple of hours working in the rigging on the Charles W. Morgan back in Mystic.

After returning from Boston I continued to work on writing some small grants and packed up my car before heading south. I was fortunate enough to have a good friend as a copilot for the trip, and our first stop was Mechanicsburg PA where a close college friend of mine lives. The next morning we rolled down to DC, where a small collection of GMS05ers assembled, including my long trail hiking buddy, my New York to Montana copilot from this past summer, and the graceful hostess who fed us all so well back in Burlington. She invited us to a birthday party happening at her house, where we had a great time but found it to be hard work not falling in love with her charming roommates.

WHY CAN'T I MOVE TO DC? I DON'T UNDERSTAND.

As usual I'll have to be satisfied with memories for a while, as I've failed to even get many pictures of the friends I've crossed paths with. There are a couple posted here, and a few more on my picasa page, but that's all I got. I was probably mostly too busy enjoying people's company to think about pictures. And naturally half of the ones I was able to take came out lousy... so I guess it's a good thing we don't need pictures to think of good times and good people, right?

So I moved on from DC to Chapel Hill, North Carolina where another college friend is going to school right now. His lovely wife fed us TVP Chili (which was awesome), and sent us off with pound cake (also amazing), which would sustain us for a thousand miles. We drove that night to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where we stayed in a motel and ate at Chilis, and then the following day through Baton Rouge and on to Houston.

As you approach Houston from the east, you pass a lot of petroleum refining operations. At night they are like brightly lit cities of pipes and tanks, sprawling over the landscape. You can smell them. The refining operation I saw while headed east through Billings was maybe around the size of one of the more modest of those down here, but here there were dozens of them. Perhaps the only thing more brightly lit were the signs advertising casinos: welcome, I suppose, to the Redneck Riviera. Down here, oil is big, big business: the gulf coast refineries are teat that sustains America's ravenous economy.

After arriving in town and settling into my house, I completed some small grant applications and also learned that the big one I had worked with my professor on this fall got funded! This means that I will have a salary this summer, and that I will be able to proceed as planned with my masters thesis project. Very good news, and very encouraging to me as a young scientist. I also started work. I have one day under my belt. It looks like the people I will be working with are great, and the project I am on seems interesting too. I should be learning a lot and having a good time!

ON THE ROAD AGAIN: SADDLING UP ON A CHILLY CHAPEL HILL MORNING

I feel very lucky to have so many good friends. Because people are unique, friendships are unique, and I value each of them. I am also lucky to be able to visit my friends when I travel. But seeing them can certainly be bittersweet for me: it seems it's never for long enough, and there's not much prospect of my living close by to my east coast pals any time soon. People's lives are moving on without me really in them, just as mine moves on with them far away. I guess its a matter of providence, something to be thankful for, when you are able to have a rich and real friendship that grows over time. But I meet new folks and make new friends wherever I go. I have connected with an old friend here in Houston already (over a pile of tasty crawfish, no less), and hope to meet new people soon as well. And I'm able to look forward to returning to Missoula next year, where I know I have great people. Pretty sweet, huh?