The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 5

The rest of the time, which was not much at all, was spent relaxing and making plans in Bakersfield and then visiting the Getty Center in LA.

Kiki caught in the act of being a "garbage cat" - what is he licking???

Loki "helps" us plan our day at the coast

I gave a (swimming) tour of Bakersfield's "mighty" Kern River, and the delightful scenery we have in the area by the bike path. More details in the video below...

the best place to eat in Bakersfield is Mama Roomba, it's fabulous, so we ate there

finally, last tour before the airport: the Hollywood sign

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 4

To contrast the desert, we then ventured to the Central Coast for a little wine tasting and some Pacific Ocean.

Tobin James started the day off right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) with 18 tastes... GAH!

after more than enough wine, we made our way to Cambria and had a delicious dinner concocted from all things local, including, apparently, flowers

and finally made it to the beach - but it was a very gloomy, foggy, overcast day... so I guess these photos look somewhat ominous

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 3

Death Valley - the lowest point in North America greeted us with some impressive wind; on the order of 50 mph (we were told it was closer to 100 mph up on the racetrack!!!) - as a result of this, the entire basin was pretty much a sandstorm when we arrived. We couldn't even SEE badwater, it was just a cloud of brown. So, we investigated the visitor center for a bit and grabbed a beer and pizza at the Furnace Creek Saloon before driving up into the Panamints to meet up with my Rockbuddy who'd saved us a camp site up at Wildrose - still windy, but no sand!

before entering Death Valley we stopped at Death Valley Junction to wash the sand out of my retinas, as I could no longer see (and consequently drive) by that point

the sand storm was still raging once we entered the park - I had to push the Jeep door open on my side with both feet!!!

the next morning at Wildrose camp - note the snow behind us, it was in fact pretty chilly up there

thankfully the sandstorm had quit (though the wind hadn't) so we were able to do a few hikes while we were there - I love the contrast of the highs and lows in Death Valley - snow on the mountains, 100% evaporation leaving behind salt in the basin

behind blown around by the wind at Badwater Basin

hike 2 - at the Natural Bridge - gave us some spectacular views back down into the valley

then we investigated Salt Creek for the pupfish that live in this most extreme of environments - not only a hot salty creek, but also a really bitc*y park volunteer, poor fishies!

then finally, the absolute best (and our final hike of the day), was Mosaic Canyon (any guesses as to why it is called that?) - it was amazing!!!

great views, great rocks, really astounding part of the park that I'd never even heard of before

the contrast of the breccia on beautifully polished smooth banded marble, was really outstanding - the Romans would have wanted this marble for sure

this 360 gives a good solid view of: 1. the wind, 2. the sandstorm in the valley, 3. the nasty thunderstorm we were driving rapidly away from, and 4. the sunny spot on the horizon we were aiming for to avoid flash floods

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 2

After the Hoover Dam, we stayed at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. For me, the best part of the Vegas experience was stumbling across the "neon sign boneyard" - soon to become the neon sign museum. At the time of our visit, it was a couple of fixed up signs on Fremont St. with plaques and a massive pile o' signs in a parking lot in North Las Vegas.

The Great Becky and Natalie Adventure 2010 - - - Part 1

The Hoover Dam: We got a sweet tour of the Hoover Dam through tunnels from the original 1931 excavation, and this was all thanks to us going as a educational group - the BC Engineers' Club - our guide, Bill, was hilarious and the whole adventure left me feeling very small!

looking down nearly 600 feet to the water level

peering out of a 9 ft "window" (ventilation shaft) about 300 ft up from the water

the mandatory group shot from just about water level, looking up almost 550 ft

standing on the border... over the Colorado river

anyone need any cotton?

A while back, something like more than 2 years ago, I thought I'd give hand-spinning a try, using a drop spindle. My friend the Extreme Chef, who works for the USDA, acquired for me a substantial amount of fresh and free cotton to give this a try with. I used a small amount, spun successfully, but still had a large clear trash bag full of it up in my upstairs closet. I left it there, safely encased in the clear trash bag... Nearly a year ago I acquired Loki, aka Bitey Whitey, and during that time he's been slowly and steadily destroying the bag in the closet. Finally, this morning, I committed to extracting the cotton explosion from my closet in order to be able to retrieve important things, like my camping gear for example, but I am now faced with an enormous pile and nothing resembling a bag to fit it in...

Say, do you notice anything NOT cottony in that pile?

"Mailable Monday" (TM) on Sunday

The title is being borrowed just this once from the originator of Mailable Mondays (TM) - as most of the contents of the envelope were being sent for said feature, and were somehow lost...

"Insufficient address" it tells me. Well, I tell you, when I mailed this there was a complete envelope, including the postal code and country.

"we care" they say. Oh you do, do you? Might I ask then why you had your postal wolves devour 1/4 of my envelope and consequently lose half the contents then?

fossils

What's new in 2010 at Bakersfield College? Fossils! It started with a grant that we wrote to build a display for Sharktooth Hill, a Natural National Landmark that is owned by the school (little known fact). We have the main display done, below, and are now working on a map that will reside on the slanted portion inside the cabinet and informational fliers that will reside in the trays at the front.


The other thing that is fossil-related and new (is that an oxymoron?) is the Historical Geology class that I am teaching. It only took a year to get the curriculum proposed, submitted, approved, approved for General Education, approved for transfer and articulated with the local university. With that done, it got on the schedule, and then I had to actually start compiling it... Anyway, yesterday was the first official field trip for the class, and I took the opportunity to take students out to the "Trilobite Wilderness" south of the Mojave Desert National Preserve. There one mostly finds cephalons (heads) of Olenellus mojavensis (aka: Bristolia mohavensis), the species of Cambrian (about 530 million years old) trilobite that is named for this "type locality". But, yesterday, a couple of sharp-eyed students found perfectly complete specimens (the photo below) and several more found almost complete bodies as well. No one left without at least a cephalon. I was quite astounded actually!

Hmmm, now that I look at this photo, I think they might be Olenellus clarki rather than mojavensis. Not sure. Not a paleontologist...

My Body is a Science Experiment

Well, I fell. Stupidly. And when I landed, on my left knee, I felt a deafening "squish"... sqshlktsht

I thought... that can't be good. But oddly, it didn't hurt - it just felt incredibly weird. And then a purple grapefruit grew out of my knee. Obviously I iced it, but here's what happened: I ruptured my subcutaneous infrapatellar bursa. The little fluid sac beneath my knee cap - all these sacs hang around in your joints to prevent friction between bones and ligaments and such, and also to protect the joint from external forces (like landing hard on one's knee) - sort of like an air bag - only with fluid instead of air.


So basically, when my knee grew a grapefruit, this was the air bag going off.


The cool thing is how these bursae heal themselves, and before too long all the fluid will go back into the healed sac and my knee will be good as new again! Hoorah! Meanwhile, there's still some swelling and some significant bruising (I think it's funny that's it's a doughnut shaped bruise), I didn't take a photo of the grapefruit, or even the navel orange that followed the next day after I taped an icebag to it for the night. Once the left knee bulge has become a dent again like the right knee - all will be well again! Aren't bursae neat?

just read it

Mushroom Fest

I had grand plans for PaleoPalooza in Philadelphia for this long weekend, but unfortunately the armageddonesque snow in the northeast demolished those plans. As a substitute for adventure, I went to the LA Mushroom Fair with Extreme Chef, particularly because the keynote speaker was giving a lecture titled "how mushrooms can help save the world". It was fantastic - weather was warm, I reminisced about the days in England collecting shaggy ink caps from near the pool (I may be clumping memories together, but that's the association in my head for some reason), and the lecture was highly entertaining, interesting and informative. The man, Paul Stamets, is a speaker and a half. If you have the opportunity to listen to him, it'll be worth your while.

I finished the sweater I started over a year ago, knit with my Rock Buddy's mom's vintage red wool. It was too warm to wear it, but here is evidence of it being finished!

These peahens were for some reason scratching themselves little "wells" in the dirt to hang out in. I thought it was a weird sort of nesting thing, but there were no eggs... so I have no idea what was up with that.

This plant is called "fire sticks" how great is that?

A blewit from the morning mushroom "foray". Note the blue-purple stem (I think it's called a stipe actually, not a stem).

Some other kind of mushroom some lady found. It has a nice ring around it - possibly called an "annulum" (I took notes at the very beginning, then got completely distracted by digging around...)

This is the mushroom I took notes on, but it seems inappropriate to give its genus and species when I have virtually nothing to offer on the other photos. So let's just focus on the white fluffy stuff at it's "butt" (that's what Paul Stamets calls it) - mycelium - which is the matter of mushrooms and is pretty darn neat if I do say so myself.

The mushroom foray leader, Florence Nishida, was brilliant. Among her wealth of mushroom knowledge that she shared with us, she mentioned that some mushrooms will break down just about anything. This reminded me of the curious mushroom colony that seems to have taken over the old cat tree I inherited from a neighbour a few years ago that has been sitting on my patio (since I thought it was too catty to allow indoors). Well, now it's both catty and mushroomy, and I really really really have to dispose of it.

Finally, we ended our day with a lovely Chinese New Year dinner in Pasadena, during which I drank "dried longan beverage", which tasted like maple syrup, which was FABULOUS!

manipulating the magnetic pole??? nice!!!

Well, a new semester begins, and with it comes a brand new challenge: cleaning up the lab room of the oddities that it has acquired over the last 50 years in order to create a semblance of order and make room for students, new lab materials, etc.

Today one of my faithful geo student helpers found this Life Magazine article from 1952 about the moving rocks in Death Valley. Pay attention to the middle column, it's brilliant.

Meanwhile the 2nd page of the article was also pretty entertaining, but admittedly the rock tied down with a peg and string was nothing to the high-waist tighty-whitey themed ad next to it.

The pages were torn and taped and I had to creatively scan it in bits and pieces, but hopefully all the goodness comes through!!!

A New Semester Begins

Part of what we have to do at work is assess "SLOs" (student learning outcomes) every semester. I was a little slow in bothering to tally my pre and post semester assessment quizzes, and literally just got around to it now when I remembered that I had to create a new set for my new class starting next week...

Anyway, see if you can find what's wrong with this picture...