Ooid

We all have those things we can be patient for. Be it waiting for that perfect spouse and family or the perfect job, the perfect grad school, we all have them.  My patience appears when I’m waiting for a wave, whether its perfect or not, no matter how long, I can sit out there and watch the ocean, and love it.  Sadly the memories of that patience, that joy, are fleeting.  Why?  I have no idea, all I feel is an abyss.  An abyss so deep that it makes the Mariana Trench appear as deep as a shoal.  What are you supposed to do, how do you handle it, when you feel your passions in life just simply dissolving.  Being a geologist the best example I can give is throwing some hydrochloric acid on some calcium carbonate.  These days I am the carbonate rock, most likely an ooid.  Why ooids?  Well ooids are calcareous layered sedimentary grains that form in a shoal, a shallow warm water environment.  Anyways, I feel like im drowning in shallow water.  I know the surface is near but i can’t reach it.  The water is warm and its in a tropical place…..beauty surrounds but im still drowning, unable to focus on any pleasure.  While once I was on top of the water, surfing on a wave being carried and uphelp by nature and beauty or I would simply float and enjoy being absorbed in nature, but now I’m at the bottom.  Adding layer after layer of anger and pain increasing the weight and keeping me down.  I can see that glass ceiling, I can see blurred remnants of the the beauty I once enjoyed.  But I can’t reach it, no matter how hard I try, I can’t do it.

damn, what was the point of this blog, oh well, I guess I was just trying to make myself understand what I’m going through.

My hand hurts from punching a wall.  I don’t mean hitting a wall and being like “yeah that felt good”, I punched the shit out of my hand and I feel like a dumbass now, but though it hurts like hell, it makes me think about something else for a while.

I need a drink, but I don’t want to need one.  I need to punch the shit out of another wall, but I don’t want to need to.

I don’t want to hate “theological bastards” and “holier than thou punks” but I do……or I’m being convinced that I do……I need to get out of this dungeon, the chains are off but I can’t find my way out of this darkness.

Arcachon Project vs. Oil – get rid of this coffee and bring me a Pint

So its been a long time since I’ve posted but it’s been so busy lately! Busy with college work, courses I like, courses I don’t like well mainly they are courses I find so annoyingly hard! I’ve also been working on the Arcachon Project, to which I’ve added another facet, building a model of the bay and determining whether the disgusting erosion buffers the filthy rich are throwing up around the bay is actually working.  While I’m incredibly busy, I’m still so fascinated with using my geological knowledge and passion to try and excite people into saving the Bassin d’Arcachon.

We all know I want to go into the oil industry and work there, but all of a sudden I find myself struggling to figure out what I want to do with my life!  Its pretty frustrating when you had a plan and all of a sudden you are unsure if that plan is The Plan…..so I need a pint.  A pint of what?  Hmmm, well I wouldn’t mind a nice pint of Scrumpy Jack cider or a delicious Golden Glory Badger Ale, but alas I don’t have one.  Its not that I crave the mellowing effects of said drinks, but rather that pint represents a a tangible touch of relaxation.  In a world where I feel I am not able to relax, Im searching for that little bit of golden-bubbly relaxation that everyone seems to have around them…..I just want pint!

I find myself wanting to use my geology to benefit people!  Not that I feel I can’t do that in the oil industry, I know I can, but I’m wanting something a little more personal right now.  I’m wanting to be able to speak with people about what we can do together, whether it be setting up a water system together or sorting out a small operation and market for a mineral that can be mined in their community and other things of the like.

These are just thoughts, but thoughts that if I had a pint, I feel I could see them better, or deal with them better.  However here I am sitting in a coffee shop with a little twitch in my hand becuase I’ve just had two cups of incredibly delicious but strong coffee…..hyperactiveness is about to settle in….not the best situation to be in when you are trying to ponder you life.

Where is my pint?  I’ve got the glass but not the beer….arsed.

Arcachon

Here I am, 2 minutes away from the view you are seeing right now, in Arcachon, France.  I love it, its home, I as born not far from here, but I have never lived here, I simply come here for summers.  Tomorrow my friend Gabe comes and we are working on a research project on this area.  We are collecting sand samples from various locations around the bay, the river delta, the islands and sandbars, and the incoming rivers and are going to do heavy mineral analyses of these samples.  The purpose of this is to see how the sediment, coming from the river, is being distributed throughout the bay, and what this does in terms of the morphology of the area.

I love this area.  It is beautiful.  Pretty much every day is more beautiful than the previous one and each night, I can sit on the beach and watch a gorgeous sunset.  Sadly this may be the last summer that I get to spend so much time here (usually about two to three months every summer).  But its great to know that this place is home, that I can come back when I want and this beauty will still be here if we preserve it.

The world is a beautiful place, I want to keep it that way, I can’t get enough of the amazing-ness of Earth.

Perhaps this little geology research project will help show people that even american students from a small private  Christian liberal arts college are interested in doing anything possible to save this region.  I’m working with a photographer and an ecologist, both from this area as well, and they are desperately doing everything possible to save this place, I respect them.  They inspire me.  I thank them for that.

Surfing, Geology, and Risk

Again, a long lapse of time since I last posted, but I’ve been busy.  Doing what?  Well surfing, writing geology reports on tertiary geology in Svalbard, and reading about risk management, yes random summer, I know.

I just finished reading the book “Sway: the irresistible pull of Irrational behavior.”  I was given this book by a friend when I expressed interest in learning more about Risk Management.  I have the possibility of working on projects with the head of Risk Management for my school and I want to know more about the subject.  Prior to reading Sway, I thought it would be a very boring subject, but learning about the irrational behaviors of humans is actually fascinating.  It really got me thinking of all the risky things we get ourselves into in order for a rush.  This rush, an instant burst of pleasure rules our society in so many aspects.  I was thinking about this while having a beer the other day, and thinking about some of the ads I’ve seen for beers.  Alcohol commercials and ads always tend to involve a guy surrounded by gorgeous women and in the middle of a party or on a beach.  All this speaks of how the companies play on our desire to have it all and at once.  We want instant sex, instant popularity, instant coolness.  The next day I went surfing and I realized how surfing, though quite risky, is contradictory to many of the things I’ve read about in terms of our desire for instant pleasure.  When you catch a wave, those seconds and minutes that you are riding it feels amazing, ultimate pleasure, one with nature and a total rush.  However, surfers spend long amounts of time waiting for that perfect wave, and after observing how other surfers and myself deal with this waiting, I realize that surfing isn’t about that burst of instant pleasure.  Surfers get so much pleasure out of just waiting for that perfect wave, the anticipation, the excitement, but also that peace, calm, and solitude of sitting there in the ocean admiring the beauty.

How can I tie this to geology?  Well as I study geology more and more, I am falling more in love with it –  I have already expressed this in several posts.  When I first started studying geology, I would just get excited if I found a beautiful fossil, or mineral sample, or a rare rock.  However now, even the “little,” and seemingly ”unimportant” things are fascinating.  In Svalbard, I found a boring green rock that I would not have picked up in my first years as a geology student.  However, I noticed that it was a sandstone, but a green one?  Why was it so green?  I took it back to southern france with me and studied it, and found that it is a glauconitic green sandstone from the Eocene age.  This sandstone was deposited right after the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, and marks a barrier in Svalbard.  Boring rock turned into an amazing find.  As I become more and more of a geologist, I find that Im not just craving that instant pleasure of a great find, but appreciating what I’m looking at while Im looking at it and realizing that life is not about those instant bursts of pleasure at all.

Back on the Mainland

So that’s it, Im back on the mainland, mainland Norway that is.  There was quite a bit gap where I did not write in there, but I was having blogger’s block.  It was quite frustrating, but mostly, I was just too preoccupied with everything that was going on in Svalbard.

Well the last post I had described my first day or two in Svalbard, but what happened in the middle of that??

Well it was a glorious mix of hiking up Sarkofagen (sarcophagus) mountain – named that because of the air, thats what it looks like, and its true, I just saw it from the air about 4 hours ago – dog sledding, kayaking, speedboating among icebergs and seals, and fossil hunting, and of course observing the absolutely amazing geology that is displayed all over Svalbard.  The picture on the heading of this blog is perhaps my favorite picture I have ever taken.  I know the skill involved is not much, Im sure someone will find something off balance or what not but to me, it is perfect:  I find it perfect because I feel it embodies my time in Svalbard, and how I feel most of the time when I travel.  Calm, yet deep.  Look at the iceberg floating on the left, something so huge (you can’t seen more than like 10 %) and yet its something so simple and calm but also so wondrous.  At points it was vivid blue with caves in it and at other places it was pure white.  Then look on the right, at Templet mount, this is an absolutely beautiful example of the geology of Svalbard.  Look at the fantastically straight strata of sandstones, shales, limestones (which contain some beautiful shell fossils, I picked some up, I will put photos up soon), and the gorgeous erosion patters and cliffs.  Also, those big landslide looking things are alluvial fans, of scree or eroded chunks of the wondrous strata above and fan out in that pattern…..a simple natural process that takes millions upon millions of years to form those layers, then erode them, to one day be redeposited!

After visiting temple mount we then went on to see the a HUGE glacier on the waterfront and observed massive chunks crashing into the sea.  It was beautiful and spectacular but also strange to thing that something that took thousands of years to form, was breaking up so fast in front of my eyes.  Not to be all “lets stop using oil, global warming is here,” on everyone, I actually want to work in the oil industry, its a fascinating one and there is so much potential to use the earth’s resources, but use them well, and help benefit both ourselves and the planet.  But back to the glacier, it was falling apart in front of my eyes.  If pieces that big and bigger fall off regularly, how on earth is there any of the thing left after say a year or something.  Its just crazy to think about that!

All in all I must say that I had an amazing time in Svalbard, and I will surely be returning several more times.  I find that it is a haven for me.  Beautiful geology, calm and quiet, but huge amounts of opportunities to ski, hike, snowmobile, observe things, and really be part of nature and feel like you are somewhere that not many people have seen.

I came back with 6kg of rocks, and that was because I was being conservative! Time to set them up in the house again!

Svalbard, my first taste

Traveling its the ultimate adventure sport. I do not mean nice neat little vacations where you go to egypt and have only guided tours and sit in your 5* hotel sipping drinks by the pool, and being too afraid to walk out into the streets of Cairo.

What do we look for in extreme adventure sports? A thrill, an unknown, and chance for our physical, mental and emotional strengths to be tested, right? Well true traveling should be like this……not in a package you buy. Why do I talk about this? Well keep reading.

Svalbard:

Here is Svalbard….an archipelago of Norwegian islands over Arctic cirle, between 71 and 80 degrees North. I was supposed to be here for a few weeks working on the excavation of the remains one of the largest marine dinosaurs ever found….yes quite cool. However, plans have gone mental, changing at least 15 times and leaving me on the edge of my seat just waiting to get to Svalbard. Well after over a month of waiting, I finally go on the plane from Bordeaux, France to Oslo, Norway and then onto Stavanger, where I would wait a few days and then head back to Oslo, and then finally to Longyearbyen, the worlds most northern airport. Well low and behold, the day before I was supposed to leave for Svalbard, plans changed AGAIN. Turns out the excavation was cancelled because of several major injuries due to problematic weather. Damn. But alas, I was still given the offer to come up to Svalbard. To do what? Well I had no idea. I was given the go ahead from Exxon (whom I was supposed to work on the dig for) to book a ticket and fly up here, do pretty much what I wanted and write some geological reports for them while I was here. Ok well that sounds cool, but for a second I was like wait….Im going to the Arctic….alone…..with nothing put a 20kg hiking pack and a smaller hiking day pack….I speak some Norwegian, but in mainland Norway, most people speak english……and Im supposed to just do whatever? Well then HELL YES!!!! What an amazing opportunity and what an awesome feeling, this is what I like to call TRUE traveling, you are totally leaving your comfort zone. Besides the fact that they have geology, alcohol and skiing up here, the rest was definitely out of my comfort zone…oh and its 20 F in summer….and no night.

Well anyways, I came up here and landed, got a bus up to where I was staying…the Polarriggen…..an old assemblage of miners cabins that are now for tourists….the offer nice hotels, but a miners cabin from 50 years ago (miner no included)….way more fun! After I breif, and I mean brief walk around in the little town, and a quick hike on the mountains around the Polarriggen, I decided to go grab a beer or two in town, just to unwind from the flight, and get my bearings and what not. So there I went, off to Svalbar (original name huh? but a good bar nonetheless…no a great bar!) and I have my drinks, starting with a nice light Red Stripe….its fresh, its clean, and its in a bottle that is really relaxing to hold….those who drink them know what I mean. Then I decided to move from Jamaican beer and try a Norwegian beer, Mack a nice ale from the world’s most northern brewery. And it was a good one to! I start talking with the Norwegian bartenders, one pretty girl named Elisabeth….an engineer from a local mining company, and the other Emmel, a cool guy from Oslo who packed up and moved to the arctic to hike and bartend….very cool indeed! Anyways, after an hour or two of talking with them, more and more people started flooding into the bar (close to midnight)…it was quite a site seeing loads of people decked out to go dancing and drinking, covered with ski jackets and the sun is still high in the sky. The drinking and talking continued and from about midnight to 2am , I met an awesome and very random slew of Norwegians, Icelandics, Dutch, and Danes all in Svalbard for various reasons and thus began and great night of trying the local brews….they make congac on Svalbard….crazy, I know!….we proceeded (me and a group of people I just met and I could not pronounce their names)…to the world’s most northern night club, which was a good time indeed, great music, great ambiance, and all the windows painted black to block out the sun….

After dancing until about 3am, a Norwegian guy who’s name was pronounce Pear, yes the fruit, had the great idea to go hiking, in the mountains around the TINY city and find a spot to hang out. So after a quick stop by the local store, yes it was open 24/7, where we grabbed some one-time mini BBQs and some polses (norwegian hot dogs) and kaviar….no not fancy, just an everyday thing here, we hiked up the mountain for about 2 hours, found a spot and proceeded to have an amazing time talking about music, travel stories, hook-ups gone wrong, and many other random things. Nobody mentioned we had no rifles to guard against polar bears, but hey thats all part of the “plan” The sun still high up in the sky, we realized it was now 6am and then decided to all go sleep and meet up and hike the next day. We all went back, and met up about 8 hours later and hiked for the next 6 and it was beautiful.

A plan for a drink or two turned into one of the best nights/days ever, hiking with random people and being surrounded my mountains, glaciers, reindeer and arctic foxes…..that is real traveling, and the most amazing feeling.

American Coffee Shop, French Cafe, or a Moroccan coffee sauna?

I love coffee.

I am not an “oh my god i love coffee so much, I can stay up so long with it, its best in a frap,” kind of coffee lover, but rather, a lover of the coffee culture.  What other drink permeates most cultures, yet is seen as something different by virtually everyone of of these other cultures?  What do I mean by all this?

Well, thing of the American coffee shops like Starbucks, or those little random coffee houses near where you live that you love so much, think Central Perk in Friends…..you know, weird and BIG mugs, big comfy plus chairs, hanging out, where students or young people go and just spend hours upon hours using free wireless Internet and drinking several cups of coffee, grabbing a muffin, asking for water, maybe a soda later…..you know.

Then I think of the French cafe, where you order a coffee and get a tiny little cup barely bigger than an espresso cup, on a little plate with a spoon and a wrapped parcel containing two small sugar cubes – 0h and milk is not brought to you unless you ask for it.  These cafes are the place where you have “rendevous” you don’t just hang out with friends there, you meet your friends there, have a quick coffee and then move to where you are actually wanting to go.  Whereas the American coffee shop is a comforting destination, the french cafe is a classy, nonchalant, way of getting to where you really want to go.

In nothern africa, coffee is served in little class cups with metal bases and poured from ornate silver “tea pot” looking things that are much taller, skinner and have a very long spout – and you pour the coffee from high up so you can oxygenate it – and you must of course, include lots of sugar to get your coffee 8/10ths of the way to the consistency of syrup.

In morocco, I sat in a sauna of coffee, yes a sauna.  A wooden room with steam and pool of coffee in the middle and coffee dripping from little holes in the roof, just talking to random men about life, people, camels, things like that…..yes a coffee sauna, weird I know – wait weird? No no no no no! DIFFERENT – better? I don’t know, worse? Definitely not, but different, enjoyable and beautiful.

In Honduras, you have coffee with every meal, does it keep you up? surprisingly no, but maybe its because you work so hard during the day that you are tired anyways.  But whenever you meet someone, you are greeted with a smile, a small scratched solid blue, or red, or green, or yellow cup that reminds you of what you drank out of when you played house in a sandbox at the age of 5, and the delicious aroma of freshly planted, harvested, cleaned, roasted, and brewed coffee – what else do you get? well just listen to the person that offered you the cup and you will get more out of that cup of coffee then you could have imagined.

So, what was the point of this post? Well I don’t know, these are thoughts I have that I like to write down and share, sometimes with people, if they read this, and if they don’t I still had a good time writing it and thinking about the culture that comes with coffee!

Hmmm, I think I will have to hit up Peru, and try and have coffee on some of the floating islands on the lake?  Or maybe Ethiopia, see how they take their coffee.  But for now, I’m going to go fill up my cup with coffee

Chateau de Versailles and Geology!?

So the past few days I have been traveling throughout London and then onto Paris with a friend of mine from school in Chicago.  Today we went to the Chateau de Versailles – one of the most famous palaces in the world because of its gigantic proportions and the utter beauty of it.  Build by Louis XIV  - King of France, known as the Sun King, it shows all the splendor of an absolute monarch, no expenses were spared in building it, and gold is everywhere!

The wealth is not just seen in the gold though! As I was walking through the castle I noticed a lot of the different stones used throughout the castle.  Obviously the inside is mainly marble, but not just white marble, beautiful red, pink, purple, black, and green marble penetrated by a large number of beautiful quartz veins as well as granitic intrusions. These beautiful, and some rare, marbles were first laid millions of years ago as billions of tiny sea creatures died and their shells deposited on the sea floor, were covered by other sediments and then lithified, forming limestone (white cliffs of Dover)  Next, huge metamorphism (depends on which marble we are talking about here) such as the colliding of continents or the intrusions of hot melted rock such as quartz and granite, caused the limestone to be metamorphosed into these beautiful rocks then used in the Chateau de Versailles!

It was a great experience because it showed me that the world is an amazing place.  The natural world and cycle causes tiny animals to be born, live, die, and become rock.  That rock is then changed through time as continents crash into each other and form mountains and then by man, this rock is quarried, shaped into beautiful statues, sculptures and walls and then polished to a perfect shine and make Versailles the most beautiful palace in the world!

Amazing!

World in Need

How can you not want to help this little kid?

I took this picture of a little Honduran boy sitting on the porch of his tiny house watching as his family’s crops were being destroyed and washed away by a raging tropical storm in October 2009.

San Ramon, Honduras

This spring I went down to the beautiful country of Honduras to go install a gravity fed water system in the remote village of San Ramon.  This is the second time I have gone down to install a water system, the first time was to Las Quebradas (which means the creeks).

The people of San Ramon were beautiful people.  They lived without many of the things we call necessary, such as water.  I’m not just talking about running water, I’m saying they straight up didn’t have any clean water for miles during the summer.  The village is high up in the jungled mountains of southern Honduras, at close to 4500 feet above sea level.  So in the summer…..no water, in the other seasons…..polluted water.

Working with some engineers and a some students (22 total) we were able to raise $60,000 and install a gravity fed water system that brings clean drinking water into the homes of 80 families.

What was most amazing about these people, was getting to speak with them about their lives.  Just asking them a simple question about the coffee they grow (which is the best coffee I have ever had!) would send them off on telling you everything about growing coffee and then bananas, beans, corn, mangoes, pineapples, it was amazing.  Things we think of as just fruits and a dose of caffine to keep up us at nigth while we study, to them, is their whole life!  They talked about coffee, rain, dirt, mangoes and sun the way we talk about cars, U2, Ipods, Starbucks, and hundreds of other things.

It was so refreshing to be down their and be with them, talk with them, play the beautiful game (soccer) with them – they beat us 5 to 4 – and play with the kids, who were amazing.

I miss Honduras, I would like to see the people of San Ramon right now and spend time with them sitting in the jungle having a cup of coffee.