Navajo

ahh sunday... a good day to sit at home and relax after yesterday's adventure: climbing navajo peak in the indian peaks wilderness with tim and cynthia. we got an early start (5:30) and hiked the four mile approach in a couple of hours. from the end of the trail, we headed across the talus fields (which are an interesting mix of natural talus and glaciers' morainal material) towards the base of the peak. the climb starts with a medium angle snow-climb. the snow slope is probably about 50 degrees, but the snow was perfect; nice styrofoam texture with a crispy crust. it's amazing to me how fast you can gain elevation on snow. you just sort of plod up the face, focusing on foot placement and balance (we all had packs on) and sooner or later you pause and take a look around. the sudden realization that you are hundreds of vertical feet from where you were, staring down a perfectly planar slope, can be vertiginous. ...that and the fact that you can see nebraska from that same vantage point. the snow climb ends in the saddle between najavo and it's neighbor, and the technical rock climbing begins. now, i said it was technical, which is a bit of a misnomer. the hardest pitch out of the two-or-three pitches there is 5.4, so it's not demanding... it's just cold and high and can be awkward if you're wearing plastic boots and a pack. we scrambled up to the climb and roped up... just as the weather was starting to really turn from clear to snowy. after topping out, we ate some food and headed down the descent route; off the south ridge of the mountain and into airplane gully. airplane is interesting because there's actually an old plane-wreck there. lots of twisted aluminum and distorted structure make it hard to identify what's what, or what's left, but it reminded me very much of reading old tintin comics where on several occasions there where rescue missions mounted to remote crash sites in high mountains. we finished out the descent and backtracked through the valley towards the car. as we walked, a wet snow fell languidly from the clouds above, muting everything in the valley. the spruces took on a familiar look and brush came alive with subtle yet distinct lavender and sage colored hues.

as we reached the car at dusk we were wet and tired but in high spirits... it's not too often that you get to spend an entire day on an alpine adventure with friends.






~t

lenticular soup

riding into school today was very nice... chilly for sure, but nice. the main thing was that the entire front-range was capped with lenticular clouds. altocumulus standing lenticularis... the result of stable moist air that's forced into a standing compression wave pattern after flowing over mountainous terrain, is always cool to see. here's a shot from the cu-boulder web-cam... they were a lot better earlier this morning.


~t

aspen

~t

creationism

kent hovind is nuts. someone just sent me a link to one of his 2 hour long lectures... the videos of which you can watch on the net. this guy is a creationist through and through... with all the pompous self importance you would expect from someone who thinks they are enlightened and everyone else in the educated world is not only incorrect in their assumptions about the nature of physical reality, but also stupid for it. he sells himself as a humble and god-fearing man, but is anything but. he tries to be funny, but succeeds at only the most sophomoric levels. i do recommend reading one of the articles on his site (pick one, they're all equally entertaining)... i still have yet to speak with a creationist who can logically and intelligently come up with an explanation for their beliefs that allow the existence of things like nuclear physics... things we have not only theorized but observed and practiced (nuclear fission wouldn't work if certain uranium isotopes weren't unstable, for instance). anyway... take a look...

~t

(*&@!#$*&

i don't hate math... i hate it when professors are incompetant at writing understandable assignments... relying on mathematic expressions to fill in for their inability to explain things in words. things like, "recall the simple analysis we made to develop the rayleigh number" (said analysis was something like 3 pages long). i will n e v e r take another class from this professor.

~T

french press

ahhhh...

i made a brilliant decision today: i brought my small one-cup french press into the office. it now occupies the shelf next to my desk. though i relish the opportunities that walking to the coffee shop offers (procrastination-wise), it's nice not to spend two or three dollars everytime i want to drink some coffee. i think i finally realized that i wasn't ever going to drop $400 on a nice espresso machine, so this little $20 press will suffice.

~t yeah... the picture is taken on my cell-phone. I still don't have a real memory card for it, so this isn't even the full resolution.

*thud*

... the sound of my head hitting the desk. it's almost 2pm on tuesday and for some reason i am exhausted... or unmotivated.... or something. i am trying to get through some homework for my class (it seems to be less odious than the last assignment was) but i am having a real problem focusing on anything in particular. i slept for something like 10 hours last night too...

anyway... back to work (if i can concentrate on it)

~t

fixie

so i submitted some photos of the fixed-gear bike i built, along with a description, to the fixed gear gallery. you can see the post here.

~t

kamikaze

yet another fool freshmen attempted a kamikaze cycle-run at me on my morning commute to school today. this one was even more ridiculous that the previous suicide-run made by the girl on her bike (read below), in that they were on the opposite side of a very wide path... 20 feet or so. as we were about to pass each other, he suddenly swerved accross the entire width of the road and cut right in front of me... running right off the road and into the grass. it was a narrow miss, with his bike nearly brushing my front wheel. i couldn't quite tell what the hell was going on... if he was out of control or just crazy, but i held my toungue (for the most part) and continued on my way, since there was no contact of bike or body.

~t

triptych

chicago-o'hare, dec/2004

~t

old pics

these are oldies, but goodies... thought i'd post them after recently rediscovering them....

~t

double cortado

wikipedia defines the cortado as:

A cortado is nothing more than an espresso "cut" (from the Spanish and Portuguese cortar) with a small amount of warm milk to reduce the acidity. It is popular in both Spain and Portugal, as well as throughout Latin America, where it is drunk in the afternoon. In Cuba, it is known as a cortadito.

so... imagine my reaction when a new barista at the local (and formerly my favorite) cafe on the hill handed me a large cup overflowing with foamed milk. I feel like mugatu complaining about foam ("i feel like i'm taking crazy pills!!") but what a pain when all the good people you know at a coffee shop suddenly disappear... and are replaced by people who think that dunkin' donuts coffee is actually palatable.

speaking of unpalatable... the attitude above pretty much fits nicely into that category. anyway... it's monday afternoon and my caffeine hit was supposed to be fueling my reading of another scientific paper (energy expenditure during cataclysmic flooding) but is instead fuelng this rant against ignorant baristas.

plans this week are pretty minimal, but the weekend will be spent mountain-biking at buffalo creek near evergreen, co. in fact, the first day will be spent working on trail maintenance; the second will be all riding. the whole shebang is catered and is supposed to be a lot of fun. the trails at buff-creek are super-fast and flowing singletrack on hardpack, so on sunday i will be concentrating on just having fun, rather than pushing the envelope. all, of course, in the interest of avoiding another high-speed expulsion from the designated trails. the nice thing about buff-creek though is that there aren't really any cliffs, so the worst that could happen during a crash might be an encounter with a cactus.

~t

math-ese

hey all,

i just got finished with an assignment for a class based on the physics and chemisty of the solid earth. think about things like radioactive nuclide decay rates and the density structure of the deep earth as a function the entropic state of crystaline atomic organization and you'll get an idea of what this class is like. needless to say, understanding (or at least explaining) these kinds of ideas requires a fair amount of math: multi-variable calculus, quantum mechanics, etc. i, for one, suck at math.

i was complaining about this fact to someone and she (a chemist by training, and daughter of a math teacher) answered back with the inevitable 'but math is the universal language' bit. ok, ok, fair enough... yes, math is to a certain degree universal... inasmuch as there are certain undeniable truths in nature (the physics of thermodynamics in four dimensions, for instance) which have discrete and absolute mathematical descriptions. this fact however has no bearing on my frustrations with my own inability to solve differential equations to save my life. I offer another excerpt from an email which illustrates my feelings:

-------------------------------
yeah yeah yeah... I've heard the whole "universal language" thing before. if traveling the world has taught me anything, it's that no language is universal, and that no language makes sense unless you speak it. i'm sort of like a foreign exchange student who still sucks at speaking a certain language because i haven't found a way to really learn it yet and i can get away with broken speech most of the time. the frustrating thing is that i almost always understand the process or idea behind the problem, and can usually jump to the goal without the benefit of an analytical path, at least qualitatively. of course i understand that calculus offers elegant solutions and descriptions of most natural phenomena, if not the only solutions in some cases. i just tend to feel that math in general should not be used as the sole method of explaining a system, since math (or at least an analytical equation) doesn't always provide the most illuminating explanation to a majority of people. i'm sure i've mentioned in the past that i bounced around between things like philosophy, literature and architecture before settling on geology. i finally went into geology because I felt like it was something that i could understand implicitly and wouldn't always require mathematical abstractions to explain (but still offered a chance to think critically about science and complex systems)... in my case, math is merely a tool to offer some quantification to what I view as a largely qualitative and intuitive field... one that is inherently interesting to humankind and has affected and shaped our societies since literally the beginning of time. for me, geology is the study of where we live... what processes shape our world and what that means to people all over the planet.

perhaps hate is too strong a word for the way i feel about advanced math... it's just frustrating to me, much the way it is frustrating to not be able to talk to people in their own language where ever i happen to be.
--------------

~t

high speed sage

i know i've been slacking on keeping this blog updated, but i've been busy having fun and spending time outside instead. below is an excerpt from an email to a friend about my activities over this last weekend.

------ ~t

... I was actually in Salida, CO over the weekend on another mountain biking trip. I (along with a good-size group of folks) rode the "Monarch Crest Trail" which follows part of the continental divide. the ride starts at about 11,300 feet and works its way up to around 12,000. unfortunately the mountains had just received their first dusting of snow so that particular morning it was cloudy (no view) and cold (30 degrees?). as we rode along the ridge crest, more snow and small hail came in and very suddenly there were a few lightning strikes and thunder off our left side. so... we're all totally exposed above treeline, in the snow, and in serious danger of getting struck by lightning... needless to say we all decended the next mile or so as fast as possible to get down into the trees again. It was exciting to say the least, but as soon as we got down to about 10,000 feet again it was sunny and warm, and the light was shining through the aspens as the trail wound down a long valley along a nice stream. By the end of the ride I was pretty tired, but happy to have gone on the ride. That was saturday... yesterday there was another, shorter, ride that was a lot of fun. I almost made it through the entire weekend without incident, but literally less than a mile from the end of the ride I had a very high-speed encounter with a lot of dirt, rocks and sage-brush. I was cruising (~ 20-25 mph) down a smoothly twisting section of trail on the final descent and somehow got my wheel out of sorts with the edge of the trail around a sweeping corner. for a second or so it was touch and go; maybe I could pull out or maybe I would go down, but once I crashed it was very hard and fast... I basically just saw a blur. what actually happened (as far as I can tell) was I went kind of over the bars, kind of off the side and straight into a section of loose dirt and small to mid-size rocks (thank god it was all loose stuff) that had a lot of sage-brush growing around. I rolled a few times but mostly went into everything face and arms first. I couldn't really see anything (eyes closed!) but there was an overwhelming aroma of sage as I tore through something like 15-20 linear feet of brush. I got up and besides a few minor scratches on my cheeks and jaw, a slightly bloody knee and a gently abraded hip I was totally fine. I was so stunned that I couldn't tell immediately if I was OK or if I was bleeding from the ears and missing teeth (I wasn't). The best part was walking 30 feet back up the trail to where I first got into trouble and following the furrow in the dirt and trail of broken sage branches to where I came to a stop.
-----------

of course the best part of this whole thing was being able to walk away relatively unscathed. i spent the next twenty minutes or so riding out the wave of endorphin and adrenaline induced euphoria and blabbing ceaselessly about the experience as i picked sagebrush twigs out of my shorts and hair. it was also lucky that it was kind of chilly on the trail so i was wearing a couple layers of clothes including some loose nylon shorts and a long sleeve jersey. believe or not i'm actually improving as a rider... i'm just pushing my riding more; riding faster and harder trails and almost considering the purchase of a full-face helmet at some point in the future.

~t

the plague of the u-grads

today, monday the 21st of august, marks the first day the u-grads return to campus. these undergrads may pay monies to the university that ultimately pay my salary and tuition, but they create plenty of problems too. wandering around aimlessly with confused looks on their faces, they travel in packs and at least for this week are sporting surly looks and parents in tow. they move like schools of fish or spooked rabbits, darting this way and that and have utterly no concept of the idea of a bicycle path.

this rant, in case you haven't guessed it already, is brought on the the two bloody knees and scuffed right palm i suffered at the hands (and wheels) of an oblivious student rider mere minutes ago.

leaving the office today i was zipping through campus on the bike path... moderating my speed when necessary, but also trying to escape the tangles of 18 year olds and parents before i was overtaken like a character in a cheap zombie flick. near the freshman dorms i came upon a fairly common scene; a pedestrian was (wisely) walking up the far left (my left) side of the path ahead... a biker was coming up from behind them (and towards me) and gave the pedestrian an extremely wide berth... so wide that she was in my lane. i, being used to the bike-paths and the fact that most people in boulder are extremely used to and comfortable with bikes, decided to avoid the oncoming biker and pedestrian by taking the only open path available to me... through the middle. i adjusted my line with ample room (read about 50-60 feet) for the other people involved to realize they were totally fine, as long as they stayed moving as they were... in a straight line along their respective paths. oh no... too easy! as i closed the gap between us to about 15 feet, the biker passed the pedestrian and cut directly into my path, cutting off the pedestrian and generally buggering the whole deal.

I set my brakes and threw the bike into a sideways skid, using a little body english to adjust the line of the skid so that i might go wide and avoid the oncoming biker, who was now coming to a halting stop directly in the middle of my path.

if any of you saw the crash in stage 16 of the tour this year (the one that ended in a fractured femur, broken clavicle, and masses of torn flesh) which sent three riders flying either over or into a guard rail, you would have seen basically how this whole thing ended. by the time i reached the other biker they had positioned their very sturdy mountain-bike in such a way that when i slid into its wheel my bike stopped dead and i went essentially ass-over-tea-kettle, over the bars of my very light road-bike, and landed behind them. my first thoughts were, "ok... don't explode... maybe this person really is clueless..." which was quickly replaced by, "jeez, this is the second time i've crashed with my laptop strung across my back... i hope it's still fine" (it is) and then, "damn... now i probably have to talk to this person for a few seconds".

the discussion was short... basically:

other biker: "sorry, are you ok?"
me: "i appear to be... "
other biker: - blank stare -
me: "... i was a little confused when you cut across.."
other biker: - blank stare -

... i just got back up, brushed myself off and left.

the moral? pay some attention to the other people on the path. learn the rules and etiquette of the paths... and for god's sake, when you pass a pedestrian, be aware of oncoming traffic, and if you can't wait to pass (or make it around that person before oncoming bikes reach you) leave enough room in the oncoming lane to allow the other rider to pass. it's identically analagous to passing traffic in a car. if the same thing had happened in cars, we'd both probably be dead. i think i'm going to ride my mountain bike tomorrow.

~t

tails from the butte

below is my account of the saddle-snapping i eluded to in the previous post. I got an email from a concerned family member/reader/rider and so i clarified... i thought i'd share.

~t
_______________________________________________
yeah... the saddle snapping experience was one of those life-flashing-before-your-eyes moments. basically it played out like this:

we rode a trail called, simply, "401". the ride to the trail starts with a 6 mile climb from one of the valleys leading out from town, up to about 11300 feet. then some steep single-track leads to the crest of the actual 401 trail. the next 6-7 miles is a hair-raising, death-defying and all too fun descent along an 8-12 inch wide single-track that sort of skirts the side of the mountain. the trail occasionally crosses small drainages... and it was at one of these drainages where the trail took a small series of three turns around the miniature gorge and gully where i happened to be carrying a little too much speed through the corner. on the last left hand corner (the exit was actually up a little lip or jump-shaped ramp. the slope dropped off to the righthand side) i unwittingly launched my ride into space. expecting the trail after the lip of the ramp to continue in the same line (it didn't), i realized my mistake mid-air and pulled the bike back towards the trail as much as possible, and as soon as my front wheel missed the trail i exited the cockpit post-haste, in what the only witness to this mishap described as, "probably the most well executed front-flip / rolling fall in a dangerous situation" he had ever seen. essentially i flipped off the bike and landed basically ass/feet first on the very steep and (thankfully) well vegetated slope immediately preceding the rocky and precitous drop into the drainage gully, and slid about 10-15 feet down-slope with my arms spread out behind me to stabilize and steer myself. my bike (since i had flipped over the front of it) came down behind in a fairly controlled manner and i was actually able to grab it and stop it from finishing the ride without me.

so, all in all it was a near tragedy that was averted through tuck-and-roll reflexes and a whole lot of luck. i did hurt my calf muscle in when i smashed it into either a rock or hit it on the bike during my ejection, and my ultralight hundred dollar saddle suffered from a snapped nose, but those are acceptable consequences considering what could have happened.

i haven't really gone on a serious ride on that bike since then, mostly because i don't have a saddle on it anymore... but i'm looking forward to replacing it very soon and getting back out on the trail.

~t

full house

hey all..

so my new house is once again full. chris just got back from field work in the sierras on saturday night and balance among the sexes in the house has been restored. no other time was this more evident than last night when kristen and erin were watching gymnastics on tv. their show finished and then chris and i sat down to watch a some action sci-fi flick with robots and guns. see? yin and yang.

figure revisions should be more or less finished, so this week looks like it'll be a push to try to get my sections finished, or at least (most?) start on writing my abstracts for a.g.u. so that i can present some findings in december when i go to the meeting in san francisco.

i need to get out on my mtn bike again soon... ever since i snapped my saddle in crested butte i've been riding road exclusively. not that i don't love my road bikes, but the dirt is calling. a new saddle, some tlc and i should be back out on the trails.

still no pics of the new bike, but soon!
~T

ps: i think it's obvious that i haven't been doing much that's really exciting or new recently... the tone of this blog has steered very far from the earlier writings during my stint in taiwan... i'll see if i can't try to pull back towards that type of experiential writing soon.

thank modem

ahhhhh.....

.........internet.......



..........mmmmmmm.....




yes.. i finally got the internet connection set up at our new house and as such, this post is coming to you from the cushy comfort of our livingroom couch. the tv and all its many (many) channels is radiating warm mind-numbing rays from the corner.

this week so far has been rush rush... figures for a new paper need to be revisited and new data needs to be considered... and whose job is it to add new data and analyze it and then integrate it into the existing figures?? yep... mine.

when i'm avoiding work however, i'm making great strides in my fixed gear bike project. over the last few afternoons i've built the wheels and today i finally got the whole thing together. so it's all in one piece, but not totally done. still to be worked on: wheels need to be finish-trued and dished, and re-spaced for chain-line. other than that and a few dabs of grease, i should be all set! pictures soon.

~t

sweet disarray

mmm.... still getting over the move. finally back in the office on a regular basis after what felt like a month of absence. it was only about four days, but for all the hassle and murgatroid that i dealt with....

lessee... the uhaul location we went to in order to rent a medium size (14') truck to move was out of medium trucks that day. i ended up driving a monstrous 26' diesel behemoth... which also happened to have a manual transmission. then our roomate also had a 26' container parked at our house. we all moved these two truck-loads of stuff into the garage into what was essentially a huge pile of shite. the next several days were spent painting and cleaning and moving stuff from the garage into the house and our respective rooms.

this weekend was just more of the same. moving, arranging, getting things like trashbags and dish-soap. hopefully this week will be less stressful and all-consuming than last.

I'm starting the fixed gear project bike now... paint so far looks amazing (final color choice? - gold flake and pepto pink!)

~t

stupidity personified

yep... that's me. i just moved... i have no access to internet in my home (this post coming to you from the patio at cafe roma) and no land line, so my cell phonw was my only method of reliable communication. then my battery died in the middle of a conversation, and then it dawned on me that i had packed my cell phone's charger................. somewhere.

i searched and i searched again, but i'm confident that i will not find it until i can really spread things around and put stuff away. ...so i may be incommunicado for a little while.

~t

kick butte pics

hey all,

just got a link to some pics from the weekend... before posting these i should give photo-credit to jason vogel... thanks jason for being the camera-man!

-getting ready to descend some amazing singletrack-

-resting in an alpine meadow-

-andria on the 401 trail-

-we couldn't wipe the smiles off our faces-

-couldn't ask for a better campsite-

~t

monday (tuesday)

ah...

back from a great weekend in crested butte, co. sitting at my desk, staring at the work i should be doing, and opting to post to this blog instead.

c.b. was unbelievable... i got to do the type of riding i've always imagined colorado to be known best for: winding single-track through aspen forests and alpine meadows, screaming descents and seemingly never-ending climbs. visions of the maroon bells mountains and elk mountains surrounded us in dizzying panoramas from sunrise to sunset. alpine meadows of black-eyed susans and fireweed added some warmth to the saturated palate of verdant green and sky blue... such a contrast from the adobe and ochre tones of the front-range. about 80 miles on trails and dirt-roads in 72 hours.

after a weekend like that, tuesday feels like monday, and i know that this week is going to go by very fast. chris and i are moving to the new house next monday which is going to be a hassle. i have a lot of work to get done before the start of the new semester, and i have the impression that is going to start a lot sooner than i'd like.

anyway, back to work now. more posts when i get some pics. random fact: since i started tracking visits to this site some months ago, activethrust has received more than 2300 views from hundreds of people on five continents. thanks all!

kick butte

hey all,

i'm heading off early tomorrow morning to go mountain biking and camping this weekend with some other folks from boulder... for epic rides, good times, and hopefully some hi-jinx in crested butte.

my bike is runnin' smooth, i've got a spare helmet, my gear is already in the car and i predict a somewhat sleepless night due to the anticipation of it all. it's been ages since i actually pitched my tent to camp somewhere... it's about time i broke it out and made use of it. i haven't even really been out to explore the rockies to any respectable degree yet either, so it's high time i went on an adventure like this. yes, i'm bringing cameras (3) so hopefully there will be decent pics upon my return.

it's also the first time i will have driven my car on a trip of more than a hundred miles... i don't foresee any problems, but fingers crossed! full report when i get back.

~t

"Valence"

this is freaking cool. "Valence" (and i only capitalize it because it is a proprietary name in this case) is a fascinating tool for visualizing vast quantities of data and the organization of relationships within data. think space-age 3d visualization that is self-organizing, self-optimizing, and dynamic. i highly recommend a tour of ben fry's website... he (as the system's creator) has a much better and more detailed explanation of how this works, as well as a 'real-time' example of this thing in motion. i immediately started thinking about how this could be applied to visualizing spatial or temporal relations in earth-processes in order to assess potential hazard or interesting trends in tectonic organization. death to spread-sheets and data-bases!

~t

monday

whee!

today finds me grinding out vectors on cross-sections. most likely, this has already been done, but the work is tightly locked away somewhere in the chinese petroleum corporations fire-walled computers in miaoli, taiwan. and so, i get to do it all over again. below is a pic of my work space... this is the most organized it's been in weeks (the pic is taken with my new camera-phone!). it's scorching hot outside, which makes working in my air-conditioned office a bit of a blessing. i even came into work on sunday, just to escape the record highs.

unexpectedly, my abdominals are sore today from doing repeated back-flips off an embankment on boulder creek yesterday. i left work a bit early to go swim in the creek and cool off a little. the embankment was really just a concrete wall, some 5-6 feet above the water, which pales a little in comparison to the slate waterfalls i'm used to jumping off of in upstate ny... but the water was cool and clear which is what really matters i guess. I had lots of fun either way!



~t

mo' racing

hey all...

it's hot! it's supposed to be 98 today. it was 93 yesterday. yesterday (and every wednesday) was (of course) short track mtb racing at the research park. since it was so bloody hot, and i wasn't feeling like giving myself heat-stroke, i opted to attack the course with my cameras and see if i couldn't improve upon my previous efforts.

below are a few shots, which are infinitely better than the last ones. the effect of speed is acheived by a panning shot at a 60th of a second at close range to the subject. basically i stood perilously close to racers as they carved through a tight turn and followed their arc with my camera as i released the shutter. enjoy!









~t

waiting

ugh... still waiting to hear back from landlord about getting the new house. hopefully things will be tied up this evening, but who knows.

i've been really tired recently, not quite sure why. maybe it's just a lack of motivation because i have been extremely sloth-like recently. race this afternoon, but ti's supposed to be about 95 degrees, so i may just try shooting pictures again... i have no interest in giving myself a heat-stroke. as i'm writing this (at 11am) i'm planning on heading into the office, but first to the coffee shop for some much needed coffee.

~t

crazy adidas people

hey all...

in case you haven't seen these, check out the new adidas adicolor films. they are basically free-form studies on one of 7 colors (well 5, plus black and white), each one done by a different production crew or director. for the last couple of years, adidas has been pushing the involvement of independent film in their advertising (which is awesome).

in this case, the adicolor shorts are very different from one another, ranging from whimsical cartoons to suicidal noir. below is a screen-shot of 'pink', which has been getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere.. if you go the the page, you can access the other shorts by clicking on the colors to the left.



~t

finally

ah... i finally got my film developed from the short track races. unfortunately, the combination of high-grain film, overcast skies and no polarizing filter gave me some lackluster pics. below i've posted the few i tried to save. again, short track racing is the off-road version of a criterium race on the road, and the track often doubles back so that riders are passing very close to each other heading in opposite directions.





~t

last week

hey all,

first, a short quote that says a lot about the positions of modern governments on 'fixing' today's problems:

"solving the problem of traffic by building more roads is like loosening your belt to solve the problem of obesity." (the suzuki foundation)


the title, "last week" is in reference to the fact that i've been meaning to post a lot of things recently, but just haven't gotten around to it. mid-summer-lull i guess, or more to the point, "mid-summer-lull-laziness". so... in the past week, i've had several friends come to visit. in fact, everyone came at once, so space was tight in our apartment to say the least. greg even spent one night sleeping on the porch. in a related (sort of) string of thought, chris and i have been seeking new shelter. we've found a couple of new grad students who were looking for basically the same things as us, which in a nutshell is a big, cool house with wood floors, a back yard, and hopefully (hopefully!!) a gas range. that last thing is nearly impossible to find in houses out here, at least ones that go for around two thousand a month. anyway, that search continues. i also took photos at last weeks short-track mtb race, and will be taking the rolls in to get developed today. oh yeah.. i finally got paid!! i haven't bought beer for quite a while... that's on my "to-do" list for this afternoon. hmmm... in other 'news', i'm in the process of building / restoring (it's more like gutting, but close enough) an old (mid-80's) steel lugged road bike. these are things you can pick up in dumpsters or yard-sales for around ten dollars. the ultimate goal will be a beautiful-in-its-simplicity single speed, fixed gear town-bike. "fixies" are great; the bike is essentially a track bike. a ride that's boiled down into a bicycle's most basic components: frame, wheels, chain, seat, handlebars. that's it! no brakes, no gears, no free-wheeling hubs, nothing to clutter the simple form of two wheeled transportation. i fully intend to put a "one less car" sticker on the frame... i've found myself resenting my car more and more in recent months; it uses gas, creates carbon-monoxide, it's a pain to park, it's basically one more THING that demands my attention and money. don't get me wrong... i love my audi. i like the sound of the 2.8 liter v6 as it approaches six thousand rpm when i accelerate, i like the heated leather seats and i like the fact that i can drive it when looking at new houses, where the symbolism of driving a nice car immediately imparts a certain aire of financial responsibility, hopefully improving the home-owner's view of me as a desirable tennant. that may be total bs though... who knows.

check out: fixed gear bike gallery

~t

check it

hey all,

i've just run across an awesome photo site: waxypoetic which i think everyone should go check out... this dude's shots are pretty cool.

in other news, i will be building my fixed-gear track/city bike soon. look for pics of the project in a while... it should be fun. i really want a beater bike that will get me around town, but won't get stolen (hopefully). fixes are something i've been thinking about getting into for a while now. i've just picked up a decent old steel lugged frame (centurion) with parts at a garage sale for a good price, and that will be the base of this project... it will start slow but hopefully get interesting soon.

~t

broken toe

i broke my toe. it is swollen and purple, and makes me limp when i walk. i was jumping up in the air to catch a frisbee, and when i landed running with bare feet, i folded my toe in half. maybe i didn't actually fracture it, but i definitely did something bad to it. at least i can still ride my bike just fine.

~t

broke as m.c. hammer

... and that's pretty broke. i just checked my bank balance today and i am poor. so poor, i can't even afford the two last letters in the word "poor"... i'm just po'

i have about a week's supply of staples (pasta and rice) and maybe a little bit of cheese and some celery. between the half a pint of cream and bottle of salad dressing in the fridge, i might even have enough to meet my fat/caloric intake needs. i don't even get paid on the usual day this month, i have to wait until three days later.

this is all due to two things. rebuilding my mountain bike at the beginning of the month (~1000) and paying off my credit line on my card (~1000). now my credit line is back up, and i'm still screwed. that nice tax refund didn't help out quite as much as i would have liked.

to add to the sting, i just spent 17 dollars today on a race-entry fee and license for the boulder racing short-track mtb series, which is held right accross the street from my house. that at least was a lot of fun, even though i got my arse handed to me by kids half my age. people here in boulder are f-a-s-t. it doesn't help that i haven't raced in two years, and i haven't trained to race in about ten. oh well.. it was lots of fun anyway.

i even shot a roll of film, and hopefully got some really cool shots, but i don't have any money to even develop the film, so y'all will have to wait on those pics too. talk about living at your limit... try to do the responsible thing (paying off credit) and you get totally hosed. i miss my old job where i actually had a salary

:(

~t

control panel

we have this picture posted in our office... i always get a little chuckle out of it so i thought i'd post it up here too...



...this had to have been made by some disgruntled (male) engineer who's capable of explaining complicated electrical phenomena on a subatomic level, but is completely clueless when it comes to members of the opposite sex.

~t

lagtime

hi all,

sorry i haven't been keeping up with the posts recently, there's been plenty going on, but i just haven't been spending any 'quality' time in front of the computer recently. i've been busy trying to paw through lots of science journal papers and also busy watching the world cup games... i just need to take some time at some point to write a few updates.


soon,
~t

HOT HOT HOT!!!

uh.... today was ridiculous. 100 degrees in denver, almost the same here.




did have a lot of fun though. after work, a ton of people from the department made it to the southern sun brewery for a going-away-bash for my office mate and co-taiwan-research partner brian, before he leaves for taipei for two months, this saturday. i've already been trying to get him hooked into the taipei-network of friends i've made over the last few months, and apparently he is in for several culinary treats... including, "spicy pot" and/or the goose-meat ("er-ro") joint I like so much in mid-town taipei.


hope things go well... and, regina, if you catch this post... brian is totally up for anything you can throw at him... not to mention I've asked him to drag ling-ho, shao-yi and po-no out on the town at some point... preferably out for a night of boozing, taipei style.


hehehehehe

~t

hot!

weather today:



~t

summer slowness

hey all,

summer is in full swing, which seems to mean that the endless days blend together and no-one really knows what the date is.

that being said, summer in boulder is a lot of fun. outside the lab, my palinspatic restorations, and other office related activities, the environs of boulder provide for just about anything you want to do. today i went for a mountain bike ride (the second real ride since rebuilding my bike) which ended up being about 25 miles long. on my way up the boulder creek path i passed by runners and people tossing frisbees, and numerous kayakers enjoying the uncommonly high flow in boulder creek. once up into betasso preserve i encountered other groups of riders, blasting down the hairy trails in the canyon. it struck me that boulder is very much a playground... catering to the "adrenaline junkies" who love all the same sports i do. i think i had an ear-to-ear grin on my face the entire time i was riding, and it seemed obvious that everyone else i saw out playing was enjoying the day as much as me.

a kayaker surfs a hole in boulder creek

~t

cubicle wars

heya,

so this post isn't literally about cubicle wars, at least not yet, but it does have to do with the unfolding drama of office usage in my department.

our building proctor unilaterally handed down a mandate declaring that all couches / comfortable chairs in graduate or non-tenure-track faculty and staff offices need to be removed by august... all in the name of the efficient usage of space. this decree has sparked a flurry (or blizzard) of office emails pointing out the myriad reasons this is a horrible idea, not to mention a band-aid fix to a much more deeply seated problem which would no doubt remain after all comfy seating arrangement were removed. i (and all of my office mates... yes all ten of them) get the feeling we are going to be asked to share our already crowded office with several more people in the coming year, and couch or no couch, sticking more people in our office is just a bad idea.

~t

new anime!

hey all,

i know a few of you love anime, and some of you know that i also have a deep appreciation for particularly stylish and well executed shows. now, from the makers of cowboy bebop comes a really cool new series called, "samurai champloo". with a similar yet more polished visual style to 'bebop' but set in 1800's japan (to a hip-hop soundtrack) the show promises some interesting and somewhat mysterious storylines.

check out the official site for more if you're interested....

'nite!
~t

ugh

i think this is the first time i have ever experienced a muggy and annoyingly hot day in boulder.

my meeting with the research group went quite well yesterday. it took two hours, and it was a little rushed... it could have taken three. all in all though, i showed them some pretty significant data and had a much more cohesive presentation than i originally thought. we've more or less discovered something new about which faults are active in controlling the uplift and deformation we see in puli, which gives us a much tighter window in which to focus our attentions in the future. the pièce de résistance was karl's accolade at the close of the meeting, "nice job".

as a self-reward, i went out for happy hour at two places downtown, and ended up having one or two martinis too many... while returning home with two bikes in hand (i was walking both my own and a friends bike) i managed to trip myself up and ended in a heap somehow underneath both bicycles. classic.

i think i'm going for a swim now....

~t

laborless day

so far, labor day has certainly been without labor... at least on my end. the weather this weekend has been wonderful however, and i have been trying to take advantage of that fact. sunny and mild during the day, and curiously cool and quite windy at night.

....

so, i started this post on monday, but it's taken me all of 4 days to actually finish it. that should be a pretty good indication of more or less how productive i've been this week. i've been meaning to respond to emails (david, that's an awesome brook trout you hooked!), read my mail (i'm accumulating another towering pile), and not least of all get work done for my meeting with my research group tomorrow afternoon (it's going to be a long night i think). oh well. the weather has been so beautiful recently and my motivation levels have been at an all time low... sort of like academic a.d.h.d.. it took me something like 5 hours today to plot 30 fracture planes on stereonets and do some basic kamb-contouring of the data... which should have taken me a quarter of that time. instead i was constantly side-tracked by internet diversions and trips to the fridge (only to find that something tasty had not materialized since the last time i checked it).


as soon as i get through this meeting tomorrow, i should be at somewhat of a 'cruise control' point. i can get cranking on my summer project without worrying about trying to tie up loose-ends from my research over the last few months.


....and of course this posting is yet another way for me to avoid work, but at least now this will be out of my head.

~t

missing:

my relatively brand-new urban/dirt jumping bike. stolen sometime this morning from the foyer below my front porch. i hope whatever lame jerk took my bike breaks his damn neck on it. still, it's just a bike and i do have three other bikes to ride.



it still stings though....



~t

this is boulder

~t

rockies v. jays

hey all...

lazy sunday today, with thoughts of narnia and cupcakes...

spent last night at 'coors field' (denver's baseball stadium) watching my first major-league game in almost 20 years. watching the game is a lot more fun now that i know the basic rules of the game, but baseball is still just not that interesting to behold. it also didn't help that canada got their arse handed to them, the game wasn't exactly suspenseful with the jays scoring only one run.

anyway, the real showcase at the game was the sunset. coors field is situated such that the view over the bleachers at left field provides game-goers with a panoramic vista of the colorado front range and the snow-capped rockies... the sun set over the mountains and the scattered thunderhead clouds over the plains lit up in different shades depending on their altitudes and for a while it seemed like no one was watching the game any more.

the big thing to come out of all this is that now i know exactly what time to head out with my camera this evening, to see if the show will repeat itself....

~t

gloriously dry

ahhhh.....

i think i'm finally 100% back to colorado time. i'm not coughing anymore, and even my heart isn't thudding from the altitude nearly as much as a week ago. three more weeks and my red-blood-cell count should be as high as ever, so i'm making sure to eat plenty of iron and protein rich foods... reminds me i should go get a steak to cook tonight.

did some good work today, maps, papers, etc... i've also finally waded through my huge stack of four month old mail that had been occupying an entire corner of the living room floor since january. the past few days (and the last week or so in general) has provided more sunny, dry, wonderful days than my entire stay in taiwan... i've been just riding my bike everywhere through town and marveling at the beauty of this place again.

so yeah.. i miss all my friends in taipei and even the bustle of the city, but the view of the snow-capped rockies every morning makes my return to boulder "bearable".

i tried to take a few pics in the last few days, but i have yet to get any off the camera. some pics of prarie-dogs, folks at our party the other night (which by the way was fun, but due to many reasons was a very low-key event... attendance was only in the 20-ish range), and maybe some random shots of boulder around town. we'll see.....

~t

film is great

hey all...


it's been a few days since my last post and i am finally starting to feel more like a normal human after readjusting to colorado time a little bit.

i just went to the camera store yesterday to develop several rolls of film that i had sitting in my camera case. it's been a while since i've shot with film and i forgot how much i like the results. below are a few of those pics.. which go back all the way to last november when i was in utah... espresso at the danshui cafe, regina throwing pottery, a bridge near tian mu, emi on the beach, wood in the canyonlands.











~T

back!

yes... i've arrived... i've slept for the last couple of days... i plan to sleep at least another day.

i got back to colorado friday afternoon, and within minutes went to the southern sun brewery. happy hour was in effect, and about 14 people showed up from my department. saturday was spent mostly riding my bike around for a while, then taking a nap between bouts of cruising the town. it's sunny and blue here... the air is dry and big fluffy white clouds appear over the mountains at the edge of town and float out over the plains. trees are leafing and grass is growing with fat dark green blades, and as always the golden colorado sun takes the edge off the cool alpine breeze descending from the shadowed valleys of the front range.

even though this is technically 'home', it still feels a little alien to me. as if when i boarded the plane to come here, i wasn't so much returning to colorado as i was leaving for colorado. it's tough to explain, but in any case it's good to be back here.

~t

fiatvera / pittsburg

check out albert song's photography... his style seems very spontaneous but observant. something like what i try to do with my photos when i carry my camera around the city here, though i think he meets with somewhat more success in the execution than i do....

~t

home stretch

ha. i'm in the home stretch... four more days in taiwan then i get on a jet and about 20 hours later i'll be back in boulder. as i've said before, i'm filled with split feelings about leaving here but overall i am happy to be heading back west (or east... i guess east of east is still west, but it's all a big sphere so it doesn't really matter one way or the other). i feel like i'm getting over being sick, too. i'm not coughing nearly half as much as i was before, which is good since my coughing ultimately caused me to pull a muscle in my rib-cage so it hurts like hell to cough anyway.

on another note: my extensive knowledge of procrastination has served me well so far today, and i'd like to share a new discovery with you, so that all of you might also put off doing useful work in favor of some lighter fare. please check out the plants in motion page from the bio department at indiana university... i especially like the section on nastic movements. i bring this up because one of the plants featured there (the mimosa or 'sensitive plant') grows all over the place here. i used to have small potted mimosas when i was a kid, and even 20 years later i can't help playing with these things... every time i run into one in the field, i have to touch a couple leaves and watch them close up.



~t

slickensides

slickensides are parallel striations on rock surfaces produced by relative motion across opposite sides of fault planes. they can give important information about the sense of shear and direction of motion across the fault plane. these slickenlines indicate a top-to-the-west, thrust sense of shear along the interface of a coal bed with a sandstone bed. the coal (with its low internal strength and high graphite content) acts as a weak layer that allows the overlying shale to 'glide' across the sandstone.



~t

time...

not much of that left here... trying to get my remaining tasks prioritized and it's proving to be a little more diffucult than i thought it might be. in part, i want to have some more polished results ready to present upon my arrival in colorado, but on the other hand i would like to spend my last several days here having fun and trying to squeeze in some last-minute exploring. ultimately i'm sure i'll manage to do a little bit of both, but not as much of either as i would like. eh, that's the way it goes.

it seems i've been slacking on posting photos recently too... so here's a quick pic of the farms around puli just before twilight.



~t

data transcription

phew. back from puli... it was sunny and hot there (as the farmer-tan i acquired can prove) and it's pouring rain again here in taipei. i'm sitting at my desk here about to start transcribing all of my field notes, which of course didn't happen during the last few nights as i'd fooled myself into thinking it would. talk is tomorrow, but everyone keeps reminding me that it's no big deal and to keep it simple.

my cough is still lingering on, but i took some time to further research the side-effects of the drugs i brought with me (tamiflu and cipro) ...it sounds like the potential side effects are much worse than an annoying cough. i've been reading all these first hand accounts of permanent disability and tendon injury and all sorts of really nasty things. i think i'll put up with the cough for a little longer... even after just two days out of taipei i could feel my lungs clearing up a little.

~t

puli bound

ahhh...

leaving today at 5pm for some last-minute field work and data-mining in puli. i'll be bringing my laptop to plot up new data every evening, and also to slide this new info into my presentation for tuesday (if i'm back by then).

the thought of leaving here is a little surreal now, after four months of really getting settled in. i know my way around really well, i'm comfortable... i have some really good friends here. if highschool represents the kind of ultra-awkward and socially combative image of my past (as it does for many people in the states) then i would have to say that grad-school represents a time when i can be at ease with my surroundings and feel socially uninhibited. this sense of ease makes traveling a hell of a lot easier than it was when i was 17, and my experiences are that much richer.

i'm not really sure what the point of this post is.... maybe just a reminder that if you're ever off in the middle of the jungle doing field work and worrying about how you're going to solve some sticky problem or how you're ever going to manage to give a talk the day you get back, remember to stop for a minute and take a look around; enjoy the view, smell the sunshine and sit back with a bowl of pork wonton soup and a bottle of pi-jio. you are a lucky bastard.

~t

down to the wire

i've got exactly two weeks remaining until i am uprooted once more and returned to my land of milk and honey (or micro-brews and mountainous peaks). at the moment i am filled with conflicting feelings for my impending departure, from joyous anticipation to mild dread.

i've spent the last four months trying to wrap my noggin around the puli basin... to get into the nitty-gritty of what will eventually become the focus of my doctoral dissertation, and i'm slightly more confused at this point than i was coming in. i've spent hours futzing with digital elevation models and ascii (american standard code for information interchange... i had to look it up) data, then days plotting profiles and vector maps. i've stared at cross sections from different sources and so far they've all constructed sections through my study area with squiggly lines, the structural geologist's equivalent of saying, "forget it, i'm not even going to try". if anything, i'm frustrated that i haven't been able to really shed a lot of light on the processes at work here... and this is where my feelings of mild dread come in.

on the one hand, returning to colorado will mean being reunited with friends and being able to understand everyone i talk to. i can ride my bikes, and enjoy all that boulder has to offer, namely clean air and that wonderful small-town aesthetic. on the other hand it means returning to my office (and my advisor) with a big question-mark on my forehead. now, i know it would be foolish for me to return with the idea that i'd figured it all out, and that it's unrealistic to think that i could have in relatively short time. it's still nagging at me though. the good side to going back to the office is that i'll have an easier time checking in and getting feedback... not to mention a little more motivation to get cracking on this stuff. this summer will be spent restoring (sort of deconstructing piece by piece) balanced structural cross-sections of the western foothills... then meshing these with my own updated cross-sections of the hsuehshan range. i think my goal for the year could be a poster at the annual a.g.u. conference with a complete balanced cross-section and axial surface map.

for now however, a 30 minute talk next tuesday and an hour long presentation in three weeks will be the focus of my energy. i think the next few days are going to be very long ones indeed.

~t

junk food...

...is the same the world over. for some unknown reason i decided to get a hot-dog last night from the local 7-11. yuck. i've never been a really huge fan of hot-dogs, but every once in a while i just get that craving for something that reminds me of summers when i was ten years old. rest-assured, the taiwanese have not quite mastered the "art" of the american hot-dog. i can't say if there were too many preservatives or not enough, if the meat mixture had too many pig snouts or not enough, but something was quite amiss. i won't be buying any more of those.

my latest field excursion was supposed to take place this past weekend, but due to dangerous conditions (heavy rain raising the water levels in the peikanghsi valley) i opted to wait it out. now i'll be going back down as soon as the conditions allow access to the riverbed, where i need to fill in some data-gaps in order to complete my initial cross-section through the area.

from the data i've compiled already, it appears that the high terrace surface deformation doesn't really follow from the deformation pattern of the rocks immediately below them in the valley, so i need to start looking for some other less obvious cause. i have a few in mind, and one hypothesis i particularly like (involving some exciting new models from very new research on the internal deformation of critical coulomb wedges under conditions of steady-state erosion) but i don't yet have enough information to prove anything. i'm sure, in fact, that even if i can come up with some convincing "proof", it will be months before i can pull it all together. i keep forgetting that i'll be taking the next 4-plus years to work all this out. ahhhh.... grad school.

~t

bali: fictional life - real death

it's been a week since i returned from bali. images of beaches and palm trees were put aside in the last few days for more dreams of structural geology and questions about noncorrelable surface and subsurface deformation patterns... but now some of those questions have been answered and i have plans to re-visit my field area soon to help fill in some gaps. in the meantime, i'll finally get to write something about bali.

several weeks ago i was im-ing with my boulder roomate about plans i had to take some time off from my studies in taipei, in order to spend a few days in a villa in indonesia. i'm sure i added a few embellishments about my plans, but the one thing i remember about the conversation was chris telling me, "the more i talk to you, the more you sound like a fictional character." in following conversations since then he's clarified that he meant a character more like james bond or some such globe-trotting-martini-swilling-tropical-villa-living type persona... the point is: i never really thought about this 'fictional life' of mine until someone else brought it up.



bali is an interesting blend of realities itself. the very mention of the name brings up images of postcard beaches... attractive tanned people and white sand, palms, turquoise water and vivid sunsets; but the truth is a little more three-dimensional than that. one walk through central kuta will show a person a lot about what bali is like. yes, the island is beautiful... almost exactly what one might expect from the postcards, but the postcards can never do justice to the human element.



there is a very clear separation between locals and foreigners. foreigners are there by choice; we fly there on a jet and stay in a hotel. we see the sights and pay people to drive us around. we shop, we spend, and for the most part that is our role. it's obvious that the economy depends on the tourist trade and just about every local has some part to play in the exchange. it's nearly impossible to walk more than ten feet through central kuta without being offered transport or souvenirs or drugs. stray dogs cruise the streets while shop-keepers arrange small, ornate hindu offerings of food and flowers and place them at the entrance of their stores. the overall aire in the town is one of real-life... people trying to make a living doing what they can with what they have.



off the streets however, behind the scenes almost, small pockets of paradise and almost opulent indulgence are everywhere to be had... by those who can afford it. "afford" is a key concept here, because just about everyone who visits bali can afford this... but if you are a local you would be lucky to ever see inside this world. even i, with a relatively meager income by american standards (a lowly graduate student stipend), was able to afford an entire private villa. this is where fictional life begins. each morning in the villa, two staff came to cook breakfast. i swam in the pool and sipped cocktails floating on a tray. i had a masseuse come to the villa to work out a knot in my shoulder. i prepared dinner in the villa's luxury kitchen... the list of surreal experiences goes on (and gets better) but i'm at a loss for words to adequately describe them. five minutes walk from my compound's front door was the beach. sunsets were beatiful and a very popular restaurant (kudeta) was right down the street, where one can enjoy tapas and martinis by the starlit ocean.



on the last full day there, i was treated to a trip to 'dreamland beach'. as the name implies, the beach is amazing. after a 20 minute drive and short hike down through old terraces of uplifted coral reef, dreamland beach is a light coral sand stretch that separates the sea from the myriad small thatched huts and bungalows that occupy every cranny along the cliff. good indonesian food and beer and fun playing in the salty surf all seem like just the things you'd want from a place like this. again, surreal perfection leaves me at a loss for words, for fear that i would fail to do the memory justice.



on the trip back to the villa, the road was blocked by an accident that had just happened. already a throng of people had flocked to the scene, surrounding the tattered wreckage of a large truck and a small scooter. both vehicles lay on their sides; the scooter looked like a toy next to the heavy, broken form of the truck. among glass and platic and metal, all shattered and shorn, a very real hand lay limp and relaxed, protruding from beneath a white sheet laid out next to the scooter and the rider's broken helmet. the realization of life lost was sudden and sobering, but still confusing given where i'd just been.



flipping back and forth between these worlds, of frivolous indulgence and harsh reality, is an experience that seems uniquely balinese. luxury and strife co-exist in close quarters... foreigners on one side and locals on the other. sometimes the two worlds coalesce and the results can go either way, but no matter what, bali will provide anyone with memorable experiences and a new appreciation for what you have in your own real life.

~t

when it rains...

...it pours! i'm not talking about morton's iodized salt, either... it is absolutely pouring buckets outside right now, thunder and all. i've learned the hard way that my puny but 'convenient' umbrella is utterly insufficient in rain like this, as is evidenced by my wet shoes, pants, shoulders and messenger bag. thankfully, my bag is waterproof, otherwise my laptop would be just another cute piece of white plastic with the apple logo on it.

i know, i know... i still haven't posted a single thing about bali. i'm still in the crunch trying to pull a cross section and working kinematic model together so it'll have to wait a little longer. i will leave one pic as a teaser though... this is 'dreamland beach'... enjoy.



~t

back from bali

hey all...

just a quick post this time. i got back from bali late last night and didn't really have any energy left to speak of. in short, bali is amazing... beautiful sights, awesome food, world-class entertainment all came together to make a really memorable 4-day jaunt to indonesia. i'm safe and sound and none the worse for wear (i even managed to pick up a mild tan).

i've got a lot to write about, and i think i managed to get a few good pics (i haven't even had time to look through them myself) so i will likely spend some time in the coming days posting those up here.

~t

cat

~t

saved by schedule conflict

thank god.

i've been working on getting all of my recent data compiled into a couple of maps and figures for the last few days, and was supposed to have a rough version today, but haven't quite made it to that point. getting sick hasn't helped me at all either, but it turns out one of the other students can't meet today so i get an extension by default.

i don't usually get sick more than once a year or so, and i've already been ill a few times this winter. it's what i refer to now as 'city-shpillchus', seeing as how i seem to have the exact same symptoms now as i did when i lived in the industrial city of pontevedra, in northern spain. the constant inhalation of everything from sewage fumes and carbon monoxide to diesel smoke and disc brake dust inevitably ends with my haucking up my lungs. i used to think the greyish stains on all the building here were just a sort of mildew from all the moisture, but i'm fairly convinced now that it's really just all the suspended particles in the air glomming onto the buildings when it rains. i have noticed that the air quality has been particularly crappy in the last couple of weeks, but i'm not totally sure why.

anyway, i've got data to plot and maps to pull together, which at this point should only take another day or two. this is very good news, since i'm leaving on saturday night for bali. yes, beautiful-island-in-the-pacific bali.

i'm excited to go, but i've also been reading up on the activities of jemaah islamiah, the terrorist organization that has been linked to al-qaeda and the 2005 suicide bombing of a popular restaurant in bali. the ideals they follow and the reasons they've given are all old-hat to those of us who took enough interest after 9-11 to read up on extremist islamic fundamentalism. in the most simple terms, indonesia is a muslim nation (88% of it's inhabitants anyway). if you show up to a muslim nation baring your flesh and imbibing alcohol you are performing acts of sacrilege and deserve to be punished. note the word 'extremist' in the previous sentence. of course not all muslims think this way... few would ever consider performing acts of heinous violence against someone who likes to wear a bikini or have a beer... the kicker is that most of the local people on bali are not even muslim, they are hindu. this would make bali a target even if there weren't hundreds of half naked drunken white people running around making fools of themselves. add to it the fact that bali is one of the most popular holiday vacation spots for australians in the world, you get an ideal location for fundamentalist focus... essentially a tiny hindu island in the midst of an expansive muslim archipelago acting as an influx point for thousands of infidels that wish only to defile everything muslims stand for (or something like that)... no wonder.

in the end though, it's no more dangerous to go to a place like bali then it is to visit london (i.r.a.), or madrid (e.t.a.), or any other place in the world where ideals clash and bombs go off.

~t