from taiwan

whew! heres a post from the other side of the pacific ocean, from taipei in taiwan. i flew here on wednesday morning, and have been sitting through some amazing discussions and presentations on taiwan and the processes and physics of the mountain building here. so far ive been sitting through a ton of things and have basically just been holding on for dear life while high-intensity faculty intelligence washes over me. haven't been into the city yet, but im hoping to get into taipei at some point tonight. well see how that goes.

until i get the chance to post some cooler pics (ill be driving around the island over the next four days) ill just post this pic from the vending machine in my hotel. you can even buy cans of beer out of the same vending machine!

~t

pretriptrippin

just a note to let yall know im trying to get everything ive been meaning to do over the last two weeks done in the next two days. leaving for taiwan on wednesday morning, for about two weeks! need to read several key papers, bone up on some taiwanese geological survey data and load at least one gis program and dem dataset collection on my laptop here before getting on the plane. not to mention pack, which necessarily involves doing laundry and reorganizing half of my house. this hardly leaves time to go screw around on my bike or wander around in the local streams with my fly-pole... interestingly, over the last few days ive actually started feeling like a student again, staying up until 2am working away on problems and thinking about things instead of just coming home and blowing off work in favor of watching the latest scifi channel stargate marathon. i knew it would happen at some point, and im glad that it was actually my own research that has given me the motivation to act like a student, rather than the threat of doing poorly in a class... which in the past has often been a primary motivating factor.

anyway, time to get things done... have a meeting with my advisor today about trip logistics and with another student about stuff i need to bring back for their work.

~t

Back from Utah

hey all... back at last from the trip i just took to utah. i hit up arches and canyonlands, hiking through some pretty amazing structures and layer-cake geology. never having been to the western us before, it was a little surreal to say the least. all i could keep thinking was that this landscape was like australia, or mars. so huge, and so flat, with such large scale landforms floating in the desert like stone icebergs in a sea of dust. i took some pretty awesome pictures, and rediscovered how much i love using a polarizing filter. ill post some on here very soon. other than that, not much is going on. i have a couple of homework assignments due next week which i will be starting today, and i want to read a few general papers on taiwan before i get on the plane to taipei next wednesday. jeez thats a lot sooner than i really thought. im looking forward to that trip to say the least. especially looking forward to eating some really good taiwanese food. although ill be avoiding the chicken... bird-flu and whatnot.

~t

friday afternoon

back again... just a quick post tonight. went on a hike into the flatirons with laura today. the entire time i was up there i had the strongest urge to climb things, and in general realized how much really good climbing there is right in my backyard. i will do my best to get back out on the rock soon. my leg is still a little bunk, and was hurting just a little bit today during the hike, but i think i could deal with some mid-grade trad climbs to start with. nothing really going on tonight, just chilling in front of the tv (st-tng is on, for those of you who dont know, never mind, for the rest of you, rock on) transferring some pics from today onto my ibook. ill post one of the pics here tonight. the pic is of a climbing party (members unknown) on third flatiron.

~t

taiwan bound

ah... finally got my tickets for this october trip to taiwan all settled. i just signed up for frequent flyer miles too, so with this one trip, i will rack up almost 15000 miles in one shot. going again in january will get me a free ticket to the carribean or hawaii.... sweet!

~t

coupla pics

just a quick post before im off to bed. first is a shot of our porch when my friends were staying on the couch. they were looking for their own place since they just moved here from ithaca, and are also both bikers. our neighbors remarked that our house was starting to look like a bike shop.








the next is just a shot of the fishing crew as we were breaking down the rods before leaving for the night. the beer was a nice touch. we thought that we should bring a cooler with ice so we could bring back all of our fish, and then realized that coolers full of ice were ideal for transporting beer.

cerebral flatulence

aka brain fart. i feel so out of it. sooo tired. i went for a fun mtn ride yesterday afternoon, and ended up being out a lot later than i anticipated. ...it was totally dark when i finally made it home.

fun ride though... and found an awesome place to check out bird-life. there is a largish hidden marsh on top of one of the mesas that butt into the frontrange that is absolutely teeming with birds. hitting the ride at sunset was ideal because they were all super active, swarming over the lip of the mesa in great black clouds. the bike trail follows the ridgeline, so while riding along the ridge and getting a great view, you have these streams of birds washing right over your head, with the backlighting from the sunset illuminating the whole scene just-so.

today i need to get shite done. i need to buy my plane tickets to get to taiwan in a few weeks, pay all my unpaid bills i was talking about in a previous post, and generally get my head a little more together. you know that feeling you get when you take an afternoon nap, but it turns into a three hour snooze? you wake up and are totally disoriented and generally thrown all out of whack. i feel like that now, and have more or less for the last several days. not sick though, its weird.

anyway, im adding a pic from saturdays fishing excursion, courtesy of Laure Montandon.


~t

greenback trout

sittin here at my desk in the grad office, eating an incredibly boring and uninspired ham sandwich. ive got unpayed bills and unfinished work and untied shoelaces (that last one was a stretch) and im doing my best to keep it that way.

i spent most of the day on saturday up in the rocky mountain national park (rmnp) with my fly-rod, practically stepping on schools of brook trout and not catching any. i went with several of my office-mates, and we all waded our separate ways through the stream meanders. some of the little pools were more than waist deep and held some good size trout. ...but they werent too into my flies. anyway, i found a perfect pool towards the end of the day and stalked quitely up the stream to where i could cast into the riffle at the head of the pool. on my third cast, i had a strong hit and hooked a nice 8-9 inch trout. when i got it in, i saw it was a beautiful but protected colorado greenback cutthroat trout, which meant my one nice catch of the day had to be released immediately.

hopefully the next time im in the area im a little more fortunate... at least i know where some of the good spots are up there. picture to follow at some point...

~t