Back in Action!

Alrighty then, the months of June July and August have gone and passed us bye. I sincerely hope they were as wonderful as summer should be.

June, in the world of this wanna-be geologist, was anything but summer. Instead, it was highlighted by freeezing my ass off on Azungate, a 20k foot plus mountain in Peru, with best buddies and ExRoommates Extraordinaire's Erin Noble and Elihu Bogan. And intense rounds of amoebic dysentery that left me frail and weak and flatulent. Well worth the price of an epic trip with the ExR Ex's.

July and August were highlighted by self-indulgent adventures throughout the great U S of A. A two week long Baseball Blues and BBQ roadtrip with Hilarious Highschool Buddies Anders Makoski and Grunny and our trusty vehicle Cal Ripken Jr took us to 7 different ballparks, countless beers and plenty of good times with generous friends across the eastern half of this great country. Then it was off to St. Paul, MN with Sal, after saying goodbye to Rochester. As you may have heard, my mother has sold the house at 34 Greenwich Lane and is moving to Salem Oregon in November. To all those who have enjoyed a night in The Basement, thanks for making it the best hangout in Brighton. "Good times, bad times, you know we've had our share..."

Two weeks in Minnesota, hitting up the wonderful Boundary Waters Canoeing Area Wilderness with Dan and Sal. Me and Sal diligently fished every day, after having been told by everyone we asked that we would catch more fish than we would be able to eat. Well, we caught a lot of crawdad's. And one big fat leach. But fish? Not so much. Lost a bunch of tackle setups to snags, for sure. But did anything actually bite on our delicious looking hooks? Nope. Why is fishing so easy when you are doing it with somebody who knows what they are doing, but so impossible when you're on your own?

Then me and El Viejo (Dan Wershow) took Bessie (Sal's truck) and booked it cross-country, reenacting the famous journey of the Blue '90 Subaru Legacy that took Hal, Sam and Dan east to Rochester in the Summer of '91. So long East Coast, its been fun, but I'm 100% West Coast now. You heard it here first, no more of this bi-coastal ambiguity, I'm finally choosing sides. My apologies to all the good folk out east, but...it's better out here.

Which brings me to Seattle. Here I am, the best city on earth. At least in the summer. Which thankfully has extended into September. This is home. And that really means something coming from a restless nomad such as myself.

That being said...I'm off to Hawaii in one week. To work on volcanoes for the next 5 months. I'll be working for the USGS's Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory. I will be mapping Mauna Loa, which means running from (cold) lava flow to lava flow and putting them all on a GIS map. Lots of field work, but plenty of time at the computer as well. The point is to construct an incredibly detailed life history of Mauna Loa, which can be used both to predict future behavior and as a case-study to better understand analogous volcanoes elsewhere.

Interestingly enough, much like my travels in tropical Peru, I will be once again freezing my ass off. Mauna Loa tops out at 13k feet, and becomes covered in snow by December, effectively ending my field work. So i'm packing all gloves, long underwear, a down bag, a parka, winter hats, etc as I head off to Hawaii...wierd.

Look for volcano posts coming up. If you have any opportunity to come out to the Big Island of Hawaii between now and February, I promise to give you a backstage, VIP tour of The Volcano.


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Hal the Wanna-Be Volcanologist