Geophysics Field Camp Week One

Geophysics knows no weekends.

I completely forgot it was Saturday in the midst of surveying. We're working for eleven days straight of data collecting without weekends. Whatever. One week down, one more week in the field, and then two more back in Golden. It's gone by pretty quickly, mostly because we're constantly busy. I'm also extremely exhausted. My feet hurt. Quiet or alone time is hard to come by. The food's okay.

Alright. I think I have my complaining out of my system. Field Camp is mostly cool, a lot of hard work, and some parts awesomely weird. I wake up at 6:15AM angry at the world and myself for not getting to bed sooner. When I have my coffee at 7, I'm extremely happy and cheerful, sitting down at our morning meeting saying, "Good morning, Terry! Good morning, Andrei! How's it going, class mates?" and such. Depending on what's being talked about, around 8 I feel meh. Then we get out in the field after driving for a half hour, and then I'm like, "Yay, Geophysics!" until 4. Then we go back to our meeting place and then I start getting frustrated, especially if the data takes a long time to download. I become extremely hungry and moody until 6, and then I'm happy but exhausted. At around 9 I stop being tired and then don't get to bed around 11 or 11:30 because I don't think I need to. But then I wake up at 6:15 again the next day.

Field camp is also awesomely weird. Our class is weird. Our professors know so, even if they are weird themselves with their own quirks. Geophysics people in general have this awesome weirdness about them. We're the weirdest thing to happen to the small town of Pagosa Springs in...well, a year.

I hope to blog every week, but here are a few quotes from last week so far. I have been taking notes in my field notebook, but the TA didn't give it back to me tonight.

"Last one in the vans is a geologist!"

"There are more buttons in this truck than the MT equipment!" Andrei

"Do these trucks automatically downshift? Because mine just did." - Andrei

"Look! Geology IS useful!" - Batzle, after propping a door with a rock.

"Geophysics girls get frisky." Craig the TA, who might have been joking around.

"That DC inversion was beautiful." "And it's not even smoothed yet, just raw beauty." "No makeup and still a ten."

"Geophysicist uses GPR...it's not very effective." Roy

"I'd rather grades you all's tests than listen to Rod Stewart." Rich, who hates grading exams

"We can fill up at the Flowing Well." - Shane, on this oil seep in a field (we almost ran out of gas).

But yeah. The highlights of my day include hanging out with professors on the line, in the car, and elsewhere, watching a pickup truck accidentally roll into our headquarters building, getting malts at the malt shoppe while the boys got girly temporary tattoos, having way too much fun on the walkie talkies, getting called an idiot after I asked my professor Rich to (it's an honor, believe me), having Dr. Bob call our geologic cross section "elegant", our department head's sense of humor, and joking around with the TAs.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday left for data acquisition. I will make it to the weekend after the longest week of my life.

Thoughts Running Through My Head During the Continuum Mechanics Final

Jeff, our professor, begins passing our tests out. Gosh, Jeff. What the heck, this test is huge! There are so many words! Uhh..let's see, do I have an equation for this problem? No? Crap crap crap crap crap. Test: "What is the word for the temperature gradient in the mantle?" Hot? Uhh...let's look at the quantitative stuff.  Better plug some numbers into my calculator and pretend I know what I'm doing.  I have literally never seen this type of problem before. Maybe I can figure it out. My brain hurts. Let's write down an equation and move on to the next problem. Test: "Explain in words..." No words, just math--wait I can't even do that so never mind. 

Well, it's been an hour and I'm getting nowhere. I'm kind of hungry. I wonder if everyone else thinks this test is terrible too. Emily sure is writing down a lot of stuff. Hmm, I bet Jeff thinks I'm stupid. Maybe taking his Planetary Geophysics class next Fall isn't a good idea for me. Hmm. Jeff: "One hour and 27 cupcakes left." Jake gets up. "Jake can you grab me a cupcake too?" I ask. "Thanks." Stuffing my face is the only good thing about this test right now. I hope I can still get into grad school after this test. Why am I in Geophysics again? Is it too late to switch majors? Yeah, it's pretty late. Maybe I should become a writer.  I bet English majors can BS their entire tests. I bet they hardly ever have moments where they are thinking, "I have no idea what to do right now and we never learned this before!" Maybe if I write an essay or story on this test, Jeff will be appeased. I'm getting really hungry now. Only had a sip of coffee for breakfast. 

Dimensional analysis...wait, okay so Pascals are Newtons over meters squared. But what's a Newton again? Oh God, oh God, I can't believe I forgot what a Newton is. How the heck am I supposed to figure this out?? I should have written it down on my equation sheet, dang it. [a few minutes later] Oh! I can just do F=ma. Bam! Better check and make sure...three times. I'm getting really hungry now. I wonder if people will want to go out to eat. BUZZZZZ. Oh crap, there's the alarm again. We have 25 minutes. In just 25 minutes, it'll all be over!! Maybe I should just turn in my test now...naw, I better battle it out. I wonder if I'll get partial credit if I write "42" on everything? BUZZZZ. Okay, fifteen more minutes. Better write down any relevant equations. Maybe I should write "I'm sorry" on the test? Why, Jeff, why? 

Jeff: "Alright, time to turn in your tests." It's all over...it's finally all over!

What to Do After a Test

• Watch a movie 
• Read
• Clean room
• Run around in circles
• Go for a drive
• Listen to music
• Go on a night hike
• Play ukulele
• Write
• Internet
• Do homework due the next week
• Take pictures
• Eat ice cream. Definitely eat ice cream.
• Breathe. 

Galaxies and Relativity

My motivation has fallen away, like the snow melts and falls off in sheets from Marquez Hall, endangering any passersby. I've resorted to looking forward to stuff, and those stuff included Spring Break and E-Days, both of which are now gone.

So now I look forward to summer.

But hey, baseball is back, and E-Days did not disappoint, so there's that.

I think I've finally recovered from my disease of comparing everything to freshman year and finally found a year to just enjoy. My third E-Days held the same philosophy. I did things that made me happy, like took naps, rather than trying to do things to just do them. GalaxE-Days Lesson #1: Don't volunteer for events just because you want a t-shirt. I love Orecart Pull, but volunteering wasn't the best idea ever. I mean, it's a good thing to do if you have time and your heart is in it (and things are organized well). GalaxE-Days Lesson #2: Wear good shoes. GalaxE-Days Lesson #3: Naps are amazing. I spent the rest of my Friday napping (for 5 hours) until I woke up to show up to a rootbeer kegger late. But whatever, you know. GalaxE-Days Lesson #4: Starting E-Days early is totally great. Even if it's due to snow canceling a class.

E-Days was a lot of fun and I didn't do homework at all, but it made me tired. My feet are still silently weeping from the stuff I put them through during Orecart Pull. I get the feeling I'm going to be tired for a long, long time...

Sigh. Is it Summer (Field Camp) yet? No, but registration for Senior Year is tomorrow. What. When did this happen? When did we become so close to responsibility, to pretending that we know what we're doing?

As Orion sets slowly below the horizon and South Table Mountain begins to look more green than its usual brown color, all I know is that we got older somewhere. Maybe it was during the coffee-stained tests, or the index out of bound errors. It could have been all the free food we've eaten, or the late hours we spent just talking when we should have been doing other things. It was probably climbing all those stairs in the Green Center, or reaching over to open the doors to the Student Center. But no matter how much I notice that time is passing more and more quickly, it still accelerates. It probably has to do with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, but I think has to do with the number of times that we've laughed so hard that it hurt.

 While my classes increase the gravity on my eyelids and put my head on my desk, life is still good. It's a good year to be a Mines kid.

Seven Days of Spring Break

Spring break tomorrow, homework today. Wake up to MATLAB. Rain rain snow snow snow, programming weather. Coffee for breakfast. Sherpa for lunch. More procrastinating, more computing. Barely done in time. Again. Sigh. No time to go to Seismic. Rent a tent...rent-a-tent? Three girls and a dude at 5 Guys. Too many fries. Fries dipped in ice cream, yum. Driving driving. Packing packing. Downloading music for the road. Too little sleep.

At dawn we go. Ski bums and traffic. Hunger. Getting off schedule. Oh, well. Walkie-talkie battleship. The Utah sun beating down on my face like it did in my dream in January. So much deposition and erosion. Oh, the glorious erosion. Sitting in a car makes my muscles more sore than Corona Arch hike. More driving, and will we find a campsite? Old western-looking sunset with spires and purple sky. Darkness, and stars. How many engineers does it take to set up a tent at night? Amazing Grace under the Milky Way (as performed on top of a rock acoustically).

Time travel and confusion. Coldness of the desert does not bode well for sleep. No firewood equals no coffee. So much driving. Evading the law GTA style, but not really. Furthest destination: Grand Canyon. Status: reached. It looks like the pictures, and amazing in real life. Extensiveness blows the mind. Arizona sunshine. One point five miles into the heart of the canyon. Crossing layers, crossing time. Even more time travel in DST-less AZ. Professional camp-setting-uppers-at-night. Quick! Be loud before it's quiet hours! Sing! And the story of Henry the tree/boy/man. (Pretty sure we ran over Bob the tumbleweed).

This place has everything, including hot showers. Wat. I got to drive all the way from Grand Canyon to Four Corners. Passing cars...vroom. Sky. Silence, and mostly sleeping (not by me, the driver). When I stopped driving and got 3g, MIT Haystack REU emailed me an offer. Approaching Four Corners, the CO side is obvious: corner with mountains. Snow on ground after crossing state lines. Campground didn't work out...getting super hungry. Golden only six hours away! But actually seven. Operation Straight-Shot. "When I wake up, well, I know I'm gonna be..." plays in Wendy's right after having a conversation about it. Weird. And awesome. Near-elk encounter. Train encounter. THE longest train. I-25 is a boring road to drive. It's not an all-nighter if the sun doesn't rise before you go to sleep.

Solid six hours of sleep after waking up at noon. Then it started to snow. Packing again, then driving some more, but only twenty minutes. Sleep. Warmth.

Whilst jamming: "What am I thinking right now?" "We should go to Village Inn." Yes. Free pie Wednesday. A third-annual tradition, and the last with all three of us being students. Sadface-happyface.

Sleep. And good food. I probably gain so much weight when I go home. Good times with great friends. I don't want to go back to school.