Reports from the North

The Heaphy - New Zealand and Australia Post #7

2009-10-12T05:49:00.007-08:00

Kiwis take a huge amount of pride in the natrual beauty of their country... duh... no brainer right? Especially when one considers tha fact that most of the country is really just that... astoundingly beautiful... even the ugly parts. The above photo was taken during a beach BBQ at the head of the track that I hiked out on a few days later.

When I finished up my Woofing stint on the farm in Karamea I decided to take a somewhat unique way out of town by hiking over the Arthur Mountain Range in Kahurangi National Park. The route is along the Heaphy Track, one of NZeds "great walks". The folks there are so into their hiking/treking that they've developed the best trails in the country via heavy maintenance and installation of a hut system... ~NZ$20 per night for a bunk, water, pit facilities, and usualy a gas stove... and not having to carry a tent and all that cooking gear... posh, posh. I was able to go out for four days, with food for five and a small emergency shelter, using only my day pack... hot damm says any of you serious hiker types out there... that is a very light load... the route is about 79km long with 1200m of gain. As it turned out I hiked in the opposite direction as compared to about 95% of the traffic for this track. Albeit hapenstance it turned out to be quite fortuitous as I had a hut to myself on two of the four nights that I was on the trail.

An opening shot at the start of the trail... I was in a great mood here and raring to go despite the rain but a bit sad too as my Woofing host Craig had just dropped me off... I had a great time living/working with him and his family and new that I would miss them... sniff, sniff ;-)

The start of the track from the southern end is freaking amazing... 16 flat Km along the rugged coast and through forest trail thick with Nikau plams, punga fern and karaka trees that run right along the base of the mountains.

I t was killing me not to have my surf board here... rumor has it the some of the heartier blokes from Karamea hike up the Heaphy on good days to ride out here.

These cable wire a link fence bridges are very stable depiste their spindly appreance... quite a bit of fun in the wind and rain too.

The tanins from the fallen forest flora turn even the faster running rivers in to amazing shades of tan, brown and this strange black/indigo.

I ran in to this young fellow from the UK at the first hut I stayed in. Adam is a carpenter/joiner who had been working in Christchurch via tha ability of citizens of the commonwealth to work abroad the way we can work from state to state... this kid was a real hoot... super funny and we had plenty to talk about via engineering and carpentry and the fact that his girlfriend is from the US. We also had a blast hanging out with the two gals from Vancouver, BC we shared the first hut with and the siblings (two cute sisters and their younger brother) from Wellington on the 2nd hut stay.

Adam took this and the following photos of me on my 3rd day of hiking. When we had arrived at the hut the night before we missed a horizontal snow storm by mere minutes. Pretty neat that... I didn't realize how good it would feel to miss heavy weather by that close of a margin to share a warm hut with plenty of food and good company... duh!

Some shots of the crosings and scenery on the trail's highest plateau...

Views looking out and in to the oldest hut on the track... it's fairly close to the 1st hut coming from the North so most folks mike it a lunch stop and don't stay for the night... as a result I had the place to myself...

Before the evening fire though I day hiked around a bit and found some... yes I have to say it... Lord of the Rings-esque scenery...

And some time journaling as all estute travelers should...

And a bit too much time alone with my camera...

Alas, the trail must end... and here I am at the end of it...

... but not really. I spent the next few days after I got off the track kayaking/hiking around Able Tasman National Park. Through a series of commedic errors and due to the willful nature of a kindergarten teacher from Germany... I ended up sharing this tandem kayak with her Ozzy military buddy... turned out that he gave me a ride back to Nelson but was a bit too much of a skirt chasing hell raiser for my liking ;-) I also ran in to an aquaintence from Karamea who took these shots... thanks mate (er um Gary ;-)!

One of the highlights of Nelson was the Episcipalian stone church on a high hill overlooking the town...

After Nelson is was a harrowinf lfight back to Aukland to spend a final day with Wade and Dacotah (see a previous post) and then on to Oz and the Famiglia!

Getting Munched by the 'Nar 'Nar - New Zealand and Australia Post #6

2009-10-12T04:54:00.008-08:00

Ah Raglan... that storied locale for left-handed point break surf. Yup... been there... "surfed" it... had my ass handed to me. No excuses though as I was nowhere near in good enough shape to handle that place let alone comfortable enough on my board or in the water... makes sense as I hadn't surfed much for the previous year or so... the board was a major problem... bought in haste right after I arrived in NZ... severely undersized for me even if I had been on my game. I didn't so much surf at Raglan as sit just outside of the main break with a ring side seat to some world class lefts and the people who call them home. A few days later I bought a brand new fun shape and moved on.

Over the following weeks I absconded away from whomever I happened to be visiting when the surf appeared to be good and scored good days around Taranaki, the Wairapa and the northwest coast of the South Island. Those days were a combination of long and amazingly beautiful drives, sleeping on the beach, in the car or at the odd and random public house, killer grub and stormy, scary, bigger than I was used to surfing.

Then I went to Australia and things were completely different ;-) I benefitted from my hard weeks of work in NZ. The surf in Oz, albeit fickle for that time of year, was generally smaller, cleaner and warmer. I had some great days on the Beacroft Head surfing with my cousins. The best and most traumatic day was at a place called "Golf Course Reef". A head high to +2ft south swell had come in and the place was firing... and crowded. I waited a while and chatted up some local blokes in the car park to get a feel for the place, show a bit of respect and get the low down on the break itself. I paddled out with a few fellows, caught a couple of great rights and then proceeded to lose track of the line-up and take off on one way, way, way to deep. I ended up hanging on to my board so as not to injure the folks on either side of me... the board hit the water, bounced up and hit me, I hit the water and then the wave rolled me over the rock reef. I paddled out the break zone without any discernible injuries and surfed for another couple of hours. Later that night after I pealed off my wetsuit I noticed some pretty intense left side pain and a big ding in the side of my rib cage. I sleepless night at the family cottage and visit to the local ER the next day reveled a few fractured and separated ribs. Interesting thing to note here is that the ER visit only took about 2 hours and cost AU$180 for the doc, an X-ray and and unltrasound... take that Congress! I didn't surf much after that as I headed north to dive the GBR and figured I'd better heal up a bit first before I paddled out again ;-)

Unfortunately I don't have too many shots as I was offten surfing alone but here are a few...

This room was about AU$10 oer night and came with a great pub and separate bistro downstairs... killer!

Yep... that's really what they call it... and here's why...

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The area is basically the western side of a nearly perfect conical volcano that dominates the landscape of the area... given the surfable area that covers about 180 degrees on the compass there is surf somewhere on Tranaki most days... hot damm!

one of the many breaks at Taranaki.

And another... the paddle out was a bit sketchy here ;-)

I was fortunate to meet up with, camp and surf with some fellow travleres out along the 'naki...

Mauro and Bruno from Brazil...

... and Martin and Gavin from Germany and Ireland. The spot in the background that we surfed that day was interesting... there weren't any rocks when we got in a high tide... ha! Duped again!

A clean, glassy, warm day on the southern tip of the Wairapa.

And now for something completely different... a video postscript... this film was the national winner of the 2008 New Zealand Amateur Surf Film Festival... the creator is currently working on a full length film covering the Sout:East:West:North (S:E:W:N) aspects of NZed wave riding... dig it:

Many thanks to Jan Baur (for introducing me to the maker of this film and sending me the link) and to Nico Brikke for making it and to both for a killer day out at the Wairapa... cheers.

TGBR - New Zealand and Australia Post #5

2009-08-11T09:11:00.006-08:00

The Great Barrier Reef: Finally had the chance to dive there as well as out on the Whitsunday Islands. Here's the setup... after countless bits of advice from family and Aussie friends I deceided to, against everyone's advice, drive from Sydney to Cairns, which is considered to be the gateway to the Breat Barrier Reef (GBR). I rented a "Wicked Camper" the bargain basement caravan rental in NZ and Oz... basically a graffitied Mitsubishi work van with a bed in th back... their schtick is to be ultra-edgy... their voice message at the Sydney office has something to do with not being able to get to to the phone because the transvestite that chained them to the bed last night has lost the keys... ha, ha... ha.

The drive is a little over 2600 Km predominantly along the coast on the Bruce highway. I had to turn back on my first attempt as severe table-land storms had torn through Brisbane and made the highways impassable... the golfball sized hail that pelted me in the camper van concinced me in the end if I'd had any doubts about the severity of the weather. After another "horrible" week down south at the family cottage (surfing, fishing, eating, sleeping) I made another attempt and drove up to Airlee Beach (gateway to the Whitsundays) in about a day and a half. In the end I should have stopped at some of the sleepy little towns along the coast and surfed a bit even if there didn't seem to be much swell. Airlee Beach was a bit crowded and full of trendy Euro-hipsters partying and drinking on "beach"... a concrete lagoon in town as everyone was afraid to go to the real beach due to the jelly-fish... I went to the beach and never saw a single one... saw lots of bandaids in the lagoon though... go figure. I ended up hanging out in Airlee for about two days until I was able to get out on a sail boat that promised some good diving out along the Islands. The boat slept about 30 people and was more about providing a floating bar for the 20 somehtings that populated it. The diving ended up being pretty good though as for the most part it was just the dive master and I... everyone else was either to hung over to dive or still drinking... when they tried to come out on the dive skiff with us the young dive master would just politely tell them to F-off and we'd head out... pretty cool on his part as it meant he would get fewer tips. To give you an idea of how rowdy the crowd was let's just say that one of my Cambridge-bred cabin mates woke us all up one night as he drunkenly (and nakedly) worked on foreign realtions with an austrian girl that he'd met that evening... I woke up to inquire as to the strange noises, noticed the goings on about 2 feet to my left, bid them good eveing and left to sleep on deck. This young fellow was mortified the next morning, apologized profusely and was riddled with comments from his mates for the rest of the day... pretty funny. I realized who the girl was the next day as she tunred away and hid her face as soon as she saw me in the chow line... also pretty funny.

After Airlee I drove throught the evening and night up to Cairns to make the ferry out to the GBR live aboard I'd booked a stay on for three days. I was a bit concerned about diving ooff of a boat that held so many people. My fears turned out to be unjustified. There were about 50 people on the boat but they rotated each group on a schedule that worked almost flawlessly. I ended up making quick friends with some of the folks in my group which proved useful as we weren't aloud to dive alone. All of the dives were fantastic, including the night dive, but I'll let the photos below tell that story...

On the way out to the reef.

Pale is the new tan ;-)

A few shots from the reef...

... and a few divers...

...Bas the dive master...

...yours truly...

...Viktor from Austria... cool dude and a great diver...

...and Carla from South Africa... cute as a button and a great diver too.

Wella Wella Wellington - New Zealand and Australia Post #4

2009-08-10T12:30:00.004-08:00

Short post for this part of my trip despite the large amount of fun that I had... so much in fact that I often forgot to pull out the camera ;-) I stopped in Wellington for about a week and a half to visit my friends Jan and Karly. Jan and I had worked together in Nepal and Tibet a few years prior and I'd never had the chance to meet his partner Karly until I visited... she's pretty awesome and they were both wonderful hosts. I split my time there between hanging out with the instant group of friends I inherited via their large community of chums, touring the town (Wellington is great!) and heading off to surf for a bit. We surfed again when I came back on a truly epic south sweel that hit the southern edge of the Wairapa... I got a few good rides but for the most part was totaly worked... Jan tore it up but broke his board and a semi-pro longboarder mate of his absolutely floored all of us... alas though no pics of that session... here are some others though:

The view from Jan and Karly's apartment... stunning.

My two excellent hosts ;-) They only thing that I don't like about them is that they live toooooooo far away ;-(

A couple of shots around Wellington...

A bit of video from my interview with Andy Blue... he's a street musician from Waihiki Island... I have some awesome video of his amazing guitar playing but the file is so large that I haven't been able to upload it or parse out the bits that I wanted to post... I'll put that up when I get it sorted so here is the interview for now... Andy is a hoot...

Interview with Andy Blue: Wellington, NZ Oct 2008 from Matthew Donahue on Vimeo.

Down on the Farm - New Zealand and Australia Post #3

2009-07-29T23:19:00.006-08:00

I think I was a farmer in a past life.

Either that or my corruption by city life wasn't quite as complete as I'd once thought. For about two weeks I was able to WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms; 4 hours of work per day for room and board) on a small lifestyle block (gentlemen's farm) in Karamea on the west coast of the south island of New Zealand. Pretty dammed cool.

The farm was owned and operated by Tonya, her partner Craig and their son Troy. We hear about folks in the US wanting to "live off the grid." Many in NZ take that to heart and some of the most resourceful, frugal and inventive head to Karamea. The culture there is an interesting mix of recent devotees to the land and families that have been farming there for generations. The long time farmers it seems are able to live entirely off of their land while others work regular jobs up and down the west coast but too a much lesser extent than they would have to living in a city. For isntance, Craig drives truck at a local mine for a couple of months each year while friends of their's (whose children they were watching during my time there) work at the local national park and in the film industry periodically to make ends-meat.

I had the distinction of being a double 1st-timer... this was my first time as a WOOFer and the 1st WOOFer that craig and Tonya had brought on. Given that, the fact that I had such an enriching and wonderful experience is a testament to the type of folks that I was working for... very down to earth, good-hearted, comfortable in their own skins, dammed smart and know how to work hard... and when not to ;-) There were definately times when I could have worked a bit longer but at Craig's urging took the rest of the day for R&R. Trips to the beach to grill out occurred as if we were headed out to the back yard.

They have such a beautiful bit of land and a house a stone's throw away from the ocean (literaly) and really had a great set-up for me with a recently converted caravan that was parked right outside the house. Tonya is an artist and used her talents to decorate the interior while Craig had shaped Manuka planks with their natural edge out and a bee's wax finish for the countertops, would trim, etc. I spent my time digging fence post holes, tending the Callah lillies, mulching, and helping Craig with organizing his shop and tending his bees. Yep... their two cash crops from the farm are the lillies and honey from their bees. I LOVE honey and was tres thrilled to have my toast and butter slathered with a big helping of honey from the five gallon bucket that they kept in the litchen... much better use for a spackle then dry wall compund.

I was fueled for all this work by eating copious amounts of homemade, homegrown muffins, bread, sausages and vegetables from the farm. When I had an afternoon off I headed to the beach with my surfboard or hopped on a bike and headed in to town to broadcast a show at the local community radio station that Craig helped start. Karamea has the feel of say perhaps the west coast of the us about 100 years ago... people still know their neighbor, gossip about the ones they don't particularly like, are always willing to help each other out and aside from providing for themselves and raising their kids, and despite being pretty darned wordly, don't give too much of a rat's behind about what the rest of the world thinks is important i.e fame and fortune.

Here are a few pics that tell the rest of the story:

Post beach BBQ sunset... lot's of flies but only when you stepped out of the wind ;-)

Radio Karamea at the Rongo (Maori word for peace) bacpacker's hostel... Craig and Brian are at the helm showing me the ropes... can't remeber why they were so frowny... ha!

The family alarm clocks... booooo!

Craig the great white bee keeper...

... and some of his loyal subjects.

Can't help but call it home sweet home.

Some views of around the farm...

The Callah Lilly beds... weeded and ready for blood and bone mixture... yum!

Yummy avos... but not 'till Summer ;-(

A cloudy day but I swear the ocean is a tthe other end of that field.

The family fire bath... very awesome!

Craig, I and jack (the dog) out to move the cattle to a different grazing area.

The "farm hands".

Bee kepping 101... "bee" sure to turn up the volume so that you can hear the hive "talking"...

Tauranga - New Zealand and Australia Post #2

2009-06-23T12:08:00.006-08:00

I've always wondered what it would be like to pick up and move to another country to live and work... What!? you say. Yes... I have done this for short periods of time. It's a far different endeavor though to take a full time job and move your entire life across an ocean on a quasi-permanent basis... my jaunts have never been for more than 4 months at a time. I had the chance to observe "vie de verite" by visiting my friends Wade Osborne and his much, much better half ;) Dacotah Krieg in Tauranga, New Zealand (the photo at left is from the top of Mt. Manganui... excellent exercise walking to the top most mornings with Dacotah when wade had to run off to the salt mines ;-)

Wade and I go back a few years to grad school at OSU. As he described it he hadn't had the opportunity to travel while in the US Navy as his duty was land based in Norfolk, VA so when he had the chance to work as an engineer in NZ he took it... smart lad eh? My two muchachos were excellent hosts and made it super easy to slip right into the beach lifestyle as soon as I arrived.

Taruanga (northeast coast of the north island) is an interesting place and distinctly separated between the beach front communities around Mt. Manganui and the industrial center near the port there. As you might guess from the above photo the place is known for killer surf... unfortunately the season for swell is in the Summer about three or four months after my visit... Dacotah and I still managed to paddle out a few times though and towards the end of my visit we all road-tripped out to Raglan to visit one of the most famous left hand breaks in the whole wide world. On that same trip we visited the Waitomo Caves (Wai = water, tomo = hole in the native Maori language) which some of you may have seen in the opening segment of the recent BBC doco "Planet Earth". Think river tubing, meets spelunking, meets summer fireflies and you'll get a close idea.

The only thing that I regretted about my visit with W and D was leaving... can't wait to visit again.

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As you can tell (if you zoom out a bit) this part of the coast gets slammed in the summer months with north pacific storm activity.

Striking a pose prior to heading in to the Waitomo Caves...

A shot of the grand cave courtesy of about a hundred other people's blogs... couldn't find the original source!

After the caves we headed a bit north to Raglan... very famous left hand point break that under the right conditions can break for a kilometer or better. We stayed at a backpacker accomodation tucked back in to the coastal hills and on this particular morning I woke up with the sun and found this platform by chance for an early morning yoga practice... Wade and Dacotah showed up a bit later looking for me to tell me about this great platform built for yoga classes... how lucky!

The surf was actually breaking while we were there... I paddled out a bit down from this spot (Whale Bay) as it looked too heavy for me and was reported to be closely patroled by the leash cutting "Whale Bay Boys". Manu Bay proved to be knarly as well... particularly so since I was on a new, too short for me board and hadn't surfed anything serious for months... I made it out though and managed to sit off to the side with a front row seat to see surfing par excellance from a crowd of a bout 40 surfers on a +meter overhead day with a 10 meter take-off zone.

This is so Wade... I actually visited these folks twice as I was able to stop in Aukland (and they were kind enough to drive up to meet me) on my way back up from the South Island before heading to Australia. We took the day to visit the National Arboretum and the National Museum... very, very cool as these things go.

Year round beauty close up...

... and at a distance.

I missed my mark a bit by having an outdated guide book... I thought there would be ample opportunity for delving in to Maori culture all over New Zealand... as it turns out one of the only places left is in Rotorua and by some standards even that is considered a "tourist trap" as it's a representation of the Maori of the past... a culture that by en large is struggling with assimilation/cultural identity issues like most other embattled 1st peoples. I will say this though... despite tensions over past treaties between the Maori and Anglos, relations in NZ are far better than what I saw working for the Indian Health Service here in the US and eons better than experience later showed between the Aboriginies and Anglos in Australia. Not knowing that Rotorua was my best shot I passed through by bus on my way in and out of Tauranga. Fortunately there is a large collection devoted to Maori culture at the National Museum... this shot is of a traditional Maori Wharenui (meeting house) built inside the museum. I had the wharenui to myself for about 15 minutes so I slipped of my shoes and sat inside... it was so quite... I swear the place breathes and has a life of it's own.

This is a close-up of the aft section on a Maori Waka (carved wooden canoe)... the bust is of Ranginui (Sky Father) the male character in the Maori creation myth.

We also had the chance to watch a cultural performance of a Maori Haka... it's commonly referred to as "war dance" via it's use by the National All Blacks rugby team but is actually more often used as a way of welcoming visitors...

I spoke with this fellow (James) for a bit after the performance and asked if Anglos were encouraged or even allowed to learn traditional Maori song and dance... he said that there were quite a few non-native folks that did and he encouraged it as long as it was respectful and well rounded (i.e. not just to be aggresive and learn the "uber-cool haka) so... next time I'm in NZ I'm going to get my own loin cloth and take a class!

Here's a wee bit of video from the performance...

I Have Croatian Feet - New Zealand and Australia Post #1

2009-05-04T18:37:00.012-08:00

I thought that I would handle the flight from Auckland to Sydney a bit better and wasn’t too thrilled about being so foggy as I walked off the plane. I was still able to recognize Antonio on nothing more than the family resemblance though. Fifteen years since he had passed and it was as if I were looking at, walking up to and hugging my grandfather. Same smell too… aftershave and cigarettes. My cousin Sue was familiar to me right away. Even more so after looking at the photos she had at the ready from her visit to Chicago when I was eighteen and she had just finished university. As I was looking at these another cousin, Steve, was driving the lot of us to his parents house. I was snapped out of a nostalgic, and somewhat painful, look back at my senior year in high school when we arrived at Aunt Cecilia’s in Blacktown to the west of Sydney proper. In the door we go and it was intro after intro to the instant Australian family that would adopt me over the coming weeks.

We ate and drank the afternoon away swapping stories about family… those back home and in Europe and others that have passed. As I’ve thought for many years back home it became more and more clear that we are ethnically Croatian but culturally Italian. The food and language at home are always a combination of both cultures. The croat/italian side of my family emigrated in two waves. The first went to the US in the mid to late twenties and the next went to Australia after WWII escaping Tito’s communist regime and guided to the southern hemisphere by closed US borders. Antonio and his sister Cecilia left their home in the ‘50s and are my great grandmother’s niece and nephew. The rest of the clan there is made up of the four children they each had, their grand children and the extended family by marriage from their sons and daughters-in-law… about 50 people in all showed up to welcome me… a distant cousin at best. It became clear that afternoon and was reinforced over the next few weeks that the nature of our genealogy didn’t matter… all that mattered is that we are actually related and that was enough to be treated like a son or brother.

A slightly more trivial take away from my time in Australia… I’ve never met anyone with the same knobby, hairy, hobbit like feet… except for my Australo/Croat relatives :-)

The Famiglia at the uber fantastic blow-out sponsored by Daniella and Anthony.

A few other photos from the gala evening... me and Anth...

....John Surdich, wife Sophie and cousin Sue Zec...

The evening's photographer... he worked cheap... and all the shots had that fabulous low angle look... thanks Andrew! Cheeky Monkey!

Hanging out with some of the locals at Featherdale...

Doesn't everybody get a Koala shot when they visit Oz?

I really did take this shot myself ;-)

Mates... Zio Antonio and I on our way down the coast to the family cottage at Currarong where, among other things we...

... fished for Calamari...

... and yes... Antonio and #1 son Anthony made sure that I received the propper indoctrination in to the family calamari killing tradition... a full blast of ink to the face... Full On Mate!

Zio Antonio, Anth and I at the family cottage...

View out the front door... sort of ;-) I went on a boat dive not too far from here... those rock formations continue far, far down in to the water... tres cool.

The three amigoes on a hike to the Beacroft Head... one of, if not the only, places in the world where you can fish for marlin from the shore.

My cousin Matt and I tried to surf this spot out on the Beacroft Headland, Jarvis Bay after a great longboard day with his brother Anth (forgot the camera that day ;-( and were a bit skunked as the whole 1/4 kilomter length of the beach was closing out at a half meter overhead... better luck next time mate! We still had some good days though at other local beaches, me with me NZ funshape and Matt with his new mal... the Big Red Pushta!

Another family bash at a Lebanese restaurant in Paramata just prior to my taking off in a caravan for Queensland... Zio Antonio floored the crowd when he jumped to his feet to dance at the invitiation of the house belly dance... if any of you blokes or shelias send me a photo of this it WILL make it on to the blog ;-)

My cousin Rob "The Beast" Surdich and I at the coast north of Sydney where he lives with his family. We tried diving this spot two days in a row but were put off by the "minor" swell. So.. instead we headed off in Rob's fishing kayak to hand-line and skin dive. I caught a leather jacket and narrowly missed driving the frontal spike through my hand and found the only abalone of the day. We also survived paddling back in to the bay against a swift outgoing tide with an incoming swell at our backs... yeah baby! Robby... send me some pics muchacho... we swamped the camera but the pics survived... they MUST live on the net!

And finally... a couple of tourist photos!

Itinerancy

2008-09-17T16:01:00.019-08:00

Itinerancy (n ) - the quality or state of hectically and constantly moving from place to place, begging couch space from friends, packing, repacking, over-packing, under-packing and restacking one's storage facility, begging more couch space, annoying employers, worrying parents, having repetitive nightmares that you've missed your flight or have the wrong visa and are now a detainee of the Chinese "government" and in general not having a permanent domicile.

O.K... it is actually a real word. I've just modified the definition a bit... but not much. It's a wonderful thing to have the freedom and energy to move around as much as I have this year. Here are a few of the highlights since I went back up on the Slope in January. I've since left, have been in and out of Seattle since August and will be heading to New Zealand and Australia until mid-December.

Mom, Dad, and I out for a night at their local Irish pub.

Some of the gang at Hattie's Hat for my one night June appearance in Seattle.

My brother and I at a White Sox game on my birthday... thanks Mom and Pop!

Mom and I out on a tour of the town... via Segway!!! I have to put this in otherwise I know that my mother will be badgering me with comments until I do. Yes... I was the only one in the group to "wipe out" on their segway. I swear it was the gravel at Buckingham Fountain and the fact that I was trying to get the thing to skid :)

Not a bad view out of my office window eh? Here are a few more...

...I watched this brood grow over a period of six weeks. They were about 3x the size they are in this photo by the time I left in August...

...Endless sky and endless grass looking towards the North Pole...

...Mated pair of snow gease that nested near my office... never did see any goslings though.

Finally! The chance to surf in Alaska. A friend from the Slope invited me down to visit him and his wife on Kodiak Island. I spent three days surfing at 3-mile beech on the south side of the Chiniak Peninsula...

... days one and two were a little cold (air and water temps about 45F) and rainy but with clean waist high beach break...

... day three cleared to beautiful skies and I found a solid waste to chest high rock reef peeler...

... all three days I didn't see anybody in or out of the water on the beach except these shaggy beach bums.

My excellent host and I out for a drive around the old Army gun emplacements on the Chiniak Peninsula. David and Betty Odell are really quite wonderful. They homesteaded on Kodiak about 25 years ago (after traveling around the world for a year) and raised three kids. They hand built a beautiful log cabin style home and were kind enough to put me up for a few days and lend me a pick-up truck. Many thanks and my apologies to Betty for not getting a picture of all three of us... remind me next time :)

I had the chance to sea kayak in Prince William Sound again this year. It's a fundamentally meditative experience to spend even a few hours on flat water in a place as beautiful as the sound. It's deathly quite out there (when a power boat from Whittier isn't wizzing by) and has
a fog and rain induced ethereal quality to being on and so close to the water. Once you get out a ways you padlle for hours at a time only to have your solitude broken by a curious seal or otter, the screech of an eagle or the splash on a jumping salmon.

Luck prevailed with two full days of fantastic weather and I was able to make 20 miles each day. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view) I had to make a decision based on the marine band weather forecast (impending 25-30 knot winds and 2-3 foot seas). It appeared that if I didn't turn around and head back on day two that day three would be spent paddling against the wind all day and would have increased the risk of having to scramble to catch my flight back to Seattle... not to mention that I was solo paddling in a fairly remote area, that I'm only an intermediate kayaker 2 summers out, and that I haven't yet learned to roll my kayak which is a very useful skill in stormy seas. I lamented the decision to come back early after the fact but was glad to be amongst friends back in Whittier. The next day I crewed for a friend that runs a kayak taxi/dive/fishing charter service and was able to see that the weather conditions did deteriorate but weren't as extreme as the weather report indicated e.g. I could have handled myself un that sea-state. Ah well... better safe than sorry!

I found myself fealing lonely out there and it wasn't because I was camping alone in bear country. Through my 20s I solo hiked and camped a great deal and was never want for company. On this trip though I really felt the lack of companionship (at times and particularly when I was ashore) and would really have relished good company to have shared the expreience with. Perhaps I'm getting soft in my "old age" :)

So... next year I'm planning a week long trip farther in to the sound for anyone that's experienced and interested :)

A couple of fun cubby holes to duck your kayak in to...

... it was a bit creepy paddling beneath that hanging rock...

... dig the color of that water... this must have been closer to a river dumping out "glacial flour".

Here's the "Look Mom... I can kayak!" shot. GEEK! I like the one with just the boat...

...much better.

Can you spot the eagle...

... here's a close-up.

More glassy conditions at the start of day two.

Alas, I headed back to Seattle... good to be back among friends though... have access to my favorite "commuter vehicle" and to pass by "The Mountain" an my way home from running errands. Not too shabby :)

Here's some video from kayaking...

Hope you are all well!

A Media Vacuum

2008-05-13T08:15:00.004-08:00

I sometimes wonder if I'm in a "media vacuum" while I'm working up on the slope... too costly to get a decent paper sent up, limited access to TV, not much time to surf the web, etc. On this hitch however that last bit is anything but true as is made evident by my sore mouse clicking finger.

I know that you are all very well informed but I feel compelled to point out the following bit of media coverage concerning the recent earthquake in China as I found it to be very moving. Use the link below and click on the audio piece entitled "Listen: Melissa Block at Shattered School" and view the "Photo Gallery" while listening:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90396578

Fast Runner

2008-04-13T10:06:00.004-08:00

The following pics were taken at the "Bone Yard" in Kaktovik (Inupiat village at the northern edge of ANWR) a couple of days ago . The gent in the photo is a resident of the village and was presumably out there to photograph or film polar bears rummaging through detritus from last year's whaling hunt. We have an ice road job out there but as a rule steer clear of active polar bear "habitat".

The folks in the village claim that this wasn't staged and the only reason that they were shooting photos instead of bullets is that the subject of the bears curiosity is a "fast runner"... hopefully he can exceed the 35 mph max speed that polars bears are reported to be capable of.

In the end he jumped in the truck that the photographer was in and hauled ass. I suppose there are worse things than a broken window or tire boot to find the next time you walk out to your car :)

The Happy Idiot

2008-04-08T12:17:00.012-08:00

I wasn't really sure of what to expect when I came back to the Slope this year. I had a pretty good idea of the nature and intensity of the work I'd be doing but I was unsure of how I would handle it. The biggest challenge I faced last year was the "distraction" caused by the parts of my life that were far away. As it turns out I've been able to turn off (or shift) the part of me that yearns for things detached. Some of those diversions are still there and some aren't. Those that are gone have made my daily life in some ways easier while those that remain I've been able to appreciate for the joy they will bring when we are reunited (i.e. my guitar, surfboard, road bike, climbing gear... and oh yeah!... friends and family too :)

As far as work goes this season has been much the same as the last... plenty of cold, ice, snow and work days that seem to string endlessly together ranging from just enough time to breathe to absolute boredom (only 2 of the later :) One bright spot has been being stationed on the opposite side of the field from last year while working for a much more amiable boss in a brand new office that I helped build last Summer. We also have a pretty good team of folks here to manage the ten active jobs that we are running at once. There's been a surprise or two... we had a visit from a young med-student from Japan that rode his bike in the "dead" of February from Fairbanks to Deadhorse. Luckily I was able to show him a friendly face in the midst of angry/blank stares and to help him get situated for a well earned meal and good night's rest.

My first R&R was well spent surfing in Southern California and watching the start of the Iditarod with my good friend Mary Coleman. Next will be a road/camping trip to Southern Utah. This was the perfect excuse to pick up a new camera so feel free to goad me for photos if I don't' post any in the next few weeks :)

I really don't know when my tour will be finished this year... work could dry up in May or they could keep me going through the Summer... time will tell... for now one foot in front of the other. Cheers for now and I hope everyone is well.

P.S. Who can name the song I'm referring to in the title of this post and why it might be applicable to my current situation... think '70s California meets Machiavelli :)

P.P.S. The other major challenge that I faced last year was deteriorating health while on the Slope and after I returned to Anchorage. Many thanks for the support and encrouragement of friends, family and the Bastyr Center for Natural Health (http://www.bastyrcenter.org/) while I was back in Seattle. Thanks to that and a few months off of work I'm on the mend. My gratitude also extends to my Mom and Brother for shipping TJ's groceries up to me :)

First sunrise of 2008

Wondering weather or not the shutter went off at Zuma Beach

Mary and I out with the pups

Sundog barking outside my office window

Home away from home away from home

Hiroshi and I in front of the Prudhoe Bay Hotel

Arctic Caribou grazing at Oliktok Point

Building an offshore gravel island by sunset light

The crane monster cometh

Two examples of...

... beautiful desolation

Ice Dodging and Rushin' the Russian

2007-07-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

A dear friend has reminded me many times that adventures that go awry usually make for great stories. A recent 2 day excursion with my good friend Brady has the distinction of having come off without a hitch (or at least not a serious one) and having a few good tales (or tails as you'll read below).

Brady is the young fellow that helped me get the job up here in Alaska. He works up on the Slope periodically throughout the year and after his last trip stopped off in Anchorage to start his R&R. I feel particularly privileged to have had his company seeing as how he hadn't seen his wife in about a month... thanks Molly! Our first day out started with an early call in Whittier to go off on a paddle through Blackstone Bay. Thanks to my friend Pete (of Alaska Sea Kayakers) we were able to rent gear and piggy back on a charter... this has the advantage of saving a few bucks, being self guided, and getting to Blackstone Bay and back in one day.

We were dropped of at 17 mile lagoon on Willard Island and left to our own devices. After a brief gear check and paddle plan discussion we were off down the southeast shore. We crossed from the tip of the island to apoint between two glaciers, had a bit to eat and headed over to visit Beloit glacier first. It's a funny thing being within 500 yards of something as big as a glacier while you're in a sea kayak... only a foot or so above the water. Funnier, or stranger still, is the deep chord struck within when you hear the glacier crack and thunder. Absolute peace and quiet... a few small waves lapping against the hull... whispers of wind in the trees along the mountainous shore and then... KARKOOOOOOM! The learning point from this is one: don't get too close to a glacier that might be ready to calve (which is every last blessed one of them) and two: that glaciers crack fairly frequently but don't calve (or dump a small city sized load of ice in to the water) every time they crack. For all the ice thunder we heard I only recall seeing relatively small amounts of material cascading in to the water on two occasions.

Next, we paddled back across the point to Blackstone Glacier. It's freakin' huge and not only comes down to the water but flanks to the North and down a long ridge line with a waterfall near the end. I should mention that up to this point and throughout most of the day we had clear skies and very little wind.

Our next leg took us to the toe of another glacier in Blackstone Bay that I don't recall the name of. The toe was a short hike back from the shore so we beached our kayaks and headed inland to have a look. Hiking in Alaska is a bit different then in the "Lower 48" even if it's only for a short distance. Hikes are seldom quiet (because loud talking or singing scares away bears) and usually require a bit of extra gear (because pepper spray or a large handgun scare away or defend against bears). Did I mention that there are bears in Alaska? All kidding aside the best tools when hiking in bear country are knowledge and vigilance... let's just say I've been doing a lot of reading, talking to locals, and zero solo hiking (which in other parts of the world has been a long cherished past time). A stream runs out from underneath the glacier or more correctly bubbles up in to a pool from underneath the ice and then cascades in two streams down to the bay. We started to hike up the side of the toe to get up on the ice but decided against it as we weren't roped up and then there's that whole crevasse issue :) Like two fat cats on a lazy afternoon we beached our selves for a nap in the sun after our hike as the other group from our charter waved hello and passed by headed North. I knew they had planned to hike up a trail along the other side of the glacier about that time and I was surprised to see them stop short of landing, turn, and head back out in to the bay. We later found out that there was a black bear cub and likely proximal but unseen sow about a hundred yards away from us. We never saw or heard them but it's pretty likely they knew we were there.

After our rest we headed back out in to the bay and began crossing over to Willard Island to meet the charter for pickup. When we hiked down from the toe of the glacier we noticed a few billowing, white clouds poking up over the North ridge of the bay. These clouds were a bit more pronounced when we hit the water again but conditions were still pretty calm. By the time we were about half way across, or about half a mile out, winds started kicking up from the southwest and then quickly shifted and came out of the northeast. The interesting thing was a swell out of the northeast that preceded the wind shift. Pretty soon we were having an awesome and fun paddle in to the wind and 2 foot chop for a great end of day work out.

Both parties made it back to the pick-up point with plenty of time to spare, the boats and gear were loaded and we headed back to Whittier. Here is where the advantage of a water taxi became apparent... the channel between Blackstone Bay and Passage Canal was howling with wind and 4 to 5 waves... yikes! We ended the day by excepting a kind invitation to grill out with the owner, guides, and other friends of Alaska Sea Kayakers, made the 11 pm tunnel to get out of Whittier (you have to drive through a time regulated one way tunnel to get there) and pulled off the road in Portage Valley to pitch a tent for the night.

The next day we headed down to Ken's Alaska Tackle to pick up brand spankin' new fishing rods and a one day license for Brady... it was time for a try at fishing for red salmon on the famed Russian River. Thanks to great directions from my roomate James we were able to find the most upstream fishing boundary along the river just below the Russian River Falls. The hike in was about 2 miles over easy and gravelled trail. When we reached the viewing platform at the falls you could see a salmon attempting to jump up stream about every minute or so... in the Alaska vernacular this means that "the fish were slamin'!" They were so thick that at spots you couldn't see the river bottom. Each of us must have had about 20 or so fish on the line and we nearly limited out by landing five red salmon in about four hours. It was just what you dream about... fishing with a good friend, hard running, hard fighting salmon, great weather along a near pristine river running down a mountain rimmed valley, only a couple fo other folks around, and actually catching fish!

Then we realized that in our effort to go "country" i.e. bare bones on this excursion we forgot to bring along something to carry the fish in on the hike back to the car. Our solution... parachute chord and my fleece made for a nice gunny sack. Let's just say that our hike back went pretty quick with our effort motivated by carrying freshly gutted, smelly fish through bear country! Fish tails sticking out and all we made for quite a site and were stopped by some tourists dressed in matching black denim and new white sneakers so they could get photos of these "true Alaskan fishermen and their catch". Ha!

After we got back to the car we had to get ice to keep the fish, dash back to Anchorage, look up how to fillet salmon on the web, actually attempt this process, double bag the fillets, and get Brady to the airport to catch his flight to Portland. He wasn't headed home just yet and was able to grill out six fillets with friends on a rafting trip down the Deschuttes River the next day. Whew!

Thanks to B-man for being a great travelling partner and patient fishing-sensai. Laters.

Some of the Ties that Bind

2007-07-02T15:27:00.000-08:00

I'm not a huge fan of credit cards and the credit industry in general but... having and extensively using an Alaska Airlines credit card to get air miles is an essential part of surviving in Alaska. It helps you to get the hell out when you need to. Such was the case a couple of weeks back when I took off for Seattle to breathe a little easier and see a few sorely missed friends.

Many thanks to David and Hanna for loaning me their couch, cat, sea kayak and a bike, feeding me fresh baked bread and returning a rental PFD for me :) I had one of the most relaxing afternoons in recent memory lounging on their porch, looking out over lake Union to downtown Seattle while catching up on my reading... a six month full time occupation to be sure. That afternoon my friend Woody and I had a great paddle out at Golden Gardens... no wind, nearly flat water and a couple of tidal currents to play with. A few other friends showed up later that evening for a bonfire and to grill out. Thanks to everyone that came to see me and hang out.

Saturday started with a hot yoga class with David trying it out for the first time. It was good to get in a room and sweat for an hour and a half again despite David's claim that I had designs on killing him. That bugger is so dammed athletic that he was made example of by the instructor as having excellent form his first time in class... teacher's pet :) We came out of yoga class just in time to catch the Naked Cyclist Parade that was kicking off the annual Fremont fair. Many brave souls venture out for this event every year to accolades and applause for their original and creative body paint "costumes" or cries of "More paint!" for those that haven't put forth an effort. Later that day Hanna, David, Kelly, Rob, Brenda and I went to the fair and tooled around for a bit... and yes... I finally put my money where my mouth is and tried on a Utilikit. Just for a laugh though... I don't think it's really my style.

Sunday the tables were turned as my friend Rob tried to kill me on a run up to Twin Falls. As I typically find though I get a better work out in win I have a friend egging me on and calling me a "Nancy" for running too slow. Thanks to Kelly and Rob for grillin' and hangin' on Sunday.

Thanks again to everyone for a great weekend and I promise I'll be back soon.

Kayaking Class in Whittier

2007-06-12T16:58:00.000-08:00

UUUUGGGGGHHHHHH! (Insert Charlie Brown type voice here!) Yet another expensive water sport that I've been totally sucked into (or immersed in as the case may be :)

Yup! I finally got around to taking a sea kayaking class and had the shear luck of calling an outfit in Whittier, AK a scant few days before their last Spring class started. We had reasonable weather the first day and fantastic conditions the second. The instructor and other folks in the class were awesome to boot. I really appreciated the attention to detail and repetition on fundamentals... kayak football was a hoot too.

I've been out for an 8 mile solo paddle in Portage Bay since the class. I ended up kayaking after bagging a dive I'd planned thanks to yet another frag out on my dive gear. The weather was good that day though so I shifted gears and thanks to "Ever Patient Pete" over at Alaska Sea Kayakers (www.alaskaseakayakers.com) I was able to rent a kayak and gear in a hurry and head out. The trick was the wind that kicked up literally as Pete was mentioning that it could. Just before I hopped in the boat katabatic winds began sweeping off of Portage Glacier at about 10 knots giving rise to 2 ft. seas. Pete let me give it a try and suggested that if I couldn't visualize being comfortable in winds 5 knots higher that I should bag it and come back. Good training prevailed though and I was pretty comfortable crossing Portage Bay right out of Whittier, then headed down wind to a rocky point past the Rookery, crossed back over to the South Shore and paddled up wind back to the boat harbor. I got a little crazy along the way and took advantage of having rented a dry suit to practice self rescues and have a go at teaching myself how to do a complete roll. Bad idea that! All I managed to do was smack my head off of the stern deck and get the wickedest ice cream headache ever.

Kayaking adventures continued last weekend while I was in Seattle. I was able to borrow a friend's boat to goof off at Golden Gardens and practice some rescues (thanks Woody and David). The paddle with Woody that afternoon was awesome... beautiful afternoon skies, near zero wind, fun tidal eddies to play in and good conversation.

Hope you like the photos... if you click on the slightly amorphous person icon at the bottom of the slide show it should take you to the website I uploaded the photos at... there is an option to down load photos on the right side of the page.

Cheers.

Winter-Spring-Summer-Fall Reading List

2007-05-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone that sent in their ideas for a good read while I was away on the Slope. The reads that I picked up and finished while there were:

"Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
"Arctic Dreams" by Barry Lopez
"Storms of Silence" by Joe Simpson
"High Tide in Tucson" by Barbra Kingsolver
"Denali - a literary anthology" editted by Bill Sherwonit
The six most recent issues of "The Sun"
The four most recent issues of "The Surfer's Journal"... oh the agony!

As requested by many of the folks that sent in their ideas I've complied a list of all the suggestions. Have look and if you see somehting that catches your eye... have a read:

P.S. After having just read through the list of books everyone sent in to format it for readability... well... it reminded me how fortunate I am to have so many amazing, wonderful, thoughtful people in my family and circle of friends. Thanks not only for the book suggestions but also your humor, insight and support... cheers.

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Matt,

I am sitting here with Chad and Clifford. Here is what we have come up with as our five favorite books:
Catcher in the Rye by Salinger (Chad - if you want to go old school)
Deep Survivial by Laurence Gonzales (Chad - great book of real tales of survival; very well written;up your alley)
Locos by Felipe Alfau (Barrett - for a very literary mindtrip; characters take over the story; same characters in different roles, etc)
City of the Century by Donald Miller (Barrett - phenomenal, readable history of Chicago through 1895)
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (Barrett - my favorite kid's book; if you've never read this, it's an easy, amazingly creative and classic read)
... by Oliver Sacks (Chad - anything by this author; he wrote the basis for Awakenings... loosely based on his story; all loosely medically based)

Clifford recommends the following authors (all sci-fi):
George RR Martin
Katherine Kurtz
Tolkien (that'll take up some time)
Guy Gavriel Kaye (sick!)
Marian Zimmer Bradley

I believe that these will keep you busy. Are they our favorites? Some days. But in general they are just great reads. Barrett

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I just read a really good one called My Sister's Keeper by Judy Picult.
erin

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awakening the Buddha within
by lama surya das

maybe check out
Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World too--pretty cool story and below is a link talking about the village
http://www.friendsofgaviotas.org/about.htm
take care man,
paul

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The Time Traveller's Wife
Veronica Decides to Die - Paulo Coelho
The Sparrow - Maria Doria Russell
Accidents in North American Mountaineering
The Case for Christ - Lee Stroebel?

(these are somewhat influenced by recent readings - if I remember others from previous years, I'll send them along, too.)

-Suz

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1) Wyoming Stories II by Annie Proulx. Dark, funny, really well written. This is her second volume of short stories set in Wyoming.

2) Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh. Maybe it's because it was the first really good science writing I'd read, maybe it was because I studied so much math, but I thought this was a great read. Right now I'm reading Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything, which is also excellent. I'll have to go back and see if the other is really as good as I remember.

3) The Climate of Man by Elizabeth Kolbert. OK, I haven't actually read this book, but I've read the New Yorker series that it's based on. It's the one I was telling you about, and it has since won some awards, and it's really good. It's also set at least partly in the Arctic. (Can you say that non-fiction is "set" somewhere?)

4) Cassandra by Krista Wolf. This is a retelling of the Iliad from the perspective of Cassandra, the prophetess who forecast the fall of Troy. It's a strange book and wouldn't make sense if you hadn't read the Iliad and people tend to either strongly like it or dislike it. I liked it so it's on my list, though I don't necessarily recommend you read it.

5) Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I'm not sure if I like this better than a lot of other novels, but I liked it a lot and I think you might enjoy it.

Alright, that's it! Let us know what other people recommend, and what you end up reading.Take care,

Hannah

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Any request for a top 5 always immediately causes me to panic and argue that there's no such thing, but here goes some 'topofthehead' recommendations.

recently I've been reading books by a chap called Tom Holt - and I think they're very enjoyable - or is that my love of a dark english sense of humour ;)

if you haven't read the phillip pullman 'his dark materials' trilogy then that will keep you entertained for a while: i don't know anyone who has disliked them!!!!

I've also enjoyed books by andrei kurkov; haruki murakami (start with norwegian wood or west of the border before moving on to something heavier if it works for you);

Phillip Ball's: Critical Mass may interest the scientist inside you;

Jasper Fforde (first book is the Eyre Affair - more of my kind of english humour - about five more if you like that);

personal favourites are: Hitckhikers Guide to the Galaxy and George Orwell's 1984. Many more were that came from... Rich

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Jane Erye by Charlotte Bronte
Simple Abundance, A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach (Men's version is A Man's Journey to Simple Abundance Edited by Michael Sigell)
How To Know God by Depak Choprah
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey
All the Harry Potter books by Rowlings

Love,

Mom

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Book: La sombra del viento, Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I do not know the English title, might sound like: The shadow of the wind, but I am sure you will find it in Amazon, etc. in a good translation.

Regards – Wolfgang

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Heyya Matty, Thanks for the update. Now ThatS! what I wanted in anupdate, pics, personal information, a few details,good job. Hmmm... five favourite books. Well, I'll give you my all-time favourite five books.It's a bit hard, some of them I read a long time ago and they seemed profound or important then, but that doesn't mean I could go back and read them. There's plenty of other books, more recently read, that were great reads. They just don't make it into my"life-time most important book list". Part of the problem, is that some books become a partof my identity, for whatever reason, independent of their objective quality. The same way we might identify with the car we own, our choice of hobbies,our work or our clothes. They're more important than they are good. anyhoo,

1) Labyrinths: a collection of short stories by JorgeLuis Borges. The perfect combination of art, thoughtand sentiment. As short, sharp and clean as an arrowto the heart.

2) Tao Te Ching: Lao Tzu. My grandfather gave this tome when I was 13. I guess it's been the closest thingto religion I've ever been introduced to by someone I truly respected.

3) Tropic of Cancer: Henry Miller. What can I say? Iwas 18, drunk and sleeping on the streets of Paris.

4) Wind, Sand and Stars: Antoine de St. Exupery. Noman is an island, all the time. Yet, it's when we are alone that we have the space to see to the horizon.

5) Quest for the Lost City: Dana Lamb. Only thecoolest, least pretentious adventure book and the only one that convinces you that adventure can be had by anyone with the correct spirit.

That'll keep you busy. If you have the time, it wouldbe great to put everyone's suggestions into one longlist. more soon,

-d

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Regarding books, Immediately I thought about these (not 5, but three)

1. The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (I loved it, but is really really hard to read). Probably you've seen the movie

2. Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder. A very easy to follow introduction to philosophy, in the shape of a novel.

3. Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. Pulitzer winner.

4. The Three Musketters, and Vingt ans apres, by Alexandre Dumas. They have been lying on my bed table since I was 12. I know the book so well, that I can open any chapter and read it independently.

That is an interesting mixture. Hopefully you can find something suitable for your polar nights. Or you can read South, by Ernest Shackleton regarding his adventure on the cold Antartic, or his biography. If you get into that, I also suggest the biography of Roald Amudsen.

Cheers,

Pato & Co

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As for your list of 5 favorite books, I can't really narrow it down to 5 but here are some that I love:

Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Crime and Punishment - Doestoevsky
Rabbit Run - John Updike
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (really, anything by Steinbeck is very worth reading)Anything by George Orwell
Anything by Flannery O'Connor

All the best,Robin

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A book that I think you will enjoy:

Blink, non-fiction about understanding where instinct comes from and how to recognize it in our brain. AWESOME BOOK.

Stay warm, remember, when you feel sleepy and your outside, it means your brain is freezing. Little lesson I learned in Kenai, AL.

Love

Sylvia, Brian and Logan

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Sounds exciting! I've never been to Alaska, but I've seen spectacular pics. As for the books, check out:

Confederacy of Dunces (comedy),
War and Peace,
Don Quijote (the classics).

The first one is a much easier read, yet very intelligent. Good luck!

John Byers

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I really like Martin Eden, a famous Jack London book. But anything by London going to be alright.

I liked One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Also, if you can find a book called The Tracker, I guarantee you would like it.

I like the L'engle books, fantasy space/time travel/telepathy etc etc- but they are very much fantasy.

I read Ultra Marathon Man, its OK too from an intense point of view.

Alaska looks pretty cool- and from what you say and the guys here that worked on the Slope remember, it seems like it might be a good place for me to bring my cold-weather experience sometime in the future.

Hope you have a good Vokhtah!!

Later,

Trale

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1. Dragon Tears DEAN KOONTZ
2. Fear Nothing DEAN KOONTZ
3. Seize the Night DEAN KOONTZ
4. Watchers DEAN KOONTZ
5. Icebound DEAN KOONTZ

Had to put the last one in there. Good luck with the reading. If you do read any of these tell me what you thought.

Kevin

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My top 10 books I would recommend for you, in no specific order:

1. Gone Baby Gone, by Dennis Lehane
2. The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand
3. Bringing Down the House, by Ben Mezrich
4. The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
5. Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
6. Marley and Me, by John Grogan
7. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8. The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
9. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
10.The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman

watch out for the polar bears! see you at christmas, hoepfully you got someone good for the grab bag!

c

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A Walk to Remember
The Notebook
The Giving Tree
All the Places You Go
Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office
The Bible- by God :-)
Heart to Heart - by Britney Spears

I will try to come up with additional good reads and send them your way!!!! :-)
Happy Reading!

Catie

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Haven't read:

Collapse by Jared Diamond
The Hero with a thousand faces by Joseph Cambell

Awesome:

Ancient Wisdom Modern World by Dali Lama

If you haven't read it, you MUST get Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. Absolutely stunning book about the arctic. Good info about history, nature, science, & good reading.

Lastly, Bear Attacks their causes and avoidance by Stephen Herarro - this is the definitive book about bears, and it seems like it may be relevant to where you are.

Just got back from teaching a mountaineering I course through the ORC; all went well. Gotta unpack all my wet crap then do some homework & sleep.

Take care,

Logan

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Given you work for an oil company, I recommend "ThePrize: The Epic Quest for Money, Oil and Power" byDaniel Yergin.

I also recommend "The Path Between theSeas" by David McCullough, which is about the buildingof the Panama Canal.

By the way, you really are crazy. You hoping to marry an eskimo up there?

Chris Kroll

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Books:

1984 - Orwell
Clockwork Orange - Burgess
Fight Club - Palanuik
The Old Man and the Sea - Unknown
Lonesome Dove - McMurtry

Wade Osborne

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not much time today to write, but a couple books pop readily to mind:

Hunger - Knut Hamsun
The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiesen
Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Prisig

Jason Killian

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Ah, this is easy!

Water for Elephants (just published this year…FANTASTIC…everyone I know keeps telling everyone else to read it too!)
Battle Cry, Leon Uris…old book but always on my top 10
To Kill a Mockingbird…you’ve probably read it a few times already….still my favorite!
In Cold Blood…another old favorite
Innocent Man….new John Grisham…very, very good…his first non-fiction

Jan Mosely

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...as for the books, I always have been a Kurt Vonnegut fan, and I liked Tolkein's Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but read the Hobbit first. Sorry, these are old books, but I have not had much free time to read lately. Most of my time is spent taking care of my daughter or working around the house. We watch a lot of Disney/Pixar type movies, such as Madagascar, Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Cars, over and over again. I suppose I complain a lot, but it has truly been an incredibly wonderful experience to have a daughter.

Richard

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Nice pics. Hope all is well.

My five in the non-fiction category are as follows:

1. Bar none, my first pick is: "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing [topic: Shackleton]...(but I think you have read that one); so a second pick is "The Last Place on Earth" by Roland Huntford [Amundsen and Scott's race to the South Pole].
2. "The Second World War" by Winston Churchill (its 6 vols, but heh you have time)
3. "Track of the Grizzly" by Frank Craighead [First radio tracking of grizzlys in the Yellowstone area, circa 1960]
4. "West with the Night" by Beryl Markham [First westward transatlantic flight]
5. "Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner [water in the West]

Bonus Pick: "A Stillness at Appomattox" by Bruce Catton [last year of the civil war in the east]

Enjoy,
Lee

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Forgive me if you've already read any of these, but:
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond (Paperback - April 1, 1999)
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond (Hardcover - Dec 29, 2004)
Arctic Grail: The Quest for the Northwest Passage and The North Pole, 1818-1909 by Pierre Berton (Paperback - Aug 2000)
Ghosts of Cape Sabine: The Harrowing True Story of the Greely Expedition by Leonard F. Guttridge (Paperback - Nov 2000)In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (Paperback - May 1, 2001)

The last three are about tradgedy and despair in desolate wastelands, which should be fitting topics while up on the North Slope. If you're not in the mood for non-fiction, I recommend the entire Patrick O'brian "Master and Commander" series (aka Aubrey/Maturin series) if you enjoy Royal Navy historical fiction.

Beer and coffee,
Chad McMullen
Seattle, WA (capital of the state of Alaska)

Anatomy of an Ice Road

2007-04-15T22:50:00.000-08:00

A few of you have asked exactly what in the hell I'm doing up here in the middle of Winter. Aside from freezing my horses patoot off I'm helping to build a series of ice roads in the Alpine oil field.

Ice roads are built every Winter season in this section of the North Slope field (as well as in many others) to allow for resupply of the drilling facilities with materials that are too expensive to or not possible to fly in. We are also building a larger separate ice road to facilitate gravel mining, hauling, and placement operations for expansion of one of the satellite drill pads. Every permanent facility in the oil field is built on a gravel pad and every permanent road is constructed from gravel. It's actually considered a wiser practice from a health and safety standpoint to build a separate ice road for a major gravel haul to keep haul traffic away from smaller truck traffic.

The method of construction for an ice road is essentially similar to the way in which an asphalt road is built. Conventional roads are built by cutting in the road alignment, placing a base course, and then laying down an asphalt emulsion. For an ice road you start by "walking in" the initial alignment (the alignment by the way is set by some crazy surveyor on a snowmobile dragging a sled with gear and survey stakes) with a large rubber tired water truck called a "water buffalo." As you pack the snow down with the tires you spray out water from the back end of the truck to freeze the snow in place (i.e. your base course). I should mention here that the idea is to do zero damage to the tundra during the initial and all following stages of road construction. Before this was practice materials used to be dragged across the tundra by bulldozers pulling steel sleds... cat tracks from up to 30 years ago can still be seen scarring the tundra today. To that effect the AK DNR doesn't allow tundra travel each year until sufficient snow has fallen (~6") and the top layer of the tundra has frozen (-5 deg C at -1 meter for ~ 5 days). If/when damage to the tundra occurs it's reported to DNR so they can go back to that location after the Summer breakup to see if the damage was permanent.

Instead of an asphalt emulsion we lay down ice chips and water to build the remaining layers of the road to achieve the minimum 6" thickness. The chips are ground off of the surface of adjacent lakes and rivers with a large roto-tiller and loaded in to 30 cy end dumps (aka Maxi Hauls). The Maxis take the chips to a section of road where they are needed and dump them out over an area that has just been watered. Next, a road grader blades out the chips and then that section is flooded with more water. When the temperature is optimal at about -20F this new section will freeze in a matter of minutes. When a large enough section has been completed the grader comes in to give the road a final shave and then that section is capped with another flood; usually from a large 325 BBL tanker. The water we use is pumped from arctic lakes that have a permitted allowable volume to be used each year.

In other cases we have to construct an ice road over a naturally frozen lake or river. In this case a "pumper" is used to ground the ice prior to chip placement. A pumper is essentially a medium sized New Holland tractor with a custom mechanism on the back... one part stainless steel auger and another part submersible pump housing. The real trick is that by pumping water from beneath the ice you don't actually see the build up on the surface. As you place water on top of the existing ice it freezes and becomes additional surface ice that due to it's weight sinks the existing ice beneath it. When the ice sinks far enough to touch the river or lake bottom then it's considered grounded and you can begin placing chips and water to build the road to an elevation higher than the natural ice surface. This is sometimes considered an "ice bridge" with a design thickness of up to 11 feet required to carry ~ 500,000 lb. loads (i.e drill rig or camp module sections). The idea here is that grounded ice is safer than floating ice. Road safety is also enforced not only through design and construction methods but by controlling speed... they use security personnel with radar guns... imagine getting a ticket for speeding in the Arctic! There has been cases though of heavy trucks moving fast enough over an ice bridge to create a frontal pressure wave. When this wave reaches shore it breaks open the ice and results in a sunken truck and a driver under threat of death from exposure if help isn't close at hand.

The weather up here is no joke. Typical temperatures have been -30 to -50 F with winds averaging around 15 to 20 mph daily. Under these conditions exposed skin will become frostbitten in less than five minutes. I usually walk from camp to the trailer that I work out of but it's a less than ten minute walk and the gear that keeps me warm is arctic grade and very expensive... worth every penny though... fill face mask and ski goggles are the norm and my favorite part of the gear... perhaps because it reminds me of diving :)

The Arctic... it's not just about Aurora Borealis anymore.

2007-04-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

This is the only photo out of only a few attempts that turned out... it was -60F without wind... the cold kept killing my camera battery... and I could only go a minute or so with my hands out of my gloves.

So... despite telling people that I was working on a blog... this has turned out to be yet another chance to say "Better late than never?" Apologies for taking so long to get something out to all you kind folks that have been wondering where the hell I am and what ever in the world I've been up to. I'll claim averaging ~ 90 hours a week since the first week of January as my excuse.

It's been a long hard Winter up here. I suppose that seems a bit silly to say given my surroundings but I have to admit I didn't expect things to be as challenging as they have been. Now... for those of you that I've spoken to on the phone recently... don't worry! I didn't start this blog to continue the tirades that I've tended towards over the past few (gulp) months (yikes!) The challenges haven't risen from the weather. They've stemmed more from the consistently long hours (12 hours/day, 7 days/week at a minimum) and the fact that the key to success on the North Slope of Alaska (aka the Slope) is to be the biggest jerk with the least amount of scruples... not something I've set myself to excel at in life... no comments from the peanut gallery.

As with all twists and turns in life there is allways a positive outcome to all situations. At the very least I know what I don't want to spend the rest of my life doing. I've also picked up the following useful information:

Metal will in effect burn your skin once it gets cold enough; I have the callouses from opening the pad lock on my office every morning to prove it... and no... I can't wear gloves while spinning those accursed little dials.
Generally speaking an adult polar bear has a way bigger paw print than my boot print... yes... a no brainer... but the distinct difference between imagining it and seeing it first hand... right outside my office door... justify this comment.
If you are tired enough after spending three days stuck on an offshore, man made island in the Beaufort See with temperatures at -80F due to the +60 mph winds and you've just seen a 1200 lb. polar bear at 50 feet and all the food is in the trailer with you and the "bear hazing" shot gun is in the other trailer... you'll still fall asleep.
People don't turn their trucks off in the Arctic... for seven months straight.
It's incredibly frustrating to work in the middle of such austere beauty and not be able to get out in it... we are forbidden by law to set foot on the tundra without a very difficult to come by permit... this relegates us to the existing gravel pads and roads or the ice pads and roads that are built in the Winter.
You can eat anything if you put enough honey on it.
And... right... wrong... or... indifferent... I... really... like... using... an... ellipsis.

That's all for my first post. My goal is to sort through the many photos I've taken and write about the circumstances surrounding the photo itself, the happenings of that day, etc. I may have lost the "fresh take" on my time up here but perhaps you've already gathered from my previous comments that time and a wee bit of perspective is a good thing.

Ah! One more thing... I'm currently living in a construction camp in the Native Village of Nuiqsut. Here is a link to the May 2006 NG cover article discussing the section of the oil field we are in and the impact on Nuiqsut:

http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0605/feature1/

It's very informative. I have a few comments on the topics covered that I'll post at a later time.

Hope everyone is well.

Nepal and Tibet 2004

2004-08-01T19:16:00.000-08:00

Just a slide show for now... text to come down the road. I started this process a couple of years ago only to lose about twenty-five pages of text to a crashed hard drive... hopefully Blogger doesn't have the same problem!

Japan - Yokosuka - February 2004

2004-02-09T18:47:00.000-09:00

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

This time around I’m a bit South of Tokyo at the Port and Airport Research Institute (PARI) in Yokosuka, Japan (as opposed to the DPRI in Kyoto last summer). I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to come back to Japan for some more structural/geotechnical/port/earthquake engineering research. So far it’s been a great experience. I’m living in a small but neat apartment about a five minute walk from the lab and right next to Miura Bay (for you history buffs out there that’s where Admiral Perry made his first landing in Japan in 1854). It’s a bit similar to my situation this past summer as Yokosuka is a really nice area that’s close to a large city but not too close. The plus is that I’m right next to the water again. A good chunk of Japan’s coast is heavily industrialized but there are some really beautiful stretches not too far from here. I started out with some killer bike rides but has to put them off the last two weeks as I did battle with the flu (don’t worry it wasn’t bird flu… although I have had an urge to peck corn off of the floor).

Tokyo is of course completely different from Kyoto. It’s larger for starters and has much more of a “Big City” feel to it. But, as with most big cities there are quite a few cultural activities type benefits that come along with the crowds and pollution (museums, etc.) The weather her has been surprisingly mild with most days sunny, breezy, and in the 50s. Unfortunately the predominant weather patterns this time of year mean that good surf is in a completely different area of the Island. Oh well, I guess you can’t have everything.

PEOPLE

The folks in my lab are fantastic. Again, I’m being spoiled by people that speak a good bit of English as compared with my limited knowledge of Japanese. Dr. Koji Ichii is my main contact most days as I plow through some geotechnical numerical modeling for him (see the research section for more info). He’s been very patient and helpful. Shortly after my arrival we went out for a welcome party in Yokohama and ate at the restaurant were they film Iron Chef; what a hoot. Thanks to Prof. Dickenson as the calendars I gave as gifts were a big hit. I was concerned that I’d be a bit bored this time around as I’m not with a bunch of other students from the Western world as was the case this past summer. However, a good friend from OSU has put me in contact with some old college friends of his that live in Tokyo. I’ve been up to visit twice and have had a blast. They’ve been very generous with their time and extended circle of friends. As a result of meeting some of their friends from Australia I’ve become a fan of Vegemite (the variation of a cheese and honey sandwich is my favorite). I've also been fortunate enough to spend more time with my host family, Takeshi, Midori, and Juri Mitomi, from this past summer as they live only about five minutes away. I just can't seem to get enough of their great company and Midori-san's excellent cooking.

RESEARCH

Despite the fact that I’m in the “Structural Dynamics Division” at PARI all the work my group does is geotechnical earthquake engineering for ports and harbors. I’ve decided that it’s a good thing though as I’m likely to spend the rest of my career on the structural side of things. Structural consultants hardly have the time or money to spend learning the ins and outs of “esoteric” (ha ha) nonlinear liquefaction models so I’m happy to have the chance. A good friend and colleague who will remain nameless (Nason) is convinced that I’m slowly but surely “coming over to the dark side”.

I’m essentially performing a parametric study for liquefaction and slope stability analysis of waterfront sea-walls/dikes. The parameters to be varied are slope geometry, soil characteristics, soil layer thicknesses, the Rayleigh stiffness damping factor, and input ground motion. The sites chosen for the study actually exist, were recently addressed for seismic and tsunami inundation concerns, and are fairly typical of this type of structure in Japan. The ultimate goal is to come up with a set of design curves.

The program they use here is called FLIP (Finite element analysis of LIquefaction Process) and was developed by Iai et. al over the last decade or so. The closest type of program back in the states is FLAC which I’m not terribly familiar with so it’s difficult to make an extensive comparison. FLIP though is based on nonlinear plasticity theory and the concept of total shear work done by each discretized element. There is, as most of you port engineer types know, a fair bit of debate as to the applicability of FLAC for seismic analysis of port structures. So, if there are some issues that you think I should be aware of or try to sort out for FLIP please let me know as now is the best time to address them.

Japan - September 10, 2003 (Okinawa Dive Photos)

2003-09-10T17:46:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody (no my name is not Dr. Nick for all you Simpsons fans out there),

Well, it’s sad but true that this will be my last travel update as my trip to Okinawa took up my last week in Japan for this summer. I can easily describe the week as consisting of diving, diving, some more diving, and then a side order of diving with diving for desert. Yes, you can call me the human prune. The diving in Okinawa is absolutely fantastic; visibility typically between 40 and 100 feet with a water temp of around 85 F. Things to see include an incredible variety of fish, crab, eel, shrimp, turtles, soft and hard corals, and a WWII era wreck dive on the North side of the Island. On top of all that I was able to stay in a collection of really cheap/nice hotels and guest houses two minutes away from the dive shop.

The best diving by far was off of the Sunabe sea wall, the entry to which was about twenty feet away from the dive shop. The location is defined by a relatively shallow reef covered with the best collection of soft coral “in the world” according to Rob who is one of the folks I dove with. I don’t have any grounds for comparison elsewhere in the world but it sure was cool to me. If I wasn’t at the Sunabe sea wall day or night diving then I was out on a boat with Rich and Papa-san and his crew at the Kurama Islands. Another great location with the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen and deep abundant reefs. I was fortunate enough see two turtles at a distance of less than 10 feet and about 40 foot depth on my last dive there.

One of the highlights of the week was doing my first wreck dive on the USS Emmons off of the northwestern side of Okinawa. The Emmons served as a personnel transport on D-day duringthe invasion of Normandy and was later transferred to the Pacific theater. She was sunk on April 6th, 1945 after being hit by five Kamikaze airplanes while assisting another US naval vessel in the northern waters of Okinawa Island. The ship didn’t sink immediately but was instead towed inshore and sunk by the USS Ellyson with ninety-six rounds from her five inch guns. The Emmons was only recently discovered by Rich Ruth (thanks to Rich for the Emmons info above) and his crew a few years ago and serves as a tomb for all the ships crew lost during her final mission and as a memorial for all those that survived. She currently rests on her port side at a depth of about 180 feet and is listed over approximately 85 degrees. The exposed hull is primarily intact except for the fantail area at the stern. The drive shafts and screws, gun turrets, and anti-aircraft guns are also still in tact but the top deck bulkheads and compartments have seriously corroded and collapsed. This was one of the most captivating dives I’ve done due to the depth and the nature of the wreck. It’s yet another example of everything that was sacrificed during WWII. Hats off to the men of the USS Emmons and their families.

The photos below are the best, but still a mere fraction, of all the shots I took while diving in Okinawa. I purchased an underwater case for my digital Cannon A70 and let’s just say I went a little crazy. Thanks to Rich Ruth at Fathoms Dive Shop; he’s a good person, great diver, and runs a top-notch totally squared away operation (he tells great jokes too… yeah right!). I always felt comfortable diving with him and that he had my best interests and safety in mind. Feel free to check out some more about Fathoms and diving in Okinawa via the link below. Muchas gracias to all the great folks I met and dove with in Okinawaincluding, Steve, Joanna, Jennifer, Lina, Carlene, Keith, Rob, Chris, Aya, and Hiroshi; be well, stay safe, and here’s hoping we dive again soon.

That’s all for now kids! Hope to hear from you soon… holla back ‘yo!

Clown Fish in it's Anemone on the Sunabe Seawall, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Soft Coral on the Sunabe Seawall, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Nudibranch (Phyllidia Coelestis) on the Sunabe Seawall, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Sea Star on the Sunabe Seawall, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Hawkbill Turtle off the Kurama Islands, Okinawa, Japan, July 2003

Wreck of the USS Emmons, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Gishipu Island in the Kurama Chain, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Soft Coral Reef at the Sunabe Seawall, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Sunset over the East China Sea, Okinawa, Japan, August 2003

Japan - August 10, 2003

2003-08-10T17:30:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody:

Busy, busy, busy! Sorry I'm a week delayed with this update but things have been a bit hectic. All is well though as I'm beginning to wind down things here at the DPRI and am preparing for a visit to Tokyo for summer program closing ceremonies (the first photo at right is of the fine gents I've been working for all summer at the DPRI.) Then it's off to Okinawa for a week of scuba diving!

Last weekend was the most action packed thus far. I started by joining three friends (Rich, Ruth, and Luke) from Great Britian to go see a fireworks display down in Osaka. The display was in honor of the founder of a rather strange group called the Liberty Church the details of which are rather sketchy at this point; I've heard through the grapevine that they may be a bit cultish. In any case they put on a great display and boy was it packed. So crowded in fact that Rich and I missed the last train back to Uji and ended up sleeping on Ruth's floor for the night (thanks Ruth!)

The next day was spent with Rich and Ben (another NHMJer) at the Osaka aquarium. It doesn't quite stack up to the good old John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chi town but it was still pretty spectacular. I had a blast experimenting with my digital camera trying to get good shots of the aquatic life through glass with blue washed light and while surrounded by about a million other tourists. Highlights included a whale shark (amazing but somehow sad to see something that big in captivity), a great array of jelly fish, and thelargest crab species anywhere (Japanese Spider Crab). That evening was followed up with a birthday celebration for Rich at an all you can eatbeer garden on top of the Gion Hotel in Kyoto.

Sunday, Ben and I hit Osaka again to visit the Osaka castle and to go to an Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes baseball game. I am now officialy a Buffaloes fan (don't worry Pop, the Go!Go! Whitesox are still my favorite team.) We ended up getting in for free as some kind gent had two tickets he couldn't use. We had planned on the cheap seats but were offered two other seats in the official fan section by a very nice eye doctor and his girlfriend from Kyoto; as it turned out he had studied in the US and spoke English very well. The game was pretty good and kept exciting for us as the fans went nuts the entire time their team was up to bat. No, really, I mean non-stop buck wild cheering, flag waving, stomping, trumpet playing fanaticism with a different cheer for each batter. There were two US players for Osaka, Toughy Rohdes and Ken Bairnes (a pitcher from the LA Dodgers on "farm relief"). The most amazing thing I saw during the game was the pitcher from the opposing team (Chibba Lotte Marines.) This guy had a side arm pitch that included totaly bending at the waste to release the ball from below his own knee i.e. he pitched predominantly up towards the batter as opposed to down with an overhand pitch; mind boggeling. If anyone knows of a US pitcher with a similar style I'd definately like to hear about it.

I hope everyone is having a good end to the summer an isn't to bummed about going back to school, end of vacation, etc. Talk to you soon.

Matt

Dr. Susumu Iai, Matt, and Dr. Tetsuo Tobita, Uji, Japan, July 2003(Sorry Tetsuo and I are so sweaty but there wasn't any AC in the lab until last week! Atsui!)

Osaka Buffaloes Fans... Go Go Buffaloes!, Osaka, Japan, August 2003

Osaka Aquarium Jelly Fish, Osaka, Japan, August 2003

Sunset over Kyoto from the Gion Hotel Roof, Kyoto, Japan, August 2003

Kintetsu Buffaloes Osaka Dome, Osaka, Japan, August 2003

Japan - Summer 2003 Research

2003-08-01T18:01:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

So it seems that my many travel updates have given the impression that I’ve been on vacation the entire summer. This is not entirely untrue since I know I’ve had a lot of fun but, I also spent a good deal of time participating in research at the DPRI. A brief summary of the work I performed follows.

In a nut shell the purpose of my efforts at the DPRI geomechanics division was to generate experimental data for comparison to and validation of the numerical modeling results of a computer code developed by Dr. Susumu Iai. The code is called FLIP, is based on the finite element method, and is used for the 2D analysis of lateral pile deflection in soil. The basic output of concern for this program are vector displacement fields corresponding to the nodes of the finite element mesh used to define the soil surrounding the pile. Two cases were considered for a model pile displacing through soil; drained and undrained. The drained condition was the first and easiest case tackled followed by the somewhat more difficult undrained testing.The basic test setup consisted of an aluminum test bed having inner dimensions of 80 cm by 50 cm by 4 cm depth. The model pile was fabricated from Teflon, has dimensions of 5 cm diameter by 4.2 cm height, and was constructed in a modular fashion with intermediate compressible gasket to allow for intimate and continuous contact between the pile top and acrylic cover bottom. The acrylic cover was attached to the test bed with a series of perimeter bolts and gasket between the cover and test bed wall. The model pile was attached by wirerope to a lateral load mechanism via an opening at one end of the test bed fit with a tight bushing.

The information I’ve listed above describes the extent of fabrication work Iai-sensei and Tobita-san had completed prior to my arrival. The methodology to be employed for generation of experimental vector displacement fields was left up to me and is to be the foundation for the remaining three years of research left for this program. At the end of the summer I passed on all the test methods and data that I had developed to Iai-sensei and specifically to the ever estute and diligent Mr. Keita Yamaguchi who was recently accepted for masters work at the DPRI. A brief description of the general test method for each condition is given below.

For the drained or dry condition a hopper was employed to “drop” silica sand into the test bed. The sand was then smoothed by hand using a system of aluminum tracks and a 100 cm aluminum ruler. A plastic frame was then employed to place a red dyed silica sand grid around the model pile. The pile was latterly displaced via the load mechanism with motions recorded by digital still photography and video tape. The gathered visual data was then used to track the nodes of the red sand grid and draw displacement vectors using the Surfer software package. A similar process was repeated using a x25 microscope to record the motion of the pile. In this instance, due to the extreme magnification, the red sand grid was replaced with randomly sprinkled red colored sand. This data was again processed with the Surfer program to obtain a vector displacement field.

For the undrained condition silica sand was mixed with a series of liquids. Problems initially arosefrom settling of the sand resulting in increased pore water pressure and “bleeding” to the top of the sand layer. This had the effect of washing away the red sand dots used to track soil displacement and obscuring the pile top from recording equipment. This problem was solved by testing different mixtures of water and a cellulose base compound called Metlose to increase the viscosity of the liquid used to mix the silica sand slurry. The best results were obtained with a liquid mixture having 120 times the viscosity of water. The same recording and processing techniques used for the drained condition were then used to obtain vector displacement fields.

The photos and figures below are of the general test set-up and some test results. Links are also provided to the very rough but much more detailed draft paper I wrote for publication in a Japanese journal covering geotechnical experimental methods (it's in the format required for the JSPS report) as well as the report I had to submit for the initial NHMJ program.

Well, if you’ve read all the way to the end then you are either a geotechnical engineer or you weren’t sleepy enough to get bored. I hope you enjoyed reading all of that gobledy-gook and please drop me a line if you have any questions or comments. Thanks.

Matt

Empty Testbed, DPRI of Kyoto University, Japan, Summer 2003

Model Teflon Pile, DRPI of Kyoto University, Japan, Summer 2003

Complete Set-up Ready for Testing, DPRI of Kyoto University, Japan, Summer 2003

Overall displacement field for drained case, DPRI of Kyoto University, Japan, Summer 2003

Local displacement field for drained case, DPRI of Kyoto University, Japan, Summer 2003

Japan - July 28, 2003

2003-07-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

Hello Ya’ll:

This past week has been a bit more on the work/research side of things but I was still able to get out for some fun over the weekend. Saturday evening I was out with the post doc I work for and his lovely wife (Dr. Tetsuo Tobita and Mrs. Satoko Tobita). We had quite a bit of fun walking through the Gion district in Kyoto, which is the most well known Geisha district in Japan, on our way out for a Korean BBQ dinner. As it turns out many tourists line up and down the street to snap pictures as the Geisha go off to various restaurants in the early evening. Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera so I have no Geisha photos to share. I was especially sorry as I could swear that one of the Geisha I saw was featured in a Discovery Channel special on the subject I happened to see this past Spring. My hosts found this very funny and were rightfully inclined not to believe me. Ah well, such is the life of an American tourist.

Sunday I made my way by two trains up to the village of Kurama which is located in the hills (roughly 600 meters in height) North of Kyoto. The two main attractions were the Kurama-dera temple and the Kurama-onsen (hot springs). Kurama-dera temple is built into a hillside and is comprised of long trails that connect the main hall, museum, and many small shrines dating back to 770 A.D. The monks there practice there own style of Buddhism called, aptly enough, Kuram-kyo. The hills are heavily wooded, rutted with streams, and with summer in full swing are absolutely beautiful. I hiked up to the main hall and arrived in time for what I think amounts to afternoon prayers. I guess Buddhists prefer toworship on Sunday as well. I don’t know much about Buddhism but I was certainly affected by being surrounded by the low hum of monotonic chant at the main hall and practically everywhere else I walked in the temple complex. Had I had my wits about me I would have pulled out the digital camera, put it on video mode, and recorded the sound of it all; next time perhaps.

The favorite Kyotoite thing to do (or so my guide book tells me) after visiting the temple is to hit the local onsen or “hot spring” in our vernacular. For a reference most onsen in Japan seem to resemble the type found in Steamboat Springs, Colorado i.e. it’s a natural spring but they’ve built a large building complex around it. Japanese onsen differ in that there are separate baths for men and women. Yep, you guessed it; the only suit you need is the one you got on your birthday; when in Rome right! Interesting thing that; it seems that I was a bit harrier than every other male at the bath and drew some pretty funny stares. Even funnier were the little tikes that would run and hide behind their fathers when I came walking out of the locker room. Most folks seemed pretty friendly though and I found the whole experience to be very relaxing. The best part of course was the Swedish component to the bath; get out of the blisteringly hot spring and jump in to the adjacent ice cold bath. Zoinks! Sorry though folks; no pics from the hot spring.

The train ride back turned in to quite a bit of fun when some fellow tourists asked me to snap a photo for them. One of them turned out to be a former Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) program employee from Wexford County, Ireland. Ms. Mary Green was on the last day of her holiday in Kyoto after having been absent from Japan for eight years. We chatted up a stormand she was kind enough to relate stories of the Kobe earthquake that occured during her last year in the JET program. Why is it that most of the teachers I meet are so darned nice?That’s all for now.

Hope everyone is diggin’ life. Take care.

Matt

Kurama-dera Shrine, Kurama, Japan, July 2003

Dragon Hand Washing Station, Kurama, Japan, July 2003

Tall Tree Torii (Gate), Kurama, Japan, July 2003

Drainage Channel, Kurama, Japan, July 2003

Japan - July 21, 2003

2003-07-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody, Yes it’s that time again; yet another Japan update. Things here in Uji are status quo; i.e. fantastic. Lot’s of work in the lab and plenty of sightseeing and travel.

So, last week I went to a local festival called “Gion Matsuri”. I’ve received a few different explanations as to the reason for this celebration which is quite understandable as it’s thought to be over a thousand years old. In general Matsuri Festivals have agrarian roots dating back to the Yayoi period (300 B.C.) Explanations include hope for a good rice harvest, the end of the rainy season and hence the end of the mosquito/cholera season (this used to be quite a problem so it’s likely that they were celebrating having lived through it another year), and just because it’s summer. Basically, local community groups sponsor the construction of different wooden carts that are built and put on display over a week long period. At the end of the week these massive 2 to 3 story carts are hauled hand and foot (via the folks that built it) through down town Kyoto in a Parade. Some of the carts are simply frames with large hanging lanterns while others are very elaborate and hold a group of musicians on the top that play the special gion festival music (basically bells and drums with some chanting); see the photo below.

This past weekend I hooked up with some of my “old” NHMJ buddies (these are engineers from the first part of my trip) to travel to Hiroshima and Fukuoka. Hiroshima is of course the site of the first use of an Atomic Bomb (in an actual attack rather than a test) during World War II. Regardless of weather or not one agrees with the use of the first atomic weapons, the impact ofvisiting the International Peace Park and ruins located at ground zero is a bit beyond description; aside from that I don’t feel it appropriate to use this website to force my opinions on anyone. Even if I did express an opinion, given the magnitude and significance of the history of this city and as is typically the case, some one has almost assuredly said it better and more wisely. I’ll simply quote the plaque located at the A-bomb dome:

“The A-bomb dome is the ruins of the former Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall which was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever to be used in the history of humankind on August 6, 1945. The atomic bomb was detonated in the air at an altitude of 600 meters almost right over the hall. The explosion by a single bomb claimed the lives of over 200,000 people and the city area of about 2-km radius was turned into ashes. In order to have this tragic fact known to succeeding generations and to make it a lesson for humankind, the reinforcement work of the ruins has been done by the contributions of many people who desire peace within and out of the country. The ruins shall be preserved forever.

August 6, 1967 Hiroshima City”

One of the great things about being human is our ability to heal both physically and emotionally. A good portion of the Peace Park and Memorial Museum are dedicated to chronicling the effects of the bomb and the remembrances of the people that did and did not survive. However an equal portion is dedicated towards a sense of hope that history will not repeat itself and that atomic weaponry soon becomes a thing of the past. The photo of the paper cranes is at a children’s memorial dedicated to children killed during andafter the blast. The memorial in particular is meant to reflect the story of a little girl who died of leukemia a few years after the attack. During her sickness she began to fold paper origami cranes in keeping with an old Buddhist custom of granting a wish for folding 1001 of them. When she eventually passed away the story of the cranes had spread and became a symbol for all the children lost in the attack. Today visitors to the memorial either purchase or make strings of cranes and place them there. The photo of the dragon is on the side of a massive drum donated to and located at the museum; I just thought it looked really cool.

Our next jaunt was to Miyajima Island in the Inland Sea of Japan across from Hiroshima. We took a cable car to almost the top of Mt. Misen and then hiked through a dense forest to the top and back to the main town. The photo is of me at the O-torii (big gate) to the main temple on the island (Itsukushima-jinja). According to legend the gate was constructed over the water as the island was considered so holy that only select monks were aloud to set foot on it. In fact the walkways of the temple are still pile supported and over water not land; this was also taken to the extreme that no one was to be born or die on the island i.e. no elderly or pregnant folks aloud. However, these days the tourist dollar prevails and you can “walk all over” the island.

There isn’t much to report on Fukuoka other than that I wasn’t swept away in the flood that hit the city the day we arrived. We had a great time tooling around town but were pretty much drenched the whole time; I can just imagine what my shoes will smell like if/when they dry out. We also stayed in a traditional Japanese style hotel (Ryokan) because they’re fun and typicallycheaper than anything else; we had the distinct pleasure of sharing our environs with about forty 10 year olds from a visiting little league team (they sure did run around a lot, very late, and very early).

That’s all for now; hope everyone is well; miss you all very much.

Matt

Gion Matsuri, Kyoto, Japan, July 2003

O-torii at Itsukushima-ji, Miyajima, Japan, July 2003

River Hike down Mt. Misen, Miyajima, Japan, July 2003

A-bomb Dome, Hiroshima, Japan, July 2003

Side of Peace Drum, Hiroshima, Japan, July 2003

Children's Peace Memorial, Hiroshima, Japan, July 2003

Japan - July 12, 2003

2003-07-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hello all:

Just trying to keep in touch with another update from Japan...

This last week has been busy with all sorts of work to do in the lab; the testing program we've started is going well though and we are, for the moment, ahead of schedule. The folks I work for through a party welcoming me and wishing a recent departee from the lab well. We had a traditional dinner and drinks at a former sake (Japanese rice wine) factory; I finally got to give all the gifts I brought for them from Oregon which was a real hoot; the favorites were the OSU baseball hats; I didn't realize how big baseball is here is especially with the local team (Honshin Tigers) currently leading the league.

I was able to do some site seeing this weekend in Nara; a city to the South of Uji/Kyoto and yet another former capitol of Japan. All three of the photos are at one of the temples we visited called Todai-ji. This temple is the largest wooden structure in the world and houses the largest Buddha statue (Daibuhtsu-den) in Japan. Other cool sites in Nara included a park with hundreds of tame deer; they're considered to be a sort of national treasure and there are little old ladies all over the place selling packets of crackers to feed to the deer; very interesting to pet a +200 lb. buck with a full set of antlers. We also visited a stamp shop (not postage); as it turns out, in Japan stamps bearing one's family name are used in the same way we use our signatures in the states; on bank documents and the like your personal stamp is required; apparently forgery is "avoided" by having your stamp custom made with subtle variations in the characters. Having an Angloname I had to settle for something close but not exactly my name (Mathew = Mashu in Japanese). The closest the proprietor could come to Mashu was Masio (pronounced basically the same way) meaning "true" (ma) "salt" (sio); you can interpret that any way you like :)

The international dormitory I've been living in has been working out great; I'll post photos of that next time. Incidentally I can receive phone calls there free of charge (to me anyway) so please feel free to email me and I'll send you the number. Well, that's all for now. Please enjoy the pics and keep in touch. Cheers.

Matt or Mashu or Masio (take your pick)

Todai-ji Daibutsu-den Temple, Nara, Japan, July 2003

Namee, Adam, and Matt at the Daibuhtsu-den, Nara, Japan, July 2003

Daibuhtsu or "Big Buhdda", Nara, Japan, July 2003

Japan Travel Log 2003

2003-07-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to the Japan Travel Log for Matt Donahue.

The purpose of this website is to provide my family, friends, and colleagues with an easy way to keep in touch and up with my travels in Japan during summer 2003. A special thank you to all of them for their continued support.

The reason for my visit to Japan stems from acceptance to the East Asia Summer Institute 2003 program sponsored jointly by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). My host institution during this program is the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) of the Kyoto University Geomechanics Division directed by Dr. Susumu Iai with great assistance from Dr. Tetsuo Tobita. I was also able to participate in a joint program sponsored by Notre Dame University entitled Natural Hazards Mitigation in Japan (NHMJ) for the first two weeks of my trip. NHMJ is headed up by Dr. Yahya C. Kurama of Notre Dame University.

The information contained herein is a combination of anecdotal travel stories, technical information on my research, program reports, and photos concerning all of the above. In addition to participating in NHMJ/EASI I'm also currently a graduate student at Oregon State University (OSU) pursuing a masters degree in structural/ earthquake engineering and should be finished by November 2003. My work at OSU is supported by Drs. Tom Miller, Steve Dickenson, and Solomon Yim.

So, enjoy and please feel free to drop a line with any comments, corrections or questions.

Matt Donahue
Uji, Japan
July 2003

Nijo-jo, Kyoto, Japan, July 2003