What a geologist does all summer

So, I am sure that everyone (at least the non-geologist amongst you) have been wondering: "what does a geologist do all summer anyway?". Well, here is a bit of my summer.

We will start in April. Fritz, Toufik, and I went to the Val Lumnezia in southeast Switzerland.

 

We were down there collecting stream sediment so that we can determine the erosion rates there. 

 

We also collected some soil samples to try to calculate chemical weathering rates as well (yes it really was that steep).

Then, I had about 4 days off before jen and I rushed off to Vienna for the annual European Geological Union meeting. 

Three days after that, I jetted off to Peru with Toufik and Mareike for the Peru work in May (see the previous post).

After that, I headed up to Potsdam in June for yet another conference.

So, now back to field work. In July, the GFZ crew came down to the Goms (where I did my PhD work) to do some further sampling. Here is everyone putting in soil water sampling equipment on the famous Honegg. 

Jan and Reka also did some bicycling (actually they are creating a vacuum for the samplers).

And possibly the highlight, Marcus and I got to (try to) drill cores out of the granodiorite walls up in Grimsel. Strangely, granitic rocks are quite hard.

After the work in Goms, I packed my bags again and headed down to South Tirol (Northern Italy) with Fritz to do some work with Sara and the crew from Milan. The work (of course) involved digging more holes, something that I have gotten quite good at over the years. Here is Vincenzo working his way through a glacial till.

This was the first time that I was snowed on this summer. 

 

This is typically what one of the holes looks like. 

We then take samples from the walls. We also took some quartz veins to try to calculate the time since the glaciers melted here (hopefully a long time ago). 

 

And of course we also looked at other exciting geomorphological phenomena such as the lovely debris flow channel. A rock as big as a van was transported down this channel 2 years ago and deposited about 2 miles further down valley!

Then came August. I had the great fortune to accompany the young researchers of the German-Tibetan Plateau Research group on a tour of mountain geomorphology here in Switzerland (they were typically more active than this). 

Along with looking at vegetation above Grindelwald (far too many pictures to post here), we headed up to the Jungfraujoch research station to look at snow (the second time that I was snowed on this summer). 

We had a great tour over to the Monchsjoch, and saw the ash layer from this spring's Iceland eruptions.

We also took a trip up to Mont Fort in the Valais to look at permafrost (this was the 3rd time that I was snowed on this summer). 

 

This is the top of a 20 meter deep borehole into a moraine that the University of Lausanne monitors. The only real danger to science at this elevation is from snowcats grooming the slopes!

There was also a trip over to the Goms (the reason that I was with them in the first place was to do some fieldtrip leading). Here is an intrepid group of us who popped up to the top of the Risihorn (note the Finsteraarhorn and Fiescher glacier in the background).

Then we ended the excursion with a trip over to the Great Aletsch Glacier, the longest glacier in Europe. It is also one of the first glaciers to be studied, and where Louis Agassiz started formulating his ideas of ice ages! You can just feel the geologic energy seeping from the rocks and ice.

Well, that pretty much brings us up to date. There are still two more conferences this year (one in London and one in Switzerland), but things are definitely winding down...about time to start preparing for ski season!

It's Hornussen!

We now come to the question of sport. The perfectly mown grass of England and lack of anything better to do lead to Cricket; the hills and dales of Scotland gave rise to Golf; the beer, space and plethora of Sundays in the States resulted, almost inevitably, in Baseball. So what type of sport would arise from the fertile open fields of the Swiss Mittelland? 

Hornussen!

Jen and I happened to notice a sign saying that one of the Swiss Championship games (between the local boys from Belp and the formidable Toffen crew) would be played just down the hill from our house, so naturally, we had to check it out. Despite being a championship game, jen and I sat together with 3 old guys (who used to be on the Belp team) as the only fans in attendance. They were terribly kind and explained all the rules...and then explained them again since I was thoroughly perplexed.

Through the eyes of the uninitiated, Hornussen appears to be a game in which a player from team A hits a little ball is hit as far as possible using an elongated, flexible base drum mallet, while all the players of team B throw wooden pizza oven spatulas in the air. Although, it is possible that it is more complex.

What you see below is one of the batters hitting the hornuss. They usually get the little black puck to fly about 300 meters. The object for the batters is to hit the hornuss as far as possible, and hopefully get it to land within the playing field.

 

This is where the fielding team comes in. Their job is to stop the hornuss before it hits the ground. If the hornuss hits the ground in the playing field, they loose (at least that seems to be what the old guy was saying). If they successfully stop the hornuss, then only the distances count. So, assuming that everyone in the field does their job, the team that can hit the hornuss the farthest, and stop the hornuss the quickest in the field, wins. It is just that simple. 

Since photos hardly do justice to this sport, here is a short video.

Inca Kola and other oddities

As most everyone knows by now, I was down in Peru for a few weeks in May/June doing fieldwork. I have posted lots of photos on facebook, so I thought that I would take a slightly different tack here. This is some of the other stuff that went on down yonder.

So first, we arrived at the airport in Lima, and drove to Miraflores where our hostel was. Driving in Lima is not for the faint of heart. This (if there had been lines at all) would have been a 4 lane highway...we were at least 7 cars wide. People just turn where ever and whenever they want.

Once in Miraflores (a quarter of Lima), life is quite nice. There are lots of restaurants, and touristy things. It is not really my kind of place, but it is not terrible. The beach in Lima is really quite nasty. The water is the wrong color, and there is usually a lot of trash floating in it. The surf on the other hand seems to be phenomenal.

One of the major crops down near Pisco (where we spent most of our time) is cotton. I have been told by the locals that Peruvian cotton has special properties of softness and durability which other, inferior, cottons lack. All of the work is done by hand. We would see hundreds of people slowly walking-stooping through the fields, slowly filling their big bags.

Pisco itself is a pretty run down place. It does have a far better excuse than most places though. In 2007, the town was nearly completely destroyed by an earthquake. I can not tell you whether the streets use to be paved or not, but they certainly are not now (there were 3 main roads that were paved).

Life for the average Peruvian seems to be pretty hard work. When we started working, people were already out in the fields or offices, and when we got back, they were getting back too (you tend to put in longer days during field work then normally...lots to do and not much time). Here are a couple examples.

This girl was simply coming home from school. This involved taking a taxi-bus for about half an hour, then crossing the river twice (it had two channels at this point), then walking up the far back (which consisted of a 20 m gravel bluff) and up to her village. I somehow think that we might put more effort into learning if we all had to cross raging rivers to get to school. 

Here are some shepherds. They are bringing the goats back home after grazing them for the day. There are, however, lots of little goats which are too small to make it across the river. So, they formed a human conveyor system. The first woman would bring them halfway across the river, and the second would then grab them and take them the rest of the way (I only saw men herding twice). This is certainly an excellent criterion for choosing a wife. Anyone who can carry a goat under each arm while crossing a fast river (barefoot none-the-less) must be a worthy spouse.

Now onto food. Food in Peru is among the best in the world. I ate constantly while I was there. Everything that was put in front of me was astonishingly good, even the Guinea Pigs. In these examples, I am eating a very tasty fish, and some cow stomach (Cau Cau).

Now for a (most likely) not so apt transition from food to brain surgery. I am not sure if everyone knows, but the Inca (who ruled much of the central Andes up to the 16th century (when the Spanish landed)) were excellent surgeons. There are uncountable ways to obtain a brain trauma in the mountain valleys in Peru. We personally saw rockfalls land in front of our truck, and had pebbles come crashing down on us while sampling (but that is why we wear helmets!). The Inca, alas, had no helmets. So what do you do when your best mate gets a boulder to the nooodle? Well, obviously, you pull out your machete and slice off a bit of their skull. Oh, and it helps if you also deformed the head while they were young. In case anyone is worried about the brutality of this, it does have pretty sound medical grounds (releasing the pressure of a swelling brain), and the success rate was apparently not too bad. This poor chap also had a hole on the other side of his head....it was grown over with new bone.

This is probably a bit of an letdown after the last section, but much of the country still relies on adobe blocks for building. Here, some people had simply cut the local mud-flow deposits into bricks and let them dry in the sun. Pretty handy. It does however make Archaoelogy a bit of a pain in the butt, since you can not tell the difference between a new abandoned building, and an old abandoned building.

And while we are on architecture, here is a quick photo for Chris. A John Deere on the Pan American Highway...

And while we are on the subject of work. Here is a gratuitous SCJ photo for Dave. "El Ziploc".

Ok, before we end, I wanted to ask if anyone could tell me why the Peruvians would always choose such bizarre art for their hotels. What does a couple frightened Victorian girls, a small sneaky dog, and a confused St. Bernhard have to do with the Andes? I am at a loss.

So, we are finally at an end. I will just leave you with a couple photos from actual work, so you can see some of what I do. Here is some lovely rock that has at some time in the past been smoothed by a river. I am now about 30 m above the river. So we are hoping to find out how old these rock surfaces are so that we know how fast the river has cut into the mountains.

Sampling was a bit hairy, but what is the point of being a geologist if you do not get to hang out on steep rock faces on occasion?

Making Sirup

It is summer and the flowers are blooming, we noticed one here in particular: the hollunder tree.

i think the hollunder is called elderberry in english, though i myself either never saw or never noticed these trees before moving here, so i am not absolutely sure about the name translation.

in germanic europe, mabye over all of europe, i am not sure, it is quite common to make sirup. it is also a common item for sale here. there are several different varieties available in the shops and markets to sample. here is a photo of two we had on hand, a local maker's sirup and something just mass made for the big chain stores. these are sold mainly, i believe, to put into your water and give it a nice flavor, but probably it is also used for other cooking options as well.

anyway, sirup making for personal use is a very common thing to do here; students make it in their tiny shared apartments, farmers make it in their huge farmhouses, middle aged people make it in their modest flats. i would guess that sirup making is the reason why there is no kool aid  and the like sold here, these people are making their own! most grocery stores sell sirup making bottles, so we bought a couple and decided to try brewing our own up.

kevin found a recipe online (in german) and we just followed it, though i am sure with practice, you could be more creative. we collected 30 odd blooms from the hollunder trees around us in the woods. then kevin spent a sticky morning de-bugging them (because who wants the flavor of that in their sirup?) we dissolved and cooked sugar into the water first then put the blooms into this mix, with a lemon.

this then sits in the sun for a couple of days and cooks itself, kind of like a sun tea.

 noodle supervises the procedure, and deems it sticky.

after that some acid was added to mix and we strained it and bottled it. it ended up being 2 liters of sirup.

the flavor is a little hard to describe, sort of like drinking perfume in a way. we think we like it, but aren't sure. with 2 liters to test ourselves over it, i am sure we will come to a conclusion at some point. the juice is supposed to protect you from flu and fever and also witches, so we are at least working up a nice resistance to those while we figure it out.
 

Long Pause

we have taken a very long pause from working at all on this poor neglected blog. this has happened mainly because kevin and i are pretty lazy, however, we do have one semi-reasonable excuse- sidney.

kevin and i, when we were young, decided we needed a cat. i found someone who had a cat that had just had a huge litter of kittens. by the time we met this young lady, there were only two left- brothers. i was planning to just get one cat; i was in graduate school and kevin was at the same time trying hard to wrap up two bachelor degrees in half the normal time, both of us were working two jobs. i thought one cat would be enough to feed and care for. i wanted to get the friendly one. kevin instantly fell in love with the mean, beautiful, grey one. naturally, we took both home, and never regretted our choice.

we have moved these poor cats with us countless times, and i mean that literally, i have no idea how many times we moved them. ohio, illinois, michigan, minnesota, new mexico, pennsylvania, germany and switzerland have been their homes, and often many apartments in each of those places. the cats have been one of the only things either of us could count on to be the same in each place we went, and i think both of us came to depend upon their consistency and love.

Sid had always been an enormous grey monster, but that began to change shorty after we moved to switzerland. bones could be felt by thansgiving, but since he was so large, we thought maybe losing some weight would be good for him. after christmas we were just plain worried; he was really thin, he demanded that someone hold or carry him at all times. we took him to see doctors, and it was made clear, something serious was wrong. to kevin and i it didn't matter too much what the diagnoses was, we were just going to make him as comfortable as we could for a long as we could, whereby our schedules became sid's schedule for months. by mid-april nothing was cutting his pain anymore, and after a terrible weekend in which kevin slept in a sleeping bag wrapped in plastic on the floor with sid, we put him to sleep the next day- april 19th. it was one of the hardest things i have ever had to choose to do.

zim, kevin and i still miss him of course, but feel now we should return to some of our old habits, this blog being one of them. so in memory of sidney, i will start posting some of the more light and entertaining things we have been up to, but for today, i wanted to remember this lovely grey cat.

What to do during winter in a small European country

So, you find yourself facing a long, dark, snowy winter somewhere in the rugged middle of Europe...what to do with yourself...?

1. Eat as many rolls as you can on Dreikoenigstag "Three Kings Day". By doing so, you might have the good fortune to bite unknowingly into an enamel-chipping miniature king which has been baked into one of the rolls. Assuming you do not need emergency medical care, you get to be king for a day!

Kevin, with teeth intact, sporting his crown.

 2. Sit in the snow and eat hot cheese. Fondue is a sort of national dish (but strangely, most Swiss, when pressed, will tell you that they much prefer Raclette). It is however disputed as to whether it comes from Switzerland or France (Savoy region (Dave will remember the Savoy wine in Evian)). Regardless of it's beginnings, Fondue is a highly entertaining way to make sure that you do not sleep for at least one night (try eating a pound of melted cheese and drinking half a bottle of wine...). It is important to eat your Fondue outside (preferably in the snow). The exact reason for this is, again, disputed, but it is usually because people do not want their houses to smell like hot cheese for the next week.

 Steam rising from the Caquelon.

 

 For the full effect, it is best if it is actually snowing while you eat.

3. Partake in cultural events. We decided to head over to Grindelwald for the annual snow sculpture competition. The day was beautiful, as was the artwork. In addition to large piles of carved snow, there was food (the obligatory hot cheese, assorted sausages, and gluehwein), and music...well it was loud at least.

 

 Some of the snow sculptures.

 

Here is one of the bands taking a coffee break. We are not sure, but it seems they were going for a 1980's disco/jungle theme. How this fits into Swiss culture, I can not say.

 

...and of course, cow bells. There were about 20 guys with gigantic cow bells. As they walked, the bells swung from side to side. It was actually quite melodic. I have no clue why they did not just walk the cows through.

Well, that is enough for now. As the winter blows along, I am sure we will discover more exciting things to do!