Wow....just wow

Check out some of fellow mt. clubber Tyler McPherson's pictures from Patagonia. I already knew I needed to go there. Way to make it worse dude...

....make that cool place on the earth I must go to #5412

Pre-finals Snow school

Before my finals next week I took the time to head up into the hills near Hoodoo ski resort with Richard and his friend Max. The idea was to practice some mountaineering techniques so I could actually use the ice axe I bought all those years ago when I lived in Washington. I also wanted to stop procrastinating on being a badass, as I've told people it's what I'm majoring in. Something tells me the latter is a lost cause, but I still had a blast. Max imparted a great deal of knowledge on the two of us, and it was a hell of a lot of fun just playing in our "self arrest chute". Though I did find out that attempting a self arrest with a water bottle is quite difficult. Good luck on finals people!

A couple NZ Photos

Why do I keep posting pictures of New Zealand even though I am months removed from the place? Part of the answer lies in the beauty of that country. Another part is I just got my hands on some of Greg's pictures. The last part is that I keep forgetting to bring my freakin' camera when I go to smith or on mt. bike rides. And there's no excuses either, as I now have 2 cameras. The second is a sweet Olympus that my Aunt and Uncle graciously gave me, and I am aching to give it a whirl. Here are a couple of photos to hold myself over until Red Rocks in a couple of weeks.

1080 and the letter G, you haunt me to this day

Ed doing the mandatory no Hands rest

Inga on the beautiful rock at Pohara

Dead Week

I went up to Portland yesterday to go boulder at the Circuit gym with some fellow mt. clubbers. It was a great time and after that we welcomed back Ariel and Rachel from South Korea with some beer and music.

Next week will be "Dead Week" or the week before finals. Of course all OSU students are aware of this fact, except for a few of my former flatmates at the old Chi Alpha Fraternity (I'm not too sure what those dudes do besides play video games). Yep, for a the better part of the term I have been living in a former Frat house that now has a Christian Fellowship downstairs. Moving there was one of those 'get back from Red Rocks with only 2 days before school starts decisions', so I have no one to blame but myself. Living there... how do I say this... sucked. It was the kind of place you felt you had to call Hazmat if you touched the wrong thing. The one saving grace of the place was that it was right across from campus. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I could sleep in 'til 7:59, throw on some clothes, and scoot my way across Monroe avenue to my 8 am class. Going "home" for lunch was pretty easy.

Anyways, I just moved out of the place and moved in with my buddies Zack, Carl (known as Hot Carl) and Shaun. I've lived with these guys before, and they are all big Mt. Bikers. Once I had moved my stuff in I counted 17 bikes in the garage, which, by my calculations is 4.25 bikes per person. There is a tandem there I think, a fixed gear bicycle (the pedals are deadly at high speeds), a bunch of single speeds, and some of the nicest full suspension bikes I have ever seen. Since there are lots of bike thieves here, my new address is: 12345 Fake street, Nobikeshere, OR.

The house is killer for other reasons. They have a tree house, some chickens, and a huge garden. It should be a cool place to spend the rest of my time at OSU.

While up in Portland, I finally got my hands on Greg's pictures so I thought I'll post a couple next time I'm online. Looking forward to spring everyone! Take it easy.

On school and stuff

The other day in my Geology 202 lab, we performed one of the coolest experiments I've ever been privy too. For about 2 hours, our group of six got to play around with a stream table. Hydrologists use them to model fluvial processes, and on top of just being plain fun, it was very informative as well. Instead of sand, our professor used plastic granules about 0.05 mm in size. Apparently when you scale a river down to a 3 meter long box, you have to scale down the mass of the sediment too. Above is a picture of our stream table, taken on my crappy cell phone.

The box is slightly raised on one end so the water source (a hose) flows down to the drain at the other end. We put a few meanders in the basin and placed Lego "houses" where we thought they would get annihilated by the streams erosional power, just like a kid who builds a sand castle too close to the waves. I was surprised, however, by the amount of river structures actually appeared. Where the stream entered the lake a braided river channel formed a delta. And at one point, we actually had an oxbow lake formed after the river cutoff a meander. Pretty cool.

Now when I was a kid, seeing some water running through some sand meant one thing: Dam the hell out of it. So when our group had some time, we created Hoover dam. Unfortunately, this clogged the drain with sand and we had trouble getting water out of the system for a little while. Of course, the innocent Lego town built below the dam was decimated. All in the name of science!