Back up in the Bay Area after the conference this weekend for the Southern California Earthquake Center. That was a pretty great experience. With all the free food and drinks, I think I’m definitely going to become a scientist for that reason alone! It was also great seeing many of these people again. My friend Brandee even got to meet my parents. The conversation with my mom afterwards went something like this:

Mom: “She is very pretty! And she’s so much nicer than your other girlfriends.”
Me: “Yeah, but she isn’t my girlfriend.”
Mom: “You know, you always go for the exotic looking ones!”
Me: “But I’m not going for her!”

I told Brandee and she got quite a kick out of that! Anyway, it was definitely a fun time, though I kinda tweaked my damn knee when we were playing volleyball. It is still sore. I still want to play volleyball tomorrow night over in Berkeley though. We’ll have to see how I feel.

Anyway, regarding the subject of this post, I bring you the following pictures. This one was taken last week while there were wild fires burning in Northern California.

And this second one, taken when I was flying home on Saturday evening.

It feels like every muscle in my body is sore, making today most unenjoyable. How did I reach this sorry state of affairs? It all begins with volleyball.

I haven’t played a serious game of volleyball since I left high school some 4 or so years ago. I’ve been yearning to play lately, especially after watching the olympic teams compete. The problem is, I’ve had no one to play with up here. Interestingly enough, Michelle recently found out about these open court volleyball sessions they have once a week at the Berkeley YMCA. She told me to check it out, so I went last night! After not playing for 4 years, I played for 3 hours last night!

It was completely fun, and I felt ecstatic afterwards. I am definitely going to go back and play next week. They play 6 vs. 6 and many of the players are just awesome! I got some pretty good advice yesterday and quickly fell back into the groove. David and Michelle watched me play for a bit and they were impressed. That made me feel great. It also helped that I nailed a kill within the first 30 seconds of the game! Hah, awesome!

Anyway, flying home tomorrow! Have to present a poster at SCEC meeting in Palm Springs on Sunday and Monday. A poster which isn’t completely finished yet! Ack! Quite a lot to due before then. I am also taking a writing proficiency test tomorrow for SFSU and am somewhat nervous. No reason why I should be, but regardless.

Anyway, off to packing stuff!

Oh yes, from the creator of the original “It’s raining people” comes a new sequel! This time, it involves geology students, cliffs and paragliders!

Eh. We had a geology field trip along the coast and beach today. This is an area near a place called Ft. Funston, where there are massive cliffs overlooking the ocean. People take advantage of this by para-gliding and hang-gliding off of them. Anyway, we were looking at sedimentary deposits down on the beach all day today.

About midway through the day, we’re sitting at the base of a cliff when I hear one of my fellow students exclaim, “Whoa, oh shit!” I look up in time to see a paraglider coming into the cliff’s above our head. If he was a few feet lower, he would have smacked right into the side of them. Fortunately, he was able to catch a ledge that was directly over our heads. However, by “catch a ledge,” I mean crash land into it and slide across the top of it, nearly falling 50 feet down off the other side.

A shower of cobbles, pebbles, dirt and dust came raining down on our heads and we bolted out of there, leaving some of our notebooks and things to get buried. We all just kind of looked up in stunned silence. After a few minutes, he finally got up, precariously close to the edge off the cliffs. Luckily, it appeared he was physically okay, besides being a little shaken up. Unfortunately, the ledge he landed on had no way to get down to the beach and no easy way to get back up to the top of the road. A few people yelled up to him and asked if he was okay or needed help, but he waved to us and declined. We resumed walking up the rest of the beach examining stuff for our class.

Still, that was an incredible sight, and I couldn’t believe I was seeing it.

Anyway, here is a pic I took afterwards to scale everything. He wrapped up his parachute and threw it over his back while he tried to scale the cliff back up to the road. Note how high these cliffs are, especially compared to him!

Here we go, there are 3 days left to see if Dr. K-B’s prediction for a M6.4 quake or greater to strike Southern California. Not sure how I feel about this myself. He has an interesting track record, and reading his paper, it looks like they tried to verify their method by applying it to quakes that had already happened. (A few test cases resulted in false positives though, predicting a quake where no quake happened) However, they still feel they only have a 50% chance of success.

Anyway, some interesting articles for my Southern California breathen:
http://www.dailytrojan.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=709259
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/science/story/10598421p-11517150c.html
http://www.hidesertstar.com/articles/2004/07/30/features/feature2.txt

With the Republican Convention happening this week, and Mother Nature throwing down a hurricane on the east coast, it will be interesting if she tries to wreck havoc by throwing a wrench into the west coast at the same time…

The first full week of school is winding down. Pretty good so far. My only complaint is that one of my G.E. classes has to rank as one of the most boring classes that I have ever taken. Normally, I probably would just ditch it, but it’s right between two other classes, so I figure since I’m already on campus, I might as well make myself useful.

Spent the last few afternoons down at Ocean Beach. I sat on a sand dune and did homework yesterday. That was a peaceful experience and I got quite a bit done. I went running along the beach today as well during sunset. There was hardly anyone out, I practically had the place to myself. That was just an awesome experience. My roommate Colin, might try and take me out surfing one of these upcoming weekends. I’m excited, though aprehensive at the same time. That whole “weird things I can’t see” in the water factor, scares me. Just running along the beach today, I counted 15 jelly fish washed up along a small stretch. Ack!

In some sad news, a student at SFSU died yesterday from injuries he suffered on a school field trip this weekend. He was a brand new incoming geosciences student, so I wonder if this will have some implications on our department. I didn’t know the student, but very sad stuff nonetheless. I wish his family and friends the best.

Alright, a few hands of Texas Hold ‘Em awaits with the roommates! This will be the fastest $20 I’ve ever lost. (I’ve yet to actually win a hand in this game.)