Some of you have probably gotten this email already, if so… I apologize!

I just wanted to inform everyone that I’ve arrived in New Zealand! After 2 years of planning this trip, it’s finally happened. I’m currently in staying in Wellington. Tomorrow is the first official day of field camp, and we’ll head to the South Island. The flight over here was “only” 13 hours long, but actually went by fairly fast now that I think about it. Unfortunately, I was only able to sleep for 4 hours.

We landed in Auckland at 4:45am local time (7:45 Pacific) and then I took a short flight to Wellington and landed here at 8am local time. Since then, I’ve pretty much just been walking around the city and exploring downtown and the wharf. There are a bunch of kayaks out on the bay and I was thinking of renting one.

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The weather here is PERFECT. Not many clouds in the sky, about 74 degrees F with a light breeze. Apparently, Wellington is a sister-city of San Francisco. It makes sense when you look at the geographical context of both cities: excellent natural harbors, built among (and on) lush green hills. Even the people (though most are on holiday this week) are quite friendly and laid back. Oh yes, even the transients have the same charismatic one-liners that their San Francisco counter parts have. “MAN! You’re a lucky punk! Want to trade?” yelled one person to a guy in a car with his attractive girlfriend. One person I talked to mention another uncanny similarity with SF: Very few people in this city are native to Wellington.

And for my Bay Area friends… here is another AMAZING similarity that I randomly found today. Apparently, there is no relation to the SF/Berkeley restaurants.

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I’m also noticing an abundance of Subways (food) places here. Within a 10 minute walk of my hostel, there are 3 of them. Every time I see one now (especially since I’m in a foreign country), I can’t help but laugh at Mitch Hedberg’s joke about how when he offends people overseas, he feels as if the Subway is an American Embassy of sorts. I’ll have to keep that in mind. There is also an abundance of internet cafes within the same radius. I counted 6 on my way up the street.

For those wondering about the time difference… we’re 3 hours behind, but one day ahead. So as I write this, it’s 1:22pm on the 27th here. Back home in California, it’s 4:22pm on the 26th. The other thing that’s going to be crazy to get used to is the fact that they all drive on the wrong side of the road. I really need to remember which way to look. Doesn’t seem like it’d be too bad to get used to, but old habits die hard I suppose.

For Dan: While they drive on the opposite side of the road and the driver’s seat is different from ours, the setup with the clutch is exactly the same. Clutch on the left side. However, the stick shift is on the left side as well. That’d be weird to get used to. (In my unscientific sample earlier this morning, I noticed the majority of cars parked around downtown were stick shift).

It’s weird… I really can’t believe I’m basically on the opposite side of the world. It’s quite crazy. Of course, all I have to do is look at the side of the road people are driving on and I know I’m not dreaming. 😉 The weather itself is so great though. It feels like an awesome San Francisco / Berkeley early summer day. Exactly like it! That alone makes it feel like I never really left California. When we landed in Auckland last night though, I know I had the biggest, cheesiest grin on my face that I actually made it here. Awesome. 🙂

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Click here for full size image

Tomorrow morning, we take a ferry to the South Island, where we’ll spend the next 3 weeks before returning to Wellington. From there, we’ll spend another 3 weeks on the North Island… and then it will be time to go home.

Here is our itinerary that we received about 2 weeks ago.

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My flight leaves at about 7:00PM on Sunday. I’m almost completely packed and ready to go. All my flights and accomodations are booked as well. Nothing to do now but wait. All the roommates are now gone as well, so I’m all by myself at the house for the rest of the weekend (a very rare occurence)!

Since my sister has an inconvienent work schedule this week, she wasn’t able to fly home to visit the family either. Tomorrow, she is going to spend Christmas with a friend’s family who lives near by. They invited me over for dinner tomorrow night as well. That is very nice of them, and is especially thoughtful since I was feeling rather lonely due to the circumstances. It’s going to be my first Christmas / New Years / Birthday away from home! It’s all a part of growing up of course, but there’s something sentimental (and scary) about it being the first time, especially coupled with the fact that this is the first time I’m travelling overseas too.

I’m quite excited and wonder how on Earth I’ll be able to sleep both tomorrow night and on the plane as well. It’s roughly a 16 hour flight there. The longest flight I’ve ever had before are the short one hour hops back and forth between San Francisco and Southern California. Meghan, a veteran of these long trips, bought me an interesting game called Sudoku to help kill time on the flight. I’ve played with it a bit already and it’s quite fun. I’m also bringing along “Life of Pi”, which quite a few people have recommended to me as an excellent book. There’s also the whole (trying to) sleep aspect as well as watching movies. Especially since we know how often I see actual movies anyway. It’ll be like everything is new to me!

Another nice issue is that I found someone to sublet my room for January, courtesy of my friend Julie. A friend of hers is moving back to San Francisco after a short stint in Texas and is looking for a place to stay for a few weeks while she gets settled. It’ll be nice not having to pay for a room that I’m not actually using. Of course it’s almost like moving out, so I’ve been packing up a lot of clothes and other random stuff laying around my room and storing it in boxes. Furniture is thanfully staying though, so she’ll utilize that.

While packing up my room, I was able to fill up two full trash bags of clothes that I dropped off to the Goodwill this week as well. That freed up quite a bit of space. There were also a lot of things I was able to get rid of. For some reason I was apparently collecting rotten old shoes. I tossed out about 5 pairs of completely destroyed shoes that were hiding in the back of my closet.

Among them, were a pair of hiking boots that have been with me through thick and thin. It was almost hard to throw them away, and I wanted to keep them for nothing more than sentimental value (that must be the word of the day). They’ve been with me from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the top of the Sierras and literally everything in between, plus some (Death Valley, Basin and Range, Salton Sea, Owens Valley, Nevada, Montana, as well as the infamous Caribou Scramble – 2 miles, 2500+ft of elevation gain, 100 switchbacks). I really think that I’ve easily put a brutal 500 miles on the things. They’ve lasted me well over the years… especially for a $40 pair of boots.

Ah well. So long Hi-Tec’s! It’s a shame you won’t be sharing in yet another adventure with me.

In other news… I went to a currency exchange shop downtown earlier this week and pulled out some New Zealand Dollars, so I’m prepared once I get there. I have to say, we in the United States have some of the most boring money in the world. The cash from NZ is quite colorful and interesting to look at. Perhaps that makes you want to spend it less (riiiggghhhht).

Yes, a free day to kick back and relax. What do I do? Why, geology of course!

I. Introduction

The Zanja roughly translates to “ditch” in Spanish and was built in the early 1800’s by Native Americans, under the guidance of Spanish missionaries, to bring water to an outpost of Mission San Gabriel. [1]

My parents own a house along the Zanja in Mentone. Water flows at roughly bank full depth year round. The Zanja has been the subject of a number of lawsuits between various municipalities and the home owners who live along its banks. These lawsuits have focused on the issue of water rights since the county and various cities want to divert the flow of the Zanja and use it for drinking water, effectively cutting off the flow of the Zanja to the homeowners. A settlement was eventually reached in which both sides agreed not to use the water for drinking or irrigation, and the Zanja would continue to be allowed to flow through the private properties of homeowners who lived along its banks.

Many of these lawsuits happened when I was fairly young, so I don’t remember many details about them, or the studies both sides presented for their cases. Regardless of this, I was curious to see how much water flows through the Zanja. Was the amount of water that the cities wanted to get their hands on that significant? Thanks to reading the book Cadillac Desert and recently finishing a geomorphology class, my curiosity got the best of me. So I set out to find just how much water is flowing through the Zanja.

II. Methods

In order to determine the amount of water flowing through a given spot in the Zanja at any one second, I needed to find 3 variables: Depth (D), Width (W) and Water Velocity. The depth was easily determined by simply measuring across a specific spot, which we’ll call cross section ‘A’. Depth was determined by taking a series of 3 measurements across cross section ‘A’ and then averaging them. Velocity was probably the most difficult aspect. I measured the distance between two points along the bank and then threw a tennis ball in the water, recording the amount of time (T) it took for the ball to move between those two points (H). I repeated this process six times and then came up with the average time it took for the tennis ball to cover that distance.

Once I had the physical data, I did some calculations to come up with a cross sectional area of the water at that point (W x D_avg) as well as the Water Velocity (H/T). The calculations for cross section was in inches and I wanted feet. Since W x D_avg gives units in terms of square inches, I divided by 1 square foot (144 inches) to convert to square feet. Water Velocity was already measured in terms of feet per second, so no conversions were necessary.

III. Results

Legend:
D_avg = Average depth
W = Width of stream
H = Distance between two points along river
V_avg = Velocity of tennis ball averaged over 6 trials
A = Area of Cross Section ‘A’
Q_w = Amount of water discharge

D_avg = 6.3 inches
W = 89 inches
H = 7 feet
V_avg = .97 ft/sec
A = ( D_avg x W) = 561 sq. inches / 144 sq. inches = 3.9 sq. feet
Q_w = A x V_avg = 3.9 sq. feet x .97 feet per second = 3.8 cubic feet per second

IV. Discussion

My final result, after rounding to the correct amount of significant figures was 3.8 cubic feet per second. Comparing this to the discharge of many famous rivers, this amount is extraordinarily miniscule. The Mississippi River has an average discharge of 470,000 cubic feet per second. [2] The Santa Ana River, which flows to the west of the Zanja, and where much of its water ultimately ends up, has a mean annual discharge of 33.8 cubic feet per second. [3] For being one of the largest rivers in Southern California, this is a very small amount. Needless to say, we do live in a very arid environment.

Does enough water flow through the Zanja to justify local municipalities trying to take it? To simplify things when dealing with quantities of water, many organizations speak in terms of acre-feet. An acre-foot is the amount of water a family of four will need for one year. [4] According to Google, 1 acre-foot is equivalent to 43,560 cubic feet. Dividing this by 3.8 cubic feet per second, we find that it takes 11,463 seconds (or just over 3 hours) to fill the amount of space required by one acre-foot of water.

According to the 2000 census, the nearby city of Redlands has a population of 63,591 people. To simplify calculations, I divided by 4 to come up with the number of “families” who will be needing water, or the number of acre-feet that Redlands would need. Almost 16,000 acre-feet! Multiplying that by 3 hours per acre-foot, it would take nearly 5 and a half years to store enough water from the Zanja to supply the residential needs of Redlands for one year. As you can see, that in itself isn’t too practical. Not accounting for evaporation or infiltration, by itself the Zanja would be able to meet about 20% of the residential needs for the city of Redlands. This isn’t that much in the scheme of things and almost doesn’t justify the cost and effort that would be needed to bring the water into Redlands or any other city. However, in Southern California, water is nearly more valuable than gold.

V. Conclusions

My data should be taken with a grain of salt as most of the data is based on rough estimates and many assumptions. There are quite a few sources of error, such as average velocity. In most cases, you would measure velocity just below the surface, where water is flowing the fastest, as well as taking a variety of discharge measurements for multiple locations and averaging those to get an overall discharge for the river. My data represents the amount of discharge at a single spot on the Zanja and I would assume it is roughly average, based on my observations of the water level over the years. However, I have no data to quantify that.

Regardless of these issues, the amount of water flowing through the Zanja at any given moment is quite small. Given the scarcity of water in Southern California, the cost and consequences of removing the water from its “natural” channel to use for drinking water outweigh the cost of leaving the water in the channel for many to enjoy, as it runs through Redlands and many of its parks.

VI. References

[1] How big where their footprints? “Mission Era 1,” [online]:  [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

[2] LA Coast. “Mississippi River Delta Basin,” [online]: [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

[3] 1999 California Hydrologic Data Report. “11051500 SANTA ANA RIVER NEAR MENTONE, CA,” [online] [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

[4] National Resources Defense Council. “Drawdown – Groundwater Mining on Black Mesa,” [online] [Accessed 30th May, 2004].

Baseball is back! I have to say last year’s playoffs was some of the most amazing baseball I have ever seen. From the Cubs to the Red Sox and even the Marlins, all the games were just phenomenal. And now that Murdoch and Fox have finally sold the Dodgers, I can like them again without a guilty conscience. Not a moment too soon too, because they are ON FIRE this year!

I just got back from a game tonight with some of my fellow geology classmates. Oakland A’s versus the Yankees. While I’m not necessarily a fan of either team, I am always down for hating on the Yankees. It was a great game and went all the way to the top of the ninth inning, when in true Yankees fashion, they tied it up and then drove in the winning run. While I wasn’t rooting for them, I can definitely appreciate some fine baseball.

Plans for the weekend:

» Wait for more info on that internship.
» Friends from high school, Emily and Brandy may be in town on Saturday night.
» Write a paper for paleontology.
» Finish up TWO late labs for geomorphology.
» Start looking for people to sublet my room for the summer.

Tomorrow is advising day as well. Looks like next semester is going to be another tough one. Currently on my plate is Mineralogy, Stratigraphy and Structural Geology. However, I might not be able to take the Structure class due to some funky prerequisites, so I may be taking Hydrology instead. In the next year I will need to squeeze in Physics 3 and Chemistry 2 somewhere also. Perhaps if I kick butt, I can take field camp in New Zealand in the winter of 2006! That would be so amazing! I think I can save up the roughly $4500 it will cost between now and then. Definitely worth it for 6 weeks!

Some various cleanup on the website too. I’ve added ratings for songs in the music section. Also, for those using Internet Explorer or Mozilla derivatives, you might notice the new background graphic up above. I thought it added a nice bit of personality to this blog. 🙂 The background picture doesn’t render in Safari for some reason though. Not sure why at the moment.

Yesterday I got to work on a research project with a graduate student from the University of Southern Oregon named Reid. He was creating a detailed topographic map of some beheaded stream beds that lay along the San Andreas Fault in the area and needed some people to assist him. This was part of some research he was doing for his Phd. We helped him setup a tripod on which a high tech survey system called a Total Station was placed. This recorded distance, azimuth and inclination at a variety of points. The points were written to a memory card and would be plugged into a computer to create a topographic map that is accurate to within a few centimeters. Basically he needed one student to take notes and another to run around to various points with a survey rod that had a reflector on it. The Total Station would shoot a laser to this reflector and record the data. Two other fellow students were there on the project: Amber, who had to leave part way through the day and Maureen.

I started off holding the survey rod and within two minutes of starting to record data I got nailed by a wasp. I go to put my hand in my pocket, and somehow the bastard had crawled into it! The next thing I know, I feel an electric shock and screamed. Sure enough, there was the stinger, right on my ring finger. It stopped hurting after a bit and we continued onward. However, today it is still visibly swollen and itches like crazy! I really notice the swelling when I curl my fingers to try and play guitar. Ouch!

Regardless of that, the rest of the day was pretty fun. I think we made nearly 350 measurements yesterday over this small area. Each measurement involved moving the rod about a meter in one direction, focusing the laser on the target and shooting. It took anywhere from 45 seconds to two minutes to shoot a target. We ended up being out there the whole day! Met up at about 8am and I think we finally left to have dinner at around 6:30pm. I learned a lot of stuff from Reid and it was really awesome to be able to actually participate in some real research. Apparently, they may be coming back in November to actually dig a trench across the fault to try and determine dates of various earthquakes. If they need help, they will let us know. That would be fantastic to help out on that.

Afterwards, Maureen and I decided to show Reid the joys of In N’ Out hamburgers since this was his first time visiting Southern California. Of course in my infinite wisdom, I gave him the wrong directions and nearly got him lost in the ghetto of San Bernardino. Luckily, he had Maureen’s cell phone number and we were able to find him. Best of all, he paid for our dinner since we worked so hard all day! Rad!

It was definitely a neat experience and being outdoors, even if it was grunt work, reinforced why I like geology so much. Learning about that stuff was fascinating. Also, it was great to talk to Maureen again. Despite things not working out between us, she’s still one of the most amazing and brilliant people I’ve ever met, so it is makes me pretty ecstatic to be on friendly terms with her again.