Off to the field

I am so excited. I'm finally getting to head out to the field and get some "real" work done. (So far, I've been doing plenty of statistics and data collection from aerial photos and digital elevation models). The team leaves Monday, and it sounds as though we will have a grueling week. So far, the plan involves staying at a hotel with a pool in Veracruz and renting horses to go up the mountain. Not bad!

In truth, no field work ever goes quite as planned. In 2007, I had to sew my backpack back together after it was partially gutted by a bear who found the apple I had forgotten from the previous day's lunch; I also got locked out of the field vehicle miles from the nearest paved road, and my PhD advisor had to smash out one of the back windows with a sledgehammer that just happened to be conveniently sitting in the truck bed. In 2008, my adviser and I ended up stuck on a small island in California without any means of making fire, one bowl, a fork, and a whole lot of soup and rice packets -- then the winds really kicked up and it looked as though we wouldn't be able to get off the island in time to catch our flight home. 2009 was the year of the black free-range cow on a moonless night. I'm glad that a) I wasn't driving lead van just then and b) I didn't have to explain to the insurance company why they were going to be buying a cow. In short: I have no idea yet what will go wrong on this field trip, but I'm waiting to be impressed.

Trapped on Negit Island, 2008. There weren't any bears, but the whole island is infested with mice or, according to my adviser, "evil robo-hamsters."

Keating, meanwhile, will be here in Mexico City. Despite being invited along (Have you seen him??? He can carry LOTS of rocks!!!), he opted to stay behind. He felt bad about leaving his students to a substitute so soon after starting teaching and worried about how it would look to his employers. For the record, when they found out about the field work his employers told him he was crazy to be staying behind and promised to find subs for him next time (he only mentioned it to them during his meeting on Friday, so there wasn't enough time to find subs for this trip).

Completely unrelated, unless I decide to interpret it as an omen: I noticed my first earthquake today. That was before I read the news about Chile and my paranoia level jumped by a few levels. My earthquake was nothing like theirs: I didn't even feel it, I just noticed that the clothes in the closet were swaying in the nonexistent breeze. To be fair, I suppose it could have just been a ghost. We have daily quakes here in Mexico City, as I recently discovered when I finally asked my boss what the obnoxious alarm sound over the building intercom was. It goes off at least once a day and sounds a bit like the high-pitched tone that immediately preceded all intercom announcements in elementary school, but everyone pointedly ignores it. It turns out that it's an alarm that sounds every time the in-building seismometers record an earthquake and serves to signal the seismologists on the floor above us that they should go check their machines. I'm giving myself another month to either a) adjust to the horrible noise or b) start a petition begging them to use an email announcement system or use a Lady Gaga ringtone instead of that beep. She's been stuck in my head for the last two weeks, anyway.