Long training run

Now that I have registered for a full marathon I am tempted to get snooty about mere half marathons. Only 21 km! One doesn't need training for that. Except that one does. And especially if that half marathon actually functions as a training for that looming full marathon. 

During the last half marathon I found out one more of my colleagues runs, and we had decided it would be nice to sometimes run together. So far it hadn't happened. But now the actual race was nigh, and we decided to have a nice long run with the two of us! Coleen designed a route. We would start in Beaumaris, and go north from there, sometimes following the route of the upcoming race, and sometimes just scampering around as we saw fit. And so it happened! And it turned out to be a lovely day for it. 

We set off, chatting, and some 90 minutes later we were still chatting (and running). We were overtaken by some chap who was much faster, but who was on his own. We figured he was training for the same race. He'll beat us, but we had a more sociable training run!

Not only did we have a good training session, but I also enjoyed the surroundings. Coleen had lived in Beaumaris, and knew the nice routes. It had been a good time! Now bring on that race!

Film in Bangor

Everybody who didn't shut me up in time has heard me complain that Bangor doesn't have a cinema. And it's true; there isn't one! The nearest specimens are in Holyhead and Llandudno. Poor show! But Bangor clearly does have a university. And universities have big rooms with seats, and a screen at the top end. And fortunately, the university realises the potential of such a set-up. And one day I got an email pointing out the screening of an interesting-sounding film on an evening I was available. Great! I drew my office mates' attention to this, and they all thought indeed it looked like an interesting film. So we went!

The film shown was "Leviathan", a Russian film about an unemployed chap in a slightly dubious marriage and with a stroppy teenage son, who is trying to fight eviction. (Spoiler alert: I will disclose how that ends.) The home of him and his forefathers is at a rather nice location, and the local authorities have their eyes on it. And they manage to find an excuse to boot him out. He bravely tries to fight it, but he's up against money, power, corruption, and everything that can bring against a simple villager. It's not looking good. But he has a card up his sleeve; an old army friend who has become a lawyer in Moscow. This chap comes over, having gathered a whole lot of compromising information on the leader of the evicting pact: the local mayor. And together they try to fight for what they think is right.

The film poster

In Hollywood it would probably work. But this isn't Hollywood. The villager's wife considers her unemployed husband whom she clearly isn't too fond of, and who might well get homeless soon, and she sees a handsome lawyer from the capital, and before you can say "not such a good idea" she is in bed with him. He seems quite happy with a casual shag, but doesn't seem to be equally happy to run off to Moscow with her. And from there it spirals out of control. The newfangled lovers get found out and beaten up, and the mayor figures the best response to blackmail is violence, and he manages to communicate his desire for the lawyer to bugger off and leave him alone in rather convincing ways. Exit lawyer. Which leaves the wife no choice but to go back to her husband, whom she didn't want anyway, but whose affections seem to be extra painful after she has had a dream of getting away from them. And it clearly gets too much; she drowns herself.

 

The whole film was recorded on the Kola peninsula; mostly rather far inland, but the scenes involving the sea (from which the film poster is a still) were filmed on the north coast; the above is a Google Maps image from the scarred but beautiful landscape up there.

This event creates two more nails in the coffin of our struggling protagonist; his wife's best friend is grief-stricken and wonders if it was murder. It wouldn't be the first time a husband who finds his wife shagging one of his mates would resort to such measures. And the mayor of course greatly welcomes this possibility of having this nuisance put behind bars for many years. Exit villager! Upon which, in a bit of a Mme Butterfly-esque twist of fate, the couple that had suggested the murder in the first place offer a sanctuary to the stroppy teenager son. And the house gets bulldozered to the ground. Fight the system in Russia? Better not try...

After all that (and the many, many litres of vodka that get consumed in this film) we needed a bit of a breather. We headed for the pub, to have a bit of a relaxing chat. It wasn't the happiest of films, but it was very good to sniff some culture in this slightly barren place. With friends!

Dropping out and down

For the first time in a fair while, we would NOT go to Wrysgan this Thursday. Don had suggested a nice drop down through several chambers in local stomping ground Cwmorthin. That sounded great! But on the day itself we almost had to turn to Wrysgan after all.

The run-up to the trip already was ill-omened. David mailed his car had broken down, and that he hadn't managed to do an impromptu repair. So he was out! And then Paul bailed out too; he normally gets a ride home from David. I offered to do the honours, but it was too late, and later on I would actually be glad about that: it would have got really, really late if I would have had to drive home via Holyhead.

Alone I drove to Blaenau Ffestiniog, and found Don and Rob. Simon tends to be late. Phil was reported to be so late he would catch up with us later; he knew where we were headed. So with only four of us we headed up the hill, lugging the 100m 12mm rope with us. And we got to the gated entrance. The mine is owned by some chap who uses it for taking paying groups through it (BTW: we regularly see what kind of fun stuff he installs in the endless chambers; this is a commercial underground trip that the likes of us wouldn't be snooty about! Do all go! Look here!) but he's very generous and allows casual explorers in too. Just phone him, ask what the access code is, and Bob's your uncle. And the code had been the same for yonks; we all knew it by heart.

Except that he'd changed it and nobody had bothered to check. Oh dear. And up there, at the entrance, there is no phone signal. Now what? Go to Wrysgan (on the other side of the valley) after all? Go to the pub? But we don't give up that easily. Rob, who is always up for daft antics, clambered around looking for some rat hole and actually found an alternative way in. I won't detail it; that wouldn't be nice to Miles, the owner, who clearly likes to keep an eye on who goes in. But we went! We'll tell him later. We first had to get to the gate from the inside, to leave a note for Phil, but then we could start on the planned trip. Don had rigged it while we were going to the gate. And soon we were descending, one by one! It was an unusual corner of the mine, and the chamber we were descending was impressively big. And we even found some artifacts along the way!

A lovely bottle. Pic by Simon

Rob getting ready to descend the second pitch. Pic by Simon

It was all rather calm; the abseil was practically never a free hang, and the rope was so thick you couldn't go down fast if you wanted to, but it was very nice! Coming down a 100m rope has challenges of its own; you can't make sudden movements, as a 100m rope has at least 10m bounce in it, and you don't want to be boioinging through a chamber with plenty of pointy slate edges. And the chambers were lovely!

Once down, the first thing I found was a slab of rock with the signature of a lot of the CMEC chaps on it. Including one of the chaps I'd been underground with recently! That was a nice surprise. We then had a bit of a stroll, and had some fun with an original wooden bridge still in place, but then we headed back up. We had to take the rope back out. And getting out was again a bit of a hassle! Phil never showed up in the end; it turned out he had come up, and seen our note, but had figured  going in like we had done was too much hassle and he had just gone home. But with mainstays David, Paul, Phil and Mick all having missed this trip, we surely have to come back and do it again! But then just come in through the main gate...

Teaching freshers

When I lecture the second year students, I struggle to get a response. When I got a chance to lecture to the MSc students, a lot more came out. So I wasn't quite sure of what to expect with some 100 first year students. I would have to help out on three practicals with pretty much the same students every time. I figured they'd rather hide under the desks, but then again, it was a practical. They can't really!

It all started with a session in which the students do some basic stratigraphy and palaeontology exercises. Nice; right up my street! And you don't get to sit still very much; the students need lots of help. Sometimes they need perhaps a bit too much; they could sometimes first just think logically before they go and ask someone, but on the other hand, it's nice and interactive. The questions are easy, and it's easy to steer the students towards an answer. Sometimes it just needs some rewording, or some reassurance something isn't a trick question. Or maybe just the explanation of a word. And you get to see many, many pennies drop in the course of the three hours. I enjoyed it! And the second session was fun too.

 

A figure taken from the practical

The other practical was hydrological, and that was a similar case of students being intimidated by in themselves rather simple questions. And here there was some calculating of things such as river discharge or flow speed and such things. And most of the students don't see these things a anything other than numbers on a piece of paper, which they can calculate if someone gives them a formula. Wondering themselves what these numbers mean and how they relate to each other is largely beyond them. I tried to make them see it, rather than just give equations. I think I did rather well! It was very gratifying. Soon I'll get these students to lecture to; I hope I can make them see what I mean then too, when it's just me in front of a screen!

Rendez-vous with York

When I came to York, I was very warmly welcomed by a small group of first year PhD students. They immediately accepted me in their midst, and I always had someone to have coffee with, or lunch, or go to the pub with (very many very good pubs in York!). It was great! But I've moved on, evidently. But that doesn't mean they have been forgotten.

One of this group, Abi, sent me an invitation to her birthday celebrations. I don't think she thought I'd show up! But I figured there never would be a good time. I longed to see them all again, so I decided I could take a few hours off work, and take the train to York. So I did!

From the station I biked straight to Abi and Adam's house. There we would have dinner before heading to the pub. I was a bit intimidated by the crowds; I don't like busy pubs. I want to just sit down, be able to order a beer without queuing, and hear what people are saying. But we conquered a good territory in the pub and it was a nice night! It was great to see many old friends again! And I met some new people. And I had a few pints, but not too many. Abi herself was a bit humbled by how many people showed up. And later on, even a two man band played; not very conducive for conversation, but they were rather engaging and uplifting, so I didn't mind. Au contraire!

At some point we went back home. I had a last snifter (selected from Adam's impressive whisky collection) and gallons of water. Then it was bedtime! The others had been slamming tequila so they didn't want whisky. They just wanted to get horizontal. Soon we all did.

The following morning I woke up rather late. But by the standards of the house, it was rather early! I sneaked to the toilet to get rid of the gallons of water, and retreated back to my room. Let the others sleep off their tequila! I just did the geeky thing and did some Welsh homework until the others stirred too.

When that happened we went our separate ways; Abi and Adam had stuff to do, and Tom and I headed to town to buy groceries for that evening's dinner. Tom wanted to go home for a shower, and soon after we'd meet again in a pub where we would also meet Katie, the girlfriend of one of the core PhD students, who hadn't been able to make it the night before. There were some more ladies there; I'm getting to know the current cohort of PhD's! My friends that I had met when they had all just started were now already approaching the end. 

 

The view from Abi's guest room; I love brick two-up-two-downs! 

After a while the pub-sitting got to me a bit, and after some nice reminiscent strolling through the beautiful city with Tom we headed back to Chez Abi, where we combined forces to make tempura. It was great! But it's a lot of work and after dinner it was bedtime. So time to start my goodbyes again! I gave Tom a big hug.

You can't really go to York without ogling the Minster

 

Some nice scenic corner of town

The next morning it was time to also hug my lovely hosts, and once again head for the railway station. It was great to see everybody again! It was like I had never been gone. I hope to welcome the whole bunch in Menai Bridge one day!

Image editing

It's all well having a sediment core, and it's all well having hundreds, but when you need to work on them you need to somehow extract information from them that you can just keep on a piece of paper or a computer file. You can't dive into the cold store every time you wonder about something! So on board we make a core description, in which we note things like sedimentology and fossil content through depth. And we take pictures. And later on, as one might have noticed, we have them X-rayed in hospital. And it takes 3 to 4 scans to do a complete core section.

Ideally, one would want the description, the picture and the scan all in one figure. But that is a lot of work! So recently, I have spent a lot of time staring at my screen, making snazzy digital versions of the core descriptions made onboard, and adding the core photographs to these logs. And then I had the job of taking the several scans of each section and stitching them together, somehow. Once I had the merged scans I could add them to the core logs too.

My first port of call was David; he's the School's photographer and general graphic man. He uses Photoshop for such jobs. But Photoshop struggles with X-rays! They're a bit fuzzy, and the software just doesn't see the overlap. He showed me how to do it manually, but that's a fair amount of work.

Guy (the lab technician) used some other software for the same purpose, but this software struggled in the same way. And then Juan, my office mate, asked why I didn't use the software they use. Juan, like all my office mates, is a sclerochronologist; a person who uses banded organisms for dating and palaeo-environmental research. Tree rings are the most famous example of annual banding in an organism. But corals have them too, and the ear bones of fish, and statoliths of gastropods, and whatnot. And clams have annual (or finer) bands too. All my office mates use clams. And they take very detailed photographs of their shells, under the microscope, and use the pics for image analysis. And as they need high resolution, they can't do the entire shell in one go. They need to stitch many pics together! So their software was tailor-made for what I needed.

An example of a raw X-ray image; this is some 36 cm of two 100 cm core sections. The circles, btw, are scars of the shear vane, with which we measure shear strength. Shear strength is an indication of compaction; if sediment has had an ice sheet on its head, it tends to get very compacted!

Juan showed me what the software could do. It was magic! So easy! I did all my sections while the sclero people were having lunch. Result! So then I only had to combine the scans with the other data. And when that's done I have all the information I could possibly want about my 88 cores ready at my fingertips! And then the REAL work can start; look for datable material revealed by the scans, dig it out, and send it off for radiocarbon dating. But for now I have clean hands and square eyes! And increasing knowledge on image editing...

A fully integrated core description, with all bells & whistles; notice the X-ray on the left that looks like one picture, but which is 4 pictures merged together

Testing the beach for the freshers

It is one of the perks of the job. Having to take students into the field, and then getting the opportunity to go there beforehand, without students, to see what there is to teach. I had already been to Cwm Idwal, the Aberogwen coast, and Llyn Llydaw that way; now it was time to go to Red Wharf Bay. We would be talking to the students there within the framework of the Earth, Climate and Evolution module, on which I also lecture, and of which I supervise some practicals. As is generally the case; James would teach us the teaching. And as is generally the case, he brought his dog.

I travelled with James, and we got to the bay. Penny, the dog, was excited: a big beach! And James had brought a ball! What more could one want. Except that she gets so excited about the ball she doesn't want to give it back to James after having fetched it. That doesn't help! But it kept us busy while the others failed to show up. By the time we got worried they appeared after all. We could set off.

Penny amusing herself while James is lecturing out of sight. Notice the limestone cliffs.

It is an exciting beach! It sits in a low zone on Anglesey that runs all the way from where we were standing to the estuary on the other side, and which actually traces a fault in the crust. This one runs parallel to the Menai Strait, which is a similar fault, but which was eroded out a bit deeper. These faults are still souvenirs from a time when the ocean before the Atlantic Ocean vanished. And the beach has lovely Carboniferous limestone cliffs towering over it; this limestone was deposited when the region was  shallow sea, but the closing of the aforementioned ocean caused the uplift which brought the rock to where it is now.

Right underneath the cliff

The limestone isn't only interesting as a building material; it also shows some interesting features itself. It has holes in it, caused by dissolution, and filled up with very old sandstone. This means the dissolution must have taken place rather soon after the material was deposited! Which also means the rock must have consolidated rapidly. The sandstone plugs are rather impressive.

James on a sandstone plug in a dissolution hole in the limestone

The limestone also has trace fossils, and in some places, there is Last Glacial till straight on top of it. A lot to talk about! We all liked it, but the dog didn't. She thought all that standing still and talking was unbelievably boring. Couldn't someone throw a ball? Well, no, because she wouldn't give it away, but that didn't stop her from whining in the most pitiful way. So cute, and so distracting! But then James had finally talked us through the entire field day and we could head back, throwing balls liberally. In March we will do this trip for real, with some 100 students. I hope they are as impressed as I was!