Still alive

Hey folks,

just letting you know that I'm still a resident in the realm of the living. I'm sorry for letting you down for a whole two weeks but please let me explain the reason why. The first week was simply a rather uneventful one since my supervisor Larry had to go to a meeting in Washington DC. This combined with me finishing my assignment way to early basically left me without a job for the rest of the week. Since I didn't want to let boredom prevail I asked around to find something to do, successfully.
On Thursday, August the 18th, I went to the Mount St. Helens Science and Learning Center together with four other CVO scientists to teach young boy scouts, aged 10 to 15, about volcanoes. It was my job to teach them basic geology and volcanology and I probably had the most awesome location for my station. Look at this:

Me, my rocks, the kids and Mt. St. Helens

Man, I am sooo lucky...

On Friday I went out into the field with Jeff to help him with his gravity survey. My fellow students probably recall the use of a gravimeter during our field trip and will come to the conclusion that the procedure to acquire measurements with one of those buggers is one hell of a hassle. The gravimeter we used on that Friday could have been handled by a baby, seriously. I guess the only reason we don't have that kind a instrument at the university is the price: US$ 75.000. We took measurements in the area around Mt. Adams. Here a picture of me standing in a burned forest looking at the volcano that hasn't erupted for 2.500 years.

Burn Baby, Burn

This pretty much sums up the week before I went to my major field trip to remove seismic stations in the national forest around Mt. St. Helens an d Mt. Adams. That involved a lot of driving on dirt and gravel roads in a humongous forest and pulling stations in the battering heat. It was a lot of fun and work but I enjoyed it since it's something I don't get to do very often. Unfortunately the idiot writing this post forgot to bring his camera to the field, therefor I have nothing to show except this glorious Trump sign:

He seems to be holding his scale the wrong way around.

I hope you're not disappointed for I vehemently regret not bringing my camera...
Now you're probably wondering why I'm writing this in english. The reason is simple really: This is my Blog and I do what I want!