The Jet Rock

Tim and I left Oxford to drive up to the Yorkshire Coast to fill in the gaps in the samples that we collected from Hugh. The drive was very interesting (not necessarily in a good way!) because Tim was nowhere close to being recovered from the bug that he came down with the day before and on top of that he had not slept well the night before. This was unfortunate because he hadn't added me to the rental agreement on the car and it was up to him to drive the 6+ hours

Since he needed all his focus to just drive the car, there was not a lot of deep conversion on the drive north. Mostly it was me giving directions and I would get a grunt of acknowledgement from Tim.

The sights along the drive were great though and helped pass the time. The country side was beautiful and I'm ashamed to say that I did a woefully job of taking picture for this part of the trip (This will be a running theme throughout this post). The views got especially good as we neared the coast; we drove through the Yorkshire moors; stark rolling hills with no tree and scattered boulders.

We decided to go directly to Port Musgrave (the old fishing village on the coast where the outcrop was located), instead of going to White Horse Inn in Whitby where we were spending to night. After some fumbling around on country roads and after a few "you aren't from around here" looks as we turned around into someone's drive way, we manage to find a place to park and take a trail down the sea cliffs to the beach.

Below is the spectacular view from the trailhead.

The black rocks in the lower part of the cliff were what we were after, a rock unit called Jet Rock, named after the fossil driftwood-called Jet- found within these rocks.
After a steep 15 minute hike we reached the beach. It’s important to point out that the tidal range on this part of the coast can be pretty extreme. However, we checked out the tidal chart before went so we timed our visit to coincided with low tide.


Tim was doing much better at this point, likely the great scenery helped, but still wasn't a hundred percent. So after we walked around and got our bearings, he laid down for a nap, leaving me to explore on my own. Below are pictures from Port Musgrave.

Tim and the sea cliffs

Ripples in the sand.

Ammonite in the Jet rock.

Jet (fossil driftwood) in the Jet Rock

After exploring for a few hours we hiked back to car and drove to Whitby about 15 minutes to the south. Whitby is a classic English fishing town with a harbor, ruined abbey on the hill above town and quaint, cobblestone streets. I would like to say I have an excuse for not taking pictures, but I don't.

Tim and I settled into our room at the Whitehorse Inn, which by the way, would be a great place to take your significant other for the weekend and not a place to stay with your advisor. I’m pretty sure that some of the staff thought Tim and I were a gay couple; the next morning when I went to breakfast alone, because Tim wasn’t well enough to eat, every one was giving me a look like “Did you have a fight with your partner?”

Questions about our sexuality aside, we then went and found some dinner at the Magie Pie cafe, rumored to have the best fish and chips. They definitely lived up to the hype. They were damn good! Also we got some local crab cakes that were possibly even better than the fish and chips and washed it down with some English Ale.

WWe called it an early night on account of Tim's illness and the need to get out early the next morning to catch the low tide. The next day went like clock work; we got out and went back to Port Musgrave sampled the Jet Rock. We left about noon to drive back south to London so Tim could catch his flight back to Germany.

Of all the places I visited in Europe the Yorkshire part seemed the most rushed. This was sort of a disappointment for me because I found it the most beautiful of all the places I visited. I guess it has to do with the starkness and emptiness of the coast (the same reason why I love the Great Basin). I would really like to go back and visit Yorkshire again...

The Oxfordian

This post title is in recognition of the fact that I've took so long to update my blog after getting back home (It a division of the Jurassic Period and ended about 155 Million Years ago).

So I left off with Tim and I driving out of London to Oxford. I’ve been a veteran of LA freeway traffic, but the traffic on the M25 is some of the worst I’ve every seen. The kicker, it was a Sunday evening! So to make a long and boring story short, a trip that should have took an hour and half took us 3 and a half hours.

But we made it. Fortunately for us our colleague, Hugh waited around us and set us up at his college, St. Edmunds.

We adjourned for the evening at restaurant/bar called Quod, which was supposedly Chelsea Clinton’s hangout when she went to Oxford.

The next morning I collected samples from Hugh and got to explore Oxford a fair bit (Tim got sick during the day and I was on my own for the rest of the day).

Oxford, if you didn’t know, is made up of 39 different colleges (I admit I didn’t until I was going to visit there). We stayed at St. Edmund’s which is the college Hugh is associated with. Think of it kind of like a college within the a U.S. University that has its own associated dorms. Here more info on Oxfords college system…

http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate_courses/colleges/index.html

Here some views out of my window at the St. Edmund’s.

My room was actually very nice. However, the bathroom in my room was sort of an after thought (they put them in when the college went coed). It was actually an airplane bathroom placed in the room! I'm not kidding!

Here’s the chapel at St Edmunds, which has been converted into library.

The walkways around the church are made up of old headstones.

I wonder if the people that left the "Sacred" headstone for Oliver knew it would end up in the path. Atleast they didn't build a coffee shop over his grave.

Most of the colleges’ halls have interior courtyards, which tend to be off limits, but there is plenty of cool architecture to check out from the streets. Most of the buildings are faced with a local limestone that weathers to the sort of gold color. At least it used to be local, apparently they run out of the local stone and have need to import similar rock from France in recent history. Here are a series of photo from my walks around Oxford.

I found these guys outside The Sheldonian Theatre. I like the one on the left beacuse he looks shocked by the fact a bird crapped on his nose.

The Radcliffe Camera the most photographed building in Oxford. Its the third largest dome in the UK. It houses a library.

Obligatory photo of a red British phone booth.

Spire on top of St. Peter's College.

As I said Tim was sick (it was something ressembling the flu) so I evening to myself. On a side note I hate to eat a meal in public by myself; it just doesn't seem right. I shamefully ate dinner a a McDonald's (I say shamefully because I could have done better) so I didn't have to sit by myself for long and uneventfully went back to my room to sleep.

Next up, the Yorkshire coast to do some fieldwork and see the rocks that we collected from Hugh "in the wild".

The Long Road Home.

I'll continue to update my blog retroactively recounting the rest of my trip (I wrote posts as I went). However, I'm on my way home! I still have a whole mess of hurdles to jump over (I'm flying back with all my rocks, which are probably going to raise eyebrows in customs). Wish me luck!

Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here

Ok only the last part of the title is really true. Kudos if you get the reference.

So after my jaunt to Southern Germany, I immediately flew over to the UK to meet with a collegue at Oxford and collect rock in Yorkshire (no rest for the weary!). But first Tim (my advisor) and I had some fun London on Sunday before getting down to business.

We flew in Stanstead Airport which is Northeast of London and took the train into the city. Tim, being the worldly traveler he is, knows the highlights and started us on a whirlwind tour of London. First stop was to Leicester Square and a lunch of bangers and mash (sausage and mash potatoes) and ale at pub. We then walked over to Trafalgar square and got a look at the monuments there.


On of the most interesting things we did was having coffee in the crypt under St. Martin-in-the-Fields Cathedral. Yes, they converted the crypt into a coffee bar and music venue. Something is cool, yet unsettling about eating on top of the grave of someone that died three centuries ago.


We waded through mobs of Italian tourists (no pun intended) and headed to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben, so I could get my obligatory photo with the famous clock. Here you go Susan…




We then crossed and walked along the Thames. Along the way we passed this cool skate park where they allow people to tag the walls. I assume this is suspost gives people a "controlled" outlet to "express" themselves.

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We stopped in the Tate Modern Art museum. The museum is housed in an old power station and is not much to look at on the outside. However the inside is pretty beautiful in it’s starkness; the main room that used to house the generators is now an huge empty foyer.





We finished our London experience by crossing back over the Thames and stopping in the St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s one of the few structures in that part of the city that survived the Blitz during WWII.




I don’t have any pictures of the inside because it was Sunday and they were having service. We then hopped on the tube and travel back to airport to pick up our rental car and headed out to Oxford.

As a teaser for the next post I’ll just say London traffic sucks.

Southern Germany

I’ve got a lot of ground to cover, both figuratively and literately so I will just jump right in.

On July 22nd I traveled to Dotterhausen in Southern Germany to sample the Posidonia Shale for part of my dissertation. I manage to convince Mike, a friend from my MU days who is now at the MPI, to come along and help me. The trip was 6 long hours of driving, but we managed to make it to Gormaringen, the village where we were staying, without too much trouble.

I really shouldn’t under sell the drive, because it was amazing. The sights were great; green rolling hills, castles, etc; we basically cover the length of the country! Above all of that though was the fact that I had my first autobahn driving experience. I set my own land speed record of 200 km/hr or ~120 miles/hr. However this did occur while I was being blown away by a BMW SUV. In my defense I was driving an Opel sedan.

As rocks go, the Posidonia Shale is pretty famous. If you’ve seen an ichthyosaur (one of these…
http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/ichthyosaur.jpg

it’s highly likely came from this rock unit. The Posidonia also contains ton or other fossils and even ancient driftwood. The cement company that utilizes the quarry has a great museum that houses fossils they find in quarry (the ones that they don’t blow or crush into bits that is).

Geologically the Dotterhausen quarry was impressive. Ammonite fossils (cephalopods, similar to Nautilus) are everywhere. Just by walking around you crush museum quality specimens. Although my task was to collect shale samples for chemistry, I did collect at least 20 ammonites (now you all know what you are getting for Christmas…just kidding).

While we weren’t working in the quarry Mike and I discovered a great beer hall/restaurant about a block from our hotel; it was so good we ate dinner there both nights we were in town.

The sampling took two days and on our last night Mike and I went to the city of Tubingen for a night on the town. The city was beautiful. Tubingen’s city center is pretty much what you’d expect a medieval Southern German town to look like; narrow cobblestone streets, timber framed and stone buildings.

We ate dinner at a restaurant that was in the city center set on top of a hill close to the castle. They specialized in making Maultaschen, a meat filled pasta (sort of like a German ravioli). They definitely were worth the trip; mine were filled with cheese and trout. Mike made sure that I had a beer while walking around town because it’s legal in Germany. We then commenced to pub hop until we caught the bus back to our hotel sometime after midnight.

The next day, Saturday, we repeated our scenic, but long trip back to Bremen. The trip was made longer by us being a little worse for wear from the night before and also we managed to get lost in Stuttgart. Despite this minor annoyance though, the South German trip was a total success and a great time. I definitely need to go back.

And believe it or not I got up the next day and flew to London.

Next up London Part I.

What Happened to Ben?

Sorry for the sparseness of blog entrees, but internet access has been, well sparse. I’m in Oxford, UK right now at an internet café and wanted to let everyone know I’m still alive. More posts will follow when I’m not paying a £1 per 50 minutes for internet access. I’ve got a lot to share!

Greetings from Germany!

It’s been a long few days shaking off the jet lag. Actually it's probably been pretty funny being around me because one moment I'll be totally on and the next I'll be unconscious. I imagine this is what it's like to have narcolepsy.

I managed to navigate from the airport at Hamburg and take a bus to the city train station and then the train over to Bremen and on to Delmenhorst. I managed to do so with out the aid of English, however its not as impressive as it sounds. Its amazing how far you can get on “danke” and “bitter”; although I did manage to buy a telefonkarten (telephone card).

I’m really set up nice here at Delmenhorst. I’ve have an apartment here at the Hanse Institute that’s very swank. I have a full kitchen, living room, deck and office on top of a bathroom and bedroom.

I've gone into Bremen the each of the last few days. On Friday and Saturday it was with my advisor and his family. Both days were fun, but were hampered by my jet lag and the rain; its rained every day I've been here. Despite the weather I managed to see the downtown and go to a great outdoor market.

The main thing I've done is eat. It all started at the market. A vendor was selling split pea soup that was fantastic. We bought a horde of cheese, meat and bread, which we basically ate the rest of the day. I’ll be lucky if I don’t gain 10 lbs on this trip…

Today (Sunday) I went out in Bremen with my friend Mike, who went to school at Mizzou and his wife Amy. The weather was much nicer and they gave me a walking tour Bremen.

I met them downtown by the Rathaus (town hall, which was built in 1410) by a statue of the "town musicians" from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. For those who don't know the tale here's a link to the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Musicians_of_Bremen

If you look close you'll notice that the feet and nose of the donkey and the nose of the dog are polished because people rub them for good luck.

Next door to the Rathaus is the Dom St. Petri (St. Perti Cathedral), which was built around 800 A.D. The pillars on the front steps have some great medieval lions in various poses; the picture below has one biting the neck of a dragon.

Unfortunately I didn't take any more pictures on my tour because I was busy catching up with Mike. We stopped in local beer house and had a couple of the local brews and then continued down towards the Weser River through a narrow street called the Bottcherstrasse. The Bottcherstrasse is decorated with red brick and glass and has a golden entrance; apparently it was almost torn down by the Nazis, but was left standing as an "example" of over decadence.

At the river we enjoyed the sun, which was shining for the first time since I got here, and some more beer. We ended the evening at a hole in the wall restaurant tucked away down a narrow side street in the Das Viertel neighborhood (home to good cheap food and students from the University) off of the downtown. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant, but I’ll ask Mike and post it here later. I ate some delicious Schnitzel Jagertern with red cabbage and roasted potatoes.

Even with the weather and jet lag, all and all its been great start to my trip, however the work starts tomorrow; I’m heading into the Max Plank Institute (MPI) for the day.