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In early December, I headed to San Francisco for the annual Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. While most of my time was spent at the conference, I did find time to catch up with friends who live far away and see some of the sights of San Francisco.
My family’s border collie, Crash, died yesterday. He was about three months shy of his 16th birthday. We got Crash when I was 14. When we went to go look at the litter and pick out our puppy, all the puppies were bouncing off the walls and running around like crazed, energy-filled border collies tend to do. This one puppy, however, was lying back in the shade, just chilling and watching all the other puppies. He was very laid back, and we knew he was the one we wanted. He was the runt of the litter, very smart, and very sweet. He had bright blue eyes, that eventually turned amber and then brown, and reddish brown fur. He was an adorable little fuzzball, and we loved him immediately. We had two grown cats at home, and Crash was about their size (or maybe even smaller), and they quickly put him in his place. He grew up knowing that the cats were the bosses and should be feared and respected. Many years later, when I was in grad school and brought my cat Kepler home with me at Christmas, Kep took full advantage of Crash’s fear of cats. Crash was sleeping, minding his own business, and Kep marched right up to him and hissed at him. Crash jumped up and ran away, and Kepler chased after him. It was hilarious watching a 10-pound cat chase a 40-pound dog. When he was little and wanted to lie down, all four legs would fly out from under him and he would crash – thus he got his name. It also helped that he had puppy nails and long fur so if he went chasing a ball into the kitchen, he had no traction so he went skidding across the floor and crashed into the oven. Border collies are herding dogs, and Crash always tried to herd anyone, whether it be one of the members of my family, our cats, any visitors… If they were going somewhere, he was going to make sure they went in the right direction (according to him). This little trait of his tended to make the cats pretty angry. Or terrified. My younger cat, Apollo, isn’t afraid of anything (vacuum, hair dryer, the outside, bigger cats, etc.), but when I took him home the last two Christmases, he was really afraid of Crash, who by that time was arthritic and deaf, as well as being scared of cats. It was too funny watching Apollo creep around the house to stay away from Crash, who was completely harmless. Crash was incredibly smart. He loved to play fetch with his tennis ball, but my dad, with his herniated discs, didn’t want to bend down to get the ball, so Crash learned to put the ball in his hand after he retrieved it, rather than at his feet. He sat and stayed and waited for permission before running out into the yard, even with the door wide open. The one thing he couldn’t ever quite grasp was heeling. I used to run in my neighborhood in Austin, and I took Crash with me on a leash. He always wanted to pull ahead and sprint, and then he’d get completely out of breath and we had to stop so he’d stop wheezing and panting before we could keep going again. Crash was a part of our family for more than half my life. He loved us, and we loved him. He was a wonderful dog, and we’ll always miss him.
Eve had not had pictures taken with her husband and kids in quite a while and wanted to give prints as Christmas presents to her family. I met them at Bay Area Park about an hour before sunset one Saturday in late October to take their portraits. We first had the kids run around the playground to get some energy out, and I took some fun candids of them climbing around on the playground equipment. Then we strolled along a wooden walkway over the water and got a few posed shots. It was a gorgeous evening and we had a great time! Eve has a beautiful family, and she ended up making Christmas cards to send out as well as prints of the photos. Pictures are always a great gift!
Every year, NASA Johnson Space Center hosts a hot air balloon festival. The balloons launch from another location and land in a giant field on the JSC campus shortly after sunrise. They have contests for the pilots to throw things from their balloons trying to hit specific spots on the ground, and booths to visit. I like watching the balloons floating through the sky in the wind. We had a clear blue sky that day, and the colorful balloons looked gorgeous set in front of it. The JSC grounds are very lush and green with many trees and a few ponds, which made the walk to and from the parking lot quite pleasant.
My friend Colleen had never seen The Nutcracker and always wanted to, so I got us tickets for her birthday. We were seated in the lower balcony, so we had a view of the entire stage, as well as the pit orchestra! The dancers were fantastic and the music was phenomenal. We had a great time, and Colleen got me a Nutcracker ornament to commemorate the event, which I hung front and center on my little tree in my apartment.
The last stop on our teacher workshop field trip before heading back to Phoenix was Sunset Crater National Monument, a cindercone volcano in northern Arizona. When we were leaving the park, we caught a gorgeous view of the sun peaking through the monsoon clouds and shining on the San Francisco Peaks. As we drove out of Flagstaff, the sky beneath the clouds turned a brilliant shade of magenta. It was a beautiful sunset, which was short-lived as we then drove through pouring rain all the way back to Phoenix.
While on the teacher workshop field trip in northern Arizona, one of our stops was a cindercone volcano called SP Crater. When we arrived at the cone, the sky was blue with a few puffy clouds. We spent less than an hour climbing around collecting cinders and lava bombs before gathering at the bottom to discuss what we had found. About that time, the sky started looking like the second panorama and giant cracks of thunder were booming, so we decided it was time to go. I took the nine photos in the second panorama and hopped in the minivan, and as soon as we started driving down the dirt road towards the main road, the sky opened up. It was pouring rain blowing in sideways and hailing, and we were driving in minivans (no four-wheel drive…) on a road that quickly turned to mud. I rolled down the window every so often so I could get pictures (and video!) but could only leave it down for a few seconds before I (and my camera) were soaked; those are the middle two photos. It’s not a geology field trip without some sort of adventure! The last few photos are the view of the storm after we had gotten back onto the main road. We got out just in time!
One of the stops on the teacher workshop field trip in Arizona was Meteor Crater (or Barringer Crater). Meteor Crater was formed when a meteorite about 150 feet across made mostly of iron and nickel metal slammed into the northern Arizona desert, creating a hole about a mile wide. At 50,000 years old, it is one of the youngest impact craters on Earth, and because of its arid environment, it’s the best-preserved crater in the world. This crater helped planetary scientists figure out what craters were and how they were formed (from space rocks hitting the Earth, rather than volcanic craters). There is some neat history about the crater you can read about in the links above. While we were there, we had some free time to wander around, so I got some fun pictures. Storms from the monsoons were building on the horizon and heading toward the crater, which made for a dramatic backdrop.
While trying to create another variation of the below panorama, I either added or neglected to put in a photo that seriously confused the autostitching program I was using, AutoPano. AutoPano generally does a great job at creating panoramas, stretching and tilting the photos, and correcting any lens distortion and color variations to make a seamless image. This time… not so much. But it’s swirly and brightly-colored, and it made me laugh, so I thought I’d share it. I’ll call it Meteor Crater Swirls, deem it an abstract photo, and let it be a happy accident
During the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter teacher workshop I helped teach at Arizona State University in August, we took a field trip to visit some craters in northern Arizona – two volcanoes and an impact crater. Meteor Crater, or Barringer Crater, is located about 35 miles east of Flagstaff. Because of the arid environment and its young age (~50,000 years old), this crater is the best preserved impact crater in the world. August is monsoon season in Arizona, and storms were building as we approached Meteor Crater. I got a few images as we were driving, and we stopped on Meteor Crater Road for a few minutes, where I took the horizontal panorama (Meteor Crater is the rise on the left side of the road.). I love how you can see the individual storms pouring down rain on the desert with clear sky on either side.
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