Hanging Around

...at the GSA meeting. And what better place to do it than with a bunch of other geobloggers and geotweeters in a friendly pub? I didn't take many photos during our meetup-tweetup, but got this one of Callan Bentley - who said, at the time, that it was a "great" photo. Callan has a photo of 18 of the 19 bloggers right here. He and several others have written more extensively about the pub, the beer, and the bloggers. (Well, no one wrote much about the beer - I thought it was just great, but don't remember anything specific.) If I missed any writeups, go ahead and let me know!
Like I said, I really didn't take many photos in the pub, instead, I took some pics while a few of us were taking the train back across the river to the convention center area. Above: Jessica Ball of Magma Cum Laude and Ron Schott of Ron Schott's Geology Home Companion Blog.
More: Brian Romans of Clastic Detritus, Jim Lehane of Dino Jim's Musings, and Callan Bentley of NOVA Geoblog.
Here's Callan with Kyle House of Geologic Frothings and Fresh Geologic Froth, with Kim Hannula and All My Faults Are Stress Related looking on.
Anne Jefferson of Highly Allochthonous has been hanging on all this time, and is now conversing with Kim.

It was a great night, I enjoyed meeting so many geobloggers, and look forward to doing this again sometime! A full list of the blogger and tweeter attendees can be found at NOVA Geoblog.

Getting Back from GSA

I got back from the Portland GSA meeting yesterday, arriving beneath partly cloudy skies with scattered wave clouds like the ones above. I'm not sure I feel like I'm back, however - I have a huge number of things to do, including possibly driving back across the state again because of miscellaneous appointments. As far as blogging goes, in the next several days I'll be getting around to a few more travel and meeting highlights - from both before and after the meeting - but these updates may come along gradually as I try to settle in to some kind of post-travel schedule, while also working on laundry and other mundane things. I also want to review contacts I made at the meeting, update my resume more completely, and plan a bit for the next meeting - Northwest Mining in Reno in December.

GSA Report #2

It's Wednesday morning and raining steadily, unlike this shot from Monday morning. GSA Annual meeting events at the Oregon Convention Center are winding down somewhat: many geologists leave Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, though talks and posters continue through the day, and post-meeting field trips and short courses are still to come.
The exhibit hall, combined with the poster hall and graduate school recruiting booths, is huge - none of the pictures I've taken really show the size - I'd need to stitch together a full-circle panorama, but maybe you can get an idea from this picture showing a portion of half of the exhibits. Photos aren't allowed in the poster area behind me.
Geologists, guests, and exhibitors walk down the "Geoscience Highway" - this is the center area of the exhibit hall, with the photo looking from one end to the other. About half the exhibits are on each side of this central dividing area. This year, the GSA has internet cafes of ready-to-use computers scattered through the meeting halls, including one inside the exhibits. Wifi is available everywhere that I've tried connecting, for those who've brought their own computers or smartphones.
One of the reasons I've always liked coming to annual and sectional GSA meetings is to cruise the rock and mineral booths. This year, there are many; they offer rocks, minerals, fossils, jewelry, and other items made from polished rock and stone.

And now for a summary of where I've been and what I've done. Yesterday, I spent a good portion of the morning and afternoon in the SEG sessions on Magmas and Volatiles: Linking Granites, Volcanoes, Geothermal Systems, and Mineral Deposits I & II (158 and 204). These sessions covered a wide range of topics from porphyry copper deposits to Carlin-type gold deposits, from zircons to fluid inclusions, and from subduction to low-angle normal faulting.

In the afternoon, I also bounced around the convention center, going to talks by various individuals including one by my first employer and mentor, a talk by geoblogger Brian Romans (200-8), and a talk by geoblogger Kim Hannula (200-12).

For the evening, I was invited to the QG&G awards meeting by Bud Burke, an old friend of mine from ties that go back as far as early grad school. I saw several old friends there, reconnected with people I hadn't expected to see, and actually managed to conduct some business relating to a Pleistocene lake in central Nevada. A paper about the lake will finally be published; I'll be a co-author when it comes out, probably because I provided the initial information about the area and was there when the first work was done, and because I tried to get the ball rolling on the article way back in the early 1990's. I'll say more about that when the paper is published.

Today I plan to be in the SEG sessions most of the day: morning and afternoon.

Be the way, summary posts about the GSA meetings by various geobloggers can be found at this GSA page: From the Blogosphere. I don't think the list is complete.

GSA Meeting Report 1

I arrived in Portland Friday night, which was a bit early, so I spent most of Saturday getting ready for the meeting: picking up my badge and free drink tokes for Sunday through Wednesday receptions, setting up my approximate meeting schedule, meeting and socializing with Kim Hannula and others near one of the Starbucks, and going to the GSA Awards reception, which had free wine, beer, and food after a series of great and moving awards.

Sunday was a day of many talks. The annual GSA meeting is a large meeting if you measure by the number of scientific talks given. On Sunday morning, 24 sessions of about 14 talks each were running simultaneously in 24 separate meeting rooms. That many sessions run simultaneously every morning and every afternoon (about 48 sessions per day not counting posters which change daily) for 4 days in a row. This gives me ample opportunity to want to be in more than two places at once, besides trying to squeeze in going to poster sessions and the exhibit hall. Sunday morning, I spent some time at the SEG talks on porphyry copper deposits and gold and copper transport in crustal fluids (1), and finding those somewhat dry, I bounced over to the detachment session (12), which was on the opposite side of the large Oregon Convention Center. There I learned about such things as 'mini-detachments' and graded sandy layers in fault zones. Then I bounced back to find out how soil samples reflect the West and East Pebble deposit at depth (well and hardly at all, respectively).

That was Sunday morning. For the afternoon, I decided to attend only one session, so stayed in the Google Earth to Geoblogs session (53), where several fellow geobloggers - and others - gave excellent and inspiring talks and demonstrations. I met several bloggers I hadn't met before, including Ron Schott, Jim Repka, Callan Bentley, and Lee Allison. I expect to meet several more, along with #geotweeters, tonight at a planned get-together.

Today, the morning seems slow to me as far as talks go. Yes, there are 24 sessions going on right now, and some very interesting talks scattered here and there through the convention center. I'm attending the exhibit hall and blogging, rather than going to morning talks. This afternoon, I get to choose between Volcanism, Impact, and Mass Extinctions (133), Geology in the National Parks (136), LIPs (138), and Virtual Globes to Geoblogs (144). I haven't yet decided!

The best part of meetings, though, is meeting people, which for me often involves seeing people I haven't seen in 10 to 20 years. If you stay in the talks all day long, you don't see anyone - wandering around the exhibits and posters and going to the evening socializing events is something I highly recommend.

I thought I'd show you a couple photos - of the convention center and exhibit hall - but I left my camera downloading cord over in the hotel.

I'll try to have another meeting update, but don't promise anything.

Through the Rain

Yesterday, my travels toward the GSA meeting in Portland, Oregon, took me across Nevada into the face of the oncoming storm.
Lenticular cloud in eastern Nevada.

Dust storm, with overhead mass of lenticulars, while approaching Eureka.
Serious rain started as I crossed Big Smoky Valley and drove toward the Toiyabe Range. I couldn't hardly see the mountains until I got into them, and Big Smoky Valley to the south was a near whiteout (gray-out?) from the rain and low clouds.
Looking south toward the west side of the Toiyabe Range from the center of Reese River Valley: clouds roil over the back side of the mountain near Big Creek.

A relatively dry spell ensued, until somewhere east of Fallon.
Good news! The windmill is back up and running at West Gate. A lot of happy cows were lying down in the nearby field. Happy cows are ones that are lying down, rather than having to stand up and spend their entire time eating. Cows aren't usually that "happy" in the desert and steppe rangelands of Nevada and southern California (the Mojave Desert).

Driving from Fallon onward included barely being able to see with windshield wipers going full blast from the intensity of the rain and from semis splashing water all over while passing me in the canyon of the Truckee River east of Reno. There was enough standing water on the roads to cause unexpected hydroplaning in places - and the winds were blasting sideways across the water-sheeted concrete highway between Fallon and Fernley, strong enough locally to push my truck sideways.

Oh, and how much gas did I have? Usually that isn't a problem for me, but I didn't want to stop and risk getting completely drenched, didn't want to stop and risk driving over the mountain pass in the coming darkness. My odometer seemed to be telling me I had been getting 20 mpg or more for the last 400 to 500+ miles. Since I couldn't believe that, I chose to think I had not reset the odometer, and must not have traveled as far as it said, thus giving me enough gas to get to my destination without refilling. About 40 miles from the next gas station, I did the math and realized that with less than a quarter of a 30 gallon tank, I had really gone 560+ miles, another 40 would make that 600 miles, a precise 20 mpg. I usually fill up at 500 miles, and although I probably had enough gas to make it 40 miles - probably, maybe - I turned around and drove back less than a quarter mile to the last gas station, getting a little damp for the trouble. I'm packed for wet and cold weather, but was only dressed for cold.
Finally, after driving through the most consistently intense rainstorm I've seen in Nevada for a long time - over a broad area from east of Fallon to beyond Reno - I spotted this bit of clearing on Highway 395 south of the Honey Lake rest stop.