Fifteen minutes of fame, well sort of...

So the say that everyone gets fifteen minutes of fame, so heres mine. The College of Natural Resources here at Cal has a magazine called Breakthroughs and we (myself and my boss Allen) featured in an article about the instrument we're developing. Follow the link to see the article:
http://nature.berkeley.edu/breakthroughs/break_feature1_fa07.php

Enjoy...

Dave

Colorado New Year and the great snowboarding saga!

Following the success of new year in the snow at Lake Tahoe last year I journeyed east this year, in search of a real winter, to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. Fort Collins, home of the New Belgium Brewing Company, was the first destination to see in the new year at Chez Colette (photo 1). Colette having just moved there to start a professorship at Colorado State University. The new Belgium Brewery (http://www.newbelgium.com/index.php) were we spend new years eve with a tour and tastings would be a great place to work and not just because its a brewery! The company is a co-operative as in all the employees own a part of the business and therefore have a vested interest in the companies success. After one year of employment, a stake in the company is awarded along with a neat New Belgium bike. After 5 years, employees are rewarded with a week long trip to Belgium to learn skills from their master brewers. Recycling and sustainability also feature heavily and all the power generation comes from wind farms. All this and theres a slide that leads to the tasting room, what more could you ask for. Being Colorado (Denver is the mile high city, being a mile above sea level), there was plenty of snow, freezing temperatures, ice skating (photo 2; I'm the one on the floor, I suck at ice skating) and snowball/ice fights (photo 3). It was a classic way to send off 2007 and welcome in 2008 with a bang.

After new years I spent 5 days up at Winter Park in the Rockies learning to snowboard with Mike (english guy I met on a research course in France 6 years ago) and a bunch of his University friends from the UK. It was a tough first few days with multiple bruises and sore muscles before I final got the hang of it and was cruising down the pistes. For the final two days we were rewarded with real Colorado powder, 4 inches of fresh fluffy snow on the first day and 8 inches on the second. This was awesome and exactly what snowboards were designed to ride! I have truly been bitten by the snowboarding bug and this past weekend I was up at the Heavenly resort at Lake Tahoe with my housemate Lindsey and several of her friends to cruise the slopes. Two weeks previously Tahoe had had 12 feet of snow, I kid you not and although snow was not as fresh and fluffy the base was pretty damn thick and it was all good. The views from the top of the Mountain were impressive looking down over Lake Tahoe (photos 4 and 7) and for the Friday at least the slopes were not overcrowded (photo 6). An impromptu performance by the University of California's band (all the musicians on skis) added to the atmosphere (photo 5) and the fact that the Condo we we're staying in was 2 minutes from the ski lift and was free (the owners are friends of Lindseys parents) were definite bonuses.

Laters,

Dave

Happy Holidays 2007-2008!

Dear Friends, Romans and Country-'blog reading'-folk,

Firstly, I wish everyone a very merry christmas and a fruitful and prosperous 2008!
And secondly apologize for having been a little slack with updating my blog. Its been really busy here since I got back from the woods (BEARPEX) in October. I will endeavorer to make a new years resolution to provide an increase in blog posting frequency.

I hope that all are well and I will no doubt be in touch with you soon.

Have a mulled wine on me and drink to the USA signing up to the Kyoto Protocol in 2008, we can but hope.

Cheers and all the best for now,

Dave

Frichalak Wedding, Traverse City Michigan.

During the last weekend of September, myself and several of the Berkeley crew (Colette, Delphine and Tim) made the trip East to the shores of Lake Michigan for the wedding of Julie and Dave. It was a classic; it had hats (of the foam cowboy variety and the Canadian 'chapeau' type), plenty of Dave's (see photo bottom middle) including the father and grandfather of the bride, champagne (from the Napa Valley, California) of course, swimming in the 55F Lake Michigan, giant pumpkins (in the forecourt of a gas station, don't ask me), parkour with martinis (cosmopolitan ones as i recall) and of course a great wedding with the best vows I have ever heard! Once I get hold of more photos I will post them!

The only other small thing to mention is that i missed my first flight (missed the shuttle bus from the hotel by a whole 3 minutes) and that cause a few knock on effects which resulted in me arriving back at Blodgett some 30 hours late (after forcing Mike and Delphine to stay overnight in Reno to wait for me) and with a replacement hire car after the first got dinked proper by some huge SUV outside Reno airport....ruining my until that point clean driving licence! Boo..

TTFN,

Dave

BEARPEX field campaign - Blodgett Forest

For the past 10 weeks I have been hauled up in the woods about 2 hours North East of Berkeley as part of the BEARPEX campaign. The site was located in Blodgett Forest, 2 miles away from
UC Berkeley's Forestry headquarters. The field deployment was focussed on studying the effects of the biogenic (natural vegetation) emissions from a predominantly Ponderosa Pine forest. The tower site is shown in photo 1 (and the view fromt he new tower at sunset is shown in photo 4), the new tower in the foreground to the right and the original tower in the background to the left. The deployment was long compared with other field campaigns that I had previously been involved with and there was barely time to keep up with the outside world. The purpose of the extended length was in principal to get enough weekends so as have good statistics for looking at the weekend/weekday differences. As it turns out it was necessary in order to overcome several major logistical problems mostly relating to power or should I say the lack of power. All this stemmed from changing the main site generator from diesel to propane. After two weeks or so these initial hiccups were overcome and the site was fully up and running.

There were some great people (graduate students, postdocs and principal investigators) from 9 different institutions from across the United States and these folks certainly helped to make the time pass more quickly and of course Stumpy Meadows (photo 2) - our local swimming hole. It was not all work, work, work and I got introduced to 'beerpong' - a US 'frat house' favourite on more than a few occasions, including a battleships versions (photo 3). The premise is simply you fill cups with beer at either end of a long table and then attempt to throw a ping pong ball into your opponents cups which they then have to drink. The first team to lose all their cups has to drink the remnants of their opponents. In principle a genius drinking game, except for the fact that we sucked at it and the games lasted far too long for anyone to actually get drunk! Glenn elected himself as social secretary and illustrated how much extra time you have when you only measure 3 things...sorry Glenn! But he did do a sterling job, from mulitple Beer pong adventures, to movie night and drinking with the dude (the big lebowski) - I felt pretty rough after that one, damn you natural ice! Already looking forward to the repeat offences likely in phase II next summer....NOT!!

Sorry to everyone for the lack of communication over the past few months, the satellite internet connection in the woods was terrible at best. Fortunately, I am now back in civilization and back on the grid so hopefully I will be able to catch up with you all soon.

Laters

Dave

#3 - "Slippery Melon Zest"

So with the 10 week stretch in the forest approaching (the BEARPEX - Biosphere Effects on AeRosols and Photochemistry EXperiment or as Delphine christen it the "Bitter Experimentalists Always Repairing Pieces of Equipment eXperiment" since we all seemed to be having trouble getting our instruments to work pre-campaign) it seemed appropriate to have a pre-campaign party to celebrate the future absence of civilisation.

It was of course a true classic and would not have been complete without one of my now infamous cocktail concoctions. I had two hard acts to follow: the #1 "not as bad as I thought it would be" from the new years party at Lake Tahoe and #2 the "sorbet-rama" from Delphines Berkeley leaving party but the #3 "slippery melon zest" proved to be a willing contestant thanks in part to the zesting skills of Dave Michalak and the oversized Melon slices (which actually proved to be fundamental in order to prevent the Sambuca and Baileys mixing). My medicine ball again led to some entertaining moments as everyone tried to balance on it (not sure what Tim was trying to do, see bottom left photo)!

Heres to 10 weeks in the desolate forest with no TV, terrible internet and 12 miles to the nearest red neck hick bar. Bring on that post-BEARPEX party.

Cheers

Dave

Uncle Dave and the "Donner Party"

This past weekend I was climbing up in the Donner Memorial State Park at Donner Summit. This state park was named after the ill fated Donner Party. The Donner Party was a group of California bound American settlers caught up in the "westering fever" of the 1840's. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846 - 1847, some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism. Although this aspect of the tragedy has become synonymous with the Donner Party in the popular imagination, it actually was a minor part of the episode. There were truly spectacular views of Donner Lake from the Summit climbing areas (photo) although the heat was a little hard to handle even at 7000 feet. The climbing, on Granite, was good but really paled in comparison to the huge and enormously impressive granite domes of the Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite NP, where I spent the previous weekend.

The Donner Pass is where the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States crosses the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This railroad linked the Eastern United States to California and the Pacific Coast and was completed in 1869. Its completion initiated a nationwide mechanised transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West. This network caused the wagon trains of previous decades to become obsolete, exchanging it for a modern transportation system. To protect the railroad and keep the tracks open year round, wooden sheds were constructed over the tracks (see top right photo below) especially during the heavy winter snowfalls.
Even more interesting is my recent ascension to the ranks of Uncle Dave - WOW do I sound old now! My niece, Teyha, was born on 16th July and weighed in at a health 7lbs something. I look forward to meeting her very soon but until then we will both just have to get by on on photos and stories alike.

Cheers

Dave