A Quick SoCal Trip

In contrast to the Christmas markets of Germany, I flew to LA and Santa Barbara just before Christmas for some, shall we say, "business." (No quotes necessary, actually.)

Santa Barbara is very pretty, with the Santa Ynez mountains in the backdrop and the Pacific Ocean front and center.

There's a bike path that follows the ocean, and the town itself is very bike-friendly.. even to beater beach cruisers.

The old Mission is beautiful, with a sort of park and flower garden out in front of it that people hang out in.

The harbor was packed...

.. and the view from Inspiration Point was a very welcome reward for a good hike.

Baltic Vacay

I was glad to clear my mind (and rest my GI tract) after my trip to China with several days along the Baltic Sea at the border between Germany and Poland. I visited Swinoujscie and Rewa, which are touristy beach communities, and quite lovely.

Land of Yaks

Tibet is a beautiful place, and the blue skies when we arrived at the Lhasa airport were a welcome sight after days of Beijing's "blue" grey skies. (Above, a sign leaving the airport that pictures all the great Communist party leaders, past and current.)

The Potala Palace is Lhasa's most noteworthy building, and while I was initially excited to do a tour inside it, the tour process for our English-speaking group was going to be a massive pain in the butt, so a coworker and I escaped in search of noodles instead. We wandered through some public park areas and through the main streets of downtown, which are quite cheery during the day, despite all the police and military presence.

After a few days of acclimation, we headed to our field station at Nam Co, which is at an elevation of ~4720m (15,000+ feet) (and everything liquid-like in a bottle you bring up from Lhasa WILL explode as soon as you open it). We first headed over a nearby pass, which is often visited by tourists and pilgrims and covered in prayer flages, to the point that they just look like trash.

North of Nam Co, a local pub/restaurant/hang out for workers on nearby construction projects.

Yaks were everywhere, including this prettiest lady of the bunch (disclaimer: possibly not a lady).

Rock cairn by the shore of Nam Co, or Holy Lake

 Bridge out over a glacier-fed stream.. not a problem for our professional drivers and land cruisers.

Tibet.. alas that I only had 2 weeks.

Baton Rouge: Life in the Big Greasy

I'm trying to make "The Big Greasy" stick as a nickname for Baton Rouge. Despite the fact that Baton Rouge is generally cleaner than it's more cosmopolitan neighbor New Orleans (The Big Easy), Baton Rouge's relationship (dependence) on the oil/gas/chemical industries is on full display with its skyline as you cross the main I-10 bridge. It's half city skyline to the south and half Exxon refinery to the north.

 Anyways, this post is just a mish-mash of some of the different things I took pictures of in BR.

I didn't believe some redneck telling his little kid that Huey P. Long was buried under the massive statue in front of the capitol building, but it turns out that guy was right. (Geaux Tigers!) Despite ol' Huey's stated desire for a small, simple grave marker, he got a whopping statue on a pedestal with tended flower displays. (He allegedly requested a very simple grave, so maybe this was another middle finger from his political enemies.. but maybe not.)

And of course, here's the capitol itself (not to be confused with the Old State Capitol that I shared a picture of previously), the tallest state capitol in the US as of 2017.

View from the top, of the grounds below, with Huey P. Long's memorial in the hourglass-like shape in the middle.

Three ships side-by-side here: the USS Kidd on the left, whatever that boat that played the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean is called, and one of the casino riverboats (Belle, I think) on the right in the distance.

Hilarious old photo of a researcher from the 1970s measuring trees at one of our sites in the Atchafalaya River basin. No shirt, no problem.

Great example of Cajun ingenuity on the swamp: just work with what you've got (especially if what you've got is an old school bus and some empty drink syrup barrels), and voila, you've got your floating houseboat/fish camp!

Zoom in close to the pier, and you can see a logjam's worth of lumber strained out of the river (unintentionally).

Long-horn cow at the LSU Rural Life Museum.. definitely a place worth checking out, and not just for the cow.

Someone decided to speak for our lab truck and declare to the world, "I'M DIRTY".

And speaking of Cajun ingenuity, just DIY your own home repairs: grab a bobcat and rip up that annoying concrete-slab driveway.

Red Stick

I headed over to Baton Rouge in November, and I've been steadily checking out its offerings since then. While perhaps not the most exciting of cities, BR has some gems, both hidden and very visible. The manmade Lakes just to the northeast of the LSU campus are a nice feature that have running and bike paths along them, plus lots of ducks, geese, and cypress trees.

The weekly downtown Farmer's Market is a surprisingly good one; not sure why I was surprised, as it should be, since Louisiana is a great place to grow plants with its ridiculously long growing season.

There are levees everywhere, which I guess is necessary for a state with the combination of something like 600 feet of relief across the entire state and the Mighty Mississippi. Located by the levee is the Old State Capitol, which is a really gorgeous building both on the outside and the inside. It's probably my favorite sight downtown.

The LSU Botanical Garden has a nice set of walking trails, where you can see such beauties as trilliums, box turtles, water snakes, and even cottonmouths (not pictured).

 

I spend a lot of time in trucks and boats on and en route to the Atchafalaya River basin (Cajun country), where I work with a freshwater ecology research group to collect data on the state of water quality. More on that to come. Thus far, Baton Rouge is okay. We'll see what kind of weather craziness the summer brings and see how I feel after that.

An Artsy Chattanooga Christmas

The trek to Chattanooga this Christmas was complete with cats, lots of family time, and lots of rain.  Evan and I took the 3 kitties with us for a little over a week and split our time visiting the various members of our family and friends who were in town for the holiday.

I made it a point to walk around my favorite parts of downtown, so I got a few artsy or interesting pictures, including this obligatory one looking north through the Walnut Street Bridge.

The legacy of my old favorite restaurant and coffee house, The Mudpie.. replaced by Hill (sh)City pizza, and now by something else under construction.

This sign was only slightly comforting, but mostly disturbing, located at one of the shops on the North Shore by Coolidge Park.

I mentioned rain, and I'm not kidding: there was a thunderstorm on Christmas Eve, which is HIGHLY unusual, and the Tennessee River showed off that craziness with its swollen flood stage (not in itself an unusual occurrence). The above picture is looking south across the river, and it doesn't look too bad, but observe the closeup from the south shore:

All those little nubs that are separated from the stone staircase are actually 8+ foot tall lamp pillar things, and the stairs go all the way down to a sidewalk at their base. None of that is supposed to be underwater, so the river was probably close to 10 feet above where it should have been! A final more-closeup by the stairs, with ~1 foot of the pillars above water:

... And Rembrandt's in a coffee cup, mmmm.

I Could Never Swim that Far

In October I went to Chattanooga to participate in my third "Swim the Suck" race. It's a 10-mile swim down the Tennessee River, but no, I was not swimming it. I've been a volunteer kayaker for it, which means I paddle alongside an impressive athlete who's actually swimming it, keep their unofficial time, feed them snacks every 30 minutes of so, and make sure they don't get run over by a motorboat.

This year's weather forecast was absolutely dismal. We were all prepared with rain gear and extra sets of clothes, and we knew what the emergency plan was in case of lightning. When I woke up at 6am the day of the race, it was raining steadily, and I thought about how miserable I was going to be sitting in a kayak for potentially up to 6 hours.

To everyone's credit, nobody chickened out on account of the weather. We showed up, and we were ready to go. And as luck would have it, we were all starting to mill about the starting ramp about 30 minutes before race time, when the sun came out.

And stayed out pretty much all day. It turned out to be an exquisite day to be on the river, as the sky gods rewarded us for our bravery. My swimmer made excellent time, and we were off the river in about 4 hours, with tasty food and libations awaiting us. A few swimmers dropped out due to hypothermia, and some powered through nearly-hypothermic, which was rough to see. But for the most part, it was a great day for a race.

Asheville: the {insert nickname here} city

Seriously, what is Asheville's nickname? Here's my exploration of potentials.

Wildflower City: It has a nice botanical garden, with cool rocks and lovely plants like jewelweed, ironweed, and some sort of phlox.

 

Culture City: It has a cool sculpture walking tour you can take around downtown.

Foodie City: It has some good restaurants and breweries, even a bar that makes their own sake.

Future-site-of-a-water-war City: Apparently it's in one of the driest areas of North Carolina situated immediately next to one of the wettest.

Surely one of these must be close!

... Okay, I just looked it up, and apparently Asheville's nickname is "Land of Sky." Yeah, I guess it has some sky. Case closed.