Wrapping it up

I suppose there should be some kind of closure soon of this particular blog thread. After all, the course is finished, I am back home and the stromatolites are safe where they are. That won't stop me from adding more material in the future, but before I fully go back to my real life I would like to take the opportunity to sum up the course.

It was great. Just great. From the first day in LA to the teary eyed godbyes on the dock at Catalina, I had just so much fun. Amazing people, amazing places (I will remember Yellowstone for a long, long time), food of... suficient amounts and quality (you spoiled us rotten, and you know it), very dedicated teachers, highly exciting things to learn and do... Wow. Just wow.

I learnt a lot - both biology, biochemistry and - more spectaculary - geology. I had never heard of the stromatolites before I got that paper before the course, but now I'm ready to challange anyone you care to name on a biogenicity deabate. And snowball earth... How comes no one has seen fit to mention to me before that the earth might have been totally (or at least mostly) covered in ice two or three times?? That is important stuff, you know.

I learnt other stuff too - about teamwork, about expedition mode and about leaving and reading footprints. We had a great time together and I'm sure I will see quite a few of you again.

The proud course, breathing out after the presentations.


Birthday boys - me and Ben - cutting the cake. The slight moist that can be observed is due to the epic relaxing waterfight going on in the background. (Thanks for the picture, Marcia.)

Some stats:

New stuff I learnt: Lots!!!
States visited: 4
Cameras bought: 3
Times I climbed Lunchbreak Mountain: 2
Mornings I cajaked: Many
New words learnt: Quite a few (thanks Sean)
Days I went hungry: 0 (thanks Ann and Sue)
New friends gained: At least 30
Suck factor: Low
Wow factor: High

Thanks all of you for a great course

Redwoods

Just twelve miles or so north of the Golden Gate bridge lies Muir Woods - a preserved area of Redwood forrest. Me and Maja spent a wonderful day there. While the trees we saw don't reach the maximum of the species, 80 meter is still rather spectacular in my book.

The air is misty and humid - a prerequisite for the tall trees - but we were in luck and went there a sunny day. The light was fantastic. Filtered through all that chlorophyll so far away it sifted down like a soft dew. There was not much undergrowth - except in the places were the trees had left gaps - and what little was there consisted mostly of ferns. The terrain was rugged, and and some places we could climb high enough to see the crowns of the trees below. In all - spectacular.
We also visited the underwater glass tunnels of San Francisco aquarium. The shoal of anchovy was probably the one thing that impressed me most.

More pretty pictures from the course

My Seal friends in their home cove.


One of them paying a visit to us.

A pretty rock at the beach!

Apparently we had a bison in the garden.

Guano rock. I never kajaked out there, but those who did told me about the smell.

Lunchbreak mountain. Rumour has it the best time to the top and back is six minutes. In my first attempt I made it in about ninety (but I took the cacti paved rood...)

The course is over...

This marvelous course is over. All those amazing people are gone. I have to leave the island.
Suck factor: High.

Maja is here, and we have a week to do California.
Suck factor: Low

This is not an ordinary day, today is my birthday

And I will get the best gift ever, because today Maja flies to me!!!

I may have left you with the impression of the lab work as hard and stressful - and it is. Today we are running the last analysis and writing up the reports, which makes the stress level go up to an all time high. We have spent many long days in lab and with computers. We have crunched tons of data and dived into totally unfamiliar fields in a way to short time, and all have that nagging feeling of leaving too much data behind (we do community analysis, after all...) - but even so, this place is brilliant.

The facility is three stores, with three separate suits of stairs, a nice view over the ocean and packed with unexpected nooks and crannies everywhere. I walk down the corridor in one end and see Carie coming from the other with a rack of test tubes. When I cross a corner I almost run into Richard who is looking for someone. Through a window I see the next group in a heated discussion of this or that incomprehensible diagram, and in the computer lab people do pretty good imitations of chickens. The whole place is buzzing like an anthill - or why not like a microbial mat - full of interesting people and projects and things. And everywhere is the smell and sound of the ocean. This could just as well be the Western Biological Laboratory that Steinbeck describes - and in many ways it is.

On a total different page. A few days ago I experienced the third totally independent and unprovoked confirmation - this time by a leading Deep Time geologist - of my physical similarity to Lenin. I'm still not sure how to react to that information.

And tomorrow is the last day. After that I have to leave these people, this place, this group dynamic and this wonderful course. I feel last-day-in-school mood crushing down over me. Good thing we will be too tired to be very sentimental about it.

Wild life spotting: I spent some quality time with the seals again today. And they have feral cats here. And a local crow was gracious enough to pose on a stick for the camera.
Suck factor: Low
Wow factor: High

Independence day

Congratulations, USA, to your freedom. I'm honored that you let me celebrate it with you in Two Harbours in the traditional way - with barbecue, drunk boaters and eighties disco music. The firework was cool, though.

We are working more or less constantly now, finishing up our projects. A general sense of desperation is loosening up, and we start to realize that we actually are achieving things. But we have had a few rough days in the metagenome.

And don't ask me about the microprobe. Just don't.

The ocean is still just outside the door, and today we found some time snorkling.

Wildlife spotting: Heron, spotty fish, tiny fish, lobster, bison that were not as large as the bison we saw in yellowstone, squid and a black and yellow butterfly.
Suck factor: Everything considered - low
Wow factor: High.

Pirates

In October they will celebrate the 19:th Annual Buccaneer Days here at Catalina. Sounds like great fun because as everyone know, there can't be too many pirates.

Right now I miss the pirates back home. I know you will have a glorious lajv with plenty of yarr and arrrrgh and even a few shiver me timber. Have fun, and remember that X marks the spot.

Pretty pictures of Catalina

A ship from Santa Barbara was docking over the day with a cargo of middle school kids. What a ship...

Our spartan student dorms. A bit on the rough side, but they will have to do.

Pretty picture of plant.

The cacti that stabbed my foot. Vicious creatures.

Another pretty plant - this one in Two Harbor, the local two sheds, one pub, five hundred tourist boats-town.

Me and our 454... I just had to have a picture of this.

I never grow tired of this sunset.

How do you buy a Canon EOS 450 in one hour in LA anyway?

Well... You don't. Instead, when you realize that you have no time what so ever to explore the town before you will be loaded into a plane heading for Montana, you rush off to the local radio shack (thanks for the pointer, Kat) and buy a pink little Samsung. It was Susan who suggested it to be a pink one, and who am I to argue with that? (And apart from that I actually like the color, it was the cheap option - and still so much better than the one I left at home.)

So, I have traveled through Yellowstone, Green River and Catalina with this little pinkie, filling up a 2GB memory card. I'm rather pleased with the pictures, and even if I'm still a bit grumpy about not having anything more cool with me to the hot springs, it might actually be for the best - I would have spent way too much time playing with the camera and too little time with the real course stuff otherwise.

But now I have ordered it, and unless the postal service of the island decide to let me wait for the next boat - tomorrow I will receive my new, shiny Canon EOS XSi!!!

Talking about cameras. I got myself a disposable underwater camera in Two Harbor to have with me in the kajak (I will have at least one good picture of those seals before I leave this place). Yesterday I did some snorkling with it and got a pretty good shot of kelp in morning light. Today I went out looking for seals. The cove where I found them a few days ago was deserted, but I spent some time playing tag with a swimming seal. I paddled towards him, he dived and showed up a few tens of meter away in the other direction. I turned around and went that way, and he dived again and so on. When we grew tired of that I spent some time watching herons, and put the camera away in my pocket (I thought). When I got the shore - no camera. The seal must have taken it. Or possibly the herons. I spent some time looking for it (it floats, after all), but nothing. I had given up and just asked Ben to get myself another camera when he went to town for some provisions - but lo and behold, on the beach, washed up together with seaweed and kelp - was my camera.

Now, in a well told story, this would be the time when I lowered my voice, gave you a conspiratorial wink and added that when I picked up the camera, I saw that since I lost it three pictures had been exposed, and I would find something strange and mysterious (and possibly related to seals) on them.

No picture's were taken. But I'm glad to have my camera back.

I'm uploading a new bunch of pictures. As you see I try to put them approximately in the order they were taken.

We on the course

We have settled down, of sorts. We will stay on the island for the rest of the course, so we have finally been able to unpack our bags and get some serious washing up done.

We are twenty students from four continents and nine countries. A few more girls, which is why all the boys are stuck in one house together. We have backgrounds in geology, paleontology, biochemistry, ecology, molecular biology... but we are all more and more becoming geobiologists. The teachers spend almost as much time with us as we do ourselves, teaching, supervising and making up bad jokes.

It is a great bunch of people with lots of both humor and jargon. From the initial geeky interviews of each other's research interest we have moved on to get to know each other and to develop our own communication. We spend about every hour of the day together working, listing at lectures, talking, eating, swiming, kajaking, sleeping... when I have finished this I will go down to the docks to the others and look for cool fishes.

Yesterday I went out in a kajak and spent nearly an hour in a little cove just next to this one, watching a colony of seals basking and swimming. That was spectacular.

Wildlife spotting: Seals, pelicans, rays, orange fishes, black fishes, striped fishes, flying fishes, grumpy fishes, big fishes, small fishes, other fishes...
Wowfactor: High
Suck factor: Low

The class finding the perfect connection between geology and biology. No, I'm not on the photo. Who do you think was behind the camera?

Note: Updated 30 June 2008

We are in Catalina now

So anyway

Yeah, so I was just - dude, and he was just no way, and I was just, whatever, and he was just whatever, and we were just way to go, man.

So anyway, we did this thing and I was in the flow and we were way back and no way, it didn't work out and we were just, come on man, it's just DNA, and they were all come on and we were all no way and anyway.

So then we all were this suck dude, and they were, whatever, and I were just come on man, and we all said shit and satan and fuck and merde and vitto and whatever.

But anyway, we where all just whatever dude and then we said - whatever rocks your stromatolite, and we all went - hey man, it's just DNA, so yeah, that's it.

Yeah. Anyway.

Livet i labbet

Jag har nastan varit tva veckor i USA. Det kanns som om det gatt mycket langre tid an sa. Bara Yellowstone kanns oerhort avlagset, for att inte tala om LA. Det ar massor med upplevelser och saker att se. Guldgravarstaden Golden saknar en del i spanning, men tar igen det med mycket vacker natur. Vi har i vilket fall inte tid att skrota runt pa stan, eftersom vi tillbringar dagarna i labbet.

Labbjobbet ar en intressant upplevelse. DNA-extraktion och 16S-kloning ar mitt shit sa gott som nagot, men det ar langa dagar, och vi ar manga manniskor med olika bakgrund som skall samarbeta om pipetter och mikroskop. Vi utformar experimenten lite allt eftersom, vilket innebar att ingen vid ett givet tillfalle har total overblick av vad vi egentligen pysslar med. Stamningen ar dock fortsatt god och vi dricker mycket ol. Dagens lediga timmar agnade vi at ett besok pa Corrs bryggeri, studera kopparbyttor, stirra pa lopande band och prova deras akta Amerikanska Irlandska ale.

Vi har haft seminarium med nagra riktigt coola namn, med efterfoljande grillfest. Forutom nagra mycket nordiga - men otroligt intressanta - diskussioner, sa har vi kylen har pa studentrummet full av mat. Som om vi nagonsin har tillfalle att bli hungriga pa den har kursen. Frukost, snacks, lunch, munchies, glass, middag, kakor, kaffe, ol, kvallsmal... Jag lovar - nar vi kommer till Catalina sa kommer de att sluta mata oss helt och hallet och lata oss fanga var egen fisk eller nagot. Jag kommer att klara en vecka bara pa overbliven packed lunch.

Wildlife spotting: Turkey
Suck factor: Corresponding to the current lab situation.
Wow factor: High

How to dress right for the lab

The CSM lab sure has pretty pipettes

...and gloves, and safety glasses, and coats...

Me, JC and Sean riding the cowboy

Two racoons. They retreated into the trees - but not far.

Note: Published 30 June 2008

Blue and evil...

Of all the bizarre creatures I seen on the course so far...

When we went to the cafeteria for lunch it was packed - literary packed - with smurfs. Hundreds of little hyperactive kiddies in blue t-shirts running around, screaming, milling, swamping the place. They were there for some kind of sport summer camp, but still... There is a two meter high wall inside the dining hall, semi-separating two halves of it, and I sat and watched those blue little bastards bounce up and down on the other side of it. The scene would have fit well with Benny Hill music.

So, I'm at Colorado School of Mining now. We have spent a bunch of hours in the lab, extracting DNA, running PCR and looking at microscopes. I've bought a tie.

Wildlife spotting: Raccoon

Suck factor: Still low

Wow factor: Works fine

Sampling the puddle

The thing with fieldwork in microbial ecology is how small scaled everything is. Like the mighty extremeophlic hotspring ecosystems I have read so much about. Ponds. Puddles. Little bubbling splashs of water. And when you sample them, every centimeter, millimeter, temperature difference and uncountable other factors matter. 

I spent a constructive hour in the car today inventing a tool for systematic spatial gradient calibrated sampling of microbial mats. It wasn't until I proudly looked up from the paper and took in the whole view of my blueprints that I realized that I just had invented a multi pipette. 

We are finished with field studies now, and are preparing for the next phase of the course - the lab work.

Wildlife spotting: Pronghorn

Wow factor: Quite high

Suck factor: Low

Pretty pictures of rocks

That local Cowboy touch.

Mountain we passed on the way down from Yellowstone. Massive view.

Prairie dog

Boar's tusk - taken from the old sea floor at Green River formation.

Rock with pretty lichens.

Rock with lots and lots and lots of dead snails in.

Stromatolite bed with a bunch of Geobiologists

Stromatolite at Green River. Characteristic rounded, domed shape.

Large rock. Pretty.

Note: Published 30 June 2008

Stuck in the rock record

Up the rock record we went, walking in the ancient Green River formation sea bed, past sand stone and gastropod (and that was a pretty cool feature - half mud stone, half fossilized shells), to the much antipicated stromatolite layer. The day was hot, and the Old West shrub fields that surrounded us didn't offer any shade. But it was a beautiful scenery.

Stromatolites are layered structures. That's about that. There is also a huge ongoing debate discussing to what extent they are indicative of life.

When we went back we spent about six hours at lectures, something that could have been a bit traumatizing if it weren't for the beer.

Wildlife spotting: Prarie dog
Wow factor: High.
Suck factor: Inched it's way upwards under influence of biochemistry, but went back to low during the Stromatolite Drinking Game.

Tomorrow we are going to Colorado.

Out in the sticks

Wow! This is sure an intensive course. After the first day of introduction we immediately packed up and went to Montana, where we drove down to Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park. Since then we have spent our days looking at modern and fossil hot springs (some totally incredible microbial mats), laminated hill side and wildlife (lots and lots of bison). I will have to tell you more about that in time, much more...

Right now I have managed to find a computer at a hotel in Rock Springs. We are going to spend the day at the Green River, looking for fossilized traces of the ancient sea bed that covered large parts of North America. The following days will be spent in the lab of Colorado School of Mines, analyzing the samples we took in Yellowstone.

The other students and the faculty is a fun gang, and we are having a really good time out here. Since there are not many minutes of the day we don't spend together, we have became a team really fast. As they said at the introduction in California - this is Expedition.

Pretty pictures of hot springs

Norris Geyser Basin - acidic hot springs and a wonderful view. The Sulfolobus isolates I work with comes from this area.

Octopus hot spring. A wonderful microbial mat that follows the heat gradient down the slope.

Me taking samples in hot springs just like all the cool archaea reseachers.

Stromatolites in Octopus. They are not necessarily biogenic.

Old Faithful, the probably most famous geyser in the park (which, as a side note, finally explained an old Terry Pratchett joke for me). Note the bison.

Sperm pool. Too hot in the puddle itself for mat forming life.

The mud volcano by Obsidian pool. Note the bison.

Mammoth Hot Springs deposit carbonates, building magnificent structures and swamping the local flora.

Note the bison.

Grand Prismatic's beautiful microbial mats.

The time in Yellowstone was quite an experience. Scenery, wildlife, smell and sound of nature and four days of breathtaking hot spring experiences.

Wildlife spotting: The first day, just driving into the park to our lodgings, we saw Bald Eagle, Deer, Grizzly Bear, Bison and Elk. Later we saw Sheep, Coyote, a greyish Fox, and lots and lots of more Bison. We didn't see Moose until we actually had left the park.
Wow factor: Very, very High
Suck factor: Low

Note: Published 24 June 2008