back in town

Greetings all, pad eye kup

 

I arrived last night after ~30 hrs in airport terminals and planes. I like incheon int’l airport (seoul) and most dislike seattle (verrry poorly designed, hope they tear it down sometime soon, it is aging and there are three separate underground trains one needs navigate that are poorly labeled). Both of denver’s airports are even better than seattle’s. Korean airlines is the best ever. Service is par excellance and the food is the best I have ever had on a plane. I only hope they expand their American airport destinations!

 

I had a great time in phuket! Played it low key walking on the beach and sleeping. I have some cool shells and carbonate beach sand. Ate great food. Phuket is not much cheaper than Oregon (perhaps because it is catered to rich germans and Americans on holiday). The first place I stayed at was the cape panwa resport. Very POSH at over 3,000 baht a night, with a buffet breakfast and a room large enough for two thai families (based on what I observed when walking around neighborhoods later in my trip). Disparity! Second place was at Ao Bangtao Lagoon Bungalos. The room was 1300 Baht (plus 10% and 7%) ~1500 = 45 bucks. This was 50% the peak rate! I could have rented a tent, but I wanted a bed. Meals were 150 Baht ($4.50) at the hotel and 300-400 B ($9-12) at the great local Indian restaurant. Next time I go to Thailand, I will stay away from the tourist areas. I had reasonable luck communicating in phuket (with my dictionary that had thai script that I could point to if I could not pronounce the word, verrry important). If I stray from there, it may be more of a challenge (but I feel comfortable enough that I am sure I could do it).

 

I will post some pics soon and more summaries. I do still like coffee. As of now, I am cleaning my house that was left in disarray during my rapidly rushed departure. Following that I plan on attending my friends wedding (jay and sacha) in Humboldt county. Back next week for some debriefing.

 

Luv you all, krup koon kup

 

J R Patton

jpatton@coas.oregonstate.edu

541.753.0421    home

541.737.9622   office

707.498.4290  mobile

http://oregonstate.edu/pattonj

P.O. Box 392

Arcata, CA  95518

 

 

in port, hasta la vista

salutations

this is my fond farewell to the crew of the R/V Roger Revelle. they have been a
most excellent companion to my first adventure on the high seas (although the
seas were relatively calm). the cooks on board (jay and pete) were key in my
comfortibility. i only ate less than 1/2 my personal food stores. i also feel
really healthy (sans my previous gastrointestinal issues that i will not mention
again...). jon the computer tech was very helpful (i spent much of my time in
the computer lab planning our course and coring sites). i will miss him for
sure. captain tom a`was a joy to work with. he was easy going and very helpful.
the cheif mate rob, second mate, mellissa, and third mate heather (roger that)
were all the best. the cheif engineer, dave, was very helpful as we had many
techinical failures during the cruise. all the other guys, jack, rick, jd,
manny, eddie, edwin, matt, scott, steve, jim, jim, john, and i hope i did not
miss anyone are great!

the indonesian crew was particularly helpful. this morning when i was beginning
to take apart a table, udrekh jumpoed right in and said, "jay, is there anything
we can do to help?"

i am ready to go to the dock, after our group picture .

we have already cleaned up all the labs (excpet the computer lab desks where our
computers are still hooke dup for lasdt minute file transfers). my room mate
bart hass already cleaned our room and taken the alundry out and cleaned the
abthroom. he is awesome.

sea you all on the flipside of the globe soon. i have many pictuers to share, i
will post them on my web site. i also have a couple videos. i plan on making a
presentation at HSU geology next fall, as well as at hfog?

luv you all, jay

phuket in the mist

greetings

it is 2:30 pm local time. we will arrive at port around 8:00 am tomorrow
morning. we have been getting all of our equipment put away and the deck
transformed back to the way it was before we got here. i am busy making sure we
have redundant copies of all the data we have collected. only one piece of
equipment is running and we hope to be done with that by 9pm tonight. that will
give me ~9 hrs toupdate the data and then pack up the computers.

my shoulders are strained from all the whale gut swimming i did yesterday and
the gally still smells like squid (gross and salty). most of our stuff is done,
but we are still really busy. we want to have our stuff loaded and ready to get
off the ship whenwe pull into port. it will only be a couple hrs after that that
the containers (i.e.vans) will be lifted by crane onto flatbeds to be shipped
back to seattle. we will have to wait till august to get that stuff. i expect
tonight to be a late one. too bad there is no alcohol on board (at least
officially and legally) that i know of. i am sure we will be celbrating soon.
one of the coring crew is expecially ready to leave for home. he is retirement
age and has been extra cranky since we were 1/2 way throught he cruise.

jay-roy

last core on its way up

greetings and salutations

our last core is 15 minutes from being on deck, a multi core. we recovered our
last piston core just before that.

last night was the wog entertainment ceremony. (wogs, pollywogs, are single
celled organisms who have yet to be welcomed into the world of king neptune;
shellbacks were once wogs, but king neptune has accepted them as worthy; i will
detila this later)

today, begining at 6am, after 4+1 hrs sleep, we began our initiation ceremony.
we wore our clothes inside out. we had to walk backwards everytime we were in
the presence of a shellback. we had to do whatever a shellback said. (sort of
like hazing, but not that bad). we did some things like measure the ship with a
1/2 hot dog (i counted while my wog partner held the hot dog). we were then
brought before king neptune and his court to stand before for our charges. i
plead guilty. i was a special case (i did some really bad things). so they
really gave it to me. they pretended to cut my hair off. they pretended to
electrocute me. they oured goop all over me and made me swim through kitchen
wast (historically, wogs 'swam' through the innards of wales and out their
anus). this ceremony goes back centuries and i got a really cool certificate
(and a laminated card i will carry with me whenever i go on a ship that will
cross the border, so i do not need to go through this again). the certificate is
cooler than all of my different diplomas combined. i still smell like kitchen
waste. i need a second shower. eughghhgh...

more later. gotta go give coordinates to the bridge. we are goin home! 36 hrs
form now, the ship should be unloaded.

luv jay

4 degrees 20 minutes

greetings

we just passed 4 degrees and 20 minutes to our final trench core site. we will
do one to two more piggy back basin sites on our way to port.

today is the wog ceremony. last night was our entertainment night. we made two
films. some of the shellbacks were not too entertained as they were expecting a
live show... but most everyone was on the floor laughing with tears in their
eyes. it was quite hlarious. i will have a digital copy of this movie. but you
need to do an equator crossing on a ship to view it.

back to sleep for an hour more nap (after my 4 hrs already) before we get
awakened for our day of hell... stressing out about it, got a headache, gonna
really suck. i hope i enjoy it.

me'ya lat'r

tic toc

welcome to this message,

i began the cruise reading. it was very comforting and relaxing. i do not get to
read much, too busy, too much oging on. i soon fell to the needs of the cruise
and stopped reading. i look forward to returning to this book once the cruise is
over.

the winds today were up to 20 knots, so the waves have answered the call and are
smaking the boat pretty heavily. the core deployment the afternoon was pretty
wet. the sunset tonight was wonderful. the one last night was aboslutely
spectacular. there was a squall moving between the ship and the sunset. really
awesome. i have taken about 4 GB of pictures and about 15 GB of video. i am
still reeling them in. gotta get the moments, it has already been fun looking
back at times from early in the cruise. we left a few people in padang and it
seems like so long ago (not sure how long it really was). miss those guys.

one of the guys we left in padang is a filmaker for cbc (canada). they are
making a film about the cascadia subduction zone. since there are many parallels
to oru study here, they decide to send him along. a week before we left cv, a
whole slew of calls came in from different companies (natl geo, etc.), but there
was not enough time for the paperwork for int'l clearance (was that a pain, took
about 6 months for most of it to go through). i am not really photogenic (long
hari and all), so i do not expect to be in it. it may take a couple years till
we see it. look forward to it.

gotta go get the bridge set up or our next plans... then perhaps a nap before an
all night survey and site selection again. yippee. i hope this cruise never
ends. i have my seventh wind!

reggae rising is just 54 days away. i can't wait! check the lineup i am most
excited about (the best yet, as always: reggae reggae reggae):
anthony b
abyssinians
queen omega
sly and robbie
ziggy marley
cherine anderson
morgan heritage family
tanya stephens
damien marley
stephen marley
steel pulse
freddie mcgreggor
ishi dube.
I CAN'T WAIT
i hope lee scratch perry makes it also (he was on the lineup for reggae on the
river, probably due to the 2B1 production connection) (for those less informed
of the political issues between reggae ont he river and reggae rising, go to
reggaeontheriver.com for a quick summary, or go to reggaerising.com for the
lineup that is going to happen) as he was on the 2B1 lineup and there were
rumors some acts would be transfered...

luv one, j-sun

2004 earthquake

greetings

we have split therest of the piston core from the basin we were in last night.
we have a good view of the entire deposit we think is likely the 2004 turbidite.
it is over 1 meter thick. this is the thickest deposit, by four times, that we
have seen in all the cores recovered on this cruise. below that turbidite are
perhaps over a dozen thinner turbidite sequences. many of them have thin mud
turbidite 'pre-cursors?' and then nice buoma (person who typified bedforms of
turbidites) b,c,d, and mud tails. the ripples of buoma c are particularly
beautiful! also, lucky for us, there are hemipelagic deposits between most of
these turbidites. residing in these hemipalagites are forams. the age control we
were looking for. core 96PC will be a benchmark of this study.

most people are in a good mood, as we are getting close to the end. i hope
these4 last few days last a long time, but time is running really fast (back to
sans sleep mode).

the ocean is still blue. the moon is waning. sunrise this morning was
spectacular.

later gator, jater

2004 rupture zone and thai massage

greetings and salutations,

we are amidst the 2004 rupture zone again. oru most recent core in a piggy back
basin looks like we got the event. there is a nice upwards fining unit at the
top of the core. ifning up into a nice mud. looks like we have a good tail to
the 2004 turbidite. of course, when we launched and recovered the multicore
device (to capture the sediment-water interface, in up to 8 cores), it looks
like we overpenetrated as most every core was 100% full. after looking at the
piston core form this location, i am not surpised. we will have a few more
chances to capture this interface, so we are heading back to the trench right
now to get another piston core at this latitude. we probably have two more
trench sites and two more basin sites, plus or minus. if we are lucky.

i am looking forward to a week in phuket. i plan on staying in a bungalo on the
beachd on the west coast of the island. kata beach or patong. or several to try
different ones. i really want to go snorkeling to see coral reefs and tropical
fish (you know, the vibrant yellow, pink, and green ones). i may need to travel
by boat to an island to get good snorkeling. we'll see. i also plan on sleeping,
waking up, getting a traditinoal thai massage (2 hrs), going back to sleep,
waking up again for another thai massage (about $30 bucks for 2 hrs), for a
couple days before i go adventuring. kata beach is less tourist packed than
patong, but patong has discos where i might be able to socialize with some
beautiful ex pat. woman so, i will try to mix it up.

3:30 local time right now, gotta keep an eye on things. later.

louvre jay

got sleep?

sleep? forget what that is. i will try it again soon.

brevity master jay

steaming ahead

greetings all, one love,

we are moving right along. the end is near and i can taste it. while i feel like
i am now ready to return, i know as soon as i do i will wish i was still on the
ship. i just watched tha sunset, a mildly rare ocurrance for me, so it was a
treat to relax sitting out on the deck somewhere near the bow. we have only a
few more core stations to go (about 5 or so). we on or ahead of schedule (dont
tell anyone on the ship we are ahead, they will begin to expect to get back to
port early; we will probably throw in a new core station if we are early;
although i would like to get back a day early, so we have time to pack up
everything).

gotta go, just found some good stratigraphy on the sub-bottom profiler....

luv me

smooth operator

cool runnings

irie

congrats to tom and susan leroy on their spanking new born with a goatee!
congrats to sam van lanningham on his soon to be defended defense!

will be home soon, more later, gotta go get some mud.

l-j

mud thud

greetings and salutations,

king neptune has been very patient with us as we are about to cross the equator
again. most of us pollywogs (those not experienced with a crossing ceremony) are
i sdue trouble with king neptune. we are slated to be lower than whale shit
slime balls for the transit back to phuket once our science is over. we will be
wearing our clothes inside out and do what ever a shellback (one in good
standing with king neptune) tells us to. i expect to get slimy, greasy, grungy,
and dirty. i will probably work very hard ond something(s). i hope i do not get
hurt (other than my very large pride). following this hardship, we each get to
entertain king neptune for 15 minutes. i hope i do a good job. the shellbacks
have been threatening to cut my beard and hair off. i am shuddering in my shoes.

science is going well. i have been getting to do some core logging. much like on
land cor eloggin. more detailed in some ways, less detialed and way less
rigorous than i am used to doing (thanks ken aalto for the preparation). i tried
to make some changes to the strat logging sheets, but i was not to be heard
(chris was surprised at this, so he and i will sit down after the cruise and
improve on their existing core log sheets)... mud is mud. getting my fingernails
dirty again is a good thing, albeit i am still short on sleep. i did get over 6
hrs last night, all one solid block of time. yippee.

luv you all, j-sun