Small World, Part III (VI? IX?)

Today I went to my new yoga class for the first time -- I graduated myself to Yoga 2 for a bit more challenge, but then promptly missed the first two weeks (so much for the challenge thing). After class I was putting away my mat when one of my fellow yoga practitioners walked up to me and said, "Excuse me, but isn't your name [Pangea]? We met at [The MegaConference] last fall." And indeed we had -- although I hadn't recognized her in yoga clothes with her hair back, she had somehow managed to recognize me in yoga clothes with my hair back. Impressive. We chatted for a while and walked to the dressing room where, while changing, she suggested that we exchange phone numbers and make plans to hang out soon, since her Spookytown-area research will continue only until the end of the summer, at which point she'll return to her home institution in another state. "I wish we could hang out now," she said as we exited the dressing room, "but I have a friend waiting for me somewhere outside and then we're going to dinner. Oh look, he's right here."

As we walked up to her waiting friend, I realized with a start that I knew him already. Knew him rather well, as he was the physicist I had gone out with twice in the fall, had had a small world experience with between these two dates, and then had somewhat brutally rejected after date two. (Brutal in the sense of unwanted and unexpected on his part, I think, but not unkind. He had been so delightful by e-mail! Such a good-hearted and kind person!And so irritating when interacting face-to-face!)

"This is my friend," said my classmate and colleague.
"Hey, [Rejected Physicist]," I said, "nice to see you." (This was a lie.)
"Hey," he said back, looking uncomfortable and a bit unhappy.
"You already know each other?" she asked in surprise.
"Yeah, we've met, " I said. "Because the world, you know, is about this big." I then promised that I'd call her soon and booked the hell out of there.

As I was walking down the street headed back home, I took out the roll I had bought earlier at Whole Foods in preparation for post-yoga hunger and started munching thoughtfully. I then began to laugh and, of course, a piece of roll lodged in my throat and I started coughing violently. The man walking towards me on the sidewalk looked at me concernedly -- as I looked back and tried to say with gesture and my expressive eyes, "It's ok, just some roll in the throat," I realized that he was the same guy who had been standing in front of me in line when I had bought the very roll that was trying to kill me at that moment -- and mind you, this purchase had been many blocks away and three hours earlier.

I guess if these things come in threes then I'm all set for a while.

One step nerdier (can it be?)

Today while I was cleaning up my work inbox I found an e-mail about a beginning astronomy course at the university observatory (just 3.1 miles from my house) and decided, on a whim, to register. God knows it's hard to know less about what's going on up there than I generally do. Tonight we learned how to understand the horizon coordinate system that uses altitude and azimuth and how to spot satellites in the night sky - there was even a practice session after class. One set of communication satellites, originally launched to support satellite phones, briefly flare when the sun hits them - at the brightest point of the flare (you can download the coordinates, trajectory, and flare magnitude - but who is figuring this stuff out?) they can be 100 times brighter than the brightest planet in the sky. I had hoped for something more romantic than looking for reflections of abandoned and outdated human-made objects in orbit, but actually they were surprisingly nice - like slowish shooting stars whose arced path across the sky has been minutely calculated by giant nerds. Meanwhile, every single satellite that we looked at during our practice session appeared somewhere around the Cygnus constellation, and I am wondering if maybe it is time to get paranoid about the various cygni suddenly making an appearance everywhere in my life...

A killer time at the beach

One morning at the beach house, after a night of drinking and debauchery that I checked out of a bit early (between sleeping and digestive disorders, I'm a total lameass these days, although in my defense here, early = 1 am), I woke up at around 6:30 and headed down to the beach. It had rained the night before and was incredibly misty. So misty that I could barely see the walkway I had just come from, or the simple fisherfolk that set up along the shore just after dawn, or anything more than 10 feet in front of me, really. The previous night's storm had apparently been hard on the creatures of the sea, and the shoreline was littered with the carcasses of all kinds animals. There were wee little crablets, and mid-sized transparent non-stinging jellyfish, and larger, oddly bubbly stinging-type jellyfish, and even a quite large skate. Saddest of all, though, was my discovery back at the house that the mists -now burned off- had been obscuring the body of one of the biggest victims of all - Fish, one of more boisterous members of the Delaware vacation crew. These are the effects of partying hearty that they just don't show in the Budweiser ads...

Almost seeing a bald eagle

is the same as not seeing a bald eagle at all, according to Colliculus. Such a stickler! I spent most of last week hanging out on the Delaware shore with Colliculus, Prairie Landing, and between 12 and 17 of their closest friends in a luxurious beach house. I know, I also thought that Delaware is just a state that you drive through en route from Important Place X to Important Place Y. But apparently people not only grow up there, they go back year after year to vacation. And now I see why they do, even if the water is a bit colder than the bathwater-style ocean my wussy adult self prefers.

An added bonus was that there's this national wildlife refuge filled with all kinds of migratory birds located midway between my house and the shore. A look at my hiking map had convinced me it was en route, since it's clearly just a few miles north of the bridge you use to cross the Chesapeake. A look at Mapquest the morning of my departure, however, told another story - as the crow flies (or, perhaps, as the osprey flies), sure, just a few miles. But as the car drives, a giant circuitous route covering about 315 degrees of a circle. But said circuitous route was mostly on adorable back country roads (with unstaffed roadside produce stands where you just pick out your zucchini and put money in a can), and I was excited by the prospect of possibly seeing bald eagles, since there are several nests there.

I'm getting used to mid-Atlantic naturescapes (although prefer a bit more drama in my hiking scenery) and so enjoyed the quiet bayside forests and cornfields. The island is filled with ponds and inlets for waterfowl - I kept a safe distance from some of them. I avoided the bench set up for birders (doesn't look like it's in heavy use) and sat on the sandy beach instead. There weren't a lot of birds to see on this side of the island, and I found myself watching some beach ants (?) instead - when traversing a long stick of driftwood the connected a grassy field with some beach rocks, each ant headed out would apparently head-butt each ant coming back in. (My shutter is too slow, so this is a just-post-head-butt moment.) Is this the ant equivalent of a bee dance? They wouldn't say. This horseshoe crab was also quite silent. In the midmorning heat, there were far more dragonflies flying around than birds. And in the end, the only raptors I saw were turkey vultures (not pictured) and ospreys. The ospreys built their nests on these platforms in March, and these juveniles, born in May, are apparently just a few weeks away from flying. As of now, though, they sit and cheep like tiny pathetic little birds and their mother comes and brings them fish. I used to keep an osprey cam open on my desktop, but seeing them in person was much cooler. People, I think I am this close to becoming a birder. This close. Just when we thought I couldn't get any nerdier (sigh). But I think I may treat myself to some binoculars for my birthday, and I'm also looking for a not-too-expensive camera with a lot more zoom, because 3x optical just isn't cutting it anymore.

Ireland photos - Killarney and environs, day 1

So I had this conference in Limerick this past week, the biggest conference in the world for one of the fields I work in (in the past, only lack of money, well, and lack of an invitation to participate in a panel, had kept me from attending). There was no way that I was going across the Atlantic for a conference only - although now that I'm back on the east coast, Europe is really much closer than it used to be - so I scheduled in a few extra days for hiking and nature appreciation.

I wasn't sure where I wanted to go, and my original plan was to do a walking tour, one where they transfer your luggage from one B&B to the next and you just hike all day with your daypack, but not one of the people I contacted got back to me with real information. Given my memories of Irish driving from 1989, I was pretty sure I didn't want to rent a car, and so given the limitations of bus schedules and pedestrian nature-access requirements, I settled on Killarney, down in County Kerry. The town itself was eh, pseudo-posh and kind of plasticky Irish - definitely aimed at tourists, and a bit more pricy than I'd expected. But there was all kinds of natural magnificence in easy walking of my B&Bs, and I took full advantage.

The first place I stayed was a little further from the bus station than I'd expected - this is particularly important when you are getting in after a red-eye flight followed by a 3-hour bus ride and shlepping a backpack that's packed nearly full. But once I got in, I was adjacent to a lake-side castle and historic island with old mining ruins - archeological digs have shown that copper mining there started in the Bronze Age, about 2500 years ago. When not in view of the lake, the scenery generally looked like this [don't forget that you can click to get full-size photos] , with fetching little ruined buildings scattered about. The forests were filled with all kinds of interesting trees, and flowers that are only found in cultivated gardens over here seem to grow wild over there.

After navigating my way past several sets of romantically inclined Polish teens, I reached the lake, where I settled in for a snack and some rest. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a tiny white boat, which resolved into a rather large swan. Who swam closer. And closer.
And turned and headed right toward me. At this point I started getting kind of nervous. Ok, very nervous. Because when I'm sitting on a beach a swan on the water is basically my height. And while Google's not backing me up here, it's my understanding that swans are the most dangerous of waterfowl, and when angered, can break your neck with the single flap of a powerful wing. With this in mind, I gathered up my stuff and prepared to flee up the hill as the swan drew nearer and nearer, like a small unmanned motor boat with a bomb in it and a homing device bearing down on the beacon implanted somewhere in my hiking shoes. At the last minute, though, it veered away and headed west. Phew! I was free once more to enjoy the peaceful solitude of the lake.

After all that excitement, it was a relief to come across a herd of placid cows grazing in the shadow of the cathedral.

Ireland photos - Killarney and environs, day 2

Day two of hiking was a bit more intense - after cabbing on over to my new B&B, I headed on out around 11:15 and didn't get back until 7:30ish, and was on my feet almost the entire time. In fact, my hips still kind of hurt (that's aging for you, I guess). This day was a bit more misty, but this made walking through the forests just that much more evocative. For some reason I hadn't expected pine forests, but there they were, carpeted with ferns or with mossed-over rocks.
The ground cover was incredibly lush and green, and also quite shamrocky. This I should have expected, but somehow surprised me anyway.
Less surprising was the appearance of a couple of red deer - this part of the national park is adjacent to a wilidlife preserve that's part of a red deer range.
By day two I had learned to expect the wild hollyhocks as well.
After visiting a waterfall,
I headed out through a different forest onto the Kerry Way. The trees here were kind of eerie - mossed over, with twisted branches that often had little ferns growing out of them. As the forest ended, the trail (which is on walking paths that are thousands of years old) emerged into a long river valley ringed by mountains that were shrouded in mist. I decided to climb the only mountain without mist on the top. It was covered in heather, which seemed to bloom in both the standard puple and in yellow (although maybe this kind was some other plant?).
The view from the mountain, called Torc Mountain, included lakes to the north, west, and south.

Even though the sun didn't set until around 10:30, I wanted to be back around dinner time, so after my descent decided to head back home. The river was so pretty, and so filled with leaping fish that just hurled themselves out of the water, that I decided to sit on a rock in the middle for a while.

My route home took me by yet another lake (this one, luckily, without deadly swans), and by some more placid cows.
The last aesthetic treat of the day was this florist's window in town - nothing says "flowers" like a ceramic dog in a purple bonnet...