My Orogeny Fetish

Since I moved to Boise, ID I have discovered that it is a Mecca for Dual-sport motorcycles.  About a year ago a joined a club whose members provides a support network for one another, and who put together rides throughout the year, and it has been a great experience.  In that same year I have transitioned from a somewhat antiquated 20 year old Yamaha XT 350 to a much newer, and more capable Suzuki DRZ-400E.

The new Suzuki was an offroad model when it came off the assembly line, but previous owners had modified it to be street legal.  But at its heart it is still much more of a dirtbike than a capable dual-sport touring bike.  So since so many people in the IAMC like to do multi-day rides, I decided it was time to start modifying my DRZ to be more of touring bike, without losing too much of that dirt-bike performance.

The first steps were to get it geared properly.  It still had the stock gearing which gave it a top end of about 65 MPH.  Sounds fast enough, but it was way too low to make the bike bearable anywhere but on nasty trails.  Next step was to take care of all of the little nit picky maintenance items that this model year had.  This included repairing a water pump issue, putting a new manual cam chain tensioner on the bike, and beefing up the protection factor by adding a skid plate and case gaurds.  At this point I had taken care of all of items that were cheap and easy to fix, from here on out things got a little more pricey.

After several rides it became apparent that the stock 2.6 gallon fuel tank, with its 80 mile range (to hit reserve) was not going to cut it on rides where it might be 150-200 miles between fuel stops.  So I upgraded to an IMS 4.0 gallon desert tank, which had the added benefit of providing good radiator protection, and not seeming really fat. 

Now I had the range to go on these rides, but I didn't have any way to carry all my gear.  Hearing my plight, my buddy Ryan was a huge help getting me all set up with a set of tank bags and saddle bags on the cheap.  The saddle bags are modified horse saddle bags from the local farm supply, and only cost 13 bucks.  The tank bags are actually fender bags designed for ATVs, but they work great as tank bags with very little modification. 

So thinking this would be enough space to carry most of my gear (and what I couldn't fit in the bags could go in a backpack), I set out on a nice easy overnight ride with the club.  Well, I quickly discovered that even a relatively light backpack is still murder on your body when you are riding a motorcycle.  I also realized that for long distance, the seat was going to need some modifcation, or else my butt would be miserable. 

These realizations lead to the next step in the process; putting in a new rear subframe that can will allow for carrying gear on the fender, and modifying to seat to be more comfortable on long rides.  I was able to get a subframe off of ebay for a halfway decent price, and despite the looks, it was pretty easy to get the new rear subframe swapped in, although I did have to take a hacksaw to the fender and to a lot of cutting and fitting to get the original fender to work.  I also discovered through the club that there was a local guy that rebuilt motorcycles seats for about 1/3 the cost of an aftermarket Corbin seat.

So with the new seat, new rear subframe, and rear rack, I am finally ready to do some touring the right way.  I will leave tomorrow afternoon for my first multi-day trip which will involve a circumnavigation of Hell's Canyon, and about 700 miles in 3 1/2 days. I am really looking forward to it, I think it will be a beautiful ride, and a great bunch of people to ride with.  If I am not lazy, I will get some pictures posted up here when I get back.

Christmas Day is a pretty good day to travel in most regards, other than the fact that there isn't much open. Our goal today was to make it from Astoria, OR all the way around the Olympic Peninsula to Port Townsend, WA, which our longest day aside from working our way from Boise out to the coast.

The Astoria Bridge was festooned with snow, so we definitely got our white Christmas. As we headed north we definitely encountered our fair share of crappy conditions. We encountered a semi tractor-trailer that had lost traction on an icy hill blown through a T-intersection and dove right off into an icy marsh, luckily it wasn't deep, but I bet it was a bear getting him out.

The drive around the Olympic Peninsula was quite beautiful, we did have to fight some poor road conditions, but we did managed to get to Port Townsend in the daylight, and had a wonderful Christmas dinner at a restaurant called Sirens. If you are ever in Port Townsend and want a good dinner, that is the place to go.

After spending our first night in a yurt at Harris Beach State Park, we began to head north again, but not before heading down to check out Harris Beach, which we couldn't see, since we got into Brookings after dark. From Harris Beach we headed on North along the coast and enjoyed the variety of OR coast scenery. We also checked out the Sea Lion Caves, which, while touristy was a good stop. From there we worked our way up to Beverly Beach (just north of Newport) for our Second night in a yurt.

We spent the night near Newport, at Beverly Beach State Park in a Yurt again, which was very comfortable, despite the rain and the relatively cold weather for the area. We had dinner at a place call Szabos, which had an outstanding dinner special; a $9.95 16 Oz ribeye dinner which was great.

So the next morning we were at Les Schwab at 8:00 AM on the money, and have the tire fixed, and were out the door in 17 minutes flat, plus it was FREE! Thanks you Les Schwab.

So from here we decided to head south and hit the "Avenue of the Giants" which parallels HWY 101 for quite some ways, winding its way through old growth redwood forest. This drive proved to be very scenic, but not very photogenic. After running through the redwoods, we ended up down in Redway, CA. I had planned to head from Redway back out to the coast via some windy 2-lane through Honeydew and Petrolia, and then on to Mattole Beach, then back up to Ferndale, and then boogie to Brookings where we had a yurt reserved for the night at Harris Beach State Park.

Instead of heading straight to Honeydew, we decided to head down to Shelter Cove first, which proved to be a very windy and bumpy drive, but well worth it for the phenomenal beauty of the Shelter Cove area.

On the way back out from Shelter Cove, we decided to take a Detour on a road called King Ridge Road, a single lane gravel road which would hook us up with the road to Honeydew after about 20 miles. It turned out to be a GREAT side trip.

Once we got back the pavement, we wound our into the heart of the King Range, to Honeydew, Petrolia, and on to Mattole Beach. There is some real pictureqsue scenery here, and I didn't know there were areas of CA that could be so untouched.

The drive from Mattole beach out to Ferndale (like the drive the whole day) was very windy, very bumpy, and very steep. But it was tons of fun, although I wouldn't want to do it if the conditions got slick and nasty, it would be impossible.

From Ferndale we hot-footed it north to Brookings where we spent the night in a Yurt at Harris Beach State Park. These proved to be comfy accomodations, in a beautiful area.

Today's plan was to head south towards Redwood National Park. Our first stop was down in Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, near Crescent City, CA. We took a fun little one lane dirt road through a cool stretch of the redwood forest.

After we finished our drive through Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, we headed south, planning to drive the down the Avenue of the Redwoods before we found a place to stay for the night. Well, when we stopped to pick up the info pamphlet for the Avenue of the Redwoods drive, I noticed this hissing sound coming from the rear end of the car. I tracked the sound down the driver's side rear tire, and low and behold it was leaking air. So we had to make a U-Turn and head back to Fortuna, where awaited the opening of Les Schwab in the morning.

This year my mom and I decided it would be better if she came to Boise for Christmas, as opposed to me coming home to FL. So she booked a ticket, and I started thinking, "What the heck are we going to do in Boise for two and a half weeks?" So I decided we should take a road trip.

This spring I drove from Boise, to Las Vegas, then on to Anza Borrego, San Diego, and then all the way back up the CA coast. So it only made sense that my mom and I should finish the job, and do the drive from Nor. CA up the Oregon and Washington Coast, on to Vancouver Island, back down the BC mainland and on back to Boise.

So we started the trip on Saturday, December 20th, planning to drive from Boise, ID to Grants Pass, OR. I knew it was going to be cold, snowy and icy, and we were hoping to dodge a break in the succession of winter storms that seem to be hammering the coast this year. The trip was pretty good until we started to get near Bend, OR, and my car started to do the "ghost walk" that is common on the 2005+ models.

I wasn't convince that this was the ghost walking problem, so I decided to pull over, and make sure my lugs were torqued properly, my tire pressure was right, and there wasn't anything going on with the suspension.

So, I just dealt with the ghost walking, and we made our way though Bend, OR, and on south towards Crater Lake. We got of US 97, which had pretty nasty ice, and got onto the packed snow of a road that made a big loop around Crater Lake National Park. The scenery going around Crater Lake NP was great, and the Subie was completely in its element, we were able to cruise at 50-60 MPH on the packed snow, it was great driving. We finally made it out of the snow, and down into the wet country, and ended up spending the night down in Rogue River.

So it has been quite a while since I posted anything on here, but I have a story to tell that I hope will get me jump started back into posting a little more often.

I spent a good part of last week traveling to and attending the Geological Society of America conference in Denver CO.  The GSA annual meeting is a great place to network in the geology community, since it is the one place most of the who's who of geology end up every year.  GSA is also a great place to see work other people are doing on every aspect of geology.  Throughout the conference there are talks and poster presentations for much of the current research in the community, so it allows a geologist to see the most current work done in a particular area.

On the third day of the conference, the chair of Geosciences Dept. at BSU told me that there was someone with a poster relating to the Albion-Grouse Creek-Raft River core complex where I had originally planned to do my Master's thesis, and still plan to do some dating and geochemistry work; so I had to go check it out.  So I tracked the poster down, and sure enough this person had just completed some dating of the basement rocks in this area (something I wanted to do) as part of a larger project that involved a different primary focus than dating of the basement rocks.

After looking her poster over, I thought I might ask her a few questions about her work.  So I told her that I had been interested in dating the basement in this location, and that I was actually already in the process mineral separation, and that I believed the basement might be younger than what she had found, which was in agreement with the general consensus of the scientific community. Upon telling her this, she assured me that they were of archean age, and that her work proved it, and basically treated me like I was some kind of drooling idiot.  So needless to say this got my hackles up, and I proceeded to tell her that I didn't appreciate being talked down too, and that I was even more committed to proceeding with my research after our little encounter.  At which point she decided to walk away to talk with someone else.

With that, I decided it was time to take a close look at the work that she had done, to see just how sound it was.  This person happened to be from Standford, and works on a piece of equipment called the SHRIMP (super high resolution ion microprobe), of which there are only two in the United States, because they are very expensive, and typically very accurate.  SHRIMP folk tend to think their shit doesn't stink, and this case was no exception.  Not to diminish SHRIMP, if used properly it should be the perfect tool for dating very complex zircons, which may have several age domains (sections of different ages), like the ones her researched focused on down in the the Grouse Creek range.  Basically a SHRIMP can zap a very small location on a zircon grain with a laser, and date it very accurately, which is great for complex grains.

So when I told her I was going to date these rocks using TIMS (thermal ionization mass spectrometer) she told me I was crazy, that the grains were just too complex. And if I were trying to date grains like the ones that she was dealing with, she is probably right, they might very well be too complex for the TIMS process.  The reason for this, is that with TIMS we actually have to dissolve and entire grain, or at least a whole piece of material (this could be a bit of a grain that we have snapped off).  So if you have something that is very complex, it is nearly impossible to separate the different age domains from one another, making TIMS a poor too for such a problem.  BUT, what she was not taking into account was that the location she collected these grains was from a place where they were much more likely to have been modified (and made more complex) than the location I collected my grains.  I collected my grains directly from the basement rock, as opposed to her samples which was from what she assumed was melted basement rock, or highly deformed basement rocks.

These things mentioned above are big clues into the big problem with her work, which was that she didn't have a single date, from a single grain, that was 2.5 Ga (2.5 billion years), which is what she was claiming the age was.  All of her grains dated differently, 1.7 Ga, 1.4 Ga, 1.1 Ga, and she used a specific analytical technique to say that these grains had undergone mixing of young and old domains, and had extrapolated and age of 2.5 Ga, which, with SHRIMP should not be a problem, because you should be able to find a zone large enough that you can sample, that should give you a date for that specific zone, and not a mixing of two.

This range of ages could be due to a couple of different problems.  They could be related to loss of lead from the zircon, which would make the grains look younger than they were, or it would be that the dates are right, and that the cores of these zircons were 1.7, 1.4, and 1.1 Ga, which would mean that these were probably detrital grains (like grains of sand that came from another source) and which would mean that the rock she collected them from was not sampling the basement at all, that it was sampling sediments.  Either way, her story seems more and more bogus the more I think about.

I really hesitate to call anyone out in a situation like this, especially since a lot of my questions were not answered to my satisfaction.  But the very way I was treated, and the sort of smugness that went along with her reactions to me questions has really emboldened me to pursue this issue.  My luck, I will do all of the work just in time to find out that her dates are more legitimate than I think they are, and that it was time wasted, but at this point in my career, I can't help but think it will be time well spent either way.  So (raises a glass), here's to my first professional feud, may it be equally infuriating as it is enlightening.

We managed to make it up to Powell River to spend the night last night, and after a bit of searching around for a place to stay we settled on a "cabin" down near the water.  If I were to describe it would be more of an efficiency apartment, but it beat the crap out of setting up camp in the rain.

The Edgehill

So we got up and were moving around 8 AM today, and we headed up to get some coffee at the Edgehill Truckstop, which we had been told was a good place to get a bite to eat.  Unfortunately, since I was the only one who had not had coffee this morning, I was the only one who was hungry.  So rather than eat a meal out of sync with everyone else I decided to just have some toast.  While we were enjoying drinking coffee and chatting with some locals, the coffee pot managed to overflow and cover the counter, shelves, and floor underneath it with coffee.  So Lawrene jumped into action, grabbing a mop and going at it like the old pro she is.  So we got things cleaned up in short order.

Wavy Siding

From Powell River we headed up towards Lund, which is the start of Highway 101, which I subsequently learned is the longest continuous highway in the world, running from Souther BC all the way to somewhere in Peru.  Lund seems to a quite a tourist town, and it is also the jumping off point for people looking to explore the discovery islands. The car seems to be a huge parking lot, since it is the only place to park for the people who take long hiking, biking, and kayaking trips out to the islands.  There are also some really cool buildings one of the houses here had the siding cut in such a way that it looked like it was all wavy and uneven, and it also had cool windows, with the frames and veins of the windows shooting off at weird angles.  One of the other interesting buildings was a small shed near the boat ramp which had siding that made thee sides of the building look 3-dimensional.

We stopped at a bakery in Lund called Nancy's which had some really amazing pastries.  Despite the variety available everyone ended up choosing the blackberry sticky buns, which were superb.  Lawrene also had a really good yogurt, fruit, and granola bowl.

From Lund we headed back down to Powell River and caught the Ferry over to Vancouver Island where we landed in the town of Comox.  From Comox we headed on north to Campbell River, where they have a ferry over to Quadra Island.  Everyone was starving and jonesing for some fish and chips, so we asked around and everyone told us that "Dick's" down by the Ferry Landing was the spot.  So we headed on down to Dicks, and had the best Fish and Chips I have ever had.  I ordered the the fried Cod and everyone else ordered the fried Salmon.  I definitely preferred the Cod, I don't believe that Salmon is a fish that should be fried.

Car Squattin'

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Well, this is my second day in the good ole land of the canuck.  I spent all day yesterday driving, and with the car loaded with over a thousand pounds of gear and people, was squatting pretty hard, which made the handling very interesting.  But we were able to do about 500 miles in the mountains in the 10 hours that we were on the road.

Ferry Waiting Line

Today involved driving through Vancouver, and catching a couple of ferry boats to try to make it up to Powell River, BC.  We ended up being about 10 minutes late in line to catch the first ferry, so we had to wait an extra 2 hours at the first ferry which sucked, but, I have become aware that it is the lifestyle around here.  But we finally made it only the ferry about 4:30 PM, which was going to make it a close call to make it to the next ferry on time.

The ferry was pretty cool.  It was my first time on a big ship, so it was odd to feel vibrating steel under my feet.  But the views were great.  The whole area was socked in just like I expected this area long the coast (the Georgia Strait) to be.  The ferry ride was about 40 minutes, and then it is a mad rush back below decks to get in your car and get rolling out of the ferry so you don't hold up traffic.

Right now I am at "The Last Resort" in Earls Cove, BC waiting on the next Ferry.  Luckily for this one, we are fifth in line, so there shouldn't be any issue catching the next one.  I just had one of the best hamburgers I have had in quite some time, which is rare for a place like this.

Once we get a across we are going to try to get as close toe Powell River as we can tonight, and get a camp site or a motel (my preference since there is a light rain).  This a beautiful area, and my fears of my dad and I having a huge blow up over my driving seems to have been assuaged by both of our attempts to keep one another happy.