Slightly Out of Touch

There have been no emails from JR for the past couple days until we received a very crackly phone message yesterday. It took two of us to figure out most of the message. Fortunately he managed to find an internet connection on the road:

Yesterday we drove to Altai to catch the charter flight, which was bringing in the change of crew from UB. But when it got halfway, they reported iced up wings, so were obliged to turn back. So we had to stay in Altai an unexpected night; terrible hotel conditions, but at least there was a toilet down the hall. Meanwhile, around lunchtime when we were still awaiting the plane that wouldn’t come at the airport, I started getting chilly. Didn’t think much about it until we reached Altai, but when we were finally arrived at a camp we thought we could stay for the night, I was freezing, and then became nauseous. I did finally vomit, which is rare for me, so I knew something was wrong. I then became feverish and still could not get warm. Luckily we had the camp doctor with us and he advised it might be food poisoning, so gave me some things to settle it. He decided it was best to get me to a hotel in town since the camp gers are not heated, and it was obviously going to get cold (freezing) and typically they give you nothing more for bed clothes than a sheet and light blanket. So we searched Altai for a motel room. When we had just about run out of options for motels, we learned by phone the rest of our crew had returned to town and found a hotel, so we joined them, and shared 3 rooms between the lot of us (14). I ate almost nothing for 30 hours. Finally, the plane arrived around noon today, we exchanged greetings with the new crew, and loaded up the prop for the 3 ½ hour flight to UB. But first we had to weigh in; the pilot, a very friendly lady with English accent, asked us each our weight in kilos and then weighed our bags, and naturally we were overweight. The doctor volunteered to remain in Altai as most of the rest of us had international connections to make and he is Mongolian; but besides, he grew up in Altai, so hopefully it is no hardship for him to remain there an extra night. We landed in UB about 5pm today, and went to eat at an Indian restaurant. The food was very good, mild but nicely flavored, but I could eat little since my stomach is still tender. Hopefully I will recover better tonight. It was absolute luxury to have a warm shower, especially after having been sick and sweating in the same clothes.

Don’t know if I am up to it, but the others want to get up to watch the final football match at 3:00am. I would like to but, probably need my rest, even if I will be mostly sleeping long hours on the remaining flights. Hopefully the trials are mostly behind us, but we were counting on a day in the UB office to do some clean-up work, so are now further behind. Guess we will have to collaborate on the flight. Time is running by, so wish us well on our connections so we return on schedule. Guess that it about all for now. I’m glad this hotel in UB is modern enough to have wireless connection! See you soon.

We are hoping he has a smooth flight and flawless connections on his trip back home. We can't wait to see his photos.

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night

Summer is just not cooperating out there on the plains. The summer solstice was a bust:

Early this morning it started to rain, and it continued steadily all day, and blew as well, so was really cold. We decided to make it an office data catch-up day, which we needed anyway, and had really planned for such a rain out. But I did not expect it to rain the entire day. Finally just quit after dinner time, and we could see the mountains covered by a dusting of snow; this is how summer begins here? Since it is so damp, and will be very cold tonight, we finally asked the camp manager to install a stove pipe, so he did, and then lit the stove, and the ger warmed up right away, so maybe we will be comfortable tonight. Expect to spend a solid day in the field tomorrow, so imagine it will be cold and damp. Lucky the rain began early today, or we would have gone out and have been stuck in steady rain all day, as we are now working far from camp and get a driver to take us out and pick us up. So it worked out all around. Just have to hope we won’t have more days like this.

The night was cold despite the fact we had the stove; after the wood burned (too quickly), the ger cooled off fast, and of course the wind was howling all night, so it was difficult to get up in the morning. It was gray and threatening when we did, and the wind was still severe when we headed out but at least it wasn’t raining. We took rain gear, anyway, and by noon the clouds were parting and the afternoon was comfortable, even though there was still some wind, so we had a good field day. We timed everything just right taking our office day yesterday and getting back out today.

Inquiring minds wanted to know about toilet facilities (because inquiring minds belong to campers/backpackers and know how you need a shower the most when you can't take one):

We have an “ablution block” as K calls it, with a number of separate rooms with showers and toilets; one of those is reserved for us, meaning the project supervisors. The shower usually runs cold water only, so showering in the evening is a real chore, just let water dribble, hoping the body warms it up as it trickles down. Tonight, however, I could get nothing but scalding hot water, so I had to resort to the same technique of turning the water on and off and using a minimum at a time. The toilets are not great, but at least they are toilets and do have a flushing mechanism (button on top of tank to release the tank water), and work OK.

Let's head away from the head and onto the dining room:

A more serious problem we realized yesterday is that they ran out of bottled water. This is used for all drinking, mixing with tea and coffee, etc. Luckily we still had a few left over bottles for use in the field. So camp was without drinking water for 24 hours until someone drove back today to buy more cases. I hear that a truck load of supplies is on its way, but will probably be here tomorrow. It looks like they are also running out of some food items, so hope this will replenish all of those needs.

Tonight for dinner, us non-Mongolians actually got a small dab of vegetables, a “salad” composed of carrot pieces, pickles and red peppers. The rest of the plate of course had various items composed of meat. I had tea, about the only drinking option, but I’m not asking where the water came from; at least I know it was boiled. As for the apricots, I took a bunch of dried ones I had at home, so they have been useful; I have been spare with them, so still have some and some of the nut mix from Grammy.

They have a strange thin rubbery mushroom? item which we had for dinner both tonight and last night, and it was actually good. It’s dark brown to black, ruffly and thin, and looks kind of like some exotic pasta, but doesn’t taste much like mushroom.

All I can say is, What have you done with my husband? You know, the one who hates mushrooms and piles them up on my plate when we go out to eat, where'd he go?

Could I have a litte fat with that grease?

The latest:

I am totally burned out on eating eggs. They want to feed us eggs for breakfast and every bag lunch packed for us contains two sandwiches both of which are fatty bologna and fried egg between two slices of bread and then covered by another slice of bologna plus another fried egg. Everything is greasy. I am just asking for specifics now; at least they have oranges. Otherwise, not much fruit, so am glad for the dried apricots I took and for the nuts & dried fruit mix Grammy gave me. Dinners are mostly just a carbohydrate plus meat; usually noodles or dumpling type covering, often again fried or cooked in oil. Occasionally get some potatoes parts, sliced onions, and red peppers, so those are welcome. Not usually much to drink other than water or coffee, sometimes they give us a can of Coke, even for the field, which is really weird. I wish they would put out the fruit juice more often like they sometimes have in the mornings. Anyway, there is plenty of food, if it’s not completely balanced, so we will fare OK.

A change in diet has to be the hardest thing to adapt to when you're travelling. This may be one reason I don't yearn to travel--if I don't have cereal and milk every morning, stay away from me for the rest of the day. He's had beef for breakfast, lunch and dinner when in South America. On the other hand, Turkey had an abundance of fruits and vegetables so that was an easy trip.

I suspect that with an active lifestyle and fairly cool temperatures, the locals probably use up those fats and proteins efficiently. Just a guess. JR's doing the same thing; he just misses home cooking. Guess we'll be stocking up on loads of ripe juicy fruits and crispy veggies at the Farmer's Market when he's back.

Meteorology

Guess JR's been having plenty of weather. It sounds rather like the summer monsoons that our southwest gets. So he gets a full day of work done and they are usually back (or near) camp before they hit. Other than that, he's been busy and hasn't emailed more than a line or two.

Just a Wild Life

Spring cleaning yielded three bags of paperbacks to haul over to the Paperback Exchange. I love getting credits for my old books which I then squander on paperbacks I haven't read. It's recycling at its finest.

Anyway, that's beside the point which is that I ran across the fairly well-known A Hike Across America by Peter Jenkins residing next to the somewhat-obscure (to me, anyway) Across China by the same author. I browsed through it, looking for something about Mongolia (I may not know everything about the place but it's on the same continent as China last time I looked). Turns out the author and his guide had roamed some windswept Mongolian plains, so I scanned through the photos. There were several of some scrappy little horses so I thought I'd ask my better half if he'd seen any animals.

Here's the latest:

The wildlife here is herds of goats and some sheep, and a few horses, but all domestic. The dogs, however, are huge, with fluffy brown coats that puff them up even bigger, so they look more like yaks. There are very few birds and we only saw one tiny snake, ...ants and a few beetles; rarely we have seen the iridescent beetles like scarabs. I had one mosquito land on my arm, but killed it when it started sucking, so that line will not replenish and think there are few relatives left.

I hope he's taking lots of pictures, because I want to see those yak doggies! Meanwhile, his socks are getting quite a workout:

We are getting further afield, so the hikes are getting longer returning to camp.

Good thing he has laundry service. Speaking of which, I'm off to do another load of my own and then hopefully give my own socks a workout hiking with my summer walking partners.

Notes from the Field, Pt. 2

He's been gone a week now and is apparently hard at work. Here are some excerpts from his latest email. Given the poor connection, the time crunch and lack of proof-reading, we kinda have to forgive the quality of his composition which isn't up to his usual standard. I'm happy just to hear from him and share his adventure a little.

The weather:

We are working further afield each day, and today at noon were probably 2 miles away when the clouds moved in. They come fast here, and we didn’t have much warning, but I could see they were bringing rain. We crouched by the biggest outcrops we could find and let it come, but after 15 minutes we were thoroughly soaked anyway. We continued mapping and over the next couple of hours the clouds parted a bit and the wind occasionally kicked up, so we dried out ok. By the time we reached camp at 6:30, we were dry. This evening, though, it has rained off and on for the past couple of hours. Afternoon thunder showers seem to be common here, and explain why we see all the green, though short, grasses.

The geology:

The vegetation is not enough to form much cover, so the rocks are usually well exposed, although the complex folding of these strata makes figuring out the geology really difficult. There are a lot of fossil wood casts in the sandstone beds and I have found several small logs. Since the beds are Permian, these are very primitive trees, probably cycads or similar tree fern types. Typically there are just alternating beds of carbonaceous siltstone (black) and sandstone (tan or light gray) so distinguishing rock units is easy enough, but these repeat so frequently it is almost impossible to tell them apart to know where in the entire sequence any one bed lies. Exposures are good along sides of hills and in gullies, but many flat pediment surfaces are all just alluvium, so we will be extrapolating our map units quite a bit in some areas. I figure this area was dominantly fluvial plains with meandering streams and interwoven swamps, and that these migrated through time, so the beds are thin, variable, and abundantly interspersed with siltstones and sandstones and occasional conglomerates from the channels. But now the beds are rumpled like a carpet that has been shoved completely against one wall, and we rarely find beds dipping less than 40 degrees, many being vertical.

The dinosaurs (in response to my question of whether he'd discovered any dinosaurs yet):

Since beds are Permian, no, we will not find any dinosaur remains, as the period just preceded their reign.

Dang.

The internet:

Enough...I have to finish work and this connection is a real pain.

Notes from the Boonies

It turns out he DOES have email capability from the field. I don't know if he's technically in inner or outer Mongolia, but he's definitely in the boonies:

I finally have an internet connection briefly at the camp, but there is only one tent that has cables for this, so we will just be accessing when we have time and a cable is available. It is slow, though and difficult to type because the lag time is extreme; I can type a whole sentence before I see the words on the screen. Also this will quit in a few minutes and then I will have to restart.

Today we had our field introduction so tomorrow we may be able to start out mapping.

The “tents” here are called gers and are the cylindrical Mongolian houses with two central poles holding up the roof. They have wool(?) batting for the walls and then bright-colored fabric over that so they are fairly quiet, warm and clean. I’d guess they are about 20’ in diameters, so plenty spacious, as we only have cots and one small table for furniture.

We didn’t know it, but there are laundry facilities and women who will do laundry, so they actually place a laundry basket in each ger and these women will pick it up and do the laundry.

Food is pretty basic usually noodles with some meat in a soup base, white bread, sometimes a vegetable. I’m not usually asking what the food is, because you just get what is served, so there is no point contesting.

We have electricity, from a generator, so two light bulbs hang down from each ger’s ceiling. Can’t complain, but the cots and bedding are so short it is nearly impossible to keep my feet undercovers at night, a feeling I hate. I’m going to have to devise some system.

The weather was warm today, mostly clear but clouds seem to build in the afternoons and sometimes threaten rain. Apparently it has been raining fairly consistently over the past weeks as there is a lot of low green grass and the shepherds are running their flocks of sheep and goats all over.

I tried a bit of white brick cheese today and found it really sour; this is a Mongolian favorite, but would take a lot of getting used to for us; it is a mix of sheep, goat and camel cheese, and the odor that comes off it strikes me as smelling rather like the negative end of the camel. Come to mention it, our ger smells a bit like that as well.

Sounds like his sense of humor is intact! Hope to get another email soon and will share it with you.

Notes from the Field--Ulaanbaatar

The trip from here to LAX to Beijing to Ulaanbaatar took 36 hours!

He and his fellow mapper made it okay, his suitcases made it okay (that was a worry), his companion's did not. So, they were going to do some clothes shopping before their charter flight left for the field.

Ulaanbaatar is a big and busy city. The traffic is chaotic and the roads very rough. Even the sidewalks are rutted. No one yields to pedestrians, so getting from their hotel to the office just a few blocks away was quite invigorating. Nothing like a challenge to get your blood pumping (as long as it doesn't flow, I'd say he's doing fine). Maybe that's a great way to beat jet lag.

The powers-that-be had assured him there would be email. Well, sort of...the service times out after ten minutes and it takes three minutes to start up, so he's been typing fast and saving his drafts as he types. Just another challenge!

Mongolia is part of China last time I looked at a map, but they don't speak Chinese. Go figure. Ulaanbaatar is just a stone's throw from the Russian border though. Guess the Russian influence was extensive since signs in Ulaanbaatar are in Cyrillic. JR's had some experience with the Cyrillic alphabet in Ukraine, but that was back in the 90's. Fortunately, one of his colleagues from Bulgaria has plenty of background. Oddly, JR says many signs are also in English. Guess it really is the international language. He doesn't think he'll see much English once they move out into the sticks!

He didn't know his fellow geologists that have been drafted for this project, but as they've arrived in Ulaanbaatar they have discovered many friends in common. Guess it's one perk of working for an international company--he has friends from China, Eastern Europe, South America and various places in Europe that he's known and worked with for years. Everyone gets around globally, so eventually the geological world becomes a small community.

As we bid a fond farewell to Ulaanbaatar, let's hope there is some sort of internet connectivity in the field.