Ge 136 field trip to Baja California, Mexico

Last term Caltech ran a geology enrichment field trip to the grand canyon in Arizona, which was a pretty extraordinary experience, and a wonderful opportunity to learn stuff beyond your usual specialty. For that trip I gave a talk on the mechanics of river incision, an important erosive mechanism. The previous trip was to have been to Baja California in Mexico, but at the last minute had changed due to concerns over the situation in Mexico. Statistically speaking, of course, you're much more likely to be shot in Arizona than in Baja, but at least then you'd be supporting American made weaponry. Headlines aside, Baja is actually much safer (even including Tijuana) than Los Angeles, but that's not very difficult! Headlines not aside, dozens upon dozens of executed, beheaded, and kidnapping/ransom victims hit the papers every week. Deaths in the 'war on drugs' are well in the five figures, not that far behind civilian casualties in Iraq, and over a shorter period. So it was with some trepidation that I, as usual, set aside my emotional concerns and fear and approached the issue statistically. Never-the-less, I packed light in case of robbery or misadventure!

Photos: https://picasaweb.google.com/105494084231616659850/MexicoGe136FieldTrip

Videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKUClqEFU5k

At 6pm we met at the Arms geology loading dock. To get there, one walks through the elevated front door of the Arms building on the Rose walk at Caltech. In the entrance foyer are several large rock samples, including a large volcanic bomb. Turning to the left the curve of the staircase mimics the spirals of the diagram of the geological ages on the wall (something like: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Qbzyg0vIdLfQ0WDEEfeTVGpILuxDUFDoE-JTuEQfOvlwjM8WEPx3-sR2SMNFmV-D0um4oIIAnZ_WkUyuA0zwR8C8Q82NN0SbR3UcsqATFqGMGrxRY38WmT6_nZ1nhKo3ddYL01QBQr0/s1600/Geological_time_spiral.png) and then you are in grad student land. Several frantic-seeming icons of originality and free thought decorate the closed doors of various offices and labs. More wall poster prints of pictures from field trips in previous decades, photos of the moon, etc line the corridor as the noise of activity steadily increases. Emerging at ground level four huge white Ford Excursion (and similar) 4WDs lined the dock as last minute packing and seating allocations took place. By choice I wound up with seven undergrads in the largest of the trucks. Unlike other more technologically bold groups, roughly divided into grad students, Europeans, and S's team, we did not bring portable music players or laptops, so spent most of the trips engaged in conversation and bizarre word games, the rules of which I shall sprinkle intermittently throughout this report.

Dodging bad traffic we eventually crawled from the LA basin by the 210 East towards the 10 South and 111. By 9pm we had reached the northern shore of the Salton Sea. I put up my new bivy bag/tent combo, since I anticipated this trip would be low on trees from which to hang my hammock. Snacks and fireside chat ensued, split with a quick trip down to the seashore to shoot lasers at clouds, skim rocks, and disturb the birds which lived there. In due course it was time to retire to sleep on my luxurious customary camp mattress, made from a single car windshield reflector. I figure that a 2cm inflatable mattress is no different to a 1mm shiny thing, with similar heat properties. I took advantage of a clear view towards Jupiter to look at a few moons 

Next morning we were up early, packed, munched on some breakfast, and drove around the eastern shore of the sea. With only a brief detour to be told off for trespassing on private owned railway tracks, and admiration of the bright green haze over the rather polluted sea we arrived in the Schrimpf-Davis seismic field, corresponding to the southern terminus of the San Andreas fault. Here compression gives way to rifting and several other faults. Incredibly, the Salton Sea as it exists today is anthropogenic, resulting from the flooding of the Colorado river in 1905 and filling the rift valley to a depth of 15m. 12m more and it would have overtopped to flow to the pacific ocean. Apparently it was a 'disaster' on par with the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 and came very close to being a permanent problem. Now waters of the Colorado are used for extensive irrigation in the region and the sea is fed entirely by runoff. The field is also known for hot gas effusions giving rise to mud pots and gryphons, which are small mud volcanoes. I gave my talk on mud volcanoes (naturally). There are tens of thousands of such features around the world. The largest are found in Azerbaijan, though the man-made one in Sidoarjo, Java, Indonesia is giving it a run for its money. Down at the sea shore we found lots of dead barnacles and dried fish resulting from one of the frequent die-offs. As the salinity rises, more species of fish have found it impossible to live in. Now only the Tilapia survives, meaning that the next die-off will probably be the last. In between this quasi apocalyptic landscape of depressed and dusty towns between hyper-phosphate green fields, fumaroles, glassy obsidian beaches, and dozens of geothermal power plants I managed to cut my toe on a sharp rock. A quick application of alcohol and ethyl-cyanoacrylate (superglue) staunched the flow and permitted the persistence of sandals for the remainder of the trip. Which is lucky as I didn't bring any other shoes!

We pushed south to the border town of Calexico-Mexicali. Like most border towns, there was absolutely no reason to hang around so, navigating alternate two- and one-way streets, we drove towards Tijuana and the fault from the 2010 El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake. Modern seismological techniques have taught us that this earthquake began as a magnitude ~6.4 normal thrust earthquake, whose rupture propagated a few hundred km along the fault, in the process triggering a stronger strike-slip movement lasting for about a minute and with a total magnitude of 7.2. With surprisingly few fatalities for such a large quake, there was none-the-less impressive surface ruptures visible, one of which we were soon to discover. At the time of the quake, the road looked like this: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/34083282.jpg. The road has, of course, been repaired, however on either side it's still possible to stand in cracks taller than one's head and wider than one can reach.

Turning south we drove towards the Californian gulf (part of the same rift), stopping at some rather lovely sand dunes on the way. The sun was by this stage low in the sky and sharp black hills poked through the deposited sediment in a landscape reminiscent of Mongolia. We had dinner at "Rice and Beans" in San Filipe, then drove up the coast to a marginal beach resort. I unrolled my sleeping bag on a rickety picnic table and slept under the stars. When we arrived the tidal mudflat stretched further than the eye could see. By the time we slept it had vanished beneath the incoming tide, replaced by fisherman. Another campfire raised spirits, smoked for the lasers scanning pattern, and provided a nucleus for the consumption of cheap Mexican booze.

Next morning we woke once again at 6am, packed, ate, and after a few talks on tidal flats, beach morphology, and so on, were on our way. This time we drove north, passed a routine military checkpoint and headed inland. Before long the black-top vanished and after a few turns past bewildered cows our trusty vehicles began climbing the central Baja range. At the summit we stopped to discuss the juxtaposition of differing deposits; recent volcanic tuffs and granite plutons with associated metamorphic structures overlay and interleave an ancient crustal fragment criss-crossed with eroded dykes. The road wound downwards towards Santo Tomas and Punta Cabras. By now it had begun to rain very heavily. After S stopped to help pull some stranded Mexican dudes van from the mud we shifted into 4WD and to my surprise the truck stopped sliding into the ditch. Driving through puddles that sprayed the entire car with dark orange mud comprehensively tested the sealing ability of the doors (95% solid) as well as the windscreen wipers. In due course we forded the last raging torrent and reached our campsite on an old marine terrace above a forming one. Separated by a steadily eroding cliff we managed to park the cars off the track despite being unable to see anything in the rain. Most of the evening was spent inside the car waiting for the rain to ease, though at one point a few people and I donned our raincoats and set off through ankle-deep flooding (pitch a tent? HA!) towards a distant light house and access to the beach where we hoped to find some interesting rocks. By the time we made it to the beach, everyone was pretty wet. We split the distance between the raging surf and the muddy cliff dissolving and collapsing beneath torrents of water and wandered half lost in the rainy twilight for a few minutes before turning around and walking back. By virtue of the rapidly evolving landscape, the view on the way back was quite different to the way out, and we witnessed about five landslides, each with a heart-racing 'whomp' sound. Back at the cars there was a futile effort to secure a tarp against the blustery gale before we each retired to the car. A space-blanket made an impromptu screen as the more soaked members of the party changed in the back seat. Meanwhile I shivered under a towel and came to terms with the fact that my old camera was unlikely to survive its third thorough soaking in my aged raincoat's allegedly waterproof breast pocket. At the moment there was not much to see, however. We passed around my supply of trail mix and played 'contact'. In contact, a person thinks of a word and names the first letter. Someone gives a clue for a candidate answer and if someone else realises what word that is, they say contact. The person who knows the word has a few seconds to say "it's not (whatever word is being referred to)" and if they can't, then the other two say their word simultaneously. If it's the same, the work-knower has to give out the next letter. So the game proceeds. In my day, "I spy" was pretty sophisticated!

At about 8pm the rain eased enough for S to emerge, shirtless, from his car and run around setting up the barbecue and with the help of his colleague S, excavate enough mud to start a fire. Combined with our fervent hopes for continuing rain lest crops dry out and fail, the weather cleared at about 9pm and people began to emerge from their cars, dry and smoke themselves by the fire, eat dinner and pitch tents. For a while it looked like we'd be sleeping in economy class, but in the end only four people slept in the undergrad van, including me. Dinner was infinite pasta, mushrooms and tomato sauce, prefaced with corn chips and followed with toothbrushing, an alcohol wipe bath, and a visit to the rather comfortable outhouse. It had a particularly spectacular view over the night-time ocean through the open doorway, and only leaked a little in the rain. Eventually it was time for bed, so I put on my socks to keep my muddy feet safe from my sleeping bag, unrolled said sleeping bag, and slept behind the wheel. I dreamed of driving while wearing not much more than my sleeping bag, and reflected on the awesome properties of the steering column as a clothes hook.

Next morning it was Sunday, the weather had cleared and a beautiful dawn over the ocean and nearby military radar post rubbed in just how non-functional my camera had become. The ground had dried a bit, breakfast was served (I had some of my own supplies again to avoid certain additives and milk products), I packed my sleeping bag and backpack, and prepared for our last day on the road. We walked as a group to the lighthouse and ramp, heard several talks on dinosaurs, paleomagnetism, and mechanics of wave action in marine terrace formation. We had an excellent view as part of the cliff collapsed during S's talk, somewhat distracting us! I perched on the lighthouse wall, reveling in the balance afforded to squishy sandals, and conceded the keys to P for part of the drive back. Returning along the road we came on, we were surprised to find part of it had washed out in particularly spectacular fashion. A culvert had ruptured, washing away a trench 2m wide and 4m deep. At the bottom a boat sat in the mud, possibly it had previously been used as reinforcement. While I and a few others managed to jump the chasm, the cars were not so lucky and a diversion was found around the canyons to the north. The road had dried a lot, though preserved most of the very splashy puddles that continued to leak through the doors! After a quick chat to the land owner we were on our way, pausing beneath atmospheric eucalypts in Santo Tomas for lunch. Here, like so many other places in Baja, the tourist economy is geared towards contestants in the Baja 500, an endurance 4WD race featuring cars with extraordinary power and suspensions! This sort of thing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv0RIUl8j1w

After lunch I took over driving again and we drove north to Punta Banda near Ensenada to check out some pretty awesome rudists deposits. These extinct bivalve molluscs were the dominant reef builders before the KT mass-extinction. From here it was a straight run to the border at Tecate. We arrived at dusk and joined the queue of cars waiting to enter the US. Here we began to play another game in which a given word must be described with four or less letter words. After an hour we made it through, though the European car was delayed for a further half hour! On the other side of the border we zoomed down a narrow windy country road in the dark. The high quality of the US roads offset the inherent instability of enormous 4WDs, but somehow I managed to not kill everyone in a fiery conflagration. With one more checkpoint inside the border we shot onto the freeway and cruised as far as our stomachs would take us. Stopping at Temecula In'n'Out for dinner I made a beeline for the bathroom. Just at the moment of relief the ground swayed back and forth a few times, unnoticed but for my splayed stance before the urinal. A follow up visit to the USGS website confirmed my initial suspicion. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/ci15075388.html, magnitude 3.0 is the first earthquake I've felt since moving to California more than a year ago! 

I ordered the least offensive thing on the menu, swapped driving with P, and promptly fell into a food coma. Arriving back at Caltech, we fueled up our gas guzzlers for the fourth and last time, unpacked, swept, washed, signed off on the log, and left for sleep as quickly as possible. 

I was in many ways surprised that there was so little drama in Mexico, given the reputation it has recently acquired for extreme violence at the hands of various drug and crime syndicates. In fact, much of the place really charmed me. There is always a soft spot in my heart for underdeveloped and economically questionable places on earth, but unlike parts of the Russian Far East, Mexico isn't frozen for eight months of the year!

Lang Lang at the LA Phil

Lang Lang at Walt Disney Hall

Last Sunday night I had the pleasure of seeing the internationally renowned concert pianist Lang Lang give a recital in Los Angeles. Lang Lang has shot to fame since his 2001 Carnegie Hall debut, with reviews praising his showmanship and technical mastery of the keyboard. As his career progresses, it is interesting to see what and how he plays to live up to the hype and the expectations of his audience, many of whom are, it could be said, eager for a display of acrobatics. Lang Lang is certainly not the first virtuoso musician to be type-cast in this way, and I was interested to see whether he might try to subtly subvert or lampoon his own unique style. Unfortunately, subtlety is not generally considered one of Lang Lang's selling points.

He served up a balanced program consisting of Bach Partita No. 1 in B-flat (BWV 825) followed by a late Schubert Sonata, also in B-flat (D 960). Both are pieces renowned more for musical than technical difficulty, and Lang Lang approached both according to his by now familiar formula of "no rubato left unplayed". While I'd be the last person to criticise a performer for reinterpreting older music with more modern innovations, Lang Lang did not express the polyphonic texture of the Bach particularly well, leaving us with a notationally accurate but sometimes bland and often confounding performance. Indeed, were it not for the applause from the more alert ends of the auditorium, I would have had difficulty telling the end of the Bach from the beginning of the Schubert, despite the intervening centuries of musical development, thought, and stylistic difference between them. Displaying a level of proficiency performing music at a level he must have mastered nearly two decades ago, Lang Lang nevertheless delivered a piece whose cohesion, unity and flow was broken by occasional but seemingly arbitrary pauses in tempo, intrusive fortissimo chords, or other "pops".

Thus far most of the audience, where still awake, seemed confused. Where were the technical fireworks? This was, after all, the performer sometimes dubbed the "greatest living pianist" who can "play anything". Someone with his reputation could certainly afford to dish up some tasty and technically terrifying tidbit from the edges of the repertoire. Thus far, with Bach and Schubert we had travelled down the dead center of the road of western musical thought. When one sees a virtuoso perform there is an expectation that they will play easy stuff well, and that they will also select some repertoire they find challenging. Georges Cziffra, a Hungarian pianist well known in Europe in the 60s and 70s, was famed for driving audiences into a frenzy with edge-of-your-seat fear and excitement over his interpretations and arrangements of, in particular, Liszt. A pianist must perform at least some music with which they physically and viscerally contend. Without the possibility of a spectacular melt-down there can be no suspense and no excitement, at least since Steinway worked out how to prevent pianos from exploding beneath the demands of the Romantic repertoire.

The second part of the recital promised the desired technical showmanship in the form of the Chopin Etudes Op. 25. Billed as Chopin's "ultra-demanding pianistic studies", they were, at the time of their composition, possibly the fourth most challenging etudes in existence. They are certainly nowhere near Liszt's contemporaneous Transcendental Etudes in musical, technical, and pianistic complexity. Indeed, Liszt went on to republish easier and more accessible versions of his etudes not once but twice, and even then they are by no means the most challenging works in his ouvre. Additionally, there has been considerable development in the nearly two centuries since. In my opinion, the etudes composed by Godowsky, Sorabji, Finnissy, Busoni, and Marc-Andre Hamelin are, while often directly referencing Chopin's earlier work, much more interesting and certainly far more challenging.

This is not to take away from Chopin's Op. 25, whose technical challenges alternately bemuse and infuriate aspiring professional pianists in nearly every music school on earth. Again presenting a work that he must have mastered at half his present age, Lang Lang delivered solid performances of the 12 studies, though we got a few fistfulls of bonus notes in the seventh. Towards the end he anticipated premature applause and played one almost right after another, often ending with a flourish or musical joke obvious enough for most of the audience to get.

In between half a dozen curtain calls, he performed two encores: Liszt's Romanza and La Campanella. The former was most likely for the people sitting to the right of the podium who have a strong appreciation for his legendary emotional state while playing, while the latter is an old encore favourite amongst pianists. La Campanella was originally written as a musical joke, but due to its technical difficulty is almost always played "with a straight face". Lang Lang took the opportunity to play his own cadenza drawn largely from other Liszt works (including an extended melodic inversion from Liszt's transcription of Danse Macabre) which included at least one laugh at the serious faction of the audience's expense. At last! Thus it seems that Lang Lang is very aware that certain repertoire and tricks sell tickets, records and sponsorship deals, and is, perhaps, musically trapped. The question, then, is at what point will he decide he is rich enough, throw off the shackles of living up to his possibly undeserved reputation and turn his unique style and voice to more unexpected repertoire? Perhaps he could emulate Stephen Hough, who occasionally sneaks Godowsky billed as Chopin upon an unsuspecting audience. Who knows, perhaps one day he will bring a new audience to the most recent century of piano composition.

Camping for one night only

Not so long ago I went on a brief overnight camping trip into the mountains to the north east of LA. I was joined on this trip by my friends T and S, one of whom was in charge of driving! The point of the exercise was to hike to a natural hot spring that occurs in the area. Geological map of the region which makes the location obvious: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/of03-293/sanbern_map.pdf

;P

In the end we found the springs and they were glorious. On the way back we were rewarded with a terrific SoCal sunset over some spikey mountains. These, and a few other nice views along the way I managed to capture in my soon-to-be-replaced camera gloria, and can be found here: https://picasaweb.google.com/105494084231616659850/CampingWithTAndS

Might be worth a trip back there some day. One of the nicer hot springs I've ever visited; a distinct lack of boreholes and concrete!

Photos and wrap

All the photos from my recent trip to Europe are now uploaded. They can be found here.

Individual posts are now all hyper-linked for extra efficient reading/photoing. All panoramas were stitched together with the freeware tool "Hugin". 
In addition, there's a composite album of photos I took of a small stuffed cassowary in some interesting place nearly every day.

For no particular reason, I did not take substantial quantities of video during this trip, so there are no videos in particular awaiting upload. :(

This probably marks the last major trip I do with my trusty Canon Powershot A530 - bought in November 2006 and carried with me ever since. I'll probably eulogise it more thoroughly when its eventual replacement is obtained.

Spain, land of mañana...

At Vienna airport I was delayed as my ticket had been 'bought' by another airline, whose system then refused to cooperate. Fortunately I was eventually issued a boarding pass, and flew out of a cloudy Vienna into sleepland. A rainy and bumpy splash landing in Barcelona was followed by an extremely overpriced dinner and a weather-delayed second flight.

In the end, I arrived in Malaga only an hour late, with 50c of phone credit and a 20% charge. At this point I realized my friend T couldn't reply to international numbers, so I sniffed unsuccessfully for wifi and waited.

In the nick of time T turned up and we set about finding a suitably dumpy pension for me to crash. We found it in the form of Hotel Olympia. From a distance the sign even resembled 'DUMPIA'. The stairs were broken, the electrics sparked and smoked, the plumbing was questionable, and my door's bolt hole was secured by a single loose screw. It did, however, have a sink at which I washed my clothes, and a bed flat enough to sleep on. It's worth mentioning that since neither the shower nor bathroom door could close all the way, I could keep an eye on my room door down the corridor while showering; an added security feature. And thanks to early morning garbage trucks, cat fights, and two-stroke vespa booty calls, my morning sleep was punctuated by a series of extraordinary lucid dreams featuring volcanoes, alien invasions, mountain climbing, engineering projects, and so on.

But perhaps I am too hard on Malaga. T and I spent most afternoons chilling indoors, then wandering the narrow flagstone streets of the old city from tapas bar to tapas bar. I visited the magnificent cathedral, the hilltop palace and castle, which were pretty cool. In particular, the surviving Moorish architecture and landscaping/gardens were spectacular. The (free) museum of modern art was well priced and had a few works that really impressed me.

Breakfast was bread, lunch was something yummy T drew from cooking classes, and dinner was tapas, full of flavour and variety. Continuing my Croatian effort to cover the animal kingdom, I had rabbit, squid fried in ink, bull's tail, and many other bizarre but awesome dishes.

T and I caught up on at least a year of news, and I even managed to describe my research whilst ensconced in a rather atmospheric teahouse. The physics was good, but not as good as the tea!

After only two days, it was time to say goodbye. I bought a bus ticket to Granada, T revised the Spanish subjunctive for an impending exam, and we toasted absent Australian friends with very pulpy orange juice.

The bus was luxurious, better even than the ones in Turkey. Only three seats across, inflight food, and clean windows. If you adjoined this bus in Hilbert space with the one from Kosovo to Montenegro, then you'd completely span the space.

The only downside was that at one point the man in front catapulted his chair backwards into my kneecaps, and then his snoring shiny noggin kept reflecting the sun into my eyes! :P

In Granada I spent an hour finding the train station, then walked up to Alhambra (the real one), while dodging spikey and knee-high traffic bollards seemingly intent on finishing what the bus had started. A steep climb through a forested hill took me to the 'gate of justice'. Sadly the ticketed parts had sold out, so I had to be content wandering the grounds and accessing available buildings. There was an exhibition of primarily religious art in one of the buildings. A painting of San Juan de Dios and another of the Nasrid family leaving Alhambra were, IMO, particularly excellent.
http://images.evangelizo.org/images/santibeati/G/San_Giovanni_di_Dio_Religioso/San_Giovanni_di_Dio_C.jpg
http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/files.php?pid=34592&aid=5012

On the walk back down I saw a world photos exhibition on forests, which was pretty cool. I've never spent much time in rain forests, and I still want to visit the world's northernmost forests in Taymyr, near Khatanga.

Back in town I had a look around the cathedral, built in a renaissance style upon gothic foundations, decorated with baroque elements, massive in size, and surrounded by other buildings! Looking into the dozen or so chapels arrayed around the periphery, it struck me again just how disgusting and gruesome so much of the Christian, and in particular, Catholic religious imagery is. Life size hyper-real sculptures of Jesus in varying states of torture and decay, not to mention a glisteningly anatomically precise model (I hope) of the severed head of someone later beatified for their troubles. Is idolatry (not to mention polytheism) okay provided you leave your lunch behind?

I walked up through the old town, taking turns at random until I found a plaza with a great view over the town and castle. I sat in the shade munching bread, drinking juice, and watching an endless procession of tourists fill up their memory cards with the same photo. Worth mentioning is that at no point during the entire day was I out of earshot of an Australian accent, and that one slightly strange fellow spent the entire time I was there getting other people to take dozens of photos of him in front of Alhambra with his camera.

I walked back into town, and checked out an ex-caravanserai dating from 1400 or so, some traditional markets, and found a place worthy of dinner.

I ordered fried aubergine with molasses, and pasta alla Napolitano with black olives, both of which were terrific. I took a compass bearing to the station and wandered at random, this time finding it accidentally within minutes.

I had booked the overnight 'soft seat' to Barcelona. Only 12 hours, half of it going backwards, with the usual variety of peculiar co-travelers. By the time the lights went out only two babies were crying. Then a new passenger got on with a loud Bollywood ringtone, and proceeded to make calls. Someone snored. Then the father of the nearest baby decided to exploit the fresh silence by dropping his suitcase on my feet, then giving his baby some ear drops at 1am. This operation was complicated by baby's unwillingness to lie sideways, father's cross-eyed-ness, and about 60 freshly awoken people grumbling enough to suck all the oxygen from the car. Finally, silence. Someone tried to take photos of the moon out the window with the flash on, until their head imploded by the sheer weight of their stupidity. Lots of points for me, and peace at last.

In this way, sleep interruptions were compensated by at least 10 hours in which to try, and I arrived in Barcelona only mildly grumpy.

I walked from Barcelona-Sants station into town. After I found 6 hostels were fully booked, I worked out that I'd accidentally caught the Barcelona festival. Free music and shows, and pickpockets preoccupied with alcoholic backpackers! I did a preliminary 10km lap of the old city to narrow down my options, and followed up after siesta with a visit to the Palau Guell. On the way I visited most of the large churches in Barcelona, all of which lean to some extent. Palau Guell of Gaudi's earliest works, it prefigures a lot of his later stuff. His use of natural materials with interesting textures, ingenious approaches to light and space, and a decent quantity of sheer awesome. By the time I'd climbed from the stable through a series of halls, living spaces, servants' quarters and the roof, I felt I had earned a kebab. So I bought one next door.

Later that night another dude from the hostel joined me for a walk down to the beach and to the Fastnet Irish Bar, where we exchanged Spanish and English with a few other CSers. All too soon it was time to turn in for the night. The person on the bunk below me snored, so I was on 'earthquake duty', where I shook the bed in a vain but oddly satisfying attempt to stir them just enough to breathe better, but not enough to kill me.

Next morning, I realized it was my last day in Europe and I was still lugging around the 3 ounces of flab I'd gained in Austria. Casting a cursory glance over the map I set off!

First stop was the Picasso Museum, itself housed in a rather spectacular, though overlooked, building. Focusing mainly on his early works, the collection also included a number of things by his contemporaries, of which my favourites were a van Gogh painting of a glass of Absinthe (http://www.vangoghreproductions.com/paintings/1887-13-1.jpg), and a Toulouse-Lautrec portrait entitled 'Red-haired girl in a white blouse' (
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMjMemdRYX7Ao00nxgBGYtnWTObFD5zywdG1FkJNaGwIlDY73mebz__iy4z-J4QQ6-Hsowu5q32QYwGWucZyEjmAZib17cVoPXMQV7SxQiSulbjtXfYnvpKtSAKK6Lw4ECwrx1QY7O98VK/s1600/9+Henri+de+Toulouse-Lautrec+(1864-1901)++Carmen+Gaudin+1889.jpg)

In contrast to these, Picasso's works seem to show us not what is, but what we see. His later works, including the series on pigeons, I saw as skeletal and technically unsophisticated. The whole point is (I think) that the human brain fills in the missing detail, in much the same way as XKCD. (www.xkcd.com) I found as I walked away that the impressionists were on my mind, but that people resembled the Picasso sketches I'd just been looking at.

I continued up from the port, taking in a few more of Gaudi's buildings and some Chinese noodles on the way. The monument to Casanova revealed the existence of more than one new cottage lying about, as this fellow was neither THE Casanova nor a descendant.

Next on the route was the Sagrada Familia. Everyone has heard of this building, but I'm prepared to admit that I knew nothing about it except that it was unfinished and it had four tall towers. It turns out that work is continuing, and the interior was finished only last year, about 130 years after the first stone was placed. Cathedral construction, old school style. The interior is quite extraordinary, with branching, treelike columns joining in hyperbolic domes, with all sorts of decoration. The exterior remains unfinished, though the (recent) sculptures on the resurrection portal reminded me of the 'mask of sorrow' in Magadan.

In the crypt was a fascinating exhibition on the ongoing efforts to finish the cathedral, complicated by the untimely death of Gaudi in 1926 and the burning/destruction of the workshop and models during the Spanish civil war. For me the highlight was an 'inverted model'. By hanging small weights proportional to structural mass from strings of the same (scaled) dimension as structural members, gravity automatically finds the optimal solution, which is a generalized catenary. Here's the kicker: the inverted string model has only tension. When righted, the corresponding bits will have only compression, permitting the construction of cheap masonry structures in weird shapes, rather than resorting to prestressed reinforced concrete or similar.

All too soon it was time to press on. I enjoyed my walk between octagonal city blocks joined by octagonal intersections, and shaded streets running NE-SW and vice versa, meanwhile hearing only dozens of foreign languages, not Australians!

After a while I came to the Park Guell, a never-completed neighbourhood that is now a public space. The landscape design was also done by Gaudi, and resonates with his ideas on a grand scale. From the summit there was a great view over Barcelona. At this point I realized how ambitious my plans for the day's walk were, since I was only a quarter of the way through.

Without further ado I continued, back toward Barcelona-Sants railway station (via a motor scooter crash) and then onward to the Catalonian National Art Museum (MNAC), an impressive domed structure set high on a hill, not unlike the Imperial Palace Museum in Taipei. I gained entry and managed to see everything before it closed at 7pm, with about a minute to spare.

MNAC is unique for the large quantity of Romanesque art. Created c.1200 and displaying a mix of Italian and national influences, the works were preemptively removed from old church walls in a documented fashion to prevent loss into private hands. As a result, this section of the museum is a whole bunch of church 'set interiors' filling a series of large halls. To my untrained eyes, it was reminiscent of the stone paintings M and I saw in Capadocia in 2008.

My favourite this time was hidden behind a corner in a hallway, and probably missed by most visitors. A
Antoni Caba work from 1882 titled 'Dia sobre la Nit precedit de l'Aurora'. (
http://art.mnac.cat/image_big.html?id=200004-000)

Also, in the modernist section, Ramon Carga's 'Ramon Carga, pere Romeu en un automobil' (http://www.amicsdelmnac.org/imatges/170610_1276768235_6_AutomobilWEB.gif) was a lot of fun!

I walked through the port and Rambla de Mar to the beach and the Olympics Harbour, arriving just in time for a most serendipitous fireworks display. On the way back I had some excellent home-made Italian pasta, then returned to the hostel to pick up my bag after only 14 hours of walking.

I walked back through town one last time, during the quiet hours around 1am. Except that there were at least a million revellers filling the streets, multiple parades, drummers, street sellers, and happy people. Across the plaza del Catalunya to the N17 night bus to begin my 24 hour trip back to LA. The driver took advantage of empty parking lots at the airport to execute a few two-wheeled corners, efficiently dispelling any notions I may have had for sleep. Better to cope with jetlag by mixing in sleep deprivation anyway.

Two thirds of the early morning flights were to Russia: St Petersburg, Minsk, Miberalnye, etc. I haven't seen so many Russians in one place for quite some time! And none of them knew I understood everything they say... Muhahaha!

Eventually we boarded the plane, but not before chatting with an Argentinian dude until I realized I was interrupting his reading of a rather explicit magazine. Of course, boarding the plane was very slow, compounded by my falling asleep until the final call! Then we sat on the tarmac for 90 minutes as the plane had a broken windscreen wiper. Fortunately I had booked my flights with a long transit time, so was able to relax as we descended over Dusseldorf. I imagined I was Biggles, and squinted into the bright sun over medieval buildings with my comrade and best mate Algy, gingerly fingering my bomb toggle as my mustache whipped in the crisp 1917 air...

On the next plane I found myself seated to a rather broad-shouldered man with extremely bushy eyebrows who, it came out in conversation, was an increasingly devout catholic. When I expresses reservations about the current pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, due to his dubious/criminal actions whilst the leader of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, he explained the official position of the church on priests accused of paedophilia (or other criminal acts), which I found rather interesting.

Child rape is, no doubt, a terrible thing, BUT (there is always a but), given that Jesus Christ is the son of god, he explicitly vested the church run by man his power of forgiveness. Therefore the church has power and priority over national legal authorities with respect to its own, privately run, judicial system. Under this system, paedophile priests or other church members guilty of criminal acts can be forgiven and get another chance, or excommunicated if deemed beyond salvation. When I brought up Charles Manson he conceded that a deathbed repentance would mean that god would forgive him his criminal acts, so I find it hard to imagine what would warrant excommunication! I asked at what point does the church call the police, but apparently that never happens. Unless, of course, the church is a victim of criminal acts, such as vandalism.

Regular readers will be in no doubt as to my attitude to this idea. In my opinion, there is no god, no sin, and no eternal life, but there is an organization intent on covering its own arse whilst permitting the continuing violation of everyone else's. More seriously, however, if Cardinal Ratzinger covered up, and allowed to continue, the rape and torture of children, then he is effectively perpetrating that crime himself, and, at the very least, must be held accountable.

What could have been a very lively discussion petered out due to a lack of a fluent common language. But I'm always surprised when I meet otherwise normal, rational people who can, with a straight face, tell you they are absolutely certain that a special class of people are exempt from justice, or above the law. It is, in my opinion, delusion and mental illness.

Above the great lakes our aging A330 got caught in the braids of the jet stream, which made for lots of awesome bumps. Soon enough we were cruising high above the stark and beautiful deserts of the western USA, with mountains, faults, gorges, volcanoes, and many shades of red. The captain pointed Las Vegas out the right window, so I got an excellent look at Lake Powell on the left; impossibly austere, rugged terrain we visited on the Ge136 field trip earlier this year.

With a bounce and a bump we hit the tarmac in LA, and the hostess with the Portal voice wished us good day. From here it is only a few hours of sitting in traffic and I'm home.

Pointless statistics:
12 countries, 26 border posts (and not one strip search!), 38 days, 60 towns. One pair of sandals, one pair of pants, 3 shirts, one cooking pot, only 18L of luggage.

Overall it was a very interesting trip, filled with wonders and surprises. Travelling with J for 3 weeks was a lot of fun, plus all the other old and new friends along the way. Travelling with only a tiny bag and writing all my blog posts on my broken iPhone was also a new approach and one I liked a lot. Being able to walk around with your bag all day is a terrific asset!

Photos will go up in the next few days, with retrofitted hyperlinks and captions and LOTS of panoramas. UPDATE: Photos.

Here endeth the travels of Al Dente and Gazpacho.

The game

One way to minimize the chance of trouble when travelling is to be aware of your surroundings at all times, almost to the point of obsession. Combining this with the fun of prejudging people one has never met, J and I developed a terrific though slightly cynical game. One earns points by spotting a wide variety of egregiously touristic behaviour. As near as I can remember, spotting any of the following gets you FIVE POINTS.

- Incorrect use of a camera flash, such as in the sun, with a monument, too close, against a pane of glass.
- Taking a photo of something with the sun behind it, so everything is in silhouette, or of a scene with too much contrast.
- Taking a photo of beggar or other poor child close up with a wide angle lens and camera expensive enough to swap for said child.
- A backpack taller than the person when carried, OR a backpack getting jammed somewhere such as a narrow or low doorway, or knocking something over.
- Lots of luggage, to the point of no free hands. Bonus points if negotiating a staircase.
- A wheeley bag used on irregular surface or cobbles, making lots of noise, flipping, or having to be carried.
- A hybrid wheeley bag/backpack, for sheer crocoduck impracticality.
- A hipster of any size or shape. Extra points if on a shiny motor scooter or wearing sequins.
- A lonely planet guidebook.
- Reading a guidebook right in front of a famous monument instead of looking at it.
- Hiking shoes capable of climbing Annapurna. Bonus points if still shiny or obviously uncomfortable.
- Convertable pants/shorts.
- A terrible sunburn.
- Anyone shouting "Do you speak English?" at close range.
- Anyone asking if they can pay in USD.
- Anyone getting ripped off or scammed.
- Anyone using an audio guide.
- Either one of us tripping or stumbling or running into something.
- Anyone using a taxi when they could walk.
- A visible, outside, or obvious 'secret' money purse, wallet, or bum bag.
- An unusable or perilously dangerous wheelchair ramp. Eg. steep, a big drop at the bottom, or nowhere for a pusher to walk.
- A tourist map. Bonus points if it is being read upside down.
- Anyone asking directions to the 'mall'.
- Anyone so out of shape they can't see for sweat, or climb the stairs to the top of an expensive attraction with a view.
- Funny voices, accents, laughs, etc.
- The smallest and largest dog all day.
- Anyone making a comparison between, say, a wonder of the world and a place 'back home'.
- A McDonalds restaurant.
- Any person with 'only on holidays' facial hair. Bonus points if it's very silly.

To be fair, we both gleefully committed many of these 'crimes against travel' from time to time. Suggestions for more categories welcomed.

On the loading of A320s

During the last year I've done quite a bit of flying on single-aisle commuter jets, such as the A320. It continues to stun me just how slow loading these things is, especially in comparison to unloading them.

In particular, the usual modus operandi for the average traveller seems to be:
- walk as slowly as possible
- check every seat for yours
- when you find your seat, stop in the aisle, then start looking for space for your barely-legal carry on bag
- after the bag(s) is(are) stowed, stop to admire surroundings
- contemplate degree of butt-squeezing needed to fit into seat
- take 20 last deep breaths
- watch people further from the window act surprised when you tell them your options are them to unbuckle, stow baby etc or else crowd-surf
- take seat, bitch about it
- wash, rinse, repeat

However, I propose using MATHS to address this problem. There is but one narrow aisle, and around 180 seats to be filled. Also, seats are numbered sequentially (skipping 13) from front to back, and lettered alphabetically from port to starboard. Every plane is the same - this isn't rocket science.

Therefore, approach the vicinity of your seat as quickly as possible. Once there, place bag on ANY empty seat nearby and get out of the aisle. From there, throw bag in overhead locker, or wait for a break in the traffic. While waiting, take your breaths, and indicate to fellow sardines where your butt is to be squeezed, so that they can prepare themselves (mentally and otherwise).

Finally, with grace befitting of a ballerina, park in your allotted space having not blocked the aisle with pointless shenanigans. My favourite method is the 'arm rest two step', also useful for late night toilet breaks on long haul flights. The rules dictate that you may not touch any part of anyone else's seat. Only your own seat, the ceiling, arm rests, and cabin floor is permitted. Convention maintains that a successful execution's celebratory grunts and yelps be kept to a bare minimum.

Therefore, if you, dear reader, cause an aeroplane traffic jam henceforth, you shall incur my mighty (though virtual) wrath.