After a hearty home cooked breakfast supplied by the Allenspark Lodge, Zoe and I ventured out on our first trip to RMNP. We went in through the Beaver Meadows entrance. We started out at Bear Lake ranger station and took the Bear Lake Trailhead. It started out really easy – a concrete path up to Nymph Lake. We stopped here to have lunch amongst the wildlife including a boisterous chipmunk that was trying to get in to Zoe’s backpack, a blue jay and another grey fluffy bird that tried to beg for food. The lake itself was partly frozen over still.

We ventured on and got to Dream Lake which was completely picturesque! Again the lake was partly frozen, and the mountains were in the background. Here we deviated from the path the majority of people were taking. We decided to tackle the snowy and seriously icy trail up to Lake Haiyaha – native American for “Big Rocks”. En route we got some scenic views of Glacier Gorge and Longs Peak. The “Big Rocks” refer to a massive boulder field you have to scrabble over to get to views of the lake.

After a short stop at Haiyaha Lake we began the descent back to Bear Lake – there were some moments where I was ice skating down the trail!!!!

Hiking stats:
Lake Haiyaha Trail – 4.2 miles there and back.
Bear Lake elevation: 9,475 ft / 2888 m
Lake Haiyaha elevation: 10,220 ft / 3115 m
High point of hike: 10,240 ft / 3121 m

After the hike we head into downtown Estes Park to have a look at tourist tat! We found a nice mexican restaurant to eat in – although portion sizes were ridiculous! My fajitas could have fed three people!!!!! We headed back to Allenspark Lodge for a dip in the hot tub after dinner and I was out like a light! I didn’t even hear Zoe get up the next morning to go for her run!

Today was the last day of the conference, after which we headed to the west of Boulder and up to NCAR (National Centre for Atmospheric Research) which is the sister organisation of NCAS (National Centre of Atmospheric Science – to which Zoe belongs). NCAR is situated perched up on top of a large hill overlooking the entirety of Boulder. In fact from the viewpoint at NCAR we could even see Denver cos of the clear sky.

NCAR has a visitor centre with lots of interactive outreach toys in it [i will upload some pictures soon either here on on the photos page!]. After learning all about properties of the atmosphere we walked the NCAR weather trail which was a gentle stroll with information points telling us about weather and atmospheric conditions of the region.

After our walk we headed north towards Rocky Mountain National Park and stopped off at Allenspark Lodge, Allenspark. It is a breathtakingly beautiful cozy log lodge. Apparnetly it was built approx 75 years ago from reclaimed wood after a nearby forest fire (by American standards it is probably classed as a historical building!!!). The owners are extremely welcoming and make you feel quite at home. The lodge is fairly large, there are three floors, a hot tub, dining room/kitchen with complimentary tea/coffee/hot chocolate, a cozy living room with a fire and a stove and a tv/games room. I have never stayed anywhere so homely before and would highly recommend it to anyone!

We headed out to the Baldpate Inn for dinner. The Baldpate Inn is named after the book ” 7 keys to Baldpate” written by Earl Derr Biggers. It is about some people that each think they hold the key to the mythical Baldpate Inn. The original owners built the building in 1917 and named it after the book, the film was just out too. They planned to give each guest a key as a souvenir of their stay at the Inn. This proved too costly for them, in the end guests started leaving their own keys as a memento! There are tens of thousands of keys in the collection now, including things like the key to Hitler’s writing desk, the key to the gate of Sherwood forest etc. Each key has been donated with a message or letter from the sender.

o Zoe and I were up at the crack of dawn (well I woke up at about 6am cos I couldn’t sleep!). We had to head down to NOAA to be “vetted and approved” entry into this government facility. NOAA stands for National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (It’s basically the NASA of the atmospheric/oceanographic worlds!!!!). It is set in the foothills of the Rockies and the view from NOAA is beautiful. They even have an observatory up there!

I was really ill today – Zoe infected me with her lurgi! I was truly suffering by the afternoon and felt quite conscious about coughing through everyone’s talks! As far as the meeting went – I learned lots about what some of the dominant research groups in the field are doing.Zoe and I both gave our talks and got some feedback and ideas on what to do next. The conference dinner was held at Dushanbe Teahouse which was beautiful! they serve about 40 odd teas there including one from Newara Eliya!

Thursday was pretty heavy going at the conference, not entirely convinced i understood all of it. I did learn some new stats methods though, that i shall try out. On Thursday I finally managed to find a swimming outfit and went for 1/2 hour swim in the pool at the hotel. The pool was a bit weird though – it was really warm, like the temperature of a hot tub [I actually started to sweat whilst i was swimming some lengths!]

So my colleague (Zoe) and I flew out to Denver on Monday for an Ozone Trend workshop at NOAA in Boulder. We were lucky cos we managed to nab bulkhead seats so had oodles of room on the plane (quite ironic bearing in mind we aren’t the tallest of people!!!). It was daylight for the whole duration of the flight so it was a little difficult to snooze on the plane. We arrived in Denver at sunset and had the fun and games of hiring an automatic car (with Zoe only having driven one once and me never having driven one before!). The 40 min drive from Denver to Boulder was “interesting”, but I am glad that I downloaded the CoPilot Live from the iphone app store before i came out here – it meant I didn’t need to read a map in the dark and get travel sick!!!

By the time we arrived at the Boulder Outlook Hotel
it was really late and we were shattered. The hotel itself is lovely, we have a massive room and there is a pool, sauna, climbing wall and video game room! Interestingly the hotel has a “zero waste” policy so almost everything is recycled.

On Tuesday after a much need rest Zoe and I decided to walk the boulder Creek Path. Having lived in Milton Keynes it is like an uber wide redway that follows Boulder Creek from the town centre right up into the mountains. Its very popular with joggers/cyclists. We walked to Pearl Street (the pedestrianised shopping zone), which apparently is really famous for being so different to typical US shopping town centres. To us though, it was like a typical British high street. After having a look at all the outdoors shops and CRAZY Halloween stores(!) we ended popped into the Walnut Brewery where we sampled some local beer! After this we went up back on Boulder Creek path and followed it to Settlers Park. From there we took the Red Rocks Trail and got up a bit higher. We headed back to the hotel by sunset. All in all it was probably about a 10 mile round walk.

My overall impression of Boulder is that it is extremely different to other US cities/towns I’ve been to. Everywhere is very pro recycling and green (lots of solar panels on roofs etc) there are pedestrianised areas and yo ACTUALLY see people using them(!), cycle paths, footpaths, hiking paths etc and more importantly the waitresses/waiters don’t harass you all the time with the really fake banter (I refer back to Tuscon where the the staff at breakfast told Cat she had a lovely English accent (she is Portuguese!)).

So last week I handed in my thesis. Four years of toil and torment finished. In all it was 82,217 words, 303 pages, 151 figures and 27 tables. Although a fair whack of that was in the appendix, so it doesn’t really count.

I’ve been working as a post-doc for the last year, so I have been writing up in my spare time, that has not been a great deal of fun I have to admit. The odd thing now is that I don’t know what to do with my spare time, well actually it’s more that I am struggling to sit and do nothing! Ho hum, I am sure the apathy will kick in again when it can be bothered.

Just that pesky viva to think about now.

So we are enjoying our holiday out here in sunny Sri Lanka. And what makes it all the more nicer is to gloat about how nice it is here when you are all (by all I suspect I am just talking about my sister) busy working away

We stopped in a rather nice hotel when we arrived in Colombo, the kind of place where diplomats go to do diplomacy. Well I assume that is what they were doing. I should probably qualify diplomats – they were Canadian.

From Colombo we were picked up in our private tour car, which is to take us all around the island for a week, at stupid-o-clock in the morning. I can only assume that that translated into ridiculous-o-clock time in UK time that I was still living my life by.

First on our mammoth trip was the elephant sanctuary. It’s a nice place where orphaned elephants can go and be protected. So we sat in a restaurant and ate while the elephants were washed just below us, then off to the feeding place to see them munch.

From there we went up to Sigiriya which is an old palace complex that is in ruins now that they found a while back – proper Indiana Jones stylee. Much of it is on top of a very tall rock formation. As it happens there are lots of hornets nesting on the rocks, and the day before they had been getting angry and stinging people. So just as we were about to make it to the top one decided he didn’t like my leg and dug his stinger in. Now I just looked this up and hornets belong to the vindictiveus bastardus class of bugs – i.e. the ones that sting you that don’t die – so I hope he caught hay fever from me and sneezes his way into the path of a bus.

Today we went to a spice garden and saw lots of the local stuff they grow here – including cocaine. They also insisted on giving me a massage, and since I am always up for random men to rub my semi-naked body I thought I would give it a go – t’was nice. We also went to a batik factory and spent far too much money on cloth type things. From there we went to the temple that Buddha’s tooth is in.

Now we are in Kandy and tomorrow we will head out to see a tea plantation – hopefully I will get to try lots of different types…

I will upload some of the many photos when I get a chance – although something tells me that would take an age from this internet connection.

One of the nice things about being here is that people seem to think I am great! Several kids have said that I am beautiful – in fact at one of the religious monuments a bunch of school kids stopped looking at the statues and started staring at me. I could get used to this.

So our first paper from the Schome Park Pilot has been published! This one was based upon the initial data that we collected in our early days in Second Life. The basic jist of it is that Second Life works well for distance learning If you are interested in what we did have a read of the paper. I image that this will be my only publication in an educational journal!

Just a quick post this morning!

Today is our 7 year anniversary….yes 7 years ago today Olly and I went on our first date (how sweet!). It doesn’t feel like we’ve been together that long, sometimes I wonder where the 7 years have gone – but it is documented in here.  Unfortunately I’ve been at our own flat for the past week so Olly and I are apart for this anniversary

I also got my start date for my job in atmospehric chemistry research….I start on the 16th March…woo finally!  Although I have loads to do here still (thesis) AND need to swat up on my new job :S

In other news….I cut 16″ off my hair yesterday – pics are on facebook!  No I’m not bald!

I realised I never actually posted about the results of all my allergy and intolerance testing!  Around October 07 I stopped cutting out the foods I thought was making me ill and ate a full and varied diet for three months.  Then around xmas 07 I had an intolerance test as well as ear -nose- throat specialist look at my ears/palate problem.

It turns out they aren’t related….I still have an unknown probably “inhalent” allergy that causes the itchy palate/nose/mouth which they won’t be able to treat.  The consultant said that my blocked ears will get worse and worse on exposure to the allergen, then in the future when it gets really bad i will have to have an operation to “laser” my ear/nose tubes which are getting hardened on response to the allergen. I also have IBS and am intolerant to lots of foods:

dates, crab, mussels, white pepper, spinach, leek, pear, mushroom, raspberry, olive, egg yolk, kidney bean and grapes.

I’m not too sure about some of the foods, but I (and Olly) have suffered when I eat pear, olive, egg yolk, kidney beans and grapes.  Not good! Eating these gives me a lot of digestive problems, which sometimes last for days or even up to a week.  Then some food (red wine, mayonnaise dip type things, Pizza hust pizza) also make me feel incredibly nauseus for two days or so after eating them.  I learned this the hard way after multiple visits to pizza hut to test whether it really was the pizza that was making me ill!

So anyway, it makes sense that when I cut out the wheat/dairy I was also not eating a lot of products that contained egg yolk.  So I spent most of last year adapting all my recipes again and tried so many different substitutes for egg including: egg replacer, cornflour, banana etc but nothing turned out right

Then a few weeks ago I read an article on the internet about people with egg intolerance being able to tolerate duck eggs.  I suppose this is similar to people that are intolerant to cow milk but can drink goat milk.  So Olly and I had a right job finding duck eggs in our new home town….we tried Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Marks and Spencer – none of them sold them.  Then we visited a tiny Waitrose, the size of an express convenience store, and they had them….mind they were £2.35 for 6 eggs.  They were free range, and larger than chicken eggs.  That weekend I had a duck egg overload – I ate a fried duck egg sandwhich and made my “special” scrambled eggs.  Then I monitored my symptoms.  I didn’t feel sick/nor wanted to vomit (a good sign).  Only thing was i got a little constipated – but no where near as bad as when I eat some things!  So conclusion is that maybe I can eat duck egg but VERY occasionally so as not to aggrevate my IBS.

A quick note on what duck eggs taste like/look like.  When you fry a duck egg, it looks like a chicken egg .  The fried egg has a thicker egg white bit and the same yellow yolk as a chicken egg.  To me it tastes the same as a chicken egg, but then I haven’t eaten chicken egg for over 1 year now, so I prob have forgotten the taste LOL.

I can’t wait to use the eggs in baking….

So I am in La Palma doing my astronomy thing. Or rather not doing my astronomy thing because of the weather I am supposed to be using an instrument called FIES on the NOT to do radial velocity measurements with some of the folk from Queens to look for exoplanets, but alas it is too cold.

(The rest of my photos are on the photos page.)

Last night we observed until about 1:30 when it got cloudy, and when I say cloudy what I mean is the clouds descended and we were in them. Then tonight we got as far as opening the dome when it got too humid again, so we had to stop. Ordinarily when the humidity drops you can start observing again, but the temperature here is cold, very cold, so everything is freezing. We had to drive down from the telescope to the residence, and we had the support astronomer drive with us – as the roads were frozen. His advice to us when driving down was not to wear our seatbelts so we could jump out of the car if we start sliding towards the cliff edge. Hmmm. Oh well we made it down anyway and am now sitting in the residence. The temperature is rising now though, so we may end up going back to the telescope tonight….

My journey here was fairly uneventful, I came via Madrid (and didn’t lose my luggage), then Tenerife. The only thing that did phase me somewhat was when I saw the tiny little plane that goes from Tenerife to La Palma, it was a tiny little two propellar engine jobbie. Ho hum, it got me here I suppose.

Tomorrow I go back down the mountain in the afternoon, but my flight back doesn’t leave until Sunday, so I have to spend a night in that four star hotel with the indoor waterfall and heated swimming pool.

It’s a tough life this astronomy malarkey.