kareina

I flew into Edinburgh last Friday afternoon. This was a *long* day--I stayed up way too late the night before trying to finish up some work on a paper I'm the second author for and then packing, and then got up way too early so that I could do the half an hour walk to the train station from which the cheap bus to the airport departs. That walk is much harder when dragging suitcases--my elbows were not happy with me. When I arrived I was greeted by

sismith42, whom I'd not seen since her departure for this country to do her Master's degree many years before. It was a delight to see her again, and I've truly been enjoying being her guest. I'd never met her husband,

loupblanc (they met over here) and was delighted to see that she'd chosen such an attractive long haired-man with whom to share her life and start a family.

Saturday she and I went on an adventure on our own, leaving him to play with their daughter and do the gardening he wanted to do. She did a post on that topic, with links to her photos (my camera batteries were flat), so I'll let that stand as the record of the day.

Sunday I did a pre-conference field trip. So far I've written up stop one for my other blog and I plan to do the other stops in future posts. Suffice it to say that it was much fun. The only person I really spoke to on the trip was the trip-leader. This is, no doubt, due to my tendency to walk quickly and stick close to the teacher whenever a "class" is out for an adventure--my hearing problem means that I need to stay nearby if I want to hear anything, and I'm not willing to risk missing any interesting information. The rest of the group spread out a *long* way behind those of us who were in the lead as we walked from one outcrop to the next.

This trip really reminded me that even though my favourite rocks are the pretty metamorphic ones, with the slow-cooling (and therefore large-grained) igneous as a second choice, I really do love all aspects of geology, and I found it much fun to be tramping around on an extinct volcano and seeing such important outcrops to the history of geology.

I chose to miss the conference "ice breaker" that evening--our bus returned from the field trip at 17:00, and it wasn't scheduled till 18:00. They were holding it at the uni residence halls at which most conference attendees were staying, but

sismith42's house is on the other side of town. She'd been wonderful and dropped me off in the morning on time to join the trip, and she lent me her old mobile phone, so I could call them when we returned and get a ride home (buses not running much on Sundays). So as our bus approached the university I called "home" and let them know we were back, and spent a very pleasant evening with my hosts, rather than meeting geologists.

Monday was the first day of the conference, and there were many interesting metamorphic talks. I intend to blog about them as well, but I was so tired that evening I didn't do it then, and still haven't gotten to it. Oh well, I've got the program to help me fill in details when I do. I took the bus in, and was appalled to find out that it takes fully 45 minutes for it to wend its way through the city center and reach the uni.

Tuesday morning there was only one track of talks, and I didn't understand any of those abstracts in the program. So rather than attending those talks, I slept in, and then she and I went into town and ran some errands and had a stroll in the park before she dropped me off at uni so I could attend the Poster session. I hung out near my poster and had conversations with people when they came round to read it. One of the people I met turns out to be the husband of the woman in Seina, Italy with whom I published a paper comparing the Tasmanian ecologites with those of Antarctica. (I asked him about her, as he'd done a talk where she was listed as the first author.)

While waiting for the bus home that evening I got to speaking with a woman who was also waiting for the bus, who commented that the bus is often late, and it is generally faster to ride her bike, but some days that isn't an option for one reason or another. This reminded me that

sismith42 had said that I could borrow her bike if I wanted.

Therefore this morning I chose to commute by bike. Because she and I are pretty much the same size this was an easy thing to accomplish--I didn't even have to adjust the straps on her helmet, which is amazing--my head is so unusually small I normally need to really take in straps in order to get other people's bike helmets to fit me. There is a major bike path which happens to pass right next to her house, so for the first half of the journey I enjoyed a pleasant peddle along a tree-lined, shady trail with only other bikers and the occasional person on foot to watch for. The second half of the trip required frequent stops to consult the cycle map she provided, but was still very pleasant, with many lovely stone buildings and pretty gardens on my path. Even with all of the stops, the ride took only an hour, so I suspect that it really would have been faster than the bus had I known where I was going and just peddled.

Today's talks were also interesting, and we got a bonus short talk about tomorrow's field trip to the Highlands. Ordinarily they'd have saved that talk till tomorrow, but apparently there will be 55 of us on that trip. They were expecting 10-15 people, so they decided that logistically, it makes sense to do a pre-trip talk. On the way home I stopped at a post office to send my poster back to myself. It was expensive, but since there is a good chance that one or more of the three flights I'll be doing between here and home would have charged me for excess baggage if I tried to bring it back with me on the plane, it is probably worth the expense.

Tomorrow I've got an early start for the next field trip, Friday

sisimth42 and I will head to Glasgow to meet a friend for lunch, and Saturday I'll take the train to Inverness to visit the family of

clovis_t.