jere7my | Aug. 27th, 2011

Here's my week:

On Sunday, kdsorceress and I biked to the Fells for a bit of hiking. All told, it was about 20 miles of hiking and biking (map), which was a bit more than Kat signed up for, but we did have fun. The Fells are lovely — purplish sentinel pines stretching up in parallel lines among the reservoirs, leafless black trees rising from mist to stand stark against the sky, chunky boulder piles to climb and claim. We hardly got lost at all, though GMaps did direct us along a "bike path" that was 80% unbikeable. Lots of mushrooms.

Wednesday, I serendipitously noticed that the Harvard Museum of Natural History had extended summer hours for one night only, with half off admission, and were showing a bat documentary with Q&A from a BU bat researcher to follow. The HMNH has been on my mind since my copy of The Rarest of the Rare: Stories Behind the Treasures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History arrived in the mail, so I picked up my skirts and flew down there, just in time to find a seat in the standing-room only (!) crowd. The documentary was a little cheesy, but the researcher was charismatic and interesting — he studies white-nose syndrome, which is decimating bat colonies in the northeast, and I learned a lot. Then I got to roam the museum after hours, among whale bones and shaggy bison, armed with new behind-the-exhibits information, like the murder mastodon and the woodpecker that is the sole surviving specimen from the Lewis & Clark expedition. I'm toying with the idea of doing a volunteer shift there.

My bike woes continue. I woke to a flat on Tuesday, which made me late for work. I changed the tube, and got another flat on my commute home on Thursday, about two blocks past Ace Wheelworks. They changed the tube (for free), and I got a third flat on Friday on my way to work, which meant humping my bike ¾ mile to work, then 2¼ miles more to Ace after work. (My right arm is now about 6" longer than my left.) They gave it to their grayest, most grizzled bike veteran, who ran his horny index finger around the inside of my tire until a tiny sliver of metal embedded itself in the tip. Perhaps that has been the culprit all along; if not, my new tire arrives on Wednesday.

After my Thursday flat repair, I tried, and failed, to find the Taza factory store for free Mexican chili chocolate ice cream. (Here's my route — the easternmost tangle marks my search. I came within 200 yards.) Feeling grouchy, I bought myself some Ben & Jerry's Late Night Snack when I got home, which has salted caramel and fudge-covered potato chips in it. So there. I also made rice pudding, which means I suddenly have way too much dessert.

Last night, I returned home from work and Diesel to a Facebook message from EmilyKate M. saying she was feeling blue, so I biked down to Coolidge Corner for RoboRally and chatting and cheering up. Expected to be home around 11PM; made it back by 2:15AM. Oops. Nice to have some spur-of-the-moment socializing, though; I don't do that very often.

I've been obsessively watching the live feed from the VISIONS '11 submersible as it pokes around hydrothermal vents a mile below the ocean's surface off the coast of Washington. It is mind-blowing. They're currently cruising over a lava field dotted with columns of stone; I've seen spider crabs and jellies and tubeworms and palm worms, and active smokers rising from crenelated towers of sediment, and robot arms manipulating blue-light-blinking instruments in plastic spheres, and, last night, a loving lingering circuit of a good-sized rattail (a kind of deep-sea fish). There are inverted bowls of sulfides that grow from the sides of the vent towers, like upside-down birdbaths filled from below with shimmering pools of hot water that trickle over the edges and fall up in reverse waterfalls...the world is so full of amazing things. The VISIONS team are doing real science, but are taking the time to answer questions people pose via Twitter (@visions11ops), and will stop to linger on something just because it's cool. [Edit: Eee! They just answered my question about time-lapse photography of vent growth on the audio feed! Had a little trouble with my name....]