Scout Haute Couture

Figure 1. Subject is wearing long johns under shorts with spandex cape

You won't see it on the runways in Paris, London or even Miami.  The fashion industry is all but blind to it, but there is a whole segment of fashion design that belongs only to the Scouts.  I will call it Scout Haute Couture.

This is something interesting that happens when Scouts are together.  The general conventions of fashion or typical adolescent self conscious behavior flies out the window.  This phenomenon can be observed in as little as 10 minutes, though rare.  Usually after 1 to 2 days removed from society the Scout in her natural habitat will begin exhibiting signs of squirrely-ness in dress and behavior.

Scout Haute Couture can be recognized by the subject's inability to match color, pattern or even material.  Mainstream ideals of acceptable things to put on your face fly by the wayside and banana stickers, magic-marker-mustaches and some types of food become facial adornments.  Anything that can be wrapped around a limb such as grass, flowers, or office supplies become jewelery.  Materials that are usually off limits become highly sought after.  (Fig. 1-3)

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Even more unique about the Scout fashion movement is the willful disregard by most participants for the customary hygiene habits.  Clothes that would be washed after ever use or every other use can go weeks without cleaning at camp.

The authors conclude that because Scouts have a refined system of friendship the typical societal rules for presentation can be stretched to accommodate more complete outward expression of a person's personality.  The most amazing facet of the Scout Haute Couture is the ability to ignore the powerful odors that can develop after two or three days on the loose.  Scouts can remain friends through experiences like this and have developed their own standards to live by (Yes, the lake counts as a shower.  Yes, babywipes are perfectly acceptable for day to day hygiene).

The level of comfort that allows Scouts to be Best Friends Forever and is both the cause and effect of the strange fashion that manifests itself in Scout settings.  Because how could you Not be friends with someone who is baring their sole to you thus (Figure 2). And if this were you, why would you not want to share it with your friends? (Figure 3).

Trail Tales Thursday, Dingle #1

In Honor of St. Patrick's Day, we'll kick off the Trail Tales series with the Dingle Way.

Dingle Way, Day 1
2 July 2010

Fred and I got up early, left our hostel in Dublin and hopped on the bus to Limerick at the Busarus. That's the Irish word for Bus Station I guess. I like to say it in my head like this "Bus R Us" but that's not right.

I quickly learned that Irish buses are among the most sinister car-sick-inducing torture devices in the world. The seats are very tall and so it's impossible to see out the front window from any seat besides the very front. Irish roads are narrow and windy. Irish bus drivers seem to enjoy playing Billy Joel at very loud volumes. I knew I wasn't going to make it if I stayed in the back, so I had to move right up to the front. Right up there, next to the chatty old people who cross themselves whenever they pass a church, and there are a lot, so it's more like an episode of Sit-and Be-Fit than a calm, silent, still bus ride.

And I think I might die.

For 6 hours I focused on not puking, or trying to devise a contingency plan if I do. I decided that in the event of an unexpected voiding of my stomach I would try to aim it for the space next to the door, then at least they could hose it out easily.

Luckily, we made it to Limerick and then to Tralee (which is pronounced Truhhh-lee, not TRAY lee) without any vomiting. From Tralee we got on another bus which we thought was going to take us to Camp. But it didn't. Fred told me "doesn't that sign say Camp? Shouldn't we get off? Maybe you should tell the driver we want off." I said "Relax Fred, calm down. The bus will stop and then we'll get off. We'll know when we're there." But I was wrong. The bus did not stop. In Ireland, you must jump up and down or wave or holler to signal your intention to get off the bus, wherever. Stops listed on the schedule are just suggestions. When we realized that we'd driven past Camp we started to get anxious. When the next-town-looking place rolled around we stood up, and sure enough the bus stopped and let us out.

In Annascaul. This not where we planned on being. We meant to walk from Camp counter clockwise around the peninsula. Now we're forced to go Clockwise.

At least we've finally made it to Dingle.

The first thing I noticed about Dingle, is that it is cold and windy. It's also much more mountainous than I expected. From the map, from home, Ireland looked flat-ish. 950 m Mountains are not really mountains, or are they? They are. Especially when they grow directly from sea level.

I know that I have underestimated this place. We stopped in a small park with the statue of some antarctic explorer. Tom Crean. He went with Shackelton and stuff...and he's from Annascaul. Fred and I hadn't eaten since breakfast and now it's 3 pm and we need to hike at least 6 miles, preferably twelve before we sleep. I pulled out a loaf of soda bread, a chunk of cheese and began to chow down, whilst contemplating Fred's "10 pound more awesome" bag.

I wonder if he can really make it 90 miles with all that Stuff. Who brings an iPad backpacking, anyway?

After we finished eating we cinched up our bags and headed off. Over a bridge, across a road and then Up. We walked up for quite a ways, until there was no more Up and then we could see the ocean, and we walked Down for a while. It was warm enough out to walk in just a long sleeved shirt and it wasn't raining.

So Far So Good.

We came across a beautiful bouldery-beach with a castle.




Thanks Ireland, that'll do nicely.

Then, there was more up. We were mainly walking on narrow farm roads, which was not very exciting at all. There were nettles and whoever was in the back was in charge of hollering "Car!" so that we could dive, quickly, into a ditch or press ourselves up against the nearest nettle-infested garden wall. And it was a windy day, so there were lots of false alarms. We did manage to entertain ourselves though, playing with the local fauna--farm dogs--and arguing about whether Cromwell built the castle or knocked over the castle.




The sheep dogs in Ireland are very friendly. They are generally allowed to roam and seem to generally stay where they're supposed to. More than a few times we were followed for quite-a-ways by friendly dogs. This is the first one we encountered. In DunQuin we were followed all the way home from the pub by a dog. On the other side of Mt. Brandon we were followed for about a mile by a dog who liked to play 'fetch' with rocks that we kicked in front of us, until someone drove by in a car and stuck their head out the window "Bella! Come on!" and the dog turned around and trotted after the car.



After about 6 miles, we spied a gas station. Since I refused, on principle, to pay 10 Euros for white gas in Dublin we decided to just fill the fuel bottle with gasoline at the first opportunity. So we stopped at a gas station that backed up to a really nice canyon that was bridged by an old rail-road viaduct. I filled up the fuel bottle and went inside to pay the 45 cent bill. The man behind the counter looked at me funny and said "Very small car?" I held up my fuel bottle and said "Yes" I bought a postcard and a candy bar and went back outside to see what Fred was up to.

He was lounging against his 10-pounds-more-awesome bag with the nastyiest-pus-ridden-flea bag tom cat I've ever seen in his lap.






I loaded up the fuel bottle and looked at the map for a bit. "Fred, how much further do you want to walk?" I was nervous about where we'd stay, and since there was 6 more miles to Dingle Town I didn't think we'd make it before it got dark.

I convinced Fred to go inside and ask the man behind the counter if there was any place we could stay around Lispole (where we were). Fred came back out with a bottle of water and the message that Dingle Town was the closest place with accommodations. "Did you ask about camping, or bed and breakfasts?" He said he didn't know and I shook my head. It was already 7 and I didn't think we were going to make it to Dingle. I went back into the shop myself to ask the man specifically about camping. I was a little embarrassed because by this time we'd been hanging around in his parking lot, petting that nasty-pus-ridden-flea-bag cat for like 15 minutes. "Do you know anywhere we can camp around here? I don't think we can walk all the way to Dingle Town tonight" The man didn't even pause for a second before he said "Sure, camp across the way in my field. There are no animals in there and the electric fence is off". Of course, it took a few iterations to get the message across--so thick was his accent, or my brain.

Awesome! Our first experience with Irish hospitality. It was easy. The man showed us his field and we set up our tents in a flat spot behind a nice church.





We had a quick dinner. Though we were tired we walked a mile down the road to the nearest pub. The man behind the counter was probably about 80 and by the looks of the decor, was named Tom and had been running the place since the 40s, or whenever he stopped playing rugby on his local team (Go Kerry!). We were the only people in the place. We tried to have a conversation with the old man about the vuvuzelas on the TV (world cup was on) but again, the thick Irish accent was hard for us to get through. The man was really lovely though, and we went and played a game of pool on a tiny pool table (or was it a snooker table?) before we headed back out. By this time it was nearing 9:30 and we toddled back to our tents. It was still light.

Turns out, it never gets dark in Ireland.

Who is Lari?

Meet Lari!

or, the quieter half of this project.  This is a link to an awesome profile she's got up at the Girl Scouts of Western Washington page.

Well, I've been here before

I had a blog before--during 2008 when I lived in Switzerland.  My life seemed very interesting at the time.  I packed up my belongings and flew off to a foreign land for an indeterminate amount of time.  There was so much new there.  New food to eat, new words to learn, new ways to embarrass myself in public and all of it ripe for blogging.  Then, I moved back to the States, went back to Grad school and decided that being a grad student just wasn't interesting enough to read about.  Actually, the truth was I just wasn't interested enough to write about it.

Figure 1.  My Life

I suppose that grad school may be like a long distance hike.  From what I've gleaned from volumes and volumes of Appalachian Trail through hike logs (check out the Resources section for the books I'm talking about) and daily posts over at Whiteblaze, a lot of folks don't really know what they're getting into when they start out from Springer or Katahdin.  There's thinking about something, and then there's the actual doing of it.  Everyone who finishes a thru hike was once a beginner with maybe a few years of backpacking under their belt at best.  Everyone who finishes graduate school was once just an undergrad with a few credits of lab class and klunky pipetting hands.  Whether that's mountains or endless days of bench-jockeying it's impossible to really know what you're in for before you go.  Actually, the drop-out rates for grad students and thru hikers is roughly the same, about 20% for Life Sciencers (such as myself) and thru hikers between Springer and Neels Gap. 

Of course I had high hopes for graduate school.  I was going to FIGURE STUFF OUT.  I was going to be really good at science.  Turns out, it's less rewarding and exciting than that.

My days lately are an endless blur of impossibly tiny volumes (think 1,000x smaller than a drop) and impossibly tiny tubes.  I spend about 9 hours a day moving tiny drops into tiny tubes, ad nausaem.  I put the tiny tubes into tiny machines and wait a few hours before retrieving them, transferring tiny drops into other tiny machines to see if the magic cartoon strip of molecular genetics I have running through my head was correct, maybe.  See, that may or may not be interesting for general consumption.  But then, there are days when things work. When the results from the tiny machines is unequivocal.  At times like these, I forget the weeks and months and late nights of frustration and cramped thumbs.  

I guess the AT is probably kind of like that.  Judging from the time-lapse video I posted earlier, and from pretty much what everyone says, I think it would be safe to conclude that the AT can be monotonous.  The AT has can also be unpredictable and stressful:  BEAR!  LIGHTENING!  COLD!  But after the long climbs, or snow storms or bear encounters it is also beautiful. 


So, maybe graduate school isn't terribly exciting to write about, but you should see my daydreams...

Figure 2.  Doesn't this look better?  Near Gooch Gap Shelter

Today will be day two, landing us somewhere Gooch and Woods Hole shelters.  The weather in Suches today:  High of 65 low of 45 with 100% chance of thunder storms overnight. 

The Green Tunnel

Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.

This is a really cool/kind of creepy stop-motion video of the entire length of the Appalachian Trail.

From EEBlog tipper BUCKET.  Thanks!

Get Out!

There is evidence that the socialization of girls to stay clean and dress in clothes that restrict play may be dangerous.

Department of Scary Numbers

Vertical gain on the AT is equal to 16 ascents of Everest.  91 vertical miles.