Week 2 Summary

Time it takes to bike to work: 30 minutes with a tailwind, 55 minutes with a headwind
Number of falls off of bike: 1.5
Number of bruises resulting from falls off bike: 5

Kilos of chocolate consumed: 1.4 (uh oh)
Cups of tea consumed: 0
Caffeine in consumed chocolate in cups-of-tea-equivalent: 25

Strongest earthquake: 4.6, with ~10-second duration
Response to strongest earthquake: "Hmm... I wonder if this will get stronger.  Should I get out of bed?"


Hours spent coding a statistical model in R: 5
Hours it would have taken in MatLab: 1.5
Motivation to keep using R (scale of 1-10): -1e12

The Squeeze Theorem

If you haven't heard me talk about the navigational applications of the Squeeze Theorem before, you've been missing out.  (Hey watch it, I can see your eye-rolls!)

For those of you who didn't take, or don't remember, first-year calculus, the Squeeze Theorem is a mathematical nicety that helps you if, say, you need to know what value a function (a particular type of equation) will have as a variable on which it depends goes to infinity (i.e., as you take the limit).  If you're lucky, you don't need the Squeeze Theorem, and you can calculate the limit directly.  But if you can't perform that calculation, you might be in luck if you know that your function is bounded (i.e., always bigger than one thing, and smaller than another thing) by two other functions that go to the same limit.  That is to say, your function of interest gets "squeezed" to its limit by the bounding functions.  Ta-da!

All right, that whole paragraph was utterly useless (and probably not mathematically accurate).  But the Squeeze Theorem, that most glorious concept, is not!  Because, you see, the Squeeze Theorem is vitally important to everyday life -- specifically, to finding your way around in strange places.

Consider the following:

• You are Holly.
• You want chocolate.
• Chocolate occurs in discrete patches.  For example, in Ghirardelli Square, at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula.
• Therefore, if you head generally North while in the city (creating your own wandering function as you do), and do not swim across any bays or oceans (your bounding functions), you shall reach chocolate.

I've used the Squeeze Theorem to find chocolate, and also to burn it off (it worked remarkably well during long marathon-training runs in Boston, which, like any decent city, has a river to aid in bounded navigation).  And my friend Adam has reported that it works rather nicely in Minnesota, where the land is so flat that you can see your boundaries for miles (never mind that those boundaries happen to be ten miles apart).

And, wonder of all wonders, it turns out that Canterbury plans are the perfect for some Squeezing.  Allow me to present photographic evidence:

Imagine you are biking along a perfectly anonymous road.  You are surrounded by cropland, and it's very flat (i.e., the plains of Canterbury).

Perfectly Anonymous Road

 You might think you are lost.  But no!  Simply look left, then right!

To your left, some power lines (which are a useful North-South
bound once you get the hang of the place), but more importantly,
the Southern Alps!

To your right, the Canterbury hills!

Now securely bounded, you know you are traveling Southward!  Don't ask me how far apart the hills and the mountains are... that's why I've memorized road names. :)

Above Water

When I left California, it was in the midst of the driest winter in twenty years -- so dry that when my friend Luke and I went to Yosemite last December, every single road was open.  (On my previous trip there, Dad and I arrived in May to find most of the roads still closed.)

I wrote about the state of Californian affairs in my weekly Seeing Green column (water has, so far, been making an annual appearance, as it also graced my first-ever piece for the Stanford Daily), and then hopped on a plane to New Zealand, where I've been enjoying plenty of clouds and the occasional bout of precipitation.

Though I greet any kind of overcast weather with unabated delight (ever since a summer in Juneau, I've preferred clouds to sunshine), I was particularly ecstatic to go for a run in the rain during my first week in Christchurch because, as my landlords had just informed me, this is the dry season here in New Zealand.  Although the place seems unbelievably wet compared to California, at this time of year, water restrictions are tightened.  This is especially true in the wake of infrastructure-damaging earthquakes, which have compromised water delivery in the metropolitan area.

I've never been the best at conserving water -- I don't drink very much of it, but I sure do take long showers.  I'm trying to get better, though, especially after experience with a shower timer in Death Valley and military-style showers shipboard a few years ago.

To my great delight, I also received the following set of great tips from a Seeing Green reader:

1. Collect rainwater in buckets for outdoor use.  My landlords do this!  But note that such things are not permitted in all areas.  For example, Colorado residents need permits to capture their own runoff, because the legal system there believes that rainfall belongs to the downstream recipient.
2. Flush toilets with shower water.  (Did you know that if you pour a bucket of water rapidly into a toilet, it will flush?  This is a great trick Dad told me about when I was little, just in case...)
3. Xeriscape (i.e., plant drought-tolerant ornamentals; landscape to eliminate the need for supplementary water).  Very important in dry places like California.  Plus, the best plant choices tend to be natives.
4. Capture the first, cold wash of shower water in a bucket.  This is my absolute personal favorite.  I have to confess, even with the shower timer, I never flip the hourglass until the water is tolerably warm.  Now, I have a way to partially alleviate my guilt!

Two-Wheeling Around Town

There's something you should know about me: I never stand on my bike pedals.  It's not that I can't: when I'm going at a reasonable clip, I've practiced getting out of my seat to pump the bicycle.  And when I'm crossing an intersection, I can manage a few feeble turnovers to appease the waiting cars.  But I always sit securely back in my seat just as soon as I can.

My inability to pump a bike has led to some entertaining attempts at hill climbing in California, and promises to lead to some interesting experiences here in New Zealand.

Trusty, but thus-far nameless, beautiful steel-frame
I've been enjoying.  Admittedly, needs a racier seat.

How to Get Raccoon-Eyes in Two Hours

I was feeling a bit down after my tour of post-quake Christchurch last Saturday (and after spending $40 -- $40!!!! -- on a pair of hiking socks), so I hopped on a bus out to the coast.  After living for a year literally on the water in Woods Hole, I find nothing so soul-restoring as the ocean.

Perhaps the easiest beach to access by public transportation from the heart of Christchurch (read as: The only beach Holly has yet accessed by public transportation from the heart of Christchurch; any tips Liz?) is out at New Brighton. 

Week 1 Summary

Time it takes to bike to work: 50 minutes
Kilos of chocolate purchased: 2.4 (sale this week!)
Kilos of chocolate consumed: 0.3 (I've been good, I guess!)
Number of earthquakes Holly felt: 4*
Number of earthquakes everyone else felt: 36
Length of first run in the rain in what feels like ten years: 15 minutes
Cups of tea consumed: 3 (all on first day of work)

*I thought I felt 7 yesterday but there were only 3... Overcompensating?

Oh, the Mondays

Some of you (Hal!) may have noticed one stray post claiming to be from the future (a.k.a. 2013) constantly hovering on the top of my blog.  It's not actually from the future -- it's just pretending to be, so that there's a constant introduction to the site for new visitors.

Now for something from the present:  It's Monday here in New Zealand, so while the rest of you have been preparing to watch epic football* games, or going looking for amphibians, or sleeping late, I've loaded up a backpack, hopped on a loaner bicycle, and pedaled 14km (about 8.7 miles) into work to start my day.

Inspired by my Stanford labmate Rachel, and my very dear friend and former roommate Li Ling, I've decided that real scientists bike at least 5 miles to work every day.  (Actually, this new method of transport was really inspired by a scheduling conflict with my landlord, Hugh, with whom I usually carpool in to work at Landcare Research.)

It's quite the pleasant ride -- when you're not worried about getting lost, that is!  I can see myself getting quite accustomed to it over the next few days -- hopefully so accustomed that I remember to stop for pictures to show you all!  All in all, it's just part of the transformation of Holly, from soft-and-lazy desk worker to hard-core field biologist!  (Yeah, we'll see how long this lasts... probably until the first time I encounter a steep slope or a wasp's nest in the field, and run away screaming.)


*A note on sports:  Here in New Zealand, the big ones are cricket and rugby.  My landlords (Hugh and Robyn) are tremendous sports fans, and have been slowly teaching me the rules of cricket.  When rugby season starts next month, I'm sure I'll learn all about that, too!

As most of us know, there's general confusion between Americans and the rest of the world about what "football" means.  I've learned to specify "American football" in most cases, but here in NZ, it's called "gridiron."  All right, that's well and good.  So does "football" mean soccer?  Nope!  Here's the jargon, as best I can map it:

Gridiron -- American Football
Soccer -- Plain old black-and-white ball soccer (but the uncool term for it)
Football -- Used to mean rugby, but slowly coming to mean soccer.  Except that there's some complication Hugh was trying to explain to me about several different kinds of football in Australia and.... oh well.