Category Archives: travel

A Countertop of Kilkenny Marble

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Cari The Geologist And Certified U2 Freak is sure to love this post.

Volcanoclast hosts this month’s Accretionary Wedge on countertop geology.

Have you seen a great countertop out there?  Sure, everyone says it’s “granite”, but you know better.  Take a picture, post it on your own blog or send it to me and I’ll post it for you.  Do you think you know what it is or how it was formed?

I was all set to write about the rapakivi granite (that’s “Baltic brown” to you realtors out there, who refer to everything as granite or marble) in my kitchen when, hark, from the sky down came a reminder of a really cool countertop of yesteryear. Black marble with deformed fossils. Or more precisely, a lightly-toasted, black, fossiliferous, Irish limestone in the shape of a large octagon that belongs to U2.

Marble Bar At The Octagon

Black "marble" of Kilkenny

Some science channel or the other provides constant background noise in my house (with signal being occasional exclamations such as “That in NO WAY could have caused the K-T extinction,” “When will these TV earthquake scientists balls up and start talking about strain instead of stress?”, “That 3D dinosaur has more feathers than our last Thanksgiving turkey” and “Really, did that American geologist just say MOGMA?!” There’s also the gratuitous repetition of “bass-solt” after a Britisher says the word “basalt.” Nope, never really left fifth grade.) For the last few days, a Science channel commercial on heavy rotation has been the trailer for U2′s new documentary From The Sky Down. The U2 fans are going to be on me like a pack of rabid … U2 fans for this, but one can only take so much Bono cooing about the transition from playing notes to finding The Great Pumpkin or something while creating Achtung Baby. It’s like those who say they found god in geology or New Orleans; a lot of times life simply boils down to being really good at something and enjoying doing it. For the good times and cash money.

The Octagon Bar, Dublin

The roof over the bar (photo by bobsrocket on Flickr CC-BY-NC-SA)

Anyway, Accretionary Wedge. Countertops. U2 commercial. Of course! The Kilkenny marble countertop of Dublin’s Octagon Bar in the Clarence Hotel owned by Bono and The Edge. I’ve been in there twice, but it wasn’t until the second time, when the place was a lot less crowded, that I nodded off looked down, noticed the fossils, especially the sheared brachiopod (see above – bottom right), and realized that I was looking at the beginning stages of a marble with preserved fossil fragments. The bartender is usually asked when Bono’s coming in or if she’s waited on The Edge so was really surprised when she caught me scrutinizing the bar and asking her if she knew its source. That it’s Irish is all she knew which sealed it – Lower Carboniferous “marble” from County Kilkenny in the southeast of Ireland. Not to be confused with a Kilkenny stout, which I am pretty sure can be had at the Octagon Bar while listening to The Joshua Tree, which in my opinion was the best U2 album ever.

Is there anything you cannot do, Ireland?

Further reading: Kilkenny Geology

Wednesday Geology Picture: Eye-Of-Sauron Basalt In Fire Coral

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One dreary Wisconsin day right before Christmas, D and I drove down a grey country road towards Manitowoc. We stepped out of the car for a minute and, to our chagrin, the car kept going without us. Suddenly, stop lights appeared out of nowhere and we followed the vehicle as it continued forward through these newly-lighted intersections narrowly avoiding collisions with giant pickup trucks and snow plows. Shortly before we caught up, huffing and panting, the car had veered off into a field and crashed into a barn, its engine block having been spit out onto an unsuspecting and now very bludgeoned-to-death cow. Distant screams and wails indicated that other parts of the car had landed in a farmer’s home and caused further death and dismemberment. Oh no, what had I done now? A surge of pain and fear went through me and the ghost of this rock appeared before … I woke up.

It’s gorgeous, isn’t it? A trifecta of geology. Basalt, fossil coral and iron staining of the fossil. Snorkeling off the Kona coast, D and I saw thousands upon thousands of live Milleporidae (fire coral) and Faviidae (brain coral) growing on basalt boulders washed out to sea. Often, I’d come up to clean my mask, put it back on and then half-submerge it to visually straddle two worlds – Planet Of The Apes above and The Life Aquatic below the water line of the Hawaiian islands. Next time, I will have a waterproof camera on me.

I found this piece of that underwater world on a Kona beach and decided to keep it. John G asked if I knew what I was doing; did I really want to incur the wrath of Pele by taking a piece of her off the Big Island? When I brought the rock back to Waikiki, John’s assistant freaked out as well and said I was welcome to mail it back to her if my luck started to sour. Some of you may have heard of the belief that taking rocks off the Hawaiian islands results in bad luck. It’s big on the islands, having taken deep root even in otherwise rational people. Scientists don’t believe in any of that pish-posh hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo, or at least we ought not to. And, moreover, I’m a geologist, one who understands and appreciates Pele and her rocks, and didn’t take it from a national park, so I get a pass.

Then why the sinking feeling inside each time I consider this sample? And that dream! If you break it apart logically, I was involved in a really scary car wreck almost exactly four years ago to the day, D and I are driving up to Wisconsin for Christmas, we are going to be forced to make a hard decision soon and, for Pete’s Pele’s sake, I have bags of Hawaiian beach sand that didn’t bother the Hawaiians and don’t don chains of Christmas past and future and haunt me like this damned rock. Pele is possessive of her rocks, but not their constituent minerals? What kind of dumbass logic is that? And yet, almost every single day since we have returned from Hawaii, something has gone south to the point that yesterday afternoon, I had to sit down and declare to the universe, “OH COME ON.”

To top it all off, the thing is in the shape of an eye. Just staring at me. Like from on top of Mordor. With Sauron, laughing at me as I recount my dream of cow murder. “You killed Milky. Milky, nooooooo! Hahahaha*snort*hahaa!” (Actually, that’s what D says to me each time I bring it up.)

Respect Pele and send it back? Or put on my big girl socks and keep it? Let me know.

(I’m probably going to mail it back to John as an experiment. If things continue to flounder after I’ve repatriated the offender, then it’s just me and life being, you know, life.)

Tuesday Geology Picture: Crystalline Growths On Aa

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GeoEvelyn has declared this Geology-Picture-A-Day Week and I thought I’d join in. Mostly since I need a couple of things identified.

Found this chunk of aa (rubbly basalt) in the roof of a collapsed lava tube right next door to where we stayed on the Big Island of Hawaii. What are the growths/precipitates on the aa surface? They look like tiny little mushrooms but are actually crystalline. American nickel for scale.

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A Trip To Kilauea or The Volcanic Smog Gets In Your Eyes

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In National Geographic’s Finding The Next Earth, an astronomer enters the Gemini Observatory at Mauna Kea and begins to weep tears of joy on seeing a brand new space telescope. There’s no crying in science, but I get it. The stuff we see and achieve is often too damned beautiful not to be overwhelmed with emotion. It’s the same way I felt when I first laid eyes on the Halema’uma’u summit crater inside the Kilauea caldera on the big island of Hawaii a few weeks ago. It’s all black rock and toxic quantities of sulfur dioxide to you, but for us geologists who love our planet, alighting upon one of the world’s most famous active volcanoes is a life goal and akin to a religious experience. New crust forms right beneath our feet, the material having traveled miles up from the mantle, pushing, transforming, being transformed, rising into the atmosphere and, in the process, causing goosebumps of scientific elation. There is nothing more right and perfect than this moment.

Until your husband comes along and says, “Oh geez, are you crying?!”

Halema’uma’u crater inside the Kilauea calderaOur day started on the southern flanks of Mauna Loa with a drive from Oceanview to Southpoint or Ka Lae, the southermost point in the 50 United States, situated at 18.91°N 155.68°W. Well below the Tropic of Cancer, but a stark reminder that it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the southern latitudes which needs correcting soon.

DSC02983 Where Mauna Loa Meets The SeaWe then drove past many large windmills, Hawaiian grass-fed beef cattle and zebras (don’t ask) towards Hilo. After puttering around the town of Volcano (and noticing the Google Streetview car parked at a pub there) we made our way over to the national park. The rest of this post describes the stops we made on Kilauea along with pictures, some pithy remarks and tips should you choose to visit there some time.

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Vignettes From The Volcanoes

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Back from Hawaii. Some panoramas of various places we visited for your viewing pleasure (please click on each picture to embiggenate). More complete descriptions and tales of hilarity after emergence from turkey coma.

Diamondhead Crater from the Waikiki Banyan
Northshore/Haleiwa, O’ahu
Remains of the Pu’u O Mahiuka Heiau or the Pu’u O Mahiuka temple in northern O’ahu
Mokuleia Beach Park, Northshore O’ahu
Haleiwa Beach right before the start of the Triple Crown of surfing
Diamondhead Beach Trail, O’ahu
Southpoint, Hawaii: The southernmost point in the 50 United States
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: Halema’uma’u crater inside the Kilauea caldera
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: Chain of Craters Road cuts across lava flows from the 1970s
Kailua Kona from the bow of the New Horizon
Pearl Harbor
The USS Missouri as seen from the USS Arizona memorial

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Light posting ahead. D and I will be on vacation / proper-honeymoon-after-five-years for the next couple of weeks. Aloha!

Now Showing At Homeland Insecurity Theater

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Remember when TSA had this program and then cancelled it? Yeah, they’re resurrecting it. I would say Hallelujah but who knows whether it will make it out of the (second) trial?

Pilot Starts at Select Airports to Further Enhance Security

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) [on October 4th, 2011] announced that it began testing a limited, voluntary passenger pre-screening initiative with a small known traveler population at four U.S. airports.

… During this pilot, TSA will use pre-screening capabilities to make intelligence-based risk assessments on passengers who voluntarily participate in the TSA PreCheck program and are flying domestically from one of the four pilot sites: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County, Dallas/Fort Worth International and Miami International airports. Eligible participants include certain frequent flyers from American Airlines and Delta Air Lines as well as members of the Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP’s) Trusted Traveler programs, including Global Entry, SENTRI, and NEXUS, who are U.S. citizens and are flying on participating airlines. If successful, TSA plans to expand the pilot to include additional airlines, as well as other airports that participate in CBP’s Global Entry program, once operationally ready.

As a Global Entry customer, I cannot say enough good things about how efficiently the program gets you into the country after international trips. No standing in an hour-long line for a CBP/INS agent to stamp you through – just scan your passport, have your fingerprints and picture taken and off you go. It saved me from missing a crucial, cross-country connecting flight once.

Once you get to the domestic terminal, however, the system falls apart. All that Trusted Traveler stuff is out the window and, if you opt out of the millimeter-wave scanner as I often do, you are ripe for non-standard groping and explosive checks by a domestic TSA agent. The program that lets you into your own country doesn’t work in your country. The Department of Homeland Security was formed to reduce departmental redundancy and waste, merge databases and increase cross-organizational cooperation and overall efficiency. So, why in the name of “eliminating government waste” don’t CBP and TSA processes talk to one another? And why am I treated like a pariah in my own country, and especially after I went through the pains and paid to be pre-approved as a low-risk traveler?

All of this went through my mind in Hobby airport last week when, for the very first time in all my years of flying and patdowns, my nether region was rather unprofessionally and vigorously probed and patted down by a burly, female TSA agent before I got on a routine flight to Dallas. (Which incidentally was grounded and cancelled due to inclement weather in the north – figures.)

But, what really gets me comes from this last sentence in Mominem’s latest post on this same topic: “I don’t expect any airline to be able to block anyone from using government services we all pay for.” Mominem is a preferred AirTran customer and he was kept from the PreCheck line by a Delta gate agent who gave access to that line to preferred Delta customers. Leaving aside for a minute the defeat of purpose in allowing airline gate agents to have anything to do with security pre-screening, that entire barrier between the passenger and the flight gate was made possible by the taxpayer. Security priority and better treatment given to those who have flown more miles with a private airline and/or have had to pay extra to become a trusted traveler seems cross purposes when the intent and follow-through should be standard, courteous and timely service for all, regardless of race, age, gender, number of frequent flyer miles. Anything less makes me wonder how seriously our government-security complex takes this whole business.

My question is quickly answered when O’Hare TSA pulls aside a passenger for wearing this Pardon My Hindi tshirt.

A Hindu Iyengar uncle in hipster glasses and fedora? Too suspicious, yaar!

Québec City Was Founded On A High Cape Of Utica Shale

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Map of French Québec City's fortifications on bedrock relief (North is conveniently to the bottom right)

Québec City sits between the Laurentian highlands of the southeastern Grenville Province of the Canadian Shield and the Appalachian Mountains that were formed during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies. Bedrock here is the Upper Ordovician Utica shale that “overlies the predominantly shallow marine carbonate facies of the Cambrian-Ordovician St. Lawrence Platform” (or St. Lawrence lowlands).The adjacent St. Lawrence River, which I gather formed post-Pleistocene glaciation by cutting into the relatively less-resistant sedimentary rocks sandwiched between the Laurentians and the Appalachians, is part of the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence Seaway system.

As a sign by one of the many higher-up river outlooks explains, the land beneath Quebec City was not chosen by the French because of the overwhelming tectonics over an equally stupefying period of time that created it but purely for defense strategic reasons. To each their own time scale.

In a time-traveling nutshell: Canadian Shield forms the core of the North American continent –> happy passive margin forms with the buildup of a carbonate platform and the transgression of the sea –> BAM BAM Taconic and Acadian continental collision events creating the Appalachian mountains –> some quiet time as the Atlantic Ocean forms to the east –> glaciation from the north –> glacial retreat –> uplifted Québec City and associated river –> some French dude named Samuel de Champlain surveys the Great Lakes – St. Lawrence area, claims the high cape of Québec City and territory all the way from north of Minnesota down to and including Louisiana for New France in 1608 and his people put up a bunch of ramparts against, well, everyone –> the Brits take over in 1763 –> Canada forms in 1868 and tells everyone to sod off in exchange for putting limey monarchs on its currency –> Canadian geologists find economic natural gas in the Utica shale. (Someone call They Might Be Giants and set this to music.)

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