The Month of May

So for the last one month I have been working my ass on thesis. It was the reason I stopped blogging for awhile, not even a single post. The load of the freakin' exhausting works tied me up to the level where I had to focus just like Jean Gray of X-Men when she was trying to use her Phoenix-psychic power to rescue Cyclops from Toad. But hard works seemed to run pretty well. All of my geochemistry analysis were done during the last month, leaving an advance interpretation with other data that I have gotten so far. This is the worst part. Understanding the behavior of two or more independent data will never be an easy thing. What would you expect to see the relationship between Warcraft III versus Diablo II ? I believe Warcraft III online is just player vs player whilst Diablo II is a completely separate world. You can't being your offline characters into online games and visa versa. And why on earth did I sum this up as Warcraft versus Diablo?? . *sigh*

Early week of May I made the biggest poster I have ever had in my life : 2 posters, each 7 feet x 3.5 feet. These super big size posters were made in conjunction with my participation in SPWLA. Yes, I was presenting posters at the Petrophysics' annual meeting. The posters conception was just fine, but the posters designing was truly bizarre. It took me not less than 2 weeks to finalize everything. How about poster printing? It's even worse. Both posters costed $ 215.33. OMG !! I could spend the money for 7x full tank gasoline of my Chevy car !! However there will always be rainbow after big storm : my posters got the 2nd place for best student poster, sandwiched by students from UT Austin (they really had strong Petrophysics group down there). YEAY. I was, of course, freakin' surprised and happy to accept the award. It felt so awesome to stand up in front of podium witnessed by tons of petrophysicist which I used to read their papers A LOT ! :)

I won the 2nd place - yeaa !

me posing together with the first winner (right), third winner (left), and Anthony Holmes (the President of Denver Well Log Society)

This Petrophysics meeting was held in Broadmoor Hotel, Colorado Springs, one of the most luxurious hotel in Colorado. I drove there by myself. The weather was chill, cloudy but not shimmery, rainy but not heavy. It took me 1 hr 10 minutes to get there, 14 minutes faster than what my GPS would have predicted. I stayed at the Motel 6, the cheapest motel in America. It cost like $30-35 / night in average (mine was $31 per night). The motel had remodeled the new edgy room interior. One thing I enjoyed the most about the motel was its location. It's very close to the Garden of the Gods. The name represents the reality. The outstanding geologic features of the park are the ancient sedimentary beds of red, blue, purple, and white sandstones, conglomerates, and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but have now been tilted vertically and faulted by the immense mountain building forces caused by the uplift of the Rocky Mt. Evidence of past ages; ancient seas, eroded remains of ancestral mountain ranges, alluvial fans, sandy beaches and great sand dune fields can be read in the rocks.

Super fancy Broadmoor Hotel

Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods

Since I am a huge nerd of traveling, visiting a place I never went before was just perfect. During my six days stay, I drove to many cool outdoor places. On the first day I arrived, I went to the Colorado Springs City Museum - a quite boring interesting museum which has quite unique building, reminded me to some museums in Europe. A day after the conference ended, I visited the Air Force Academy. The academy required a very extreme car / driver inspection - they took me almost 15 minutes with questions (some of them were nonsense and a bit racist), including car's physical investigation. However, once you have passed the screening, you will be welcomed to the 130 acres academy lot. It's superrrrr big and has magnificent background scenery (The Rockies). It took me 15 minutes driving to get to the visitor center - yes, it's super far. One of my favorite building of this academy was the Chadet Chapel, it's a chapel for Christian, Catholic, Jews, and even Buddha (wait, Buddhists pray in chapel ?). Next stop I went the Western Museum of Mining and Industry. I hate this museum. Actually it's pretty lame cool museum tho, but somehow I did not enjoy it much because its dusty air inside the building. Somehow I felt awkward. At this place I lost the left nosepad of my glasses. SHOOOTTT !! For the rest of the day I had to wear the glasses with only one nosepad, and it's sooooooooo painful as I got terrible headache once I got back to the motel :( . Before I went back to the motel, I visited the U.S Olympic Training Center in downtown CO Springs. OMG, it was the coolest thing I ever seen in Colorado. This training center building was built in the 90's. When I got there, there was Paralympic swimming competition. Paralympic is the Olympic games version for athletes with a physical disability compete; this includes athletes with mobility, amputations, blindness, and cerebral palsy. I putted my heart and bless to those Paralympic athletes - despite of their physical disability they did an amazing job. I witnessed a swimmer with only one leg and arm doing backstroke style (perfectly fine) just like normal swimmer. Unbelieveable ! I can't even do backstroke swim that good.

I forgot it's name, but it's like the Colorado Springs' local history museum or something

Chadet Chapel

The super old and freaky museum

The Olympic Flag

A day before I went back to Golden I visited Minatou Springs, a city close to Colorado springs which has plenty cool tourism attraction. I visited Pikes Peak, one of the front ranges in Colorado. With the height of 14110 feet (4300m), it is one of highest peak of Rocky Mountain. It cost $24 to go with the train that will take you to the Pikes Peak ! Although the weather was bad (too cloudy, a bit rainy), but the train made it to the top. After Pikes' Peak trip, I went to the Miramont's Castle, an enormous castle where a Catholic priest and his family used to live. This castle is somehow kinda dangerous. Every time I walked / stepped on the aisle, you could hear the floor squeaking. On the 4rd floor, there was a room filled with hundreds of freaky blonde hair dolls. It's not as freaky as Chucky, but imagine if you live in a small room with those dolls staring at you all the time ~ ew, I'd rather kill myself. After having myself bored with the castle, I drove to the Cave of The Wind. The name did not quiet explain the morphology itself. It's basically limestone caves created by dissolution of natural acid in the groundwater that seeps thru bedding planes, joints, faults, or whatever the permeable zone are. The experience of 1 hour exploring cave was amazing - but unfortunately it has few lights on the trail. Another semi-outdoor place that I went was the Manitou's Cliff Dwellings. It was basically an ancient Indian place-to-live which was built under (?) the Navajo sandstone formation. Really spectacular to think that they were able to scrape and string up the bedding into a place to live. Amazing.

the train that took me the Pikes' Peak

Pikes' Peak from different angle

Yeaaa we made it !

Miramont's Castle

Cave of The Wind

Cave of The Wind entrance building across from the canyon

Manitou's Cliff Dwellings

Overall, my 6 days trip to Colorado Spring was worth experience. I can't wait to write down my journey to Cheyenne, Wyoming by the end of this Month as I am going give a talk on AAPG Rocky Mt. Section - yayy, another trip ! :)