Day 137: December 29, 2007 Río Gallegos
Trip Start
Aug 15, 2007
1
139
202
Trip End
Mar 01, 2008
Rio Gallegos,
Argentina
Saturday, December 29, 2007
The loud noise next door and people on the street outside our window woke me up a few times during the night. Even so, I got up early and took a shower. After picking up food for lunch, we drove out to Pescazaike. At first, the drill wouldn't start but with a little patience and gentle coaxing, I finally got it going. We practiced for a little while on a boulder and then Will successfully drilled his first site at the base of the section. The rock was really muddy and the cores were short but useable.
I walked back to the car to get my notebook as Will and Megan moved to the next site. Will struck the cliff with a hammer a couple of times. A rock from a few meters above fell and hit Megan squarely on the head. Then, a large rock fell out and rolled between the two of them. Megan lay down on the ground. She had a large knot on her head and was sore but the skin was not broken. Although she claimed to be fine, we put her in the car for observation. We returned to the outcrop, 10 m away, and tried to drill it but it crumbled away. Against my better judgment, I resorted to the old way of sampling-with a rasp. I cringed at the though of doing things this way; I haven't used a rasp since 1991. I did my entire dissertation sampling this way and hated every minute of it. Not only does it take longer in the field but it requires standing in front of a grinding wheel, monotonously pushing the sample into the grinder to form it into a cube so that it will fit in the analytical equipment.
When we finished the site, we checked on Megan. She had a sore head and was seeing some fuzzy spots. I called it a day and we drove back to the hotel. I gave her some aspirin and we ate lunch in the room. She felt much better within an hour and the fuzzy spots were gone.
Apparently, I didn't sleep as well as I thought I had because I laid down on my bed and took a two-hour nap in the late afternoon. When I awoke, Megan was still doing fine but had a good bruise on her head. For dinner, she went to the pizzeria next door and got a pizza which she and I shared while Will grazed off the remains of lunch. After dinner, I used Megan's Wi-Fi to upload several days of blog entries. One of these days, I'll upload the fotos. We really want to finish our sampling tomorrow so that we can return the car.
