Usually the cold and snow don't bother me, but I have a couple of jobs waiting to be done that are on navigation lock walls, and it can be dangerous to be out there with ice and also difficult to find the points.
So i decided to head south, way south, for a week. Chile. Lived there three different times in the 60's and 70's, this is my tenth trip there to visit. Good food, good wine, good friends. Nothing like sitting on a beach watching the sunset with a pisco sour. Only one earthquake that i could feel (woke me up with a sharp jolt). I was sleeping in a cabin right on the beach, so of course the risk of tsunami occurred to me. But this was a typical small earthquake they get all the time. In 1965 I was injured in a large quake there, had to get stitches in my face and lip. That was a 7.4, but I got hurt in an aftershock at night.
Came back and the weather is the same crappy stuff I left. The paper today said we had 7 days (1/4 of the days) in february that had lows below 0F. Second coldest february in history here. And the snow.....................seems like it is never going away. Snowing today, haven't been able to fly for a while either.
Aftershock (movie)
Did a search on Netflix for movies about Chile and watched Aftershock this afternoon. Filmed in many places I have been, but pretty gory.
I did some work in Chile shortly a couple years after Pinochet left power. It was an intergovernmental project where we worked closely with Chilean government folks. Unfortunately budget considerations and the like kept us mostly in Santiago with forays to the mountains and IGS site SANT. We even drove by the "new" US Embassy which is a massive fortress. Hardly inviting.
Everyone was friendly. I did enjoy the Pisco. Would consider returning but to the coast this time not Santiago.
I remember being surprised that Chile was one time zone earlier than Eastern time.
Glad you enjoy your travels. As I age the discomfort and inconvenience of modern air travel grates enough to inhibit my wanderlust.
This is the winter that feels like it will never end. Third coldest February on record up my way, and another few inches of snow today. You know its been a long winter when that "rare" 25deg day feels warm! Glad to hear you had a good trip, and it was nice to meet you at the PSLS conference.
Actually, they are one time zone different than eastern time but almost always either the same time as US eastern (1/2 the year) or two hours different (1/2 the year), as they are now. This is because when we are on DST, they are not, and vice versa. So one of us is always offset from standard time. I am not sure when they change, so there may be a few weeks or so when they are actually only one hour offset from eastern time.
I headed from the airport straight to the coast, and never made it to Santiago this trip. Last time I was there, December 2012, I went white water rafting just outside of Santiago. They have excellent rafting further south, but I have not yet done that.
I lived there in 1975 and 1978, both times they had a midnight curfew (1 AM on weekends) for EVERYONE. I got beat up and arrested once when they caught me out after the curfew. Many times I had to sneak home (no buses, no taxis, no cars out after curfew) after being out late.
One interesting thing is that in most latin american countries the police are corrupt and can be easily bribed for minor traffic infractions. Not in Chile. And they have extremely tough DUI laws now...even one drink can cause you to be arrested. And this from a country with great wine!
Last year in Kuala Lumpur I met a couple of officers (a colonel, a major, and a captain) from the Instituto Geografico Militar who were at FIG to give a presentation about their new reference frame.
Of course being so long and skinny, the entire country is in a seismic zone that is constantly changing. Similar to our west coast, but it is actually the whole country. The last big earthquake (2/27/2010) had horizontal displacements ranging up to 5 meters. That will certainly mess up your reference system. Here are the displacements around the area of the 2010 earthquake:
That may be a little bit hard to read, but the small reference arrow in the horizontal (left) graph is 1 m. The reference arrow in the vertical graph is 20 cm. So you can see that some areas had H displacement of 5 meters and vertical displacements of 1.75 m.
They are still recovering from that quake. The interesting is that the building that collapsed were mostly newer buildings, the older buildings mainly survived. That implies that builders are not following the codes, or are using cheaper methods and materials.
Thanks for the link. An interesting article though I am more interested in their results. Maybe they will be posted after the next FIG meeting.
BTW, the project I mentioned was with a civilian agency (their version of the FAA). On of my Chilean colleagues spent the better part of a day trying to get some control information from the IGM. The head of their FAA was a colonel if I remember correctly. There was a Doppler station on the airport but DMA was not much more accommodating.
While I acknowledge the preeminence of the German geodetic institutions, I have been surprised at the lack of a strong US role in SIRGAS and efforts like that described. The curious mangling of the name of the Ohio State University and use of geodesic rather than geodetic I imagine are translation issues. I guess the disbanding of the InterAmerican Geodetic Survey(?) (and the U.S. role in some unsavory activities) might have played a role. I am forwarding your link to a friend who worked with them.
I wonder how many Americans know that Sept 11th is also the date of the Pinochet coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Allende.
In closing, I think a lot of Americans would benefit from living or working overseas. While many folks seem to only find faults with the way others do things, meeting people with different backgrounds and ways of looking at the world might open their minds.
first earthquakes and now erupting volcanoes
Notice this piece: http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-villarica-volcano-erupts-chile-20150303-story.html
first earthquakes and now erupting volcanoes
My buddy down there is a professional photographer, and he just got back from the south (he is starting a business to take amateur photographer on trips to Torres del Paine), and he was showing me pictures he took-several were of this particular volcano. Earthquakes, 90 active volcanoes, tsunamis - Chile can be a dangerous place. But still a great place to visit.
first earthquakes and now erupting volcanoes
At FIG I had an interesting conversation with the author of the paper, and we had a bit of a disagreement. He said they were not using ANY of the old triangulation/trilateration/traverse data (a lot of it done by IAGS). My thoughts were that if they would occupy some of the old triangulation stations with GPS then that data could be used to determine crustal movements over a much longer period than just since they established the new stations (relatively recent). That would give a much longer time series to predict velocities and directions.
Of course I have the same disagreement (difference of opinion) with NGS with regards to adjusting our old conventional networks on NSRS2007 and later 2011. The big advantage we have is that all of that data has already been keyed in and exists in a digital format. I realize it is not a trivial undertaking to add so many observations to an already large adjustment, but it could be done on a state level as it was done in the 199x adjustments. I think many at NGS take the view that no one ever uses any of the old stations, but there are countless existing surveys tied to those stations.
Heck I got Iris and Azaleas blooming and we are getting freezing rain tonight and mild freeze Thursday night. My Easter lilies are about to bloom any day too.
I say let winter end.
