Tuff Cookie over at Magma Cum Laude has an excellent post ‘Everything I need to know in life, I learned on geo field trips’.
Here are a few of the things I have learnt from fieldwork:
When working on the coast, the pub is always uphill.
You can fix a split radiator hose with two jubilee clips and the hollow shaft of a squeegee. You can also braid a tow-rope form the steel reinforcing from a burnt car tyre.
The time you don’t take much water with you into the desert is the time you get the 4×4 stuck.
Taking food supplies to expensive countries is fine but taking tinned Italian tomatoes back to Italy is futile.
The short-cut back from the pub has brambles and thorn bushes.
You can demonstrate the principle if isostasy with the head of a pint of Guinness but you will need several pints to properly test this theory and you will also need your compass-clinometer to prove that the bar counter is not sloping.
You can learn to use an ice axe first go.
Shredding the roof of your mouth with crusty bread and your forefinger opening beer bottles are work-related injuries.
Never leave your grey map case in a boulder field whilst you go off to take a few structural readings, especially when you have weighted it down with a large rock to stop it blowing away.
Essential field equipment comprises a rock hammer, hand lens, compass-clinometer, sharp knife, corkscrew and bottle opener.
You can never spend too much on field gear.
A cooking-group of eight females will make nine different meals to cope with the carnivore, vegetarian, vegan, pescetarian, fructairian, ovo-vegetarian, lacto-vegetarian, ovo-lacto-vegetarian and I-don’t-like-chickenitarian. A cooking-group of twenty lads are quite happy with a large chilli.
When underground, the top of your hard hat is two inches above the top of your head.
“Unsuitable for coaches” does not mean “prohibited to coaches”.
Plunge pools in mountain streams are f___ing cold.
You can have too much tomatoes, feta cheese and olives.
Man can survive on a diet of chorizo, pyrenean cheese and rioja.
Geology fieldwork has also taught me how to order a beer in seventeen different languages.
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