From left to right: standing: Miro, Steven (modeling teacher), Richard (principal teacher), Susi, Dick, Chrissy, Karl, Kathryn, Tom, Dolly, Kevin (GIS teacher), Holly, Klaas; kneeling: Andres, Ana Paula, Ashley, Jessica.
Especially the last picture shows how hard it will be to leave this place. Next to it, there was also an outdoor ping-pong table where I spent a couple of great hours 
Tomorrow evening, I start the whole journey back to “Europe” again!
I know, I should never have quit updating my blog… I know, I should have written about my travels to Sweden and the Bay of Biskay, accompanied by many cool pictures. I know, I should have kept on giving my opinion on some remarkable news facts and news about my personal life, and so on and so on. But I didn’t, and for the sake of argument let’s say that I didn’t just because of lack of time. Nothing actually changed since, I still haven’t got the time, but I’m currently in a position where I just HAVE to write again Too many cool things are happening, and too many people want to know. So here goes.
Science is slow. It’s been 9 months since I first said on my blog that we were breeding on an idea to get geography into phylogeny, in other words to model the evolution of niches of certain seaweeds, in other words to calculate where certain algae can grow and where they have done so in the past and where species have evolved (in other words, where the diversity hotspots were). Interesting? I have to admit this is quite fundamental research, but in terms of future application this insight in previous speciation events may help us understand where diversification hotspots may be located in the light of climate change, and how significant they would be. Anyway, I’m not about to tell about all the science here.
9 months is exactly the time for an embryo to grow out and to come into the world as a viable baby. It’s exactly the same with our idea. Preliminary thinking and work has been done, and now we’re actually working on it. Starting with taking a course series, as I am familiar with the geographic techniques involved in it but not with the modelling process as a whole. So I googled “ecological niche modelling training course” and ended up with a course in Portal, Arizona, of all places. To cut a long story, I got accepted after writing a motivation (only 15 people were accepted worldwide!), and booked my tickets and a rental car. The irony is that only a week after, a new ecological niche modelling course in Poland was announced Anyway, Arizona was a lot more appealing to me (my first time to the US, Grand Canyon State!) and anyway the Arizona contents were slightly more useful to me.
I must admit that, although I was looking forward to being here, I hated the trip itself in advance. Righteously so. When I came to the airport, I was informed that my flight to Chicago had 2,5 hours delay, which was kind of problematic because I would miss my connection to Tucson. I was rebooked onto the next connection, but that meant 5,5 hours delay from the beginning, with a night-time 3 hours drive to the research station still to come! Honestly, when I heard the staff at the check-in desk discuss on what flight they could get me, I was hoping for a free upgrade to business of first Alace, that kind fortune is only meant for very few among us. Another misfortune was my place on the airplane. Right in the middle seat all the way to Chicago… No pictures of beautiful Greenland, Canada or the Chicago skyline at all, only a glimpse over the shoulder of a few rather obese American people. Same story for the connection to Tucson, where I was unable to photograph the most beautiful isolated yet violent heat thunderstorm over the desert by nighttime (seen from a safe distance). Anyway, it was good to finally arrive at Tucson. I finally met Andres from Australia and Susi from Denmark, who I previously only knew from e-mail. The easy and funny e-mail contact I had with them was completely representative of how they were in real: we immediately felt tuned. Arranging the rental car took a long administration car, but the midsize car turned out to be a huge hatchback Pontiac with cruise-control, so no complains from my part After a midnight visit to the supermarket, we went of all the way through the dark, based on the route description provided by the research station. Very challenging and captivating, I can tell you So we pitched our tent on a campground in the Chiricahua mountains around the research station at 3.30 a.m., at about 2°C. By the time that was done, we had a little breakfast and we chased a skunk a little to get some pictures (hoping it wouldn’t begin… stinking), it was 5 a.m. and we went to sleep, after a 32 hour long day. We had 4 hours of sleep Not that someone woke us up, the curiosity about the environments did. I’ve never had such an experience. Going to sleep in a completely unknown landscape, and then being completely surprised when you wake up and open the tent! Dramatic rock formations, colourful and unknown birds, ground squirrels, dear, cristal blue skies, 20 degrees… we ignored our jetlag broke up the tents and had breakfast again, and began a hike to the top of Silver Peak mountain, indicated as “4,5 miles”. And about a 1000m up… As you can guess, we had to give up about a kilometre from the top, after 3 hours of hiking… We were a bit frustrated, but we didn’t want to take any risk getting trapped in the dark. And anyway we were getting exhausted. But the views we had seen by then, the change in vegetation from Cactuses and flowering Agaves to oak and pine forest, the bear and mountain lion faeces (I know, I know, but one must be pleased with small things), and the sighting of a wild cat made us feel that we’d seen it all anyway. I took 1 GB of pictures and movies in 6 hours time! I am truly deeply sorry not to show any pictures yet, but anyway now that the courses are busy, we don’t have time to explore the surroundings anymore, so no that I’ve spent the time to tell what happened since Saturday, I’ll take time tomorrow to post the according pictures!
So yesterday night we arrived at the research station. People declared us officially fools after hearing about our slightly twisted travel schedule, but it was definitely worth it. But is good fun at the course at well. Americans are, although barbaric when it comes to food, definitely very social. The computer room provides completely silent dual core desktops with DVD writer and all desirable software and 19” screen for everyone, including open web access and the possibility to plug in laptops. It surely looks like space flight control centre: everyone sitting at a giant desktop flatscreen with a laptop aside, creating colourful distribution maps on every screen. The main teacher is maybe five years older than I am, with an unbelievable publication record, yet a great sense to make difficult models crystal clear to everyone. And he’s British, which is a great relief among all the Texas and NY-style American accents
I’ll leave it to that right now… Really I promise to post pictures tomorrow And I’ll try to keep you all updated on what happens here
