Adventures down under, over and around

Whoa... where does the time go?  Phew 2012 has been busy!

Firstly, there is no possible way I could cover in adequate detail all that has happened since my last update. So I will attempt to re-live the majority of 2012 for you in photos with tid bits here and there. Note, these are just the highlights and even the highlights really deserve their own full blog. But since I'm laaazy, we'll stick to brief notes. Feel free to imagine more.

First, Tyler's parents visited in January. They sandwiched their sailing trip with friends Ken and Barb with two visits with us. Unfortunately, the weather was fairly cold and rainy (not two words you usually associate with the Virgin Islands) so their sailing wasn't the best but I think they had fun anyway. I know that we had an excellent time with them. Sadly I realized I didn't take many photos. So I'll just cheat a little and insert one from the previous year. Shhhhhh.

Me, Tyler, Dad Smith, Mom Smith, Barb and Ken at the Trunk Bay lookout. Just imagine that this is 2012 and not 2011...both visits were just as much fun!

Their visit was followed not long after by a visit from my parents. Once again, we ran them ragged around the island and had a blast. This year we even got to overnight in St. John. Unfortunately, Tyler had to get up at the crack of dawn and leave us there, but it was for a great reason. He was interviewed on a local tv program about a recent grant he had received. A highlight of Mom and Dad's visit was a trip to Coral World - St. Thomas' small aquarium - where we encountered a tv crew filming an episode of MTV's the Real World. We haven't watched the show but there's a good probability Mom's on it. Of course, I've heard it's not exactly Emmy worthy t.v. so maybe we'll jut pretend she made it on without subjecting ourselves to the actual show.

Me, Mom and Dad at the Magen's Bay overlook. And yes, that is my obligatory beach (and photo op) dress. Ha!

The MTV Real World filming at Coral World the day I took Mom and Dad. Very exciting. Well, actually I thought the fish were more exciting. The Real World people just looked... well... plastic.

Shortly after Mom and Dad Brandt left we destroyed ourselves physically by doing 8 tuff miles again. Tyler participated this year (he was off island last year). We barely saw each other during the race since we have such different paces but I caught up to him at the end and we finished with precisely the same time. ...and then drank precisely 3 pain killers! Ha!

Before the race... note how happy and naive! (p.s. this photo was taken by our photographer friend Thomas)

After the race... note how much closer to the ground we are.

UVI gives us a day off right before Easter and this year Shaun invited us to sail to Anegada with her and the CMES post-doc Joanna. What a gorgeous place! It was a very relaxed adventure until the day we started to sail home. A minor problem with the boat engine turned into a major issue when someone broke a critical screw accidentally (names won't be revealed to protect the innocent). With wind less than 5 knots we had to put on our best sailing skillzzz to make it back to St. Thomas. We were able to role into Megan's Bay around 10pm that night having earned ourselves the title of true salty sailors.

Our view in the morning when we woke up on the boat anchored off of Anegada. The island is carbonate (meaning, not built by a volcano), so it's flat with white sand beaches and is home to only about 400 people. We walked for a couple of miles on the beach without seeing anyone. The true definition of paradise! Of course, then we ran into a UVI graduate alum at the bar...the Virgin Islands really is a small town.

Me "making friends" with one of the baby goats at the beach bar on Anegada.Yeah, he wasn't interested but he was cute!

Sailing home "wing on wing" which is when your head sail is one way and the main sail is the other way. Hard to do but not that bad in 5 kt winds with no engine. It was a loooong sail. Thankfully the wing on wing sails provided some relief from the sun for our 16 hour sail.

The end of the semester was typically NUTS but an excellent salve arrived in the form of the Nor-Brandts! (See Kell's blog Red House Nine for more details) It goes without saying that it was a most excellent time having them here. We snorkeled, sat on several beaches, emptied the island of Presidente, went to an ice bar (yes, an ice bar - not exactly an energetically sustainable venture in the islands) and generally enjoyed ourselves all over the place.  Tyler missed some of their visit because he was at a meeting in Panama but he was back for some of the best parts (including Cinco de Mayo!). Nor-Brandts, you must come again soon! I demand it!

The Nor-Brandt-Smiths enjoying the chihuahua races on cinco de mayo. It was good fiesta times!

Soon after they departed, UVI had its graduation ceremonies and I had the pleasure of graduating my first Masters student. Yay Shruti!

They actually let me mold a young mind! My first graduate student graduate

June arrived and Tyler departed for the Galapagos. Check out the Living Ocean Foundation's Global Reef Expedition's website for an account of his trip for details (http://www.livingoceansfoundation.org/). Basically, he had an amazing time and was pampered on the huge converted yacht that they call a "research vessel." Sheesh!

Tyler in the Galapagos with the famous Darwin's Arch in the background.  Hammerheads, tiger sharks, whale sharks, and manta rays were just a few of his encounters on the trip.

Approximately five hours after Tyler arrived back from the Galapagos the whole extended Smith family clan arrived in St. Thomas for two weeks of Virgin Islands adventures. Once again we were so excited to be hosting and introducing our family to where we live. Mom and Dad Smith generously rented two houses in St. John so we could all enjoy our time together and boy did we. I think we pretty much visited every beach on St. John, went hiking, got to snorkel in places I've never been, including the mangroves on St. John, and enjoyed our time immensely. We topped it off with a 50th wedding anniversary celebration party and photo shoot. Happy 50th Anniversary Sharon and David!

The Smith family kicking up our heals at Magen's Bay on St. Thomas. This photo was taken by a photographer who did a shoot for Mom and Dad Smith's 50th Anniversary. The whole time was so much fun!  Happy Anniversary!

Only a few days after the departure of the Smiths, Tyler and I hopped a jet plane for two days of traveling to OZ... Australia, that is. We attended the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium where we both presented talks and then we took about 10 days to check out Australia. The symposium was in Cairns, which is a popular place to visit the Great Barrier Reef, so of course that was our first destination after the conference ended. Despite some gnarly weather we spent three great days on the reef.  Ok, so I flooded my camera and Tyler got the flu , but being that we're reef scientists - it was a dream come true.

A shot of the Great Barrier Reef before my camera went for a swim. So gorgeous - look at all that coral!!

Tyler and a giant clam on the GBR.

Me and a giant clam on the GBR. Giant clams! How cool is that??!!

Tyler's flu meant we spent the next three days holed up in a hotel room. When he finally felt good enough we struck out on a self-driven tour of northern Queensland which included stops in the rainforest and the uplands where we got to see platypus in the wild.

Our trip ended too soon and after a brutal two days of traveling back we settled immediately back into work with some serious field work since it was coral spawning season. On one dive, Tyler and I were at a 50 ft decompression stop and a 9 ft tiger shark decided to check us out. It was a little nerve racking to say the least. But welcome back to St. Thomas!

The week before last we were on St. Croix for our annual monitoring of coral reef sites there. Some very cool fish and corals and I wracked up several hours on my rebreather unit (see my previous "Bubbles!" post).

This past Monday began the semester with a whole new cohort of 10 graduate students. It should be a busy semester but we also have some travel planned to St. Louis for Tyler's 20 year reunion and Rhode Island for our friends' wedding which we're very excited about.

So to end... we've all established I'm not the best blogger. I know that my dad checks this blog all the time and is usually sorely disappointed. So I thought it only appropriate to finally post something on his birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! I love you and I hope you have a great day - so great that that it's blog worthy! 

The birthday boy touring an old sugar plantation on St. John wearing his favorite St. John shirt. You'll have to ask him what it says. :-)

Happy holidays!! Oh wait.... it's February?!?

Hi blog,

It's me... the one who never speaks to you. Who knew that fall 2011 would fly by and suddenly we'd find ourselves smack dab in the middle of 2012? 

Well, I guess that's what happened. And I say good riddance to 2011 and welcome 2012! Although the last few months of 2011 were pretty ok. Some highlights:

Aunt Kay visited for a day while on a cruise. We gave her a whirlwind tour of the island in a few hours and then waved goodbye as she returned to the boat to set off for more islands.

Aunt Kay and us at Drake's Seat overlooking Magen's Bay on St. Thomas

I went to Baton Rouge, LA to attend a workshop and then on to St. Louis, MO to judge student presentations at the American Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. UVI had a big showing and two of my undergraduate mentorees (not sure if that's a word) were presenting. Akima gave an oral presentation on work she'd done with my collaborator in South Carolina over the summer. Stephan presented on work he'd done in Hawaii with another of my collaborators and for which I guided him on the analysis since there was tons of data. Receiving an oral presentation was already an honor for Akima (only around 10% of students are selected to give an oral presentation) and Stephan went on to win "Outstanding Poster Presentation" in his division (Computational Biology). I was so proud!

Stephan, me and Akima at ABRCMS

They had us judges busy but on our one afternoon off I was thrilled to be given a tour (with lunch!) of St. Louis by Doyle and Marilyn Perry (see beach post from the summer - oh yeah, that's my last post - ha!). Thanks to them for a fabulous tour! It all made me very excited for a possible trip back this year for Tyler's 20 year high school reunion. Below Marilyn and I are posing with the new Chuck Berry statue in the trendy del Mar section of St. Louis. We'd just eaten at the delicious Blueberry Hill restaurant - apparently a favorite of Tyler's too!

I like to call this "Chuck and the Marilyns" (photo credit: Doyle)

Not long after I got back from St. Louis Tyler went off to Austin, Texas for a meeting but was able to sneak over to Houston to visit our friends Adrienne and Thiago. At the time Adrienne was expecting. Expecting what you aks? Well, a little boy (Caio) who arrived two weeks ago. Congratulations Adrienne and Thiago!

We had big plans for Thanksgiving - a sail to St. Martin with Shaun - but those dreams were dashed as the boat required some maintenance. Sigh. But instead we attended two different Thanksgiving feasts: one at our friend Bobby's house and one at the house of three of our new graduate students. Both were fantastic but resulted in much groaning from overeating.

The start of December was INSANE. The end of the semester is normally crazy but tack on three meetings on two different islands and that spells some serious nuttiness. In the last two weeks before we left for the holiday break we flew to a two day conference on St. Croix, flew home, had two days in the office, flew to a two day conference in Puerto Rico, flew home for the weekend, flew back to Puerto Rico for another but different two day conference and then flew home for three days before flying off to New York. Phew! I'm tired just thinking about it but it was fun!

Speaking of flying, the holidays were great but they definitely flew by. We arrived in NY to spend time with the Brandt side of the family first this year. After a few days relaxing (ha! I mean I was frantically Christmas shopping while Tyler spent most of the time frantically finishing a report) in the Woodstock area we drove down to Philly to visit Chung and Mike. As usual, we had a fantastic time eating our way through Philly with them and we even fit in some historic site visits.

In a series of Chung, me and Tyler performing death defying feats in front of historic places, here we are in front of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Whoo hoo!

Back in Woodstock I took Tyler to the green (the center of town) for the annual arrival of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. It's big deal in Woodstock and includes a small parade and lots of cheer. This is always one of my favorite parts of the holidays because of the people we see. This year we met up with Sarah and her family, including Kyle and their adorable new daughter Quinn. We then made our annual appearance at the Norton Christmas Eve party - a festive event as always.

A fairly blurry photo of Tyler at his first Christmas Eve on the Green

Christmas day was different this year. I knew it might be hard to go home for the holidays since it would be the first time without Will, but it was even harder than I thought. Will never visited me in St. Thomas; it's the only place that I've lived that he didn't visit. So we have photos of him but those are the only reminders. In Woodstock reminders and memories of him were everywhere.

So instead of Christmas in Woodstock we had dinner and gift opening at the newly redone Red House Nine. Which is G-O-R-GEOUS. Ed and Kelly did an incredible job and the house looks amazing. See Kell's blog about the process and for the photos. Walking into their house you would never imagine what it had been before. Christmas was a collision of Brandts and Nortons and Winstons and Smiths and it was fantastic and just what we all needed. Big fat kudos to Ed and Kelly for a lovely (and very tasty) Christmas. Unfortunately my photos didn't come out that well, but Kelly's got some nice ones on the Red House Nine blog.

The last couple of days in Woodstock flew by - and we spent a lot of it continuing to Christmas shop - this time for the Smith side of the family (I think next year we'll do more internet shopping so we don't spend our whole vacation in stores). Soon enough we found ourselves in Colorado. Thankfully all of our Christmas shopping was done and so we spent the time truly relaxing and hanging out with the family. Thanks to Mindy and Bill for hosting us for 2 nights (one on each end) in Denver, and to Mom and Dad Smith for the nights in between! Colorado, like New York, was unusually warm and unfortunately, warm does not equal snow which also means no skiing. But we got in a beautiful hike in Estes Park and a gorgeous snow shoeing adventure.

Having lunch before our hike in Estes Park

The Smith siblings on our snow shoeing adventure

New Years Eve in Fort Collins was quite a night - it ended early but was definitely action packed. We started out with the whole family at Arias at Avos - a laid back opera singing event at a local restaurant in Fort Collins (support the arts and check it out at the restaurant's website: http://www.avogadros.com/). We then headed out with the Scheetzs and McMahons to hit up the First Night activities around town. The star gazing, science show, acrobat show and pigs who do tricks were all fun but by far the best activity was racing each other through an inflatable obstacle course. Yes, I beat Tyler in our wife vs. husband race despite him checking me into the side of the inflatable course. It was brutal in there!

The time in Colorado was much too short and suddenly we found ourselves back on St. Thomas. Our semester began last month and we're now back to our routine. We've also just recently enjoyed a visit from Mom and Dad Smith. 2012 promises to be exciting. Visits from almost all of our family members, a trip to Australia and more!

So stay tuned to see if I stay tuned to keeping up with this blog! Ha!