endings and beginnings

we crashed back to earth (australia) a couple of days ago now (not really, was a relatively smooth flight/landing considering the other hellish flights on our trip) and are suffering from the impact. well, i certainly am. i feel like i have stars circling around my head like in a comic...only instead of stars it is things like 'job, house, car' that are circling overhead, with me watching them all dazed and confused and not sure what to do about it.

rohan seems less affected. he found me sitting idle on the couch the other day and started with, 'ainslie, this is quite a small house and there are two very messy people in it' (he means me and his brother), 'would you get up and unpack and sort' (two of the cruelest words those two). i gave him a level stare that could have meant a few things. then i had a brainwave - i would write a list!

anyway, i have written the list and yes, i have unpacked most of my stuff - i am still figuring out exactly what i am meant to sort though.

making our return to real life that extra bit harder was the decision we made to spend our last week of holidays in fiji. fiji is not unlike how i imagine heaven might be (if i imagined there was a heaven)...with a couple of exceptions. fiji has the kind of weather (wet and humid) which requires a small team of full time hair professionals to keep my hair under any semblance of control. i knew this going in, so i bought a 50 pack of bobby pins which i figured, with some skill on my part, should make me look semi-reasonable for the week. unfortunately, my handbag has turned into some kind of tardis with attitude on this trip and so said pins dissapeared pretty much straight away (mysteriously reappearing as we were to board our flight to oz), leaving me to look more and more like a local and less and less like the abundant sleek & tanned gap year students as the week went on. ho HUM.

anyway, about 1/2 way through the week i decided that it was high time (3 days after our 4 year anniversary) that i make rohan make an honest woman out of me. i proposed/suggested (we havent agreed on that one yet) and he said yep. with the frizzy hair and all!
he must love me : )

xxx

dam(n) america

we are almost due to leave america now, but i thought i would get in a quick post about one of the highlights of our trips...the dams ; ) - i should clarify probably that i am joking...but i cant completely deny that i am a water engineer.

we have been to three (3) now. possibly two more than most normal people would visit (most people would go to the hoover dam - am i right? ; )

the first was bonneville dam on the columbia river. i think there are 10 on the columbia all up so i guess it was lucky that we only went to one of them...but this one was actually kinda interesting. it was constructed in the 30's - to try to get america out of the depression. i had thought that fish ladders (ways to let the fish (salmon mostly) still migrate upstream) were a fairly recent invention, but they were looking for ways to let the fish upstream even then. first they constructed a naturalish stream around the dam, but that didnt seem to attract the fish for some reason, then they built a fish elevator to move the fish up the dam, but they didnt catch onto that either. by far the most successful way to still allow fish upstream has been the fish ladder. they have windows on a section of it so you can see them swim past -which is quite cool. unfortunately some fish still cant use the ladder, so they have a fish hatchery downstream where they breed sturgeon&trout.



the spillway - they let this water through so the little fish dont have to go through the turbines to get downstream the fish ladder - there were people fishing at the downstream end which i thought was a bit unsporting.
salmon swimming upstream to spawn

a sturgeon, they are prehistoric apparently and these ones were massive -about 3m long i reckon


next on the list was glen canyon dam. not nearly as interesting - no fish ladder, just a heap of concrete in a canyon. this dam controls the flow of water in the colorado river as it flows through the grand canyon. it has completely changed the quantity/quality of the water that flows through the grand canyon in that it has hardly any sediment and is alot colder than it would normally be...it does produce quite a bit of power.




glen canyon dam with 'lake' powell behind it


then it was onto the mother of all dams (in reputation at least - although i am not sure if it is actually bigger than the glen canyon) the Hoover. This dams the colorado again downstream of the grand canyon, providing a water source for las vegas amongst other uses. i quite liked the art deco styling of the dam (it was almost like going to the movies) but otherwise this was a bit of a tourist mecca so we didnt hang around too long.


these dams are of course quite controversial - completely changing the river system, but they do provide a renewable source of energy...i dunno... i liked the first one we visited because it is trying to find a balance between the different uses for water and not just using all the water for power generation.




jenai and i on the dam wall
its a bloody long way down


mr (tanned) hudson on the dam wall


well, i hope you have enjoyed my attempt at an educational post! of course we have seen a few things other than dams on our trip - seattle, a heap of national parks including the grand canyon, vegas, laughlin (poor man's vegas, but equally as entertaining) and more recently the stunning city of San Fran. It has all been amazing and one day i will get around to blogging about it...but for now, we have to keep on truckin - we are on our way to LA where we fly home (with a week in fiji on route ;-)

xxx