In the summer of 2005 I received an email from Stan Williams at Arizona State University who had questions about leading international field trips. Stan and I had overlapped a little at Dartmouth, in 1983--he finished his Ph.D. just as I started mine. We had first met in 1978 at a New Year's party at Chuck Drake's house. In the course of our correspondence of the next few days, I proposed that he co-lead a trip to Iceland with the Geological Society of America in the summer of 2006. Unfortunately, the Society changed the way it handles field trips in the fall of 2005 and I lost interest in working with them.

I saw Stan at the annual GSA meeting in Salt Lake in October 2005 and told him that Iceland was a no-go. He told me that he was considering taking a group to Guatemala over Christmas break and asked if I would be interested in going. Wow! I hadn't been to Guatemala in almost 30 years. I did my Senior and Master's theses in the area just to the east of Guatemala City and had traveled throughout the volcanic belt of the country as a part of my Master's project. I told him I'd love to do it.

We are both pretty busy guys. I didn't hear anything more in November so I just figured it was a great idea that wasn't going to happen. Then, on December 12th, I received a message from Stan saying that the trip was on! He wondered if I was still interested. You bet!

That was all that it took (after consulting with my Division Chair, the Dean, and my wife [not necessarily in that order of importance!]). Three weeks later I was on a plane to Guatemala. As usual, I kept a log of my travels. We had a great group of people:

Stan Williams ASU Faculty	Jim Reynolds Brevard College Faculty	Amanda Clarke ASU Faculty
Chad McCabe Consultant	Kristi Diller	Jessica Block
Nathan Toke	Kim Genareau	David McAlpin
Ryan Schaefer	Zack Bowles	Kirsten Chojnicki
Johnathan Drake	Maulik Bavishi	Naomi Goldenson

I would like to thank Jennifer Epley for quickly keying my scrawled journal into the computer less than three weeks after my return.

Clicking in any of the boxes of the calendar below will take to the journal entry.