Hi Michael,

The tour I mentioned is given by the lone school teacher in Parkfield. His name is Duane Hamman. I arranged for 13 of us to have the seismic tour in July 1998. Duane used to take the laser readings for Middle Mountain and was there at the beginning of the Parkfield Project. He knows just about everything that goes on around there. Mostly people I knew from Syz came, like Mary/Maya and her husband, Vicki in Bakersfield and so forth.

Learning seismological lingo is difficult, so I'd suggest you purchase Bruce Bolt's "Earthquake". You can learn a lot and there's a dictionary in the back. I like to learn by person to person visits, so I had a few. What a good time those were. That's how I got my nic name from the scientists. Some of them call me The Little Darling of Seismology. I love those endearing terms.

I few over the Carizzo Plain when I came back from seeing Dr. Leon Knopoff at UCLA. I saw something really amazing. On top of three of the mountains there were these white colored comma's. So far, no one has mentioned them but me. Most likely, they are sand deposits that rose with the mountains. But the shape is interesting.

I'm glad you like Parkfield. Did you ever stay at the Inn? The morning after we checked in, I woke up at 5am. I heard this cracking sound in the roof and then over the porch. I thought maybe a quake was coming. Then my ears started ringing. But nothing. I did talk to 3 people from Canada who were there the morning before and that quake really rocked and rolled and the woman of the three said she heard a sound like a freight train when it was coming. She was in bed at the Inn and the men were hunting wild bore not far from there. Their jeep really shook. They said they thought it might turn over. Mind you, that's only a 4.2.

Petra