Hi Chris and All,

Well, I am really sorry to hear about your accident, Lord knows over the years I've heard no less than 5,000 accounts of accidents. Some of them were pretty darn good. Here's my favorite. There was a female military Captain and she was on her way to the local establishment and dropped her cigarette between her legs in the parking lot. Ouch. She creamed about ten parked cars that day. But she had prior experience when driving drunk down the McArthur Freeway in Oakland going the wrong way.

The good news from the AGU is that this year they are allowing posters to be put up in the morning and cannot be taken down until 6PM. All day viewing instead of morning or afternoon. Sorry you missed this opportunity Chris.

Roger Musson gave me a detailed explanation of his poster based on satellite imaging of the Tokai area of Japan. He was using data from the year 2000 and Don gave him an update from the TV News special they had a few months back where the Seismological "Wise Seven" said things were not looking good, to prepare and as soon as more data was available, they would inform the public of the status of a grim looking situation. He's chairing an oral session on Monday afternoon, which we will be certain to see.

Another poster we had a look at was in regarding using b-value to determine aftershock sequences after a quiessence from the main shock. The final notes on the poster said they thought the IASPEI sub-commission on prediction should remove this item as a precursor because it was only valid in 10% of the cases.

The diplomacy of the issue I find interesting. The paper was co-authored by Stefan Weimer and the person who is the chair of the IASPEI sub-commisson on prediction is M. Wyss. So how does one communicate such matters? Got me.

The rest of the day we viewed some additional posters here and there and then hit the expo booths. I was told today that the USGS has no money for printing earthquake preparedness materials and that was the reason they had none on display. Besides, as the woman put it to me, the room was full of geo-scientists and they didn't need any of those materials. I didn't take the time to tell her the results of my field polls over the past few years which surprisingly revealed that most of them had no idea what to do during an earthquake and the first responses were unanimous in stating they would run out the building.

I still wish we could have a 5.0 during the session so we could test the field study and see if everyone would run out. But as all of you know, earthquakes never happen where I am, so I gotta be out of town.

Pooped is the only appropriate word to use for how we feel right now. Our backs are killing us. But it was fun, interesting and educational as always.

Petra & Don, almost hot on the trail in EQ country.