Kevlar...

When I was looking through boxes a few months ago, I found some of my old pictures I'd not seen in a long while. There were pictures from high school, college, and beyond. Some are great, some not so great, while others are downright hilarious. I'm sharing one of the hilarious ones with you all here.This is my Igneous Petrology and Metamorphic Mineralogy class my second year in college, circa March 2000. Yup, this is the ENTIRE class. We were studying rocks (wow, like you guys didn't know I'm a rock freak!) and had the opportunity to visit the Stillwater Mine in Montana. It's a working mine and one of the only ones around which produces platinum and palladium ore in the country, if not the only one – my memory cannot recall the exact facts at this moment.

Now this isn't one of those open-pit-big-hole-in-the-ground sort of mines, it's one inside the side of a mountain – complete with shafts, tunnels and huge expanses underground. With this came some necessary safety equipment, and thus, why we all look really really -ahem- cool. See if you can find me... I'm the short one, third from the right. And those yellow sleeves we all (almost) have on? Those are kevlar sleeves. I guess if rocks fell from the tunnel ceilings, the kevlar sleeves would protect our arms and the hard hat would save our heads. Of course, we have the obligatory head lamps – wouldn't be a true miner without them. The wide leather belts supported our emergency breathing apparatus canister. We rounded out the look with some safety goggles, and for those who had big feet, rubber boots. Some of us, okay, only me, couldn't fit into the rubber boots without taking a step and having the boot fall completely off. I didn't mind at first...

So we went into the mine via a long elevator and had a look around the interior cavern at the process, equipment, and rock. The miners had just blasted further into the rock earlier that day and we were able to see what fresh exposed ore looked like. We walked around for quite a while in a bunch of water (man, I really wished I had rubber boots, my legs were soaked!) exploring. I think they used the water for cooling the drill bits. And I will admit, I was quite impressed by the female mining engineer/geologist who worked down there.

All in all, it was a great trip. Ah, and the guy to my right (with the gray hard hat), he's my best friend, Alan. Hi, Alan! ...bet you didn't know I had a picture of this!! :) Do you even remember that class?!