Taft, USA

Latitude: 35° 8'32.86"N
Longitude: 119°27'23.57"W

          So.
          Airsick.

          Huuuurgh.

          That was the ugly sound of an old lady dry heaving, after she's already thrown up everything in her stomach. The plane ride felt more like a prolonged roller coaster, and even worse, one of my knees randomly decided to really act up, so there was the humiliation of asking the teenage boy next to me to "assist the elderly". It didn't help that Taft was about 90 degrees and that my taxi driver zipped through the streets at least 15 mph faster than the speed limit. He nearly careened into a pedestrian and had to slam on the breaks with both feet, resulting in me almost strangling on my seatbelt. When I finally dragged myself into the Holland Inn and Suites, I was a total wreck.
          But anyways. I'm back on native soil, but after Kathmandu and Koror, Taft is really nothing to look at. It's a small town, with some areas that wouldn't look out of place in an Old West movie, and right in the middle of the part of California that is arid desert, with scruffy vegetation and parched earth. Everyone parks their cars under the shade of what few trees there are. In the distance are the Sierra-Nevada mountains, but when you've seen the Himalayas and how they glow the colors of fire during sunset and sunrise, these just look...dusty.
          Why do humans choose to develop civilizations in places like this? Did they want to slowly broil to death or shrivel up like a leaf? Surely it was difficult to get anything done with such a barren wasteland before modern times. 

© 2013 Tangient LLC

          There's not much more about Taft to discuss, so I'm going to cut to the chase and educate you with my necessary bit of science. A transform boundary, the third type of tectonic boundary, is when two plates are simply sliding past. Just that: they move in opposite directions and rub against each other.


          And near Taft is one of the most famous transform boundaries in the world: the San Andreas fault, definitely an excellent redeeming feature of this area.



© 2011 Friday Fun Facts

          Now that's cool. You actually see the crevice between the North America and Pacific plates, the divide between two giant slabs of the surface of the planet! (On the flip side, the website I took the picture from called it "California's Butt Crack". Young people these days have no appreciation whatsoever.) And while other transform boundaries have remained inactive for centuries, the San Andreas fault moves up to 5 centimeters a year. Of course, that means earthquakes. Remember the demolition of San Francisco in 1906? It shouldn't come as a surprise then that San Francisco is also located near this boundary. Taft is often rocked by earthquakes as well - the people here may have felt tremors only last week, from a 3.6 Richter scale magnitude shock in Carpinteria.

           Argh. I booked one week at each destination, and while that's been nice enough in Nepal and Palau, there are only so many times I can gaze upon the mightiness of the San Andreas fault. So I guess that's it, fellow readers - I'll see you soon if I haven't succumbed to heat stroke or something.