Gergis had to bring Jojo up for her spa treatment so while she was being pampered we got thrown out of my house while my daughter took an on line bio chemistry final exam. Amazingly she only got one answer wrong. Not amazing because I doubt her ability amazing because I was stunned at the complexity of the course when I perused the text book. We first went to the beach that I have avoided for many years. A lot of rude people live near this beach and the jade is almost all black jade which I have avoided. Black rocks stress me out as they are very hard to identify most times. I have taken a scientist who is a jade expert to this beach and others and he collected specimens which were cut and tested by the x-ray diffraction method. I was then presented with proven black jade to cut. As a result I am feeling much more confident of my id's. We did find a small black jade cobble and it has been sliced and drilled for pendants to come. This piece has a bit of white plagioclase feldspar randomly oriented in the jade. This is to be expected. While cutting the cobble from the beach I also cut a piece of the famous Cowen black jade from Australia and discovered that it is possible to find feldspar visible in that jade in some cases. Only a full polish will determine how distracting the feldspar inclusions will be on our cobble.After the beach it was grocery shopping at a very exotic store , the most interesting grocery store I have ever seen . Need 20 types of fish sauce ? Exotic vegetables ? And all at great prices. I am going to look up a fish sauce recipe and try the condiment.
Eventually we were let back in the house for dinner but not before a nostalgic tour of G's old stomping grounds on Whidbey..After our return Jojo was looking very refreshed.A bit of stone drilling and then off to bed before an early start to the peninsula on the other ferry . If you look at the picture of the mountain range behind Gergis that is where we were headed as Good earth lives near the ocean at the base of the mountains.
My wife and I dropped G for his hounding trip to secret beach with Goodearth then headed south through the coastal mountains to the best rhododendron nursery in the world , Whitney gardens in Brinnon Washington another old Gergis stomping ground. Peak bloom of the hundred or so 20 foot tall rhododendron. We got two extremely fragrant azaleas and headed back for home made pizza and a tour of the finishing touches on GE's house. I was given a 143 lb variolite by GE . There is a picture of this stone on the scale as well as a picture of a portion of it wet . Very good stone. My wife became a gym rat once again when she turned sixty ( she was a very fit rock climber before kids ) and has never been out of shape but she has become much more muscular and it shows on the scale , all 120 lbs of gnarly gym rat. After loading up on pizza and many rocks we were off to the ferry after which we awoke princess Jojo and sent Gergis off on another ferry ride back to the big city . No plan this week end just happened which was nice. While at the beach we saw at least 6 types of serpentine and the one pictured is a deadly one. The white stripes are composed of chrysotile asbestos , a no no. Metamorphic grade explains to some extent why the many types of serpentine but more importantly all serpentines have a precursor rock , the type it was before the metamorphic process of serpetinization. Amazingly in some cases serpentines are re metamorphosed and turned back into the type of rock of which it was initially composed.
