Eocene!

The bus was full. I and Dr Erdik (now at Bogazici Univ.) were the only two civil engineers in the bus. Other than the driver, everybody else was a geologist. We were travelling from Ankara to Anamur, Turkey, where a power plant was going to be built and this group was going to see the site as part of the initial preparations of the siting work.

The road crosses the Taurus mountains --which, incidentally, is a part of the mountain range that joins the Alps in Europe to the Himalayas in Asia.

As the bus winds up the mountains, we see the cuts and the fills. As we climb further, the cuts and fills get deeper, and the curves get scarier. The cuts show nice profiles that catch the attention of all the passengers. As we pass near one of these deep cuts, we hear one of the geologists yell;

"Eocene!"

All the passenges who have been sitting quietly on the left side of the bus for the last few hours, and getting bored, suddenly get excited; they all spring up, and move to the right side windows to see the "Eocene." The bus dangerously tilts to the right, becomes unstable and starts swirling.
The driver is finally able to stop the bus; he gets up, and comes to the passenger area to find out what happened. He ultimately understands that "eocene" was just referring to the age of some rocks they saw back there.

He goes back to the driver seat looking puzzled. Sitting there, and glancing back at us, one more time, with disbelief--he murmurs "age of the rocks? We almost got killed for that?"

"Nuts!" (*)

M.O., 11/26/96

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(*) Short for @!#*@#!!!