Doble

Late, ay. Very productive, eventful, coffee-charged day today. At this point I’ve had 10 glasses of iced coffee since breakfast which probably amounts to 5 or 6 cups of straight coffee. It sure has kept me going through the 15km of biking and 7 hours of fieldwork. Okay…

Very wet, tired, and dirty right now so I’ll attempt to be succinct. The day began with about a million things to do, including posting yesterday’s post to the blog. Had to rent a bike from reception since the crappy project bikes are being “fixed” by the shop today. Had to pay my bill and bite the 2% fee, I know I already wrote this.

Got up later than I had hoped so things got very rushed. Gathered all the tree-measuring paraphernalia together and biked away. Had to measure about 25 trees today to complete my goal of doing 150 by Sunday. Of course, got that accomplished and all of a sudden the wind kicked up and the sky went dark. Thunderstorm!

Had a fun, boots-filled-with-water bike ride back to the station. Dried up and went to lunch. Having that couch in my room is so choice for reading a guidebook and drying off. Lunch was really good today; first time I’ve gotten seconds in three weeks. Good old spaghetti and meat sauce with these crispy rolls that had a baked-in butter/veggie combo.

Maxed out on carbohydrates, went to go do a brief amount of work followed by porch time. Got out to the porch around 2:00pm and got to reading. Since I finished Walk in the Woods I’ve picked up End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time. The book gives a great introduction to economics and world history from an economist’s point of view. Quite enlightening.

After a short while of reading, a group of undergrads from Occidental (what a weird name for a school) decided to use the porch for a group discussion. Time to post a sign dictating “For Lazy/Tired Researchers Only.” It wasn’t that bad, plus the rockers are really comfy, so I wasn’t going anywhere.

Changed into field clothes, biked away to LEP for batting. Pretty standard batting night, caught three bats, identified 3 species (=highest biodiversity index). Also caught the biggest bat yet, almost 48 grams (2 ounces). I have a sweet picture of its grillz, but no camera cord. Got lucky holding off the rain.

After returning to the lab, we got iced coffee and put in requests for field lunches. Tomorrow, it’s off to the capital! Have a pretty fun vacation planned just before our assistants arrive and the work escalates. Tomorrow we’ll (Amanda, Danielle, & I) will catch an early bus to San Jose and grab our hotel room, get some errands run. Going to the Correo Central tomorrow hopefully; if you’re feeling a postcard drop your address in comments or shoot me an email.

Also on the to-do’s is a bookstore and a churro stand, plus Tico nightlife. Saturday night is futbol, tickets and transportation TBD (soccer stadium riot also TBD). Be back on station Sunday mid-morning, blogging will persist though, no worries. This will be a very well-photographed trip and I should have enough picture ammunition (probably the wrong word, but you do “shoot” them) for a solid week of blog entries, plus, we all get to meet our assistants on Monday.

Enough of that chatter, I’m beat. Need a shower and to set and alarm for the first night so far. And remember, I supply daily, moderately-entertaining blog posts everyday for three weeks, y’all pay back with an address for postcards. ¡Hasta la ciudad!

BP

Nombres

You know how sometimes a new person joins your group or class or sits down at your table. Then the more stand-up person agrees to introduce say 10-12 people to the new person. After taking the time and everyone being really nice, the new person says, “I’m really bad with names anyway, it’s going to take me a long time.”

Is anybody really good with names? I wouldn’t consider myself bad with names, but who knows. So I’m not getting this post up until Thursday morning but the spirit of Wednesday is still with me. Going to make it kind of short since I have a long field day ahead of me, although my wonderful mother keeps pressing me for pictures and whatnot.

So I agreed to talk about the cabina, because I’ve neglected it for a while, not the room itself, just talking about it. So for about all of last weekend I was ‘rooming’ with Franklin, the lab manager (termination verified), who I still haven’t met. He actually never really spent a night there. On Tuesday, the majority of his stuff was gone. Later, when I returned to the room Tuesday night, the whole place was super-rearranged.

Most importantly the fridge was gone, and I assume it belonged to Franklin. So now that I had arguably the best room on the station to myself, life was good. I’ve been expecting to get a roommate for a while now, since they seem to fast track people over here. This morning I got a not informing me that I will get a roommate, but not until June 18th.

Oh and mid-conditioner during my first shower in the room, the hot water thingamajig (MS Word takes this too, so thoughtful) failed me. Should attend to that sometime soon.

Began the day a little late, but looking forward to visiting the LEP primary forest plot with Amanda in the morning. Through some confusion and lack of timing, Amanda left without me. Turns out she fell in a river. I suggested we build a monkey bridge over, idea pending.

Did minimal work in the afternoon before batting. Our original intention was to go bat at a plot at a farm off-site. This would involve taking the project car. Off course we couldn’t find the keys and other people had them, and there was no extra set at reception. ¡Ay Dios mio!

Disheartened, we walked back over the river to look again and then make a decision. No keys, the decision was to just tough it out and bike out to LEP to bat there tonight. 1.1km down the trail it started raining, boo. Turned the crappy bikes around and raced back to the lab. Sat in the office in quiet discontent eating field dinners.

To not be completely unproductive we reconvened before 8:00pm to go work in the GIS lab. Made some cool maps, of which I’ve supplied one as a picture today, since I don’t have anything striking on my camera. By the time we finished up there it was about 9:35pm and I was turning into a yawn machine. Got back to the cabina and crashed until 6:50am, kind of late. Remembered about forgetting to do this post in my slumber…and here I am.

Had to shell out a solid $500.85 to OTS for 21 nights here through tomorrow. Of course they gave us bills early in the week that said what amounted to nothing. As Amanda & I are standing in reception yesterday (the 30th), I’m informed that the payment was due the 30th of every month at 3:00pm. Somehow, that never made it onto the bill. And why should I have to pay for the 31st on the 30th? Funny business they run here.

I was kind of proud of yesterday’s post, I think it flowed pretty well. Not as proud about today’s, but I will avenge it tonight after batting. Time for the field pretty much all day. And exciting news, mini-vacation to San José tomorrow through Sunday, and hopefully international friendly match between Costa Rica and Chile. Pretty excited for that…and I WILL take pictures.

I feel rushed, so I’m out!

BP

Ciclismo

A few decently entertaining items for today, despite a very sedentary 12 hours around the lab. To start, the blog has reached 10,000 words, near the end of yesterday’s post actually. This being the 20th post (yay!), I’ll hopefully achieve 40, maybe 50,000 words, pretty sweet. In my elder years (like 30) it might take a while to reflect upon. Sorry again for the lack of picture, nothing especially caught my eye today.

Not to leave you without entertainment, I will provide two links today and today only to interesting things I found on the internet. First this, A Kit?!?. I ask how does one stop global warming with stencils, a book, and stickers? And secondly for you to read up on, Shaq. It’s not funny because it’s about fat kids, it’s funny because it’s Shaq, just to clarify.

After that change of pace here at the blog, we’ll return to the fragile and delicate (Re: South Park Season 3, Episode 1) rain forest. Got up surprisingly early again after being up to watch the game and blog it up. No matter where I am, waking up an entire hour before I have to is quite a blessing. Being able to open and shut the eyes as soon as the clock comes into focus is just one of those simple pleasures in life.

Speaking of simple pleasures, I continued to read Walk in the Woods today when Bryson put something forward that really resonated with me. He was discussing maps of the AT and how a particular map was really comprehensive. Of being completely cognizant of his surroundings he states, “at last I could take my bearings, perceive my future, feel as if I was somehow in touch with a changing and knowable landscape.” Countless times I have been standing somewhere in the woods with a map and have felt the same way. Cool.

And back to my morning…stream-of-consciousness writing, people have gotten famous by doing that intentionally. Had the intention of showering but never did. Set a new goal today; to read at least one study (as in scholarly paper about a study) every day for the rest of my stay and take notes pertinent to my project. Today I read two and felt quite accomplished.

Among other things input all of yesterday’s data and it looked pretty darn good in comparison with past data. Organized data tables, and color-coded some records, because we all know an MS Excel spreadsheet looks way better as a rainbow. I haven’t shaved in over 10 days; now that’s a non sequitur.

After a few days of seemingly eating nothing but peccary (again, not really peccary, just various other animals) we had chicken for lunch. It goes very well with the brown sauce. We have two sauces and I affectionately refer to them as brown and orange. As in most Mexican restaurants, you’re faced with the daunting choice of red or green, it kills me.

Took a short siesta and watched the aforementioned South Park episode. Nothing makes me giggle more than the Costa Rican president going “¿Qué?” to the choir teacher voiced by Jennifer Aniston. Had some data troubles to work out and think about along with reading those two papers. At around 4:30 I freed my mind of that and logged about 70 minutes of porch time. Really good porch time today.

Grad student Susan got here this afternoon, she’s coordinating the Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program here this summer. The same program I was denied acceptance too, but it all seems to be for the best because the REU kids have to sit through a week of orientation and lectures; not cool. After the porch, went to dinner. Best attempt at something I consider “American” in a while. Beef brisket with that French onion sauce and potatoes. For dessert, a delicious crepe with a strawberry drizzly something. Yum.

Then not too much happened between then and now. We were supposed to go batting tonight, but at 4:00pm when we would have had to leave the thunder was quite frightful and lightning was abound. Nevertheless, it never rained and probably would have been a fine night for batting. This is getting to be a long post.

Since I made the good ole list of things to mention in the blog today, I am not at a loss for words as I was yesterday. I’ll save a couple of cabina-related items for tomorrow, with a picture (be excited). For now I’ll leave you with the following quote from a recent email (5:05pm) from Dr. Chazdon. Recall that my project entails about 8km of cycling every day.

“I talked with Tinny [the assistant who will help me on my project] today. She is very excited about the summer. This week she has two big tasks. 1) learn to ride a bicycle…”

BP

Metas

Wow Memorial Day already, unfortunately a day for work here. Forcing myself to stay up and write this post, it’s almost 10. Got up pretty darn early for retiring quite late, about 6:15, which got me over to breakfast before every one else. Doodled around with my food until more people showed up.

Took a shower and got ready to go out. Got field lunches and bikes and all that good stuff. I think we (Amanda & I) hit the trail a little before 8am. Had a nice bike ride accompanied by great weather. When we arrived to the plot it had only been 11 hours since we left it after batting. Set up, hydrated, got started.

My goal for the two weeks ending Sunday is 150 trees, through yesterday I had done 68. With one more day lined up for data collection I set a goal of 50 for today. We worked until 1:30, roughly 5 hours with lunch and did a whopping 57 trees. That only leaves 25 for Thursday and hopefully we can go a little above and beyond.

I decided to be goal oriented today: 1) Measure 50 trees (check), 2) Sit on porch and read for 3 hours (2.5 down), and 3) Watch the NBA Conference Finals (check). Felt good to accomplish goals. Really tired…

So got through about 80-90 pages of Walk in the Woods and watched the NBA with the Clarks. The most unlikely people to watch sports with, the two researchers by whom I’ve read more papers than anyone else in my preparation to do research. Timmy Duncan is no match for the Jazz, that franchise ended when Karl “The Mailman” Malone retired.

Tomorrow I’ll get back to writing down all the things I want to write in the blog and therefore spicing it up a little. Well for tomorrow, I have a little pile of data processing and investigation to do, maybe some batting at night. Susan, another grad student from our lab arrives tomorrow. Sorry for breaking the streak of pictures. ¡Hasta!

BP

Domingo

Words of wisdom: If you open your mouth too big in the rain forest, something will fly in. Gosh, I keep on thinking of lots of things to write about but at this point in the day it all escapes me. Let’s just start at the beginning.

Bonfire never happened last night, rain, paid 5,000 Colones for some pretty terrible pizza. There is some kind of prohibition on tomato sauce in this country. None with the spaghetti, nor lasagna, nor pizza. Makes each item that much less appetizing. Got to watch the Spurs at Jazz meanwhile, decent game.

Got myself to bed kind of late, 10:30, which still really feels like 12:30, as it would be in CT. Started reading Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. It’s about this out-of-shape middle-aged guy who decides to thru-hike the AT one summer with his equally out-of-shape friend. The writing is quite entertaining, looking forward to more tonight.

So, nobody was at breakfast this morning, just the few of us who work around the old lab here. With plans for today I opted out of staying up late last night. Pretty standard breakfast, lots of iced coffee, really falling in love with it. Discovered that there’s usually coffee on between meals too.

Sticking with the plan, Amanda and I got the bikes pumped up with some air and shot off for the Lindero Sur Plot at the back of the property. The back of La Selva is adjacent to the sprawling, mountainous Braulio Carillo National Park that we drove through on the way here. The trip was quite formidable. Started with a 3.75km bike ride, then a 1.25km hike up and down hills, but definitely a fun hike.

Best weather ever today, couldn’t ask for much better Memorial Day weekend out of the country. Rarely a cloud in the sky all day, right now the moon is nice and bright. It ended up taking us an hour to reach the plot, which should shorten as the summer goes on. Lindero Sur will be the second plot I cover, following LEP. Only stuck around for 20 minutes or so and headed back to get spiffy and go to lunch, without the getting spiffy.

Had a relaxing lunch, ate some peccary. Today at the dining hall there were everyone’s bills for station fees stuck up on the white board. Couldn’t find one with my name, probably going to let it slide for a couple of days since the bank is charging me a 2% fee on every swipe down here. That’s $40 on $2,000 which is about what I’ll have to spend for 12-13 weeks of fees, not cool.

Had a very very relaxing afternoon, everyone else was being quite lazy, so I joined in the fun. Fooled around on the computer before hitting the porch hard with my book. Sat in the sun; it felt like a warm blanket, I could have zonked (MS Word takes that word, nice) out at any moment. Didn’t want to leave my rocker, but eventually pulled myself up and got back into field clothes to go batting.

Got going a little after 4pm to go to the LEP plot so Amanda could practice going out to the plots. We also had the 3m poles to carry on the bikes. I had two lodged between the grip and brake, which seemed to work all right, except for the fact that I was forced to sit on the bike, my behind will thank me in the morning.

We have come to a crossroads as how to get new bikes: 1) steal nicer bikes or 2) get our bikes stolen. Option #1 is much more likely. So in total today did 15k of biking and 5k of hiking, just wait till I start swimming with the crocs, triathlon here I come. Batting was good, had some ugly beetles get caught in the nets.

Requested a PB&J for my field dinner, was pleasantly surprised to find crunchy peanut butter, yum. Got a little reading in before night came. Caught a bat with a cut, so there was some bat blood, kind of creepy. Had a couple of bats free themselves, then fly right back into the net. The picture for today is from last week, but I’m pretty proud of catching the bat mid flight.

Have a pretty solid schedule lined up for the coming week, last week before assistants arrive. Taking the night off tomorrow, planning on watching Spurs/Jazz again. Regaining my obsession with platanos in every form, can’t wait to fry some up at home. Trees tomorrow…and hopefully more to say.

BP

Ornitocidio

An early post today, because stuff is going down tonight and I don’t want to forget. Best sleep ever last night, my first in the cabina. Still haven’t met my roommate, apparently he is on some sort of trip and is close to being fired because “he only shows up when he feels like it.” Had some pretty cool dreams and the walk to breakfast was nice and short.

After that took a shower and got ready for the field. My body kept on telling me I was wicked tired, but I think that’s a result of the solid sleep I got and want to get back to (bad sentence). Got my tree stuff together at the lab and water filled up.

Went to get the key for the crappy bikes and got all confused because one was missing and the keys weren’t exactly as we had left them. Took a few to figure that out, then heard about the bird murder in progress.

So I got to the scene sort of late, but here’s what I gathered. Apparently the ring leader had beef with this other bird (all a variety of toucans). The perp then gets four friends to help him subdue the victim, and eventually through the “beak (pretty big beak too) to the neck” method immobilizes and kills the victim.

Now this must have been some beef because the perp had been holding onto the victim’s neck for about 20 minutes when I showed up and we continued to watch it grasp and flop the dead bird around for another 15. I’ve included a picture of the final moments, the lighting is killer, wouldn’t you say?

Well that aside, and some time passed, we hopped on the crappy bikes and headed off for the LEP plot. Got started right at about nine, beautiful day for tree measuring. I think I use the word “got” a little too much, trying to control myself. Before lunch, we had 32 trees done, bringing my total to 68, which also keeps me on pace to do 150 before next Sunday. Goals are fun.

Had more peccary for lunch, jk. Had another shower and brushed my grillz. Later went to lab to do work with data and goof around online. Around 3:30, some people went to go float down the river, I was still pretty tired and wasn’t feeling it. Word is, bonfire tonight, pretty psyched for that.

I guess I don’t have too much more to mention about today, maybe a picture of the new crib tomorrow, who knows. Plans for tomorrow include a morning hike and nighttime batting or maybe Sunday Night Baseball. Decided I should have brought a wiffleball bat & ball; futbol really isn’t my game. ¡Ciao!

BP

Murciélago

I guess it was a “fun” day. Started out pretty good as usual with breakfast and a warm dripping. After breakfast went by reception to get the key for my cabina room (5D). Went back to river station to start packing and cleaning up the room. Did that until about 11am when I spent an hour doing work in the lab.

Had lunch, and realized that nothing will be as good as the one lunch we had with arroz con camarones and platanos. Weak coffee today. After that moved all my stuff across the station to Cabina 5 in the midday heat. Got it all there in two trips, in between started a load of much-needed laundry.

Went over the bridge to reception to return my key from River Station. Upon arrival there I was informed that 5D was out and 2A was in, so I was like oh well…

Got over to Cabina 2 and went into 2A where there was definitely a “chick smell” in the air and girl stuff everywhere. Now this whole thing was starting to bother me. Left my stuff there and went across the bridge, again.

They were all like “ho ho ho, we had no idea there was anybody there” (well sort of the Spanish version of that). If they didn’t have a rain forest for people to study and poke, they would tank. After some bickering and general confusion, I was handed a key for 2C. Okay, this was going to be it I told myself.

At least this time I only had to move my stuff down the stairs. Now 2C is quite a ballin’ room, kind of like South C will be next year. I’m rooming with the Lab Manager, so we have a private bath, mini-fridge, coffee machine, and a sweet lounge couch thing. Better yet, it’s really close to both the lab and dining room. Dropped my stuff, switched the laundry, did emailing and work at the lab.

Got the laundry dried and folded and moved into the cabina. By this time, I was out of time so packed up my bag to go batting (as in catching bats, not the fun kind, hehe) with Amanda. Went out about 600m on the SAZ, a trail that starts on the side of the river of the dining hall. Found some interesting trails and such and picked a spot for a couple of nets.

Got the nets set up really well and I went back for dinner. Weirdest dinner ever. First of all, never try to make an American dish in a Latin American kitchen. If it doesn’t include rice & beans, it’s probably not worth it. So we had this attempt at lasagna tonight, somebody forgot the tomato and cheese. That pretty much resulted in a wet taquito. Tasty with hot sauce nonetheless. Cabbage concoction and onion soup to accompany.

Prepared a little dish for Amanda, strongly tempted to put a shred of beef in there (vegetarian, not that I have anything against that, I just wouldn’t be so inconsiderate of my body, it’s important). Hiked back out by 6:25pm to be there for the first bat. In total I think we caught about eight before the rain started.

Packed up the nets and poles and ropes and hiked back in the rain. Hiking in the rain is one of my favorite activities. Umbrella kicked the bucket, well almost; time to shop for a new one. That’s about it for now, trees in the morning. I’ve included a picture from batting tonight.

BP

Posponido

Nothing happened today. The entire day felt like one long rain delay. Started out with high hopes and formidable goals, ended with field dinner in the lab. Warning: This will be the least spirited post thus far.

Got up all happy and ready to go. Went to breakfast, we had Gogurt in a cup among other things. My new iced coffee scheme is working out so fine and Amanda & I agree it’s probably the best thing about La Selva. They also need a sandwich making station, because ham between two pieces of bread isn’t a sandwich.

Spent the morning getting a data sheet ready for the field and writing a few emails. Changed the old facebook picture for the first time in about forever…the things you do in procrastination. So, the big plan was to leave for the plot after lunch and measure heights for a couple of hours, set up bat nets and catch bats for a couple of hours.

I got all my stuff packed up so concisely in my daypack, we had field meals ready to go, everything was going quite excellent. As we were about to go get the bikes, it started thundering like crazy, so Amanda decided we should just wait 15 minutes and see what happens. Pretty much have been doing that until now, when the monotonous raindrops are just ending.

Still had that field dinner, so I chomped that down. Spent some of the afternoon keeping myself in the know about pop culture, something I pride myself on. Then addressed some of the crazy academic issues I have to deal with including my not-so-ideal GPA and applying for University Scholar in the fall.

And it’s starting to pour again. So in addition to a killer day of fieldwork, today should have been moving day. Went to reception after breakfast and asked for the move and it was all good, but they said the bed wouldn’t be ready until 6:00pm (things work in a really odd way around here) and that I couldn’t get the key until “later.” At that point I was still spending the entire afternoon out in the field so I just shelved moving until tomorrow morning.

Combining the lack of activity and lack of moving, today was pretty weak. So then I felt like topping off such an unproductive, uninspired day by watching the Cavs/Pistons game. Who doesn’t obsess about the NBA conference finals?

As I flip through the Direct TV menu we get most of the typical US cable networks, so I finally find TNT, and no basketball! Just Any Given Sunday, or Un Domingo Cualquier. Super big bummer. Figure I’ll just post and hit the sack early for my (cross ya fingers, pop ya collar) last night in River Station.

Didn’t do anything, didn’t take any pictures, so all you get is a spider on a leaf from a long time ago. Ideal tomorrow: Move, do laundry, and maybe some fieldwork in the afternoon but that’s a big “if.” Oh, and I turn 20 three months from today. Until tomorrow…

BP

Pueblo

Definitely an interesting day. Watching Yanks/Boston right now in the lounge. Started out normal as usual, got in some breakfast and computer work early on. Spent a lot of time just goofing around, oh well. Grabbed lunch and finalized plans for our trip into town this afternoon.

Before lunch, Andrea told Amanda and I about a drink you could buy at a heladería near the bus stop in Puerto Viejo. It’s called a “Winston Churchill” she said. So the taxi got here on time and we rushed across the bridge. Squeezed four of us into a small Nissan something and shot off for the 4km trip to town.

Dropped the other two off at the supermarket and continued onto the ferretería, or hardware store. Lots of cool stuff inside, lots of those things you know have been in the store since it opened that nobody has a need for. Amanda got some gloves and rope and other things for bats, I got WD-40 to take good care of the tripod.

Left from there to run a crazy set of errands including fabric and other things. Amanda was trying to buy a lens cloth, but then we realized that nobody carried them and that glasses were a rarity among Ticos. Used my first ATM in a long time, totally forgot about entering a PIN, a guy from the bank had to come out and remind me after the machine didn’t spit out any Colones. Pretty embarrassing since a line was forming.

Walking down the street, it was very similar to Park St. in Hartford; lots of people not doing much of anything and those businesses that have no way of self-sustaining themselves. Really cheap stuff though. Amanda bargained with this one seamstress to sew her 24 bags for bats with ties for 5,000 colones, or about $10.

Never found our other tripmates although we looked around kind of hard. Went to a supermarket where I bought some Windex, paper towels, Q-tips, and Gatorade. Now back to my boy Winston Churchill.

We found the store near the bus stop and went in. I asked the girl working if they had a drink called the Winston Churchill. She said no and gave me this weird look and goes to help another customer. At this point I assume some grand prank was played on us. As the girl is making a drink for this other guy she keeps looking back at me, then Amanda is reading the menu and points out “Eskimo Churchill” for 550 colones (a buck!).

So it turns out the whole time we were looking and thinking, she was making an Eskimo Churchill for the other guy, and everything fell back into place. An Eskimo Churchill (?!?!) (whatever that means) begins with a layer of red flavor slushy. After that a couple scoops of powdered milk, and another slushy layer. On top of that, a few squirts of condensed milk, then a scoop of your choice of ice cream. Disgusting, right?

Actually, really delicious. I’ve included a picture. When you get it all mixed up, it’s quite a sugary, very-dairy flavor explosion. Next time you’re in the neighborhood, pick one up. Really intense thunderstorm got started around 3:30, so we hopped in a taxi and headed back to the station where it still hasn’t rained in 2 days.

Had a little time to dry off/put my new supplies away. Watched the first three innings of the game and left for dinner with New York up 5-nil. Jeter passed Dimaggio on the all-time Yankees hit list tonight, quite an accomplishment. Had some sort of spare ribs for dinner (I’m convinced it was peccary), and met a famous ecologist/photographer who got his Ph.D. from my advisor’s husband at UConn.

One inning to go, then maybe some laundry. I always tell myself I have nothing to talk about when I start a post, but look at it grow, over 7,000 words so far. There’s a long story about moving to cabinas, but I’ll spare you that. Good news that comes out of it is that I’ll probably get to move to a cabina tomorrow morning as part of some mass-relocation going on. All this business gets done by word of mouth, so it’s taken a while to find it out.

After lunch, we have a long afternoon/evening of fieldwork in the plot lined up, hopefully not too much rain. Long boring post, my bad.

BP

Escurridizo

The rainforest is slippery. One of those things that you never consider about an area until you arrive. Spent most of the day walking around if the very fine, high-clay, wet soil that covers most everything. I’m sure it would suffice for the coolest slip and slide ever, but out here we have snakes and scorpions and other things that bite.

So, lots and lots to talk about today. Got up nice and early as planned after having a few false alarm wake-ups. As I mentioned a while ago, Costa Rica doesn’t subscribe to the whole daylight savings time business. Without it, the day goes by in an interesting fashion. Today for example, the sun rose at 5:12am, way too early for anyone to really be active and then set at 5:52pm, before dinner even starts. I like it way better in CT where it’s starting to go down around 7:30 these days.

After breakfast went back to the lab to get some stuff together and then Amanda and I took off for the LEP plot on the crappy project bikes. About a kilometer into our 3.8km bike ride Amanda’s chain was falling off, so we paused to do some emergency adjustments on the bike. After that we were on our way. Parked the bikes and took a 600m hike into the plot.

At this point I was quite giddy since it would be my first day of real data collection and the sky was clear. Earlier, I had transcribed 36 trees to measure before we headed back for lunch. Got started with measurements at 8:30. Spent lots of time circling around trees, looking for the best views. I measured while Amanda held the reflector and jotted down the data points. By 11am we had done all 36 trees and took a celebratory picture with the jury-rigged reflector on a stick.

Biked back to the lab, walked over the bridge to lunch, experiment with iced coffee was quite successful. Got cleaned up somewhat and goofed around on the computer for a few. Switched gears and popped my fresh data into a spreadsheet. Out of 36 trees, I flagged 7 for odd increments from past years. After finishing the plot, I’ll try to revisit those and take special care in measuring.

Put my legs back on and got ready to go net bats with Amanda. We went up to the arboretum, about a .7km walk, to set up two nets. Since this was my first time netting bats, I was especially excited having seen only a handful of bats up close in my life. Bat nets are basically comprised of really fine netting organized into a number of pouches so that the entire thing is propped up on two 3m poles and spans horizontally about 6-7m. The idea is that bats don’t see or echolocate the fine netting and fly right into it and become trapped.

After setting up two nets near the gazebo, I shot back over to the dining room for dinner and to grab Amanda’s field meal. Ate quickly and walked back over (about a kilometer) to find a bat caught up in one of nets while Amanda was dealing with one on the other next. The little guy was squirming and trying to chew his way out. After close examination, turned out to be a girl bat.

Took those two bats back to the gazebo and identified them, measured the forearm & mass, and then set them free. With the first bat, I captured a picture of it just taking off with the wings wide open. It’s on Amanda’s camera, so maybe that one tomorrow. At 8:30 we called it quits, but found one more bat and decided to just let it go. Got back to the lab shortly after 9pm.

Long day, but really really productive. Got my first data points which really got me inspired and I finally felt like the project has started. I have a good feel for how long it will take to measure X number of trees, and excited to do some more on Thursday hopefully. I had a few more things to talk about I guess, but this narrative got pretty long.

Had some funny battery issues with the rangefinder at the worst possible moment and can’t seem to find many baseball fans. Probably going to post something to the effect of, “any Yanks or Sox fans out there, come watch the game tonight,” tomorrow on the message board.

The rest of the week will be sort of a hodgepodge. Tomorrow, my first trip into town hopefully, that should give me lots to talk about. Thursday a day similar to today but going out to the plot from 1pm to 9:30pm to do both trees and bats, we’ll see how that goes. Friday will probably be a data and hypothesis-thinking day with Amanda gone all day with the Bosques crew to an outside plot.

Saw a spider trap, kill, and mummify its prey tonight; coolest thing I’ve seen all summer.

BP

Graduación

Threw myself a small graduation party for completing the so-called “Phase One” of my project, well not really, but the joy was there. All that practice I’ve been mumbling on about is coming to a close and we’ll see how tomorrow goes. Measured about thirty trees this morning in the forest, had top-notch accuracy numbers.

So a pretty normal routine for that. Had some time before lunch to goof around, clean stuff, clean me, put stuff away. Got a little distracted after lunch and tried to make my blog more presentable. Soon after, set up camp at a PC and worked with my data in Access. Got all my calculations of canopy closure index done for both of my secondary plots in both years. Felt really proud of myself, especially because I followed the methods that I developed back in April and everything went swimmingly.

Working with data has made me a cross-platform expert at copying and pasting shortcuts.

Onto more obscure and exciting things…I opened up my laptop to find a small mini-ant “infestation,” you might call it. Put on my game face and killed the entire colony which amounted to about twenty little buggers. I thought I was keeping a close eye on my laptop to prevent its theft, but now I must also try to stop my iBook from becoming a part of the rain forest.

One of my biggest regrets of leaving the country for the summer was the lack of Dunkin Donuts, and more importantly large regular iced coffees. As it turns out, La Selva has conveniently positioned the ice machine right next to the coffee machine. I’m going to try to start my morning with a makeshift iced coffee and see how it goes.

On that note, I’ve sort of already begun thinking about what I’ll bring back home as far as souvenirs. From talking to people a good plan seems to be organic coffee and machetes. Gotta see how that one pans out.

Got back from the Jimmy Buffett lecture a few minutes ago. Good talk about stress response/physiology in tropical and temperate frogs. Showed some cool data about why animals, including humans, have lower basal metabolic rates in tropical zones. Really profound hypotheses, but it lacked sample sizes. Had one of those people who raises their hand to ask a question, but really wants to have an explanatory conversation with the presenter…I hate those people.

Definitely must have an early morning tomorrow to get some trees measured with Amanda assisting me. General plan is to hit the trail after breakfast, get some measurements done, and be back for lunch. Some time to work in the lab after that, and then maybe some netting for bats at night. Shaping up to be a full day.

I’ve pretty much gotten over my initial fascination with wildlife, so no great new pictures today except for a cool and colorful mushroom colony in the arboretum. Lots to do tomorrow, maybe an early post, maybe a late one.

BP

Juego

Walking by on the way back from dinner, the researcher’s lounge was empty so I came in and flipped on the old ESPN to watch my Yankees avoid the sweep tonight. Two straight doubles by Jeter and Matsui and we have runners on 2nd and 3rd for my boy A-Rod. Pretty big victory for this guy. Second of today…

Made some big strides with the data today and got to work in Access to fix a few things, really coming along nicely. Couldn’t be more boring to write about in the blog, but it made me happy nonetheless. All my tables are ready to go for some calculations and analyses. Man, Spanish TV is awesome, especially the commercials.

Not too too much to talk about today, again took it pretty slow and easy for the most part. Justifying all that with the whole, “I worked my butt off to have a 3.9 semester, I don’t have to work every second.” Got up to do some field practice which went pretty well, really humid morning due to lots of rain in the last couple of days. The river was noticeably higher than usual this evening.

There’s a lecture here tomorrow entitled something to the tune of “Latitudinal Gradients and Stress Physiology: A Physiological Explanation for the Jimmy Buffett Effect.” Y’know, changes in latitude, changes in attitude. Should be a good one, more on that tomorrow night.

Had rice and chicken and veggies for dinner tonight, found myself missing beans with my rice. You know how when you want those last few grains of rice and you have NO BEANS to scoop them up with? Probably the first time I’ve had that feeling. Had some lively conversation to go with it talking about NPR and frogs that navigate by the stars. The stuff you learn spending a summer with scientists…

So remember the whole Amanda’s odd trip to San José story…She sends me an email today that goes yada yada, I won’t be home till Monday morning. The best part was that she and her friend who drove from Panama are trying to find a way to ship his car back the States so he doesn’t have to drive. Sounded like a pretty formidable and costly task.

I’m making tomorrow my last official day of practice, and I’ll do a lot of it. On Tuesday, Amanda will come out with me to the Lindero El Peje plot to start measuring trees FOR REAL. I’m super excited to get started, because then I can forecast the conclusion. I’ve set a modest goal to get 150 trees done over the next 2 weeks because I won’t have an assistant most days. Then our assistants/interns will arrive and stuff will take off.

Got a pretty solid Sunday night lined up here with one and only one activity, watching the Yanks. Looking forward to a busy day tomorrow, the lecture, and data collection on Tuesday…good deal. The picture today comes from some abandoned house on the river I happened by the other day. It had some cool flowers out front…

Oh man, just proofreading but yea, Jeter’s two-run shot to deep left center, the announcer was flipping out—it’s gonna be a good night.

BP

Teléfono

Woke up to some really intense rain, which lasted from about 5 to 10am. Because of that got stifled from going out to practice measurements, but I should only need a couple more days to be ready to go with that. Got on the ole Skype today, took about forever to download on our wonderful wireless connection here, but it worked in the end. I’m sitting on the porch outside the old lab and a frog just bounced up, went around my leg, under the table and back off. Must have had frog rabies.

So yea, called the folks in the afternoon, followed my Yanks in another impressive loss at the Mets, but at least A-Rod went yard, that’s a good sign. Since I didn’t do any fieldwork today, got to stay clean, but still not as fun as being in the jungle. In turn, today’s post will be anecdotal at best.

So I’m sitting in the lab throwing together this data table I need with information from like 4 sources and it’s turning out to be a bloody mess when one of the German grad students walks in. He picks up a conversation with one of the other students that begins with “I got lost.” So he continues to retell the story to everyone that walks by and how he decided to follow the river and screamed help to some tubers who didn’t believe him and started laughing. It was a generally funny tale. Turned out he wasn’t that lost and was near the area where I saw monkeys the other day and that the trail ran parallel to the river.

Otherwise, had some solid down time today, which is good because I’ll probably be out in the field most days this week either working on my project or Amanda’s. Really excited to get this summer started by taking data, when I work all day and go to bed without being a step closer to being finished, it’s sort of defeating.

Going over my schedule for the summer, looks like I might be able to come home a week or so sooner than expected. Of course that depends on a lot of things, but it’d certainly be nice to have another week off before school starts. So anxious to get started….sitting around while everyone else is actively doing research isn’t so much fun. Mmmmm….more rain.

To continue being anecdotal, remember those times in like 3rd or 4th grade when you did a “unit” on the rain forest? You learned about how bad deforestation was, and what YOU could do to stop it. The three-toed sloth was the coolest animal ever…I would do anything to relive those moments right now and have a whole new perspective.

Due to my boring day, I can only provide you with a boring picture, but don’t forget “El Bosque Es Suyo, ¡Protéjalo!” Hopefully I can get up for some early morning practice tomorrow and spend the afternoon playing with MS Access and maybe ArcGIS. Until tomorrow…

BP

Semana

It’s been one week since you looked at me; Cocked your head to the side and said I’m angry…and the song goes on. Yup one week in the rain forest, and I survived. So I was about to sign up for mlb.tv so I can watch my Yankees once and a while down here, but then realized they calculate the blackouts through the billing address, and that just won’t fly. Oh well, right now we’re down to the last out with the Mets, and Matsui who’s not been Mr. Clutch lately is batting…we’ll have a final soon.

Infield single, Giambi pinch hitting. That aside, today was pretty good. Got a good start switched showering with breakfasting. A note about showers at La Selva, one pro is really high shower heads for 6’4”-ers like me, the con is the lack of a central hot water heater. Yea I know it’s the rainforest and it’s 80 degrees and 90% humidity 24/7, but a hot shower still comes in handy. To compensate for this the showerhead has all sorts of exposed electrical wiring coming out of it, which really freaked me out the first time (water+electricity=bad). After a short while I realized the thing had three settings, ‘hot’, ‘off’ and ‘warm.’ So I figure hot would be good, but nothing really happens when I switch to it. After more fiddling, if you put the water on really low power it actually gets warm, and I am now enjoying a warm dripping every morning. Enough of that, Yanks lost by the way, take more ‘roids Giambi.

I was already to shoot off into the forest today after my shower, but was confronted with an early morning thunderstorm so waited it out for about 30 minutes until it passed. Got in a solid three hours of really good practice. My confidence boosted through accurate replications, I headed back for lunch. Did some emailing and such, and then it was laundry time. Cleaned up the room really nice too, there’s a shelf for field stuff, bathroom stuff, computer stuff, books, and on and on. If and when I get a roommate, he’ll be impressed.

The sky opened up at 3:00, most intense rain I’ve seen in a long time.

Spent some time in the lab cleaning the equipment and checking my field measurements from the morning. Had a few political humor giggles on the porch and headed over the river for dinner. Good pasta tonight; everybody gets really excited when we DON’T have rice & beans. The station is really filling up, not many empty tables at dinner. A few courses here from Auburn, Ole Miss and UGA. Really odd bunches of folks. How about some northeastern schools? Time for a really short play:

Eddie (post-doc from Harvard): I want to know where they’re from, must be from somewhere in Europe.

Ben: We associate abnormal with European? (at a table with three German students)

I’ll try to include plays more often. So I’m surfing the net last night and I get one of those banner ads. It reads in all its flashy-ness, “Live and Work in the USA; 50,000 Winners; American Green Card.” One of those things when you know you’re in Latin America. As far as a picture for today, there’s a rufous motmot (I learned at least one bird) I caught grabbing a scrumptious bug out of the air a few days ago. It was so cool, other people asked me for a copy, enjoy.

Grad student Amanda took off to San José for the weekend with some friend who’s driving from Panama to the States (I really like calling them “the States”). Kind of odd, but cool, except for the fact that Andrea from Kansas U. wants the keys to the project car, which are in the office whose key left with Amanda. Hopefully that’ll figure itself out. Talked with a few people about cool places to go in the area; excited to have a few days in early August to explore before flying out.

Found computers with Microsoft Access (my new favorite software) today so I plan on starting tomorrow with some intensive practice and then doing some calculations in the afternoon. Pretty excited about my data and my project in general. That’s all for now.

BP

Lento

Slow day…got up late, took my time with everything…lacked motivation for a while. Got the stuff together, headed over to the lab to put some things in my locker. Stopped by the Bosques office to wish Dr. Chazdon a safe trip home. She said of my project, “I’ve never felt more confident about a student’s project.” That’s pretty cool, although I lack similar confidence.

Sometimes I miss things about home and all this just feels like work, but then I realize where I am and what will come out of this summer and it’s all good again. Until I start collecting data, that’s probably how it’s going to be.

These next few days practicing out in the forest by myself are going to be rough, but worth it. I measured a few trees this morning, did a lot more exploring than measuring. Included another action scene of me taking a data point, something I’ll be doing at least 4,000 times this summer. Started to get really hot out and close to lunch time so went back to the station to clean up. Got my computer and what not to stick in the lab before lunch. Had this rice/beans/chicken/eggs/steak combination with papas fritas, which was pretty good.

After hanging around for a while and drinking coffee went back to the lab to work on the growing to-do list. First, I did a complete “take apart and clean” of the tripod so all the connections would work and stop sticking. Cleaned the rangefinder and calibrated its scope. Packed all that up and played with data for a while.

Still have a few email items to take care of, and planning to get lots of sleep tonight so I can have a full day of practice tomorrow. Each time I go out I feel more confident about resolving the crown of the tree and more comfortable using the rangefinder. Starting Monday, Amanda and I will switch off assisting each other on our projects. I hope to get a solid amount of work done in the two weeks before out assistants arrive.

Shaping up to be a boring weekend, but I’m looking to get started in the GIS lab doing some of the mapping for our plots. Once June comes the pace will accelerate and the summer will zoom by. For now I just feel like easing in and rewarding myself some free time for a successful semester that still seems like yesterday.

Sorry for the lack-luster post, I promise improvement.

BP

Pájaros

Quite a couple of days for seeing some birds out in the field, not to mention monkeys. I’ll just include pictures of the two spider monkeys and one of the toucans I saw today. Frankly not much to say about today, my blog posts can’t be as consistently entertaining as the guys over at http://bensojealous.blogspot.com.

Other people saw both a Boa and a Fer-de-lance (Terciopelo en español) (super-poisonous) last night on the trails. I’ve yet to see anything bigger than a little green vine snake.

Had to get up like 10 minutes earlier today to get the rangefinder out of the lab office before everyone left for a plot outside of La Selva. I would have gone, but the “project car” is a Suzuki Samurai, way too small for this guy. Since I got up that ten minutes before usual, some time after breakfast was given to the earliest siesta ever.

Hit the trail at about 8:15 to the arboretum to do some scientific-based practice. I worked my way across the arboretum measuring many of the trees. I replicated the maximum height measure four times from the same perspective for each tree. As I was getting started two toucans swept right in and landed above me, made me think about Fruit Loops and other great cereals back in the States. Before lunch I was able to do this for 45 trees.

Trekked back over the river for lunch, then bought some laundry soap for 665 Colones, which turned out to be a $1.29 charge on the Visa. Dropped that off at River Station, put my pant legs back on and went to measure some trees along the river. This is where I saw the spider monkeys.

At first I heard a lot of rustling and things falling to the ground, so I walked over to see what’s up. I saw one sort of just hanging in the tree doing the monkey thing and this other guy feasting on the seeds of the palm. I’m constantly impressed by the ubiquity of wildlife. There’s always noise of birds and bugs and other creatures and every corner presents something new.

With about 90 minutes of data collection in this part of the forest I added 14 trees to my data book when I heard the rain coming. I actually saw it coming across the forest and scrambled to put the “water resistant” and “partially submersion resistant” rangefinder into the dry bag. Luckily I was about 250m from the River Station and scooted back over there to pick up where the last siesta ended.

Cleaned myself up, headed over to the lab around 4:00 pm. Did some emailing, found out I was awarded another $525 in grants, great news. The average standard deviation of the 59 trees I measured four times was about 27 centimeters, pretty good, but I can do better. Comments were great yesterday, gracias. Had no time to tackle the bag of damp laundry, it’ll wait until tomorrow.

Worked on my plan/goals for the summer with Dr. Chazdon just a few minutes ago. She’s leaving tomorrow morning. Allotted myself another week for practice and setting up GIS and data projects. After that it’s full time data collection, yay!

The research assistant helping me on my project is older than me, Bengali, and arriving June 4th…

BP

Derretir

I’ll probably melt away in the humidity by the end of the summer. Started off the day pretty normal at 6:30, had some sort of tomato & mushroom omelet for breakfast. Got the rangefinder and stuff together around 8:30 and took off to some nearby forest to continue practice on measuring heights. Really hot day, almost no clouds. Saw a bunch of peccaries on the way out, snapped a picture for y’all.

Also included an action shot of measuring a tree, pretty intense, I know. Spent the majority of the time walking in circles around trees so that I could find a point where both the trunk and crown are visible. After about three hours of becoming drenched and dirty, decided it was time to cool off before lunch and garner an assistant.

More rice & beans for lunch, I’m going to miss it in the fall. After lunch around 1:00, Dr. Chazdon came out into the field with me to use the rangefinder in Filter Mode. All that means is that the sensor only responds when the laser is bounced off a highly reflective target. We use one of those circle reflectors from a bike or a driveway. Dr. Chazdon held the reflector against a trunk as I shot it with the laser, which took some practice to get good at aiming. Using the reflector makes the rangefinder more versatile in the forest.

After an hour or so, Dr. Chazdon left to go back to the lab and work with Amanda/data. I continued to explore and measure trees in the arboretum. The arboretum at La Selva is maintained as the forest minus the understory, so it has a park-ish feel. Called it quits from there sometime after three.

Cleaned myself up and brought the computer back to the lab to work with some data. Spent most of that time correcting coordinates for trees that are inclined. Since the index I’m calculating as part of my research relies on the position of the crown rather that the stem, this was an important task.

So to back up, last night Dr. Chazdon, Amanda and I are sitting in the BOSQUES (our secondary forest project) office. They’re reading resumes of the two girls from Wellesley College who will be joining in June as research assistants/interns. Inaugural play of the 2007 blog:

Amanda (discussing backgrounds): Have they both had tropical ecology? This one girl worked with turtles.

Ben: I haven’t even had tropical ecology

…a bit later…

Dr. Chazdon (referring to one of the girls): Ben, you wouldn’t mind having a Muslim intern, would you?

Ben (taken off guard and flabbergasted): What kind of question is that?

Thinking about that last part later on, realized I should have done something to the effect of the opening scene of The Snuke, hopefully I’ll get another shot.

I also included pictures of a big palm and a cool flower that I know you were dying to see. Comments used to be limited to only users, but I fixed that and now it's free game. Dinner soon, more data crunch time later.

BP

Lluvia

Rainy day in the rain forest, big surprise. Spent some time last night getting the laser rangefinder ready and reading the manual. Saw an iguana after breakfast, had camera issues, so no pictures today. Got up this morning and started practicing on the trees around the lab, and myself (1.92m). It was really sunny out and it started raining about 10am, didn’t really quit until 2-3pm, limited my practice time on measuring heights.

Grad student from our lab, Amanda, showed up today. Went out with her, Dr. Chazdon, grad student Andrea from KU, and Dr. Losos to the closest of the secondary forest plots, which took about 20 minutes to get there, another 10 to find it. Before that did some work with the data and deciphering due to the lack of meta data (an epidemic around here). Meta data, is essentially data about data and is quite crucial when using 9-10 year old data.

Spent the two hours between the start of the rain and lunch working with the coordinate data for the plots. It’s has given me a new bunch work for tonight in the lab correcting some of the numbers. At least the lab is air-conditioned and wireless.

Had lunch with a couple journalists from the Christian Science Monitor, who’ve been poking around the last few days. It’s amazing how many journalists are here to check out and interview all the scientists. Dr. Chazdon got interviewed for Channel 7 television here in Costa Rica on Sunday.

Took off for the Lindero Peje plot this afternoon about one on a bike made for someone about 5’ 8”, oh well. Apparently there’s a bigger bike I can use for the rest of the summer. Biked through mostly second growth forest, the kind I’ll be doing research in. Much of the trail (paved) was along the Rio Sarapiquí, which is used for whitewater rafting and joins with the Rio Puerto Viejo (which runs right by my room) close to the station.

Saw a few interesting birds on the way out. Everybody with me knows all the birds just by hearing them, I’ll need to get much better at my naturalist skills this summer. After about a 3.5 km bike ride we parked and hiked in 550m to the plot. Got a brief secondary forest lesson from Dr. Chazdon. Discussed the projects this summer, looked at cool trees/plants, lots of fun stuff. Left around 3:30 as the rain was stopping.

Covered in mud, sweat and rain, parked the bike and came back here to River Station for a shower and siesta. Got in touch with some pop music and that’s about all. Dinner soon, work in the lab later. Work mixed with a ton of email, ESPN, and AIM. Pictures tomorrow.

BP

Vida

Life fills every void in the rain forest. Especially in the case of the trail-spanning tree I saw in the forest today. Check out that picture, I almost looked up expecting to see an abdomen and head. Everything is so covered with green and dense. Just now on the way back from dinner to the lab we walked over some leaf cutter ants harvesting from a tree and returning to their colony. Amazing stuff; thousands of ants carrying giant chunks of leaf at such speed. I’m planning on taking a video.

So I was up for breakfast today. The La Selva breakfast: eggs, ham, toast, banana, and rice & beans. After breakfast I took a few minutes to go on a short nature walk. Saw a big blue butterfly, the tree that collapsed into the river overnight, the big grandpa tree pictured, and a bunch of loud birds flying overhead. Still waiting to see a monkey and some snakes.

Workshop continued today and proved to be just as informative and hydrated as yesterday. At the first break we had some warm empanadas, yum. Met a lot more of the researchers/grad students, all of which are leaving this week. Probably going to have some social downtime before the interns from Wellesley and the REU students get here, but WORK starts tomorrow.

Talking to some of the scientists who spend a lot of time here, learned a lot about the Chiquita banana plantation nearby and the recent cultivation of pineapples in the area. Our juices at meals are typically either passion fruit or blackberry, definitely worth checking out.

After two relaxing and air-conditioned days at the station it’ll finally be time to start working on my project tomorrow by learning to use the laser rangefinder (pictured)…going to read the manual tonight. After lunch we’ll head out to the closest plot to start using it in situ. The rest of the week looks like many hours of learning and data preparation so in 8, 9, 10 days I can start doing some real science, yay!

We’ll settle for a short entry today since I need sleep and tomorrow will be sure to warrant many good stories. ¡Hasta mañana!

BP

Barbacoa

Now we have some pictures! There should be many many more to come. So my room has reached the peak of untidiness and it should probably get taken care of before I get a roommate. Sat around for a while pondering how I was going to fall asleep with no AC and no Sportscenter in 99.99999% humidity. But the fan saved me and it worked out just fine

Pulled a classic; slept through breakfast. Dr. Chazdon is here for a workshop entitled “Transitions in Tropical Forests” and I was invited to sit in on the talks and discussions. Saw two parrots fly over the path on my way up to the Academic Center.

It kicked off at 8am (10am East Coast) in a super air-conditioned room. Clever me sat right below the vent and wanted a sweatshirt for the first couple of hours. All the talks proved to be a really cool introduction to all the fields of research going on here. I got to meet and hear talks from researchers whose papers I’ve been reading for the last 16 months.

About two hours in we took a coffee & scone break and got to warm up outside. The first few talks were about trees, then some reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals. We broke again for lunch.

I was right on with my expectation of eating rice & beans all summer. Plus, we had platanos (high potassium), a personal fave. We sat with a bunch of tree researchers and realized I need to perfect a 10 second summary of my project as opposed to telling everyone back home, “measuring trees.” Afternoon talks dealt with stream chemistry, cichlid fish, and database management. Another coffee break, then a general discussion about what to do with all the data and projects.

That all ended up around 5:30 with a reception with coolers full of beer and soda (keeping hydrated is key). They also had incredible amounts of guacamole ☺ and a selection of wines, classy. Dinner was a barbecue, which I’m informed I was lucky to be there for. Sat at a Spanish-speaking table with some Costa Ricans to get used to hearing and using the language.

Learned a lot more about the station and some of the logistics of my project. The two sites I’ll be working on are 30 and 60 minutes away by a combination of biking and hiking. There are shrimp over a foot wide in the river, still awaiting personal observation. I might get to upgrade my housing to a cabina (cabin) by the end of the summer, since I’ll be here for so long. I need to take many more pictures of all the wildlife, and supposedly there’s crocs in the river, not the shoes either.

The pictures are pretty self-explanatory; shots of the room, a red tree frog I spotted, view from the room of the river, the river. Pretty boring…I know. They should get better once I go out into the field Monday.

Just found out that I can’t watch Lost or Survivor: Fiji online since I’m not in the states, major bummer. It’s actually a lot like Lost on the station (Collared Pecarries everywhere, sort of like mini-boars/pigs, don’t worry I’ll snap a pic); I just hope I’m not on an electromagnetic anomaly. Ah ha! Allsp.com works; time to watch Rainforest Schmainforest.

That’s all for now, probably another day of workshop tomorrow and LOTS of sleep tonight.

BP

Humedo

What a day…I woke up Thursday morning in cool Connecticut and 32 hours later I’m in the rain forest running on no sleep. I spent Thursday running around for last minute things and trying to fit enough stuff for 89 days in the tropics into two bags. And I couldn’t just go to bed and waste away my last night in the country…especially when 1999 champion Rip Hamilton squares off against 2004 champion Ben Gordon.

Watched the game…had buffalo popcorn chicken & cookies…an eventful trip to Dunkin Donuts…watched Scrubs…left for the airport

Flew into Atlanta with Dr. Chazdon, and after an hour layover headed for San José, Costa Rica. Started reading The Making of a Surgeon, a book from 1970 about residency. Read ESPN The Magazine. Tried to sleep, never happened.

Landed in San José, went through Migración and customs. Met up with a couple other researchers…squeezed four of us into a Toyota bus made for 28. A wild adventure through the streets of greater San José, saw some shantytowns, lots of cars, places to fix cars, places to buy cars, places to rent cars.

Then we entered Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo, which had a tollbooth guarded by a guy with a shotgun. Saw lots of dramatic cliffs and landslides, cloud forests. After about a 60-70 minute drive we got to Estación Biológica La Selva, my home for the next 89 days.

Got checked in, hauled my gear over the coolest footbridge ever and reached River Station, my residential area. At this point the term “WET Tropical Rain Forest” really stuck. Dripping in sweat, it took a solid 5 minutes to decipher the lock to the room, which is kind of what I imagine living in North Campus is like. Check out the pictures for the room and the view from the porch (Actually, you'll have to wait a few for the pictures, left the cord back at river station)

Now there’s stuff all over the place and it calls for some organization, but first, my first dinner in Costa Rica.

BP

El Primero

I'll be off to Costa Rica just a few hours from now, and will be down there until August 9th! What better way to keep everyone up to date and, of course, entertained with a fancy new blog.

After over a year of preparation and way too many grant applications, I was awarded over $4,000 to fund my project this summer. I'll likely end up sharing a lot of the interesting aspects of my research here, but I guess the basic gist for now is studying tropical trees in regenerating forests of northeastern Costa Rica.

For geography's sake, Costa Rica is a Central American country roughly the size of New Hampshire & Vermont combined with a population of three million. It's situated north of Panama and south of Nicaragua. The national currency is the Colón. Five hundred Colónes amounts to a dollar. Costa Rica receives over 2 million tourists annually. And most importantly, Central Standard Time Zone (minus 2 hours East-coasters).

With exams just ending six days ago, I've tried to have a relaxing week at home while packing and running around doing errands before I go. Wednesday night I got to take little brother Sam (10) to his first Yankee game (on a school night!). Check out the cool picture. Yanks won 6-2 over the Rangers.

Well, I'm bound to have tons more to talk about 24 hours from now. Hopefully I'll get a post up everyday, and comments will always be welcome (keep it PG). Hasta luego!

BP