New Whip, Almost

Apparently I just don’t have the endurance of daily blogging that I developed last summer, so I plan to continue the tradition of every 2-3 days, unless lots of super exciting stuff starts happening.  The big news today is that before accomplishing anything profound, I’m taking off to the beach tomorrow morning.

A whole bunch of us are renting a couple of beach houses in Manzanillo, the next town to the East of Puerto Viejo where I spent three nights last summer.  This is also probably the first trip to anywhere in maybe 3 or 4 years I haven’t planned, led, etc., so that’s new and easy.  I volunteered to cook our first dinner tomorrow night.  It’s going to be a super awesome taco salad.  Tonight, I’m precooking and chopping up some ingredients.

Haven’t been to the field since the last post since Chops is orienting Taylor and Fei to their project for while she’s on the plant systematics course.  We’ll be in Manzanillo until Friday afternoon and will be in the field coring/setting up more plot-age Saturday and Monday.  

Went bike shopping today.  Rural Costa Rica bike shops are more or less like suburban American car dealerships.  Test drove this super nice Cannondale with disc brakes, but it was out of the price range (~ $800).  A fun ride nonetheless.  They ordered a Trek with a bigger frame than they had to be sent over from another shop.  It should get there Thursday, and I’ll pick up my new whip either Saturday or Monday.  Sweet deal.

Also got Eskimo Churchill #2, excellent as usual, but the price has skyrocketed since last summer to 750 colones, which is more like $1.70 with the weak dollar.  Also got all the groceries  for the taco salad.  Made all the bags for the next batch of cores.  Also massed the samples that were in the oven and got the first wood density values of the summer.  

I’ll be back to blogging Friday night, with lots of exciting pictures from the Caribbean!

BP