Sometimes I Walk In Zig-Zags

Gosh, I’ve had so many of those “gotta blog this” moments over the last couple days, but almost too many as I’ve delayed this post long enough.  I’ll start off with a quote,

“i made friends with about 30 guys and chicks straight from Islam, and they all speak really heavy Hebrew.” - Steve Lavoie

Note the part about the beautiful country of Islam.  Well, on with the post.  Got up Monday morning ready for a full day in the field.  It was also the last day I had to ride one of the relatively uncomforatble and ineffiecient project bikes.  I went to the field with both Taylor and Fei, which will be the modus operandi on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for the next 4-5 weeks.  We got to the plot shortly after 8:00 a.m. and proceeded to set up the field lab.

The goal was to core all 58 tagged trees, which I’m glad to say was met.  Taylor and Fei took turns being either the wood cutter/bagger or runner of cores as I did most of the coring.  Around tree 45 i started feeling it in the shoulders and they were like jell-o for the rest of the day.  This project is also bound to callus up my hands pretty good.

On Saturday, Taylor and Fei found Ectophylla alba in the plot.  They’re little pure white insectivore bats with yellow noses and feet.  Unfortunately they broke camp and I didn’t get to see them.  To make up for it, we saw a cool lizard/iguana type thing of whi

ch the genus escapes me and a super furry spider that may or may not have been a tarantula. 

I took a break there to go watch Weeds (it was great, btw), so now I’m super tired and I’ll sum up pretty quickly.  So right after getting back from the field, I proceeded to take a shower and eat lunch.  I was on my way to grab a taxi and go to town, when I remembered about the US Open playoff round as I passed the lounge.  Sat and watched Tiger for as long as I could--as he forced the sudden death--and took off to town.  

It took a half hour or so to settle the bike purchase and the whole time it was thundering in the distance and I was no in the mood to ride the 4 km back to La Selva amidst a storm.  Luckily we dodged rain all day yesterday.  Riding the bike back yesterday felt a lot like the day I got my car.  Going from big, slow vans and trucks to the zippy Vibe and likewise from clunky project bikes to a new smooth ride.

Made it back before dinner and had to delay blog posting due to a mass excursion to the bar.  I believe, at its peak every researcher with a couple exceptions was at La Machaca where Mom bartends and her 10 year old son bar backs.  Definitely the busiest bar in town on that Monday night.

Today was all about lab processing and I won’t go into the details, but it took six and a half hours to process all 174 samples and get them into the oven.  Here’s a picture showing all the visual variability found in rainforest tree wood.  If I could, I would also include some of the great smells.  Watched the Yankees play a gem of a game this evening and topped it off with the aforementioned Weeds showing.  Turning out to be the great week as I expected.

When I finished massing and volume-ing samples I helped Taylor and Fei out with data entry for Amanda.  When I came back in from watching the game, Taylor was just finishing up entering all my data.  Way to go Tay!

In the field tomorrow setting up plots.  No coring until at least next Wednesday.  Hopefully soccer game this Saturday in San Jose.  Later all.

BP