Thursday was a little better for the knee, but the nagging pain was just as bad as my nausea during Tuesday’s lab work. Can’t really recall the rest of Thursday, but playing the odds I bet there was a coffee break, dinner was banging and I do remember that the Yankees lost. We got some slack from the Alabamans for working on the Fourth, but we definitely made up for it.
Friday my knee didn’t bother me at all in the field as long as I stayed up on it. We cored the last 48 trees at the La Guaria plantations including Dipteryx panamensis, the hardest tree yet. Taylor and I switched off on getting the corer started in 12 of these beasts. Yelled “BEEFCAKE” a lot to pump up the team. In the past ten days we’ve had beef cakes and chile con carne(ival) at dinner on separate nights. My South Park allusions have hit an all time high.
Getting a ride door to door from La Selva to the plot was a welcome change, especially with the bum knee. On Wednesday there was a downed tree 800 meters from the plantation so we had some walking, but on the way in Friday, they brought a chainsaw and made quick work of it. Taylor is sitting next to me and keeps complaining about her sore triceps from coring. Pretty sore myself, but we don’t core again until next Monday.
After showering up Friday we coffee breaked and then I took in a Tico-dominated futbol game featuring Taylor, Ron, Marvin and some other researchers. Pretty exciting game. Taylor was all complaints afterwards about getting kicked at some point by an unidentified player. That brought us to six o’clock when I headed over to the lounge to get cooking up some burgers. Burgers were a huge hit done up with some onions, Lee & Perrins, fried egg, and BBQ sauce all on some butter-toasted Musmanni bread. Gil, Rob and Fei made brownies which were shaped like the contiguous forty eight.
Lots of people showed up...a fiesta to rival Rogapalooza...we just lacked wiffle ball and fireworks (confetti poppers instead). Spent the rest of the night watching American Pie 2, listening to lots of rap music, eating Jell-O and brownies, running the pong table and eventually cleaning up the disaster which involved some “fluids” on the floor and a bunch of dishes. Also found a coral snake (no mimic, no joke) (and nobody poked it, I swear) outside. Super cool and also the first snake I’ve seen at La Selva in over a month.
I ended up sleeping until noon on Saturday. Gil, Taylor and Fei actually came to wake me up for lunch, but I escaped the attack and made it to lunch in time. After lunch Taylor and I worked with the dry samples in the lab and listened the Yankees game (regardless of all negative (jokingly) comments above, Taylor/Sug(ar)/Beefcake is the best lab/field assistant anyone could ask for, including tolerating listening to baseball and the line “Tell a girl like Doritos, that’s ‘nacho cheese’” over and over again).
Of course I had a full day of lab work to do in a half day, but the game sounded good and there was a chance it was on TV. On the way to coffee, we stopped in the lounge and the game was on we I (Tay napped) watched the fifth inning, got coffee and returned for the last three. Super exciting ninth capped with the Yanks much-needed victory. On ESPN tonight too (Joba v. Wakefield).
Great game of frisbee in the rain after baseball. Got super muddy and wet, so showered before dinner. We had peccary and Robert brought the BBQ sauce so I turned out to be zoppity. After dinner Taylor and I hit the lab work hard again and got the hard part done in two and a half hours after being joined by five others in the balance once we put South Park on. Everything goes better with South Park.
Watched the movie In Bruges (pronounced like rouge). Kind of dark and weird but hilarious at moments. Slept in again...really have to quit that habit. Spent the morning reading 1776 and coffee breaking with Taylor. Washington’s about to cross the Delaware...it’s the bottom of the ninth and enlistments are up January 1, 1777, exciting stuff. Lunch was amazing and since then I’ve been blogging. Time to collect some pictures for this post.
Field on Monday and Wednesday, not too much lab work and a long weekend. Two or three days of coring in the following week to finish up the project. Thanks for reading and don’t sign off with out reading Mike’s last two posts (see the links).
BP
2 comments:
very nice pictures though i would have liked to see one of you "not poking" the snake
yea i was thinking that too, where's the picture of the snake. super important. looks like you got some confetti on your show in the 3rd picture. should prolly take that off so it doesn't affect the aerodynamics.
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