Work and Travels

I am finding it difficult to keep regular updates. My excuses are a sporadic schedule, travel, and a lack of discipline. But this weekend I get a five day weekend so I can't use those excuses. Today I am in Desert Hot Springs, CA visiting Ceri and pretty much being lazy, surfing the Internet.

Tacos y Más Tacos

Mexico was big fun. It was basically a taco run. I ate eleven tacos of five varieties at five different taco stands. So good.

Our trip took us down the 15 from Las Vegas to Tijuana, and then down Baja 1 to Ensenada where we stayed Friday night. We got a hotel at La Mision where for $40 we got two rooms and cable TV. We wasted an hour and a half on Los Simpsons and half of a Futurama. In Spanish Futurama was funnier. After some tacos we spent some time at the Jazz Cafe. I liked the dark, blotchy colors, the split levels, and the windows. The webpage is not the great.

Saturday we drove to San Felipe for más tacos and Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo was not celebrated. Instead, the prominent celebration was the Oscar de la Joya vs Merriweather fight. After tacos we walked on the beach and drew pictures in the sand. Anine wanted to see the fight so we walked around looking for a bar. We settled on a place with outside dining and view of the TVs. However, we were distracted by the night life and ended up watching very little of the fight.

Although there were quite a few tents set up on the beach in San Felipe, it was far too populated at midnight to expect to sleep without interruption so we drove north for a few miles until we found a campground on the beach. We made a fire and told a mix of true and untrue stories to each other.

Solvang

The next weekend was a trip to Solvang, CA for the Wine Country half marathon. I didn't run but Ceri and three of her family members did. The night before the run we ate at Pea Soup Anderson's. I had the bottomless bowl of pea soup which filled me after a single bowl. While the others ran I walked around Solvang looking for a coffee shop to buy a pastry and coffee. The locals hadn't heard that a half-marathon was scheduled for the weekend but luckily I was able to find a single coffee shop open next to the Hans Christian Anderson museum. Overheard conversation included a description of a firehouse BBQ where "Uncle Eddie", as in Eddie Van Halen, had sold a guitar for $12,000 to benefit the fire department. On Sunday, Chris purchased a motorcycle in Santa Barbara. Now I am contemplating taking a motorcycle safety class and getting my license.

Mojave Field Work

Work has been going well. We finished the annuals surveys two weeks ago and have been working on road restoration projects. These involve running a tape measure down a trail that had been restored by various treatments and counting all perennial plants that fall in the path. Specifically, we are looking for seedlings but these rare. Ideally there will be more in the treated areas than the untreated areas, indicating that the restoration is working. I'm not sure how the different treatments will compare but it seems like the best thing is just to keep the vehicles off the trail.

After 8 weeks working for USGS I am almost half way through my appointment. Hiking all week, sleeping under the stars, and generally being away from society has been good for my mental and physical health. I like the people I work with and I learn new things about the desert and desert plants every day. I have also lost nearly 20 pounds since starting work here. The heat hasn't been a problem with the highest temperature experienced so far at just 100 degrees. I drank 7 liters of water and gatoraide that day. The temperature drops to 50's and 60's fairly quickly after nightfall. During hot days we set up a tarp off the truck and break from noon to 3pm. Generally we read, write in our journals, eat and play games during this time.


I think it's funny that this truck has about 1500 miles on it and have already destroyed one running board.

Ok, I'm tired of being on the computer so I'm gonna quit writing. You will notice that I have posted some links to my galleries on the right. In keeping with my sporadic nature I have them spread out over three google accounts. Someday I plan to consolidate them into a single account.

Mojave Week 3

This week had it's ups and downs. I started Monday morning by being 40 minutes late to work. I still don't remember being told to be at work at 7. The hours were long and the weather variable.

Mojave Desert Week 3 Gallery

The first site we visited on Monday was in Meadow Valley. We were greeted to the site, and throughout the next two days, with slightly terrifying sonic booms made by planes that could vanish in front of your eyes. They stop flying at night, thankfully, and the only sounds are the wind and distant howls of coyotes.


This glutenous and slothful bumble bee was rolling around on his back in an opuntia flower and loving it.


On the way to our second site we saw a new development under construction at Coyote Springs. Although there are no houses built yet the golf course looked to be finished and the deep green of the grass stood out against the beige and tan everything else. They left one natural rock with some yucca on it for the entrance to the development. It was completely surreal and a perversity of nature.

Nevershine is at the end of the road in Parachant NM and is the most remote site we are working at for this project. It gets it's name from the layer of black basaltic rock on the cliff in this picture. I am thankful that I get to see places like this for work since I am not likely to go there on my own.







Here is an example of a quadrat. They are assigned randomly within the plot. Once my GPS shows that I have reached the correct coordinates I set the lower left corner at my toe and direct it towards the north. You might be able to see that all of the plants in the smaller rectangle have been plucked. The plants are identified, separated, and placed into bags labelled native, native seeded, and non-native. My impression is that most of the plants go into the non-native bag. The work is monotonous most of the time but there is excitement when a new plant is found and identified.



The two plants in this picture are both Bromus madritensis. Most of the plants look like the one on the right and are only a couple of hairs. This makes them difficult to see against the ground as well as hard to identify and to pick up. I often use a flat rock as a tool in excavating.


I also find joy in discovering insect constructions and little jewels of eggs; pearl, amber and gold spheres stuck to the undersides of leaves.












I learned last weekend that in addition to our regular pay, which is decent but I have enough debt to feel guilty spending any money at all, we get a per diem of $20 for the "inconvenience" of staying in the field. This news has made me happy all week. As I had been eating for about $35 per week I decided to spend a little more and venture a bit away from canned food. And why not spend that money on good food? On Thursday I made a wonderful meal of prepackaged gnocci and pesto with ciabatta and Vina Salamanca. It was delicious.




Friday had the worst weather with intermittent rain and temperatures around 50 degrees. I was wet and cold and my figures were like blocks. On the weekends I had been staying at Lake Mead and taking showers with my solar shower. This works ok, but the water only gets warm if you leave it in the sun for about 3 hours. This weekend I decided to join the YMCA. The hot shower and sauna are totally worth the $10 per week, and having spent only about half of my per diem on food I am not feeling guilty for this pleasure.