Another Year in the West

While I am sorry that I haven't updated since September (or was it August?), I obviously wasn't sorry enough during these past few months to prevent such a dry spell.

Things have changed since I finished my first year in AmeriCorps. I moved from rural west Marin County to the Mission District in San Francisco and started a new job.

Moving was a huge pain. With the housing market crash, more people are renting, driving prices in this already saturated and extremely expensive market higher. I probably emailed around 40-50 people on craigslist concerning room-for-rent postings between mid-August and late-September and received 5 replies. I only saw 4 places, and the place I ended up at was the only one I could honestly picture myself living in. And thankfully, the guys who already live here thought the same of me.

I equate the Mission most closely with Humboldt Park in Chicago - it's about 50% latino, there are some REALLY sketchy parts, and people who don't live or hang out here are afraid of it. Maybe a little more Logan Square - about a third of the Mission is crawling with hipsters. Unlike Marin, where there were lots of hippie/organic -eateries all over the place, there's a taqueria on nearly every corner in the Mission.

My roommates are fantastic - I cannot imagine a better living situation. I live with 3 guys and 1 girl, Robert, Skitch, England, and Morgan. Robert and Skitch are brothers (and it's Robert's birthday today). England is from the Philippines and Morgan is from Philly. Morgan and I moved in around the same time - we met the day I moved in.

Robert, me, Morgan, and Kurt (Robert's friend and bandmate)

I interviewed for my second term of AmeriCorps last month and now that it's November, I'm just waiting to find out if I got the position or not. Right now I'm working at a restaurant near Fisherman's Wharf (though it doesn't get much of a tourist crowd) - I'm planning on making this secondary income when AmeriCorps (hopefully) starts in January. In the meantime, I ride my bike/BART (sort of like metra or maybe the purple line) to work everyday, about 1.5 miles there, and when I ride all the way home it's about 4.5 miles. So I get some kind of workout.

So, in addition to living and working at Houston's, I also usually cater about once a week, though not at all in November, and I still go back to Marin about once a week to do office work at Sea Turtle Restoration Project, SPAWN's sister organization. That leaves me one day a week off (though somehow I managed to get 3 days off in a row this weekend - absolutely amazing) to run errands, have fun, etc.

Things I love about my new situation:
-Along with the garbage and recycling bins, SF has compost bins
-I live with people my own age
-I drive ~1x per week - I'm no longer chained to my car
-I can get anywhere I want on a bike. Except Marin or Berkeley, they're too far for me
-I make a lot more money than AmeriCorps, though it's not really making me grow professionally

Things I'm not so keen on:
-No more pets that aren't really my own
-Less fresh air
-No funny ridiculous kids
-No work gossip with Mitch (the dad I lived with)
-It's dirtier and loud. Really loud. People tend to stand on our corner and gossip a lot... usually in Spanish, which makes it easy to drown out, but when it's in English it's annoying.
-I don't know Spanish.

Anyway, so that's what's happening here. I just baked a cake for Robert's birthday and I don't think it's terribly good, but I'm going to blame the cheap aluminum cake pans.

My last days of AmeriCorps (term #1)

A lot has happened in the last two weeks, all of which I’ve had grand plans of blogging about. I guess what this really shows is that I should not have a career as a blogger.

I finished my hours with SPAWN two weeks early, but I hadn’t quite finished all my duties so I was working less than full-time, taking off early here and there and occasionally taking full days off. I worked until the last day anyway.

Let’s start with the Cubs. The Cubs came to play a three game series against the Giants in the middle of the week – their only time this season in the Bay Area. I was fortunate enough to attend two of the three. Both were really exciting games, which the Cubs won in either the 9^th or the 10^th inning. Each time I was the loudest of the bunch, essentially cheering for each new (cubbie) batter. I took full advantage of this on the second game, when our seats were 3 rows behind home plate.

I supplied Heidi with a pink Cubs hat for the game.

That Friday, Heidi and I were supposed to leave work early and drive to Monterey to visit Kristin (AmeriCorps at IFR). Originally we had planned to see Wilco in Berkeley but the show sold out really early. But, that day, Heidi’s friend emailed to tell her that he found tickets for them on craigslist. After obtaining the “ok- come a day later” from Kristin, I opted to check craigslist for my own ticket. Which I found, for free – with a catch.

The catch: I had to pick up the ticket owner from his hotel in Union Square (downtown SF – like picking someone up from Water Tower Place) and drive him to Berkeley and back (so technically I could have just “led” him – ie taken public transit or the like, but I have a car and I don’t live in the city).

After considering that this could possibly lead me into a dangerous situation with a psychopath, I decided I’d rather take the risk and see Wilco than stay home. The stranger was Canadian and actually pretty cool – we got along really well, which was especially sweet because the should-have-been-30 minute drive from Union Square to Berkeley took well over an hour due to rush hour.

I like to refer to him as "the stranger"

The next day Heidi and I left for Kristin’s in Monterey. The three of us went to the Aquarium (awesome), explored tide pools on the beach, and ate a Jewish food festival. I ate the best pastrami sandwich ever. Vegetarianism does not work for me.

There are more pictures on flickr.

I returned from Monterey to find that Mitch had extra tickets for the next day’s Giants game against the Rockies. Heidi and I took off work early for another baseball game, this time sitting in the owners section, 4 rows back between home plate and the Giants dugout. The Giants win in a very exciting and close game. Like I said, I bring the magic.

And yes, I have no problem bragging about the best seats I will ever have at a baseball game. They were amazing.

The next day (we’re on Tuesday now – it has been exactly one week since that first Cubs game), Paola threw Heidi and I a potluck dinner party as a goodbye prior to our last day of work. There is no story here, I just wanted to continue the week of Awesome.

On Wednesday evening, Kristin and Nate (AmeriCorps IFR) arrive late at my house since the four of us have to drive to Humboldt on Thursday for our WSP exit celebration and paperwork. A five hour drive (each way) for 5 hours of work (plus 70s party and sleeping). Even with the carpool, it didn’t really seem like a good use of fossil fuels considering we’re an environmentally conscious organization. Oh well, it was fun.

Southern Carpool ladies decked out in 1970s gear - my dress was
worn by Kristin's mother in 1972 at Kristin's aunt's rehearsal dinner.

There were a lot of 70s outfits. Many of them actually from the 70s.

Nate may be permanently grumpy due to sharing the car with
the 3 of us (though he usually doesn't look that upset). We're
in front of the bathroom sign because of all the bathroom stops
we have to make...

So now I’m done with AmeriCorps. I logged my last hours on Friday – a few hours of paperwork and 5 hours of driving. I spent my first unemployed weekend catering for two weddings and finally had my first actual day off today, Labor day, which I celebrated by tabling for the Barack Obama campaign.

The next four months (until AmeriTerm #2) will be interesting – right now I’m catering on the weekends and helping out Mitch and Julie at their office. I’m also searching for a room for rent in San Francisco, which is not going very well. Hopefully I will find something by October 1^st, but Mitch and Julie are not pressuring me at all and giving me ample time to figure out where I’m going. On Saturday they told me I could take the bed and desk that I’ve been using as well, so now I’ve even got furnishings!

More photos on Flickr!

I skipped July. So here's an entry for August.

I've been very, very bad at updating this blog. I like to blame some of the problem on a lack of (home) internet during 3 weeks of July, and my computer's wifi capability (or card?) breaking down, thus requiring me to plug directly into the line when I'm at home which isn't terribly convenient. The other, more realistic reason is lack of motivation.

But enough with excuses, on with adventures!

So what's happened to me since late June? Well, a lot of stuff. In July, this 25-foot steel and fiberglass salmon visited SPAWN on it's journey around the West, garnering support for removal of the four lower dams on the Snake River, one of Save Our Wild Salmon's campaigns. This is a video stolen from the blog of the trip, condensing the trip into about a minute. I'm actually in the movie - the shot of the "It Takes a Valley to Raise a Salmon" is from our float at the 4th of July parade in Woodacre, and I'm the one in the big sunglasses escaping the camera (and handing candy to kids) right before the video moves on.



The thing was hollow and the interior was painted with the life cycle and some other cool stuff, but honestly I didn't explore the interior because a) it was really hot on the 4th and I didn't want to be in an oven very long; b) on the 3rd I was wearing a skirt and wasn't about to climb up; and c) I don't like those kinds of confined spaces.

Fin is the salmon's name

Paola, Heidi, me.

Heidi inside

The hottest day I've felt here thus far - in the 90's
(yet still not as muggy as the Midwest)

It was exciting to connect with salmon folks working on a larger scale issue - SPAWN is focused on a small watershed in West Marin, really, the San Geronimo Sub-Watershed of the Lagunitas Watershed. While our salmon population is crucial and the creeks hold the largest wild run of wild coho, the amount of people directly benefiting financially from them is small. The fish in the Snake are, yes, still endangered and thus not fished, but by removing the dams and restoring the fishery, jobs will be created - both in restoration and monitoring, but also in commercial and recreational fishing. I've never worked on an environmental project that made sense even when you ignore environmental impacts.

****************

Heidi and I held our Independent Service Project in July as well; pictures will be on Flickr, eventually. I promise I'll post those soon and then post here to let you know. Though, honestly, I doubt the pictures are exciting. We recruited volunteers to removed invasive Himalayan blackberry and English Ivy at a property on National Park Services Land, along Lagunitas Creek - a property where SPAWN's office will be moving to at the end of this month.

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Immediately after the Independent Service Project, Heidi and I trekked up north again for AmeriCorps WSP summer training. We all camped for a week near the mouth of the Klamath River, where Dick Cheney may have been responsible for a major salmon kill a few years ago. As much as these trainings wear on my quickly (by Wednesday I can usually be heard whispering to Heidi or Kristin (AmeriCorps WSP at IFR, see below) "it's Wednesday! Almost done!"), this one had some fairly kick ass moments (there is no way to more eloquently say that).

The Klamath meets the Pacific.

There were elk, bald eagles, osprey, comorants, AND GREY WHALES. I have never before seen a whale and it was awesome. I also saw an osprey catch a fish, but a) it paled in comparison to WHALES ROLLING IN THE OCEAN; and b) I told my dad and he's like "oh yeah, don't you remember seeing that when you were kids on such-and-such trip?" (I remember seeing ospreys nesting but no fish).

****************

So my future. I guess that's the next topic I need to discuss, since putting it off in order to write about how I'm starting to like cats (even ones that you cat-sit and that wake you up at 6 am by sitting on you) is kind of lame.

My WSP internship ends at the end of the mouth. Technically, it ends after I complete about 30 more hours, but that's 3+ days of work and there are 3 more weeks left till the end of the month. I'm planning on taking it easy, yet still working until the end.

I'm also definitely applying for another term in AmeriCorps WSP, even though it won't begin until January. My mind is still the same and I'm applying for a position at the Institute for Fisheries Resources (IFR), whose office is in the Presidio. I'm not really worried about the application (though, honestly, at this moment in time my essay question answers -- and I use the term essay loosely -- are not really up to par) or the interview. For a while I was worried about this four month period in between where I would be unemployed, but I think I've got a handle on things now. I'm working part time as a caterer on the weekends and I've been applying for other part time jobs. Since I can take lots of time off, I plan on using it to apply to restaurants and retail places in person. If I work at IFR and life in San Francisco, my rent will be significantly higher than what it is now, so I'll need a second job anyway. What's better than finding that and settling prior to starting stressful, awesome work? I don't know.

As for living situation, I'm attempting to move out of Mitch & Julie's house as soon as possible. The past 11 months here have been awesome; I really cannot say enough good things about living with them, their family, the pets, their house, the location, and on and on. However, I'm still not *really* supporting myself here. I'm also in an area with very few 20-somethings and it's getting kind of tiring. I'm ready to move on.

As I'm writing this, I got my first twang of "wait... I don't really want to leave Mitch & Julie's because I'll miss them!" For a while I knew I'd miss Lily (kitten who stalks me in the mornings and evenings and is currently curled up in the chair next to me), and maybe the sentimentalism has taken hold because I haven't been living in the house much the past 3 weeks (Klamath + cat-sitting) and thus haven't been living with 5 kids (since they are all away this week the house is quiet and empty - talk about an advantage of second marriages with ex-spouses still maintaining joint custody) (not to say I don't love the kids too - but 5 for a full week when there is no school for them is a lot).

****************

Today I spent the day in the San Joaquin and Central Valleys of CA touring Tuolumne River restoration sites as part of Kristin's independent service project with IFR, thus spending a large portion of the day with my potential future bosses. Like I said, I'm not too worried, though I never ever count on things like that (you never know who else might apply) and I would never not take something seriously because of it. Hilariously, Zeke (exec director) and Pietro (president) both have worked with Jean Flemma (Prairie Rivers Network!). It is truly a small world.

So that's what's been going on. As of now, I've been awake for over 20 hours today and I think it's time to go to bed. Maybe I will roll into work a little late tomorrow... hopefully literally as I want to pump some air into my borrowed bike (!also news though only exciting to me!) and take it instead of the car.

Job Searching

My time with SPAWN is coming to a close. I'm about to hit month 10 of the 11 month internship and August 31st is coming up quickly.

This means that I'm constantly hearing "So what are you doing next?"

The answer: I don't know.

A second year of AmeriCorps at the other site, IFR, is still up in the air. Funding issues (?) caused there to be a question of whether or not the site would exist, and while we were initially told that we'd know the answer to that question in early June, we still don't.

I'm not particularly excited about this mystery. Yesterday I heard a rumor that the start date for a second term would begin in January, so if I decided to apply for it, I've possibly got 4 months of unemployment to look forward to before it begins.

Rather than sit on my hands and wait, I've decided to apply for other jobs in the Bay Area. In doing so (and really throughout this internship), I've been trying evaluate what I'm really good at and what I want to do. I still don't think I necessarily have to decide this for the rest of my life, but at least it should help me shape what part of myself I want to explore and develop next.

Send job postings this way!

Whoa, 2 entries in 1 week.

Heidi and I watered and mulched some plants we put in a couple months ago along Arroyo Creek, about a half mile up the road from my house.

We parked, and I noticed a turkey on the lawn, behind the cars, at the house we were at. It's not really unusual to see wild turkeys around here. Just a couple weeks ago while driving to the same place there were two walking alongside the road. I jumped out of Heidi's car and tried to chase them down (it was near the end of the month and my food stamps were running out). They out ran me.

Anyway, we sneak up and there's one male presenting - feathers all up, puffing out his chest, he looks huge - and there are 5 females hanging out around him. His little posse. About 20 feet further there's a young buck standing on his hind legs to get above a tree protector to nibble on the sweet shoots or buds of the tree.

I love my job.

May 2007

Wow, a long time since I updated… so I’ll try to keep this to exciting new things.

Disclaimer: My camera was running out of batteries, so some of these pictures were taken with my cameraphone.... which I have yet to master. More photos can be found on flickr.

Two weeks ago I spent the week up in Petrolia for AmeriCorps spring training.

About 53 of us AmeriCorps Watershed Steward Project interns gathered in the Mattole Watershed, near the lost coast, for “career building” and other get-together stuff. It was fun – it’s super rural there. Only ~40 miles from Fortuna and Eureka (fairly large towns in Northern California), it takes around 2 hours to get there because the road is windy, tight, and full of blind curves. You also get to drive through the (largest?) oldest stand of old growth redwoods in North America. And they were massive. The redwoods by me at Muir Woods are nothing in comparison. Of course, coming from the south it took more like 5 or 6 hours to get there.

Mattole Salmon Group's screw trap for smolt trapping -
go to March 22nd entry to read about SPAWN's
smolt trapping project.

Measuring chinook, steelhead, and the occasional coho
caught in the Mattole Salmon Group's screw trap.

WSP members climbing a large in-stream structure installed
by the Mattole Restoration Council made of woody debris and rocks,
put in to decrease erosion, create pools and habitat for salmon.

The mouth of the Mattole River.

This smelly dog that decided to hang around during training.
Eventually his owner showed up to bring him home. Picture
by Bob Atwood.

On the drive home, Kristin, Heidi and I decided to stop at those giant redwoods we drove through on the way to Petrolia. Coincidentally, this is where Creek Days was held two weeks later (read on).

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After a week back at SPAWN, I went back up to those old growth redwoods to camp and work at an outdoor environmental education fair, Creek Days, organized by our education team leader, Karen.

My first night getting to the campground and there are only a handful of us there. Karen, who has been there since the day before, tells us how the park ranger saw a black bear cub down the road (5 miles) at the site where we were having our education event and it was the youngest she had ever seen alone before and was NOT afraid of humans. Usually with black bears, you make a lot of noise and act really big and they take off. They want berries and trash, not people. Karen also tells us that she went to the bathroom mid-dinner prep the day before and returned to find claw marks in her boxes of food... and of course there's recent bear scat ~30 feet from the outdoor kitchen set up.

*I want to insert here that I am unable to sleep through the night, almost any night. I usually wake up 1-2 times to pee. Also, there are flush toilets at our campground but they are a ~3-4 minute walk, making a pee break 10+ minutes. And it's cold at night.*

Needless to say, I spent a large part of the first night (Sunday) composing a fan letter in my head to Stephen Colbert about how I now agree with him that bears are the #1 threat to America.

Tuesday night I wake up around 1 am needing to pee, of course, and I can hear something in the kitchen. It sounds like something rooting around.

I'm freaking out. I'm so goddamned sure it's a bear, and now that I'm worried I'm unable to make myself sleep. I have to pee more. So once I hear the last noise, I give it 30 minutes, then pop out of my tent, clapping a little and scanning with my headlamp to see if anything's out there, and just pee right outside the tent.

Phew, safe!

Wednesday, my coworker Tambra caught me on my way to the shower and asked if I wanted to drive her to Arcata and sleep on her couch - no bear, free shower, food, plus internet and cell phone charging! HELL YEAH! NO BEARS!

*Also, it turns out it was probably a raven or raccoon I heard, not a bear. No damage was done, though a wooden spoon was missing.*

So Friday was our last day of kids at Creek Days and there are only 3 groups (instead of 11 or 12). I have one with 10 3rd graders and 6 adults (parents, teacher). We go to our first booth, stop and chat, then walk a bit and I stop to talk to them about redwood tree rings and tree structure. Another AmeriCorps WSP-er, Jen, down the trail is looking at me as I'm trying to get the kids to quiet down etc and giving me the weirdest look... Either she looked behind me or the kids saw it first, but I turned around and behind me, a bit above my head, is a black bear cub. Maybe 5 or 6 feet away from my head.

Holy shit... I just freeze - this is the one that the park ranger contemplated putting down because of the potential danger it was to humans. I look at Jen, she starts clapping and shouting at the bear, and I just start trying to herd my kids back down the trail. Of course, all the parents have to stop and take pictures, and I just want these kids to keep moving.

I'd never seen a bear in the wild before. It was pretty awesome, especially being so close. The whole rest of the day I kept trying to contain questions to what we were learning about and NOT the bear ("I thought it was fake or a trained bear that you guys put there..." I must've heard that from one 3rd grader 40 times), but as soon as the kids were back on the bus, my excitement was boiling over and all I could talk about was the bear.

Hopefully one of the parents will send me a picture, because I didn't take the time to get my camera out.

Other pictures from Creek Days (I'm a poor photographer so most of them didn't turn out well):

Sharah has the kids smell a fish carcass

The work days ended fairly early (3 pm) so we entertained
ourselves with games including nails, a hammer, a stump, and beer.

Cheers.

Tambra takes a swing.

Kids doing some macroinvertebrate sampling.

Matt the sustainability pirate.

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The day after I returned from Creek Days I started a second job. I’m working at a catering company based out of the North Bay, though my first job was at a wedding reception in the Presidio (within the city). It was a pretty easy job, though I think most of that was facilitated by the party itself – less than 100 people, really nice people and just smooth sailing. All the music was 50s and 60s rock, r&b, and soul. It was pretty awesome, as weddings go. I’ll be working for the catering company on occasional weekends, certainly not a lot – I already work a number of weekends for SPAWN. I plan on using the money I made at the first job to go to the optometrist. My eyes have been red far too often and for too long of time periods lately and it’s making me really nervous to wear my contacts. Yay health!

I’ve been thinking a lot about after August when my internship ends. I would really like to do a second term at IFR, but there is some question as to whether or not that will continue to be a site. Well, that’s not really putting it right – the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project has undergone some budget cuts and that means that some positions will be cut next year. That will include some positions at sites with more than 2 members and will also probably include some sites in their entirety. One of the things that the board that makes the decision will look at is how much “Watershed Assessment” time is logged at each site. IFR is all policy – watershed assessment generally refers to time spent in the field. So it’s a safe assumption that IFR is in danger, though is has been a site for 13 years, since WSP’s inception, so that should give it some gravitas, as it were.

WSP will know about IFR’s status in a couple weeks and at that point I’ll start applying or I’ll start a massive job search. I’d like to stay in at least the Bay Area, preferably moving to the city. It takes a while to establish roots and meaningful friendships in a new area, and I’ve just gotten that. I don’t want to give it all up so fast. However, I do want to have housing, etc, so I plan on looking back in Chicago and I’m also considering New York City. Unfortunately any move is incredibly expensive, and a nearby move would be considerably cheaper.

We’ll see what happens.

A bear! I saw a black bear cub!

Photos

I created a flickr account and have uploaded the majority of my California photos and a smattering of photos from before that.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nataliehg/

Spawning a Trout

On Thursday I went to a fish hatchery to participate in Steelhead spawning.

When steelhead trout and salmon are born, they are imprinted with the smell of their home stream. So when they're out in the ocean deciding to come back to the freshwater streams to spawn, it's the smell of that stream that guides them and results in them spawning in the exact stream they are born.

So the Warm Springs Hatchery is at the head of Dry Creek (or at least, right before it's dammed off to create a lake or reservoir) and all these trout, imprinted with the smell, are just waiting to get inside, not realizing that they will herded into pools and then spawned by CA Dept of fish and game employees.

It all went down like this:

We all put on waders, rain jackets, and gloves even though we're working inside. About 150 fish are waiting in this channel, and a button is pressed and a gate starts moving from one end of the channel to our end, herding the fish into a much much smaller space, maybe 8x8? Basically, about 30 fish at a time are herded into a basket filled with water and CO2, which makes them slower. Relatively.

After about 25 or so fish have fallen into the basket, the elevator drops and the gate moves back - the fish can swim the whole channel again. Meanwhile, the trapped fish are slowly being doped, becoming more passive by the second (relatively more passive). After 4 or 5 minutes, the basket raises and dumps the fish into a counter top, where I (and two DFG employees) sort them into male and female. 3 ready females go into one bin, with more CO2'd water, and then about 7 males into the one next to it (also with spiked with CO2). The rest of the fish go down a hatch into a pool (not the channel).

Doped up or not, the fish are thrashing around wildly, and pretty big at that - 18 to 36 inches, I would guess. Big and thrashing while you're trying to sex them and grab them... Mostly I stood there trying to keep them from jumping off the table or from smacking me. My face was soaked, quickly. So were my sleeves under the raincoat. Thank god for waders and a heavy rain coat (mostly).

Anyway, so, now we have 3 females, getting more doped (again, relatively) and 7ish males. First we deal with the gals. Grab one, hold in this weird way, while another person sticks a needle in her belly, depressing it and releasing air into the belly so the orange eggs spew into a cloth-lined colander. Then the female goes into another bin where the water isn't spiked so they can recover.

I tried to hold a female like this, so that someone could get eggs out. She trashed. Too much. I dropped her. Visitors (parents with kids on spring break) were standing on a balcony above, watching, much to my embarrassment. Awesome. 36 inch female steelhead trout flapping and flipping and flopping all over the floor.

On to the males (this I could do successfully, probably because they were drugged much longer). I grabbed the guy, fin in right hand, resting his head on my left hip, running my left hand along his belly so the milt (sperm) spew out onto the washed eggs.

Then the males went down the hatch, into the pool, where the other, unused fish, went.

Back to the females. So the females' bellies are full of air and they're swimming upside down while they're recovering. They need to be grabbed, held upside down and rubbed on the belly so the air comes out, then carried over to the hatch and down they go.

But, of course, they're recovering from being drugged.

Yeah, I dropped one of these too. Embarrassing, again.

We repeated the whole thing until all 150 fish had been gone through and were back in the pool.

Once all the fish are out of the channel, thrown down the hatch, and into the holding pool, we moved them back into the channel, drug them, and then the head lady counts males and females and we move them into a truck with a water tank on the back. One of the DFG guys and I drove to the Russian River, well upstream of the Dry Creek mouth so they wouldn't get respawned that year to release them. We backed the truck up to the side of the river (we're about 20 feet above the water), attached a big metal tube to the back, then opened it up - fish went flying into the river - really - just this stream of water and fish shooting into the river.

Pretty awesome.

I have no pictures, get over it.

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The weekend before was Easter weekend, Heidi and I went to the Bring Your Own Big Wheel race down Lombard St.

A really far away picture of Lombard St.
The race was down the really curvy part.

My friend Zack was racing, if you can call it that. It was a lot of people crashing into each other, into walls, it was hilarious and awesome.

This video was stolen from Tony Chang (Zack's roommate - was in grad school at UIUC while I was there, we met on the bus to the March for Women's Lives).

The end, for now.

Tide Pooling and Bike Riding

These past few days have been fantastic - probably some of my favorite times here thus far. A lot of it has to do with becoming better friends with people, even those I haven't known very long.

Saturday was Cesar Chavez day and AmeriCorps WSP required us to volunteer for at least 4 hours. Heidi and I decided to host a nursery day in SPAWN's native plant nursery and invite other semi-local AmeriCorps WSP members. So the John and Brock at the Dept Fish and Game in Hopland (about 1.5 hours north) and Nate from Institute for Fisheries Resources in SF (the place I want to be next year) visited and a ton of seeds got planted. Hundreds.

After the nursery day, the guys and I went tide-pooling on Tomales Point. 20 miles away!! Who knew you could do that so close to where I live? The red circle is where we went, the green is where I live.


I saw (and touched) starfish, crabs, sea anenomes, mussel beds, some weird cockroach-y thing, and a sea urchin (I didn't touch that one). It was absolutely amazing. Our trailhead was actually in the Tule Elk Refuge and the elk were hanging out at the parking lot on our way back to my house.

Brock, John, and I accidentally got our feet wet at one point, as we were staring at starfish, assuming we were out of wet-foot danger but then the water crept up and BAM! I screamed, we all jumped back, Nate up the rocks immediately above us but Brock and John and I were not so quick.

Shells!!

This tiny guy had a funky shaped shell with this crazy curve in it.


John with a crab


Brock


Nate


Sea Anenome! The fingery things feel really, really weird. We fed the crab to a different anenome.


John and Me, looking down on the ocean and crashing waves.


Me, Nate, John... rock scrambling.

It was amazing.

I want to do it again.

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On Monday I went to San Francisco and went to a seder with Zack, who also went to U of I for a little while. Zack lives with Tony, who I met at U of I while he was in grad school. Anyway, I took Tuesday off of work, slept on their couch, and borrowed Tony's bike to take advantage of the free admission at SF's Museum of Modern Art.

I'd never ridden a bike in a big city before and I was a little nervous - I'm not really the most excited motorist when it comes to passing someone on a bike, even if they're in the bike lane. But it's really not as frightening being on the bicycle side of it. I didn't die, get hit, or get in any kind of trouble (except I walked so much my foot really hurt).

It was actually really difficult being at the museum. I spent an hour beforehand waiting for it to open by window shopping and the weather was absolutely beautiful. Once I got back to MOMA I felt, firstly, really tired, secondly, somewhat lonely, but third and most of all, cooped up. I wanted to get back outside and back on the bike.

So I left. Eventually I made it back to return the bike and home before crazy traffic.

pictures will appear... someday.

I'm so bad at posting on here.

I went to spring training and it was fantastic. Sitting in the sun all day watching baseball... what can be better? I'm going to create a flickr account and post some photos, eventually. Maybe this weekend.

Immediately after driving back from Phoenix (with a night spent on a couch in Santa Barbara, thank you Anthony), I left for a conference about an hour north of home, in Santa Rosa, CA. The conference was the Salmonid Restoration Federation, full of presentations and lectures about salmon and, well, restoration focused on salmon-bearing creeks. I did work trade in the kitchen to go for free (and AmeriCorps paid the rest).

Now that I've returned to SPAWN from vacation and conferences, a new, big project has begun: Downstream Migrant Trapping.

In the life cycle of the coho salmon (and the steelhead trout), the eggs are laid and a year and a half later the juveniles (smolts) migrate downstream to the ocean, where they'll live for a year or two (or more, if they're steelhead) before heading back to the creek to spawn. They actually migrate at night, facing upstream. Meaning they're floating to the ocean facing backwards in the dark... smart move.

We have a trap in San Geronimo Creek set to trap migrating smolts (and anything else that gets caught there, including newly hatched salmon/trout fry). We mark the smolts and from the recapture percentages we can estimate population. Each morning the trap needs to be checked, and while I'm not there every single day, it's a lot of them. I know it's significantly warmer here than it is in Illinois, but the stream at 8 or 9 AM is COLD. I thought my hands were going to fall off this morning! So did Paola, so I know it's not just me being a wimp. The sun doesn't hit the spot we do the data collection at until around 10:30 or so, and half the time we're out of there before that happens.

In the morning we arrive (8 AM if I'm with Todd, 9 AM if I'm with Paola) and fish everything out of the trap - smolts and larger fish in one bucket, fry and smaller fish in another. We dope the smolts with an organic sedative (clove oil), measure, weigh, identify, and clip their tails. We measure 25 fry of each species and all of the other species we catch (california roach, stickleback, juvenile lamprey eel, signal crayfish). The other day one of the crayfish we caught had eggs on her underside - that was really neat. We began late last week, getting around 400 fry in the trap. Now that number is down to less than 100, which is interesting.

We've also put a smaller trap in one of the small tributaries (Larsen Creek) that leads to San Geronimo Creek. This is likely not to catch smolts at all, even though it is a salmon-bearing stream. In the summer, the small tributaries often dry up and SPAWN does fish rescue, bringing volunteers out to catch the fry in the drying pools and moving them downstream, away from certain death. These streams are not historically intermittent, so while it's an unsustainable practice, it's a result of development and rescue is really the only option. So there aren't smolts left in Larsen Creek because as fry they were all transferred out or they died.

Instead, that trap is meant to catch fry that might be migrating out of Larsen Creek before the really hot season begins. This will help us figure out what percentage of fish we're rescuing and whether the program is worth it. The trap went in the water yesterday, but there were no fish caught when we checked it today.

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SPAWN partnered with the College of Marin to create a display creek/garden for the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, taking place this week. Tomorrow Heidi and I get to work at the show and finally see the display (we weren't part of the project). I'm excited, though it means I need to get up early again tomorrow (and again, Saturday, for smolt trap checking).

But Sunday, Sunday I will sleep forever.

It's hard to find pierogis here.

I'm seriously considering a second term in AmeriCorps. Part of me may be thinking "oohhh... don't have to worry about real jobs for another whole year!" But most of me is thinking about how much the experience could do for me.

If I did another term in the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, I would absolutely want to stay in the Bay area. I really don't want to go through another big move - making friends can be a pain, especially when you're broke as a joke. If I were to look for a real job, though, I'd prefer to look in, again, the Bay area or back in Chicago. I have friends in both places (I feel like I'm actually now starting to really develop more than superficial friendships here, and it would be annoying and difficult to just drop those), I know Chicago and I'm getting to know Marin and SF.

Basically, that boils it down to another year at SPAWN (which I love, and is perfect) or at IFR, the Institute for Fisheries Resources. IFR is a non-profit in San Francisco that is entirely entrenched in policy. Little to no outreach or field work. I'm really interested in finding out if I am interested in policy. Did that make sense?

I think policy is neat and I'd like to learn more about it. But I don't know if I'm really interested in policy for a career. I took the LSAT a couple years ago; obviously I've had some interest in environmental law at one time or another.

So, yeah, I've been considering IFR. This past wednesday I visited the AmeriCorps WSP interns there to check it out, see what they did, where they worked, etc. None of their mentors were there, unfortunately, so I did not meet anyone except the part time accountant. (I stopped and ate pastry at the Headlands on the way, that was fantastic).

We went to a salmon fisheries meeting with the department of fish and game (DFG). Mainly, the point of the meeting was for DFG to present last year's catch numbers to salmon fishermen, suggest ideas for next year, and get public comment and input from the fishermen so that they could better make up the allowed catch etc for this upcoming season. Tensions were high. CRAZY high. Commercial fishermen were pissed off about last season and this season, in part because last year, after all these meetings and an eventual DFG decision, at the 11th hour the governor-appointed commission decided to scrap the whole season. So their anger, paranoia, and distrust in the government has a very clear foundation.

Luckily, not all IFR days are spent at meetings that stressful or annoying (a lot of people being mad), because if it were, I'd say "HELL NO" to policy. I'm still undecided, though definitely more interested.

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In other news... I leave for Arizona on Wednesday! I'm going to Cubs' Spring Training! (and I'm going to see Kerry and Vince!)

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Real updates coming soon!

As promised:

Photos from Alcatraz! Just as a heads up, they give you a free audio tour, so some of the pictures show people with headphones on. The pictures show Heidi (my field partner), James (her friend from St. Louis), and a very dork-tastic Me.

James and Heidi on the Larkspur Ferry (to San Francisco).

It rained and misted almost all day.

San Quentin: maximum security prison, right here in San Rafael!

....maybe Heidi's future home? No, just kidding.
She's totally straight.

Just in case there weren't tickets left for Alcatraz,
I took a picture from the Larkspur Ferry.

Prisoner intake! (bye Heidi)

James takes a shower. Like, a jailhouse shower.

At a cellular level.
haha.



Heidi examines her future home. I mean, a jail cell.

Recreation yard! Where you can do ... things.



The view from the rec yard - the Golden Gate
bridge is in the background.



I look too happy to be in jail.



Heidi looks a little mad. More appropriate
for her future home... I mean, jail.

View of the city from Alcatraz.

I like that you can see the roads.

Chatting on the phone with one of my jailhouse visitors.

A certain cell block name bears a resemblance
to a certain Chicago street.

I have no clever commentary for this picture.

They paint black where the knives are supposed
to go so it's easy to tell if one is missing.
They went missing anyway.

Guard apartments? I think... I can't really remember.



The windiest road ever... but really far away.
We stumbled upon this view on accident while
walking to Chinatown from the Alcatraz ferry.

Heidi and James on the ferry back to Larkspur
(and the rest of the North Bay).

Angel and... idiot*?

The End.

*He's not really an idiot