1. Heidi's friend from St. Louis came to visit this weekend and it rained, a lot, while he was here. Nonetheless, on Saturday we took the ferry into San Francisco and then went to Alcatraz. Pictures to be uploaded soon! It was pretty awesome - the ferry to the park* is expensive, but there's no actual entrance fee for the park. A audio tour is also free, which is totally useful and amazing.
And then we had a delicious lunch in Chinatown. Pictures not coming soon, because I didn't take any.
After spending the day in the rain, we ended up soaked, taking the ferry back to the North Bay.
I HATE THE FERRY. Well, hate might be a strong word. I'm not a big fan of boat rides. If I'm not distracted by conversation and exploration I start to feel queasy. The ride to Alcatraz was really choppy and uncomfortable. We got off and the ramp up to the ground was really shaky too. After finally reaching solid ground I had to hang on to Heidi for a bit to regain my stomach.
2. Yesterday and today (and tomorrow) we worked on this new restoration site on the golf course. It's along the creek and the golfers have to hit their ball OVER the creek - meaning, while we're working there, that we have to hope and pray they don't hit us. Actually we wear hard hats, start early in the morning, and when we see a golfer get ready to t-off at that spot we go a little downstream in the healthy riparian zone (ie, tall plants, willows, trees, etc).
We're planting willows, juncus, and hazelnut tomorrow if I can fit them in my car. Essentially we're trying to recreate a riparian zone so the creek doesn't get so skanky there and golfers stop trying to rescue their balls from in the creek. Endangered salmon and threatened trout spawn there, dudes!
Yesterday I managed to smack my hand with a metal mallet once, with a rubber mallet twice, drop the rubber mallet in the creek, slip in the mud, bend a piece of rebar (long metal pole), and cut my hand. K L U T Z.
Today I realized that the smell I always associated with freshwater mussels & sampling with Bob and the Illinois DNR is really just wet neoprene. Wet the day before and not yet dried. IE it's river funk. Ahh waders. (Neoprene is what my waders were made of with the IDNR and what the bootie part of my current waders are made of - if I get a picture of them I'll upload it).
3. Last but certainly not least. My external hard drive died yesterday. All my tv shows, music, photos, and work files. Thankfully, one of SPAWN's volunteer naturalists works for Driver Savers, a data recovery service based in Marin, and will recover my data free of charge - I only need to pay for the medium they put it on (DVDs, a new hard drive, whatever). I think I'll need a new hard drive. Thank god for savings/Goodbye savings (well, not all of it - not delving into car insurance $$ or AZ $$).
4. Finally, I'm importing this blog to both Facebook and LiveJournal (on a separate feed for LiveJournal). So you can read it there if you forget to come over here... in fact, maybe you're reading it over there right now...
Photos soon, I promise.
*National Park, mind you.
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