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.