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!

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!)

In other news...

I'm going to visit Kerry in Phoenix, AZ, with Vince for CUBS SPRING TRAINING!

From March 1st through March 5th you will find me in the bleachers at miscellaneous spring training parks (mainly HoHoKam park though) throughout the Phoenix area wearing my Cubs hat and hopefully drinking an Old Style.