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.

San Francisco

My pet peeve with San Francisco is that there's no highway that runs straight through it. So even though I live about 30-40 minutes from the city, once I cross the Golden Gate Bridge it still takes another 20-30 minutes to get anywhere. Hwy 101 immediately turns into a really heavily lighted road - imagine trying to get from the north side of Chicago to the south side taking Halstead the entire way.

Heidi and I went to the SF Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) yesterday after we had a school group of fifth graders come plant willow in the morning. So yes, we skipped out on work early. Being the first Tuesday of the month, the museum was free (parking, however, was not - $9, yuck).

Even though we only spent an hour and a half or less there (since it took longer to get to the downtown area of SF than we expected - thank you absence of an express route), it was still great to get out and just see something beyond the North Bay. They had some really neat pieces - a room of Paul Klee and some sweet Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, and Marcel DuChamp pieces. They also had a room dedicated to the art of design. Something I know Jess would like, but something in particular Jason would've loved. They had Charles and Ray Eames furniture, a whole bunch of ESPRIT stuff, including explaining the transition to using more natural and recycled paper (with very high post-consumer %s - since the term "recycled" is sort of a catch-all), as well as typewriters, citrus presses, and a series of concert/show posters done by two design firms (one had done a series for the Pixies reunion tour, and two recent Bowie shows. Recent as in 10 years ago, but not in the 80s. Recent enough).

The museum closed a little early and we just walked a little. It appeared that we were right in the downtown - people were leaving work and businesses were getting to close around 7. Heidi was going to see the Blood Brothers & Trail of Dead show, so she had to wait for a friend arriving via BART (bay area rail transit or something). I, on the other hand, was missing both that show as well as The Faint, which I would have really liked to see, but definitely not alone.

Today we had another school group come, more fifth graders, and we put them to work. Yesterday the group that came got too social and didn't do as much as we would've liked. I realize it's about their experience too, but they can chatter away about video games any other time. So today we really made them work. They took all the redwoods and oaks out of the shade house and organized them by species - a lot of work for Heidi and I, but really quick for 18 kids. Then we split them into 4 groups - 2 planting acorns, 1 propagating snowberries (separating the seeds from the berry) and 1 collecting acorns. A lot of work for Heidi and I done in so much less time - it was great to have them.

Tomorrow is... something. Returning the calls we didn't return today, I suppose. And Friday is another school group - home schoolers that are going to help us plant more willow! We've had these kids before, they're hard workers.

It's not this year, but it's still our creek and a Coho salmon jumping.