Helicopters!

We've been working on this project with a bunch of other agencies,
By we I mean my bosses. Who am I kidding, I AM JUST THE FEET
Anyways
The project is to see if helicopters could be used to spray buffle grass in terrain too remote or too steep for us to work in. We've been setting up these plots for, like, EVER, and on the 18th it finally came to fruition



AWESOME



We were about 100 ft away from the test plots. Test plots! It felt like I was doing science again.
The protocol was beautiful



The helicopters were pretty cool too. I was put in charge of 2 test plots. My boss was one of my underlings. Oh ho ho, I said, let me tell you how I feel about walking in straight lines.

Also this



Then I ate Chinese food and got on an airplane.

GUYS. HELICOPTERS.

Off Trailing

The best part of this job? We get to go everywhere in the park, not just the trails.This means we get to see a lot of really neat stuff and wayyyyyyy more wildlife than we would probably see. I've been better about bringing my camera into the field.

HERE'S A LOT OF PICTURES

This is the day I was working on a graduate student's tortoise project. I was a little concerned about the physics of tortoises existing in this plot. Behold, this was the line I was walking


Riiiiiight across that cliff face. I was 90% trying not to fall to my death in the wash below and 10% looking for tortoises.

We searched a 200x200m plot of similar terrain and we found 0 tortoises. We did however find one on the way back to the rigs



It looked really sad and didn't have any toes on it's upper right foot. Booooooo000ooo

Check out these sick ass petroglyphs! One of my co-workers is an archeologist. She tells me interesting things about the time period of these, none of which I can recall now.



I did ask her "DO YOU EVER WONDER IF, LIKE, IT WAS JUST ANCIENT PUNK KIDS WHO MADE THESE DRAWINGS?!?"

She said sometimes



This is a picture of two frogs doin' it. They are so losing their college scholarships now. NEXT TIME MAKE BETTER LIFE CHOICES FROGS


Look guys! FERNS. Also, there is some moss in there! ALSO I saw some lichens! (mostly dust lichen but some foliose too!) ALSO ALSO PUFF BALLS. Who remembers my Fun Fungi Fact about puff balls? I ONLY KIND OF DO


Can you deny the cuteness of this pin cushion (genus Mamillaria) cactus? No. You cannot.


Can you deny the awfulness of prickly pear? no. You also cannot. I'm constantly pulling its gloccids out of my extremities. Shame. Face kick.

Check out this cute ass baby tortoise that wanted to hang out with us at our staging area. We made so many high pitched noises, then we hover crafted it to a root which it promptly buried it's face in. More high pitched noises were made.


Views. And this is kinda a wussy one



Guess who came back to our blue tarp burrito the next day. BABY TORTOISE. There he is in the fold of the tarp by the top of the yellow dry bag. We decided that he needed a name if he was gonna keep showing up. I nominated Stanley. We decided on MegaBaby

GUESS WHO ACTUALLY GETS TO WORK WITH HELICOPTERSSZZZZZZZZZZZ NEXT WEEK?
(It's me. I do.)
(I don't get to ride in them though.)
(I'm just ground ops)
(...still bad ass.)

Welcome to my new Blogball game!

Friday June 18th Seattle

Sittin ' in my increasingly empty apartment with BROOKE JAMBOREE who always seems to be around when I'm packing.
(Also it's not possible to say or write this particular BROOKE's name without imagining it in all caps. I imagine a lot of things in all caps though.)


WELCOME TO MY NEW BLOGGGGGG
Lot's of peeps want to keep up with the haps so I'm gonna try and write this blog thing so that I don't fill your inbox with a bazillion pages of emails. Also this is the age of social networking. Email is so 2001.

Oh man I'm gonna miss my little apartment. It's the tiniest thing in the world but it's the first time I really lived by myself and not just mostly by myself like winter quarter in the dorms when my roommate was never around except at like 3 am whenever I had to work early or popping corn to cover another, more illicit, scent which only resulted in the room smelling like socks.
Good times!
Moral: I love living by myself. I'm never going back.

My apartment in Tucson is gonna be 3 times the size of this one. It has doors! and closets! and a dishwasher

I got super sun burnt at graduation both from the sun and from a boiling embarrassment for our ASUW president (Were you high during the grad speech? Really bro? Go dawgs?) and now it's starting to peel. It looks like I have leprosy on my neck. So much for that tan. It wasn't so much a tan as it was skin that had atrophied. I am SO PREPARED for the Tucson sun.

I should probably buy some sunscreen...eventually

I received my work schedule for the first week of my job. Most of it is awesome training on things like WILDERNESS FIRST AID and going to MUSEUMS for CULTURAL TRAINING. Also plant identification. I'm gonna ace it.
It also says several times. Meet at Helibase, Tour of Helibase, Set up Helibase
HELIBASE?
HELIBASE = HELICOPTERS
HELIBASE = IRENE IN HELICOPTERS!?
HELIBASE = BEST EVER?

Oh man, helicoptering in to a remote location to do invasive removal would be just about the most bad ass thing ever.
Also totally unreasonable for a government plant removal job. A single helicopter drop probably costs as much as an entire decade of this projects budget.
But I can dreeeeeeeaaaammmmmm
Aprox 48 hours until Tucson.

Also, should I totally buy this Jeep? (The answer is yes)
http://tucson.craigslist.org/cto/1796254164.html

Also the photo above is pretty much what I expect the Saguaros to look like