SEKI - First Week

7/5/2011 to 7/10/2011

With a few more days in the front country of SEKI I no longer feel like a new kid on the first day of school – insecure and awkward.  I have worked, lived, and played with my coworkers and think they are all awesome and like I am one of the group.  This past week we all worked Wed-Fri getting ready to leave for the backcountry next week: getting paperwork finalized, getting the gear for each site inventoried, replaced, and fixed, mending gill nets, etc.  I checked out a back-country backpack, zero degree sleeping bag, sleeping pad, and tent from the Park, all of which I will be using for the next three months instead of my own gear (which I can leave at my car now).  My bosses have to slog through an enormous amount of paperwork for us to leave next week – they both remind me of my boss at Saguaro –enthusiastic, passionate about their job and family, overworked and underpaid, and yet doing an excellent job anyway.  

The Southern Sierra Research Center: my bosses work on the upper floor, there is a wet lab on the bottom floor, and the Inventory and Monitoring people work out of the building to the right.

I told some of my coworkers about me having a blog, and they seemed to like the idea of having pseudonyms instead of my naming them outright (for privacy purposes).  They have not told me their pseudonym of choice yet, so I will refrain from describing them too much.  There are four girls (including me) and two guys right now.  We are all paired up and working with our partner throughout the summer.  My partner until August is one of the guys, and then a different girl is coming in and being my partner until the end of Sept. 

Friday after work our bosses treated us all to a beer at a local bar in Three Rivers.  We six employees came in three cars, mainly because one of the boys (boy-partner)was leaving town immediately after to go to the coast for the weekend. He also left the bar ~20 minutes earlier than the rest of us to start his 6 hour drive.  The rest of us were planning on going swimming in a nearby lake.  When we got to our cars, our other male coworker realized he’d left a bag of his in the other guy’s car.  None of us had cell phone service to call the other guy, so we all piled into my car and drove out of town in search of phone service and a good place to swim.  As we were driving, we realized that the car in front of us was, oddly, the other guy’s!  Thus began a high speed chase, which ended up with me honking and pulling up next to his car in a passing zone with one of the girls yelling out the window that he needed to pull over because a bag was left in his car.   It was very exciting.  It turns out boy-partner had taken a dip in the lake really quick, which was how we were able to catch up with him.

After retrieving the bag, we found a fine place to go swimming in the lake, right next to a small dock.  The water level was high enough that some trees were partially under water, and we girls climbed up the tree and jumped into the water – it was quite fun, and very refreshing after another 100 degree day.

Our swimming spot

Saturday we all did our shopping.  The other two partner-groups were shopping together since they would be together throughout the entire season and sharing meals.  Because of my situation (two partners for varying periods of time) I was buying meals just for me for the three months, with the expectation that my partners would do the same and we would share the meals that we bought.  All of my site’s gear and food gets flown up via helicopter this coming Thursday, and we hike to our site this coming Tuesday, so anything I don’t want to carry up myself (i.e. food for the next three months) has to be ready by Tuesday morning to sit at the helispot until Thursday. 

I and one of the partner teams (the girl/boy team) took one car and the other team (girl/girl) took another.  All of us went to Visalia first and bought hundreds of dollars worth of food at WinCo.  A short stop was made at a Grocery Outlet and then we decided my car would make the dreaded tip to Fresno to go to Trader Joes while the other car would go to WalMart in Visalia.  In Fresno we also visited a Goodwill where I found a cheap pot to use all summer.  By the end of our trip, my car was literally stuffed to the roof with food – my poor coworker in the back had to contend with boxes falling on him when I turned or braked to suddenly, and he also had to balance a box of food on his lap throughout the drive home.  We all had a good time throughout the day though – the girl/boy team both have a dry-sarcastic humor and poke fun at each other a lot, which is quite humorous to all involved.  It fits in well with the Ratzlaff sense of humor.  

The backseat of my car, stuffed with food

When we got home we spent the rest of the day/night packing our food into cardboard boxes.  The helicopter that is taking our stuff up is more space limited than weight limited, so we needed to have things in small boxes that could be stuffed around our big gear boxes.  Unfortunately, this meant that I could not use the large Tupperware containers that I had brought with me, but oh well.  

The 3 bedroom place the other girls and I have been living in for a week - note that we do not use the driveway  :)

This morning our male coworker (not boy-partner) made all us girls breakfast: pancakes with maple syrup, strawberries, raspberries, bananas, grapefruit, whipped cream, and potatoes cooked with onions and peppers.  It was quite delicious.  I then did laundry and am now in town getting my last internet tasks for the next  2 weeks.  I will finish packing today and tomorrow, make get a hike in tomorrow, and then we go to work again on Tuesday.  

Ready for a delicious breakfast (none of the people in this photo are my partners)

Tuesday we will get our get into shape and then start hiking to our sites.  We will be out until the following Thursday, I believe (9 days), and then I will have lots of photos and job-details to share.  :)