sorry I didn't have time for pictures. I'll try and get them up whenever I can! See y'all in a 22 days!
-Chris
Monday, March 22, 2010
Farting
The camp food was delicious and filling. It was also camp food. Every time I farted anywhere withing 10 meters of Tali she would ask who farted within 30 seconds then get mad at people for farting. I didn't own up to it because they were--as I am half-selke--fucking terrible. Impressive and worth congratulations around my male friends...worth excommunication from the dining area amoung our group.
The camp food caught up with everyone else eventually though.
People kept complaining about people farting (50 percent of the time it was me) until they realized everyone (or at least all the boys) were letting them rip whenever and wherever they wanted. At the dinner table, in the tents, while hiking.
Now it was a competition. We got so much closer and (as a group of about 15) had a hour long discussion about bodily functions in the tent after dinner one night. It is these type of things that really bring a group together.
New idea for pre-trip retreats: Everyone camps in one giant tent after Burrito night.
Ben, Kat, and Caitlin responding to either a Joke by Spencer or my flatulence.
The camp food caught up with everyone else eventually though.
People kept complaining about people farting (50 percent of the time it was me) until they realized everyone (or at least all the boys) were letting them rip whenever and wherever they wanted. At the dinner table, in the tents, while hiking.
Now it was a competition. We got so much closer and (as a group of about 15) had a hour long discussion about bodily functions in the tent after dinner one night. It is these type of things that really bring a group together.
New idea for pre-trip retreats: Everyone camps in one giant tent after Burrito night.
Ben, Kat, and Caitlin responding to either a Joke by Spencer or my flatulence.
3/17/10 continued:
OH MY GOD. Today was so fucking amazing. After dinner, which was plentiful and delicious, (curry chicken w/ rice. better than the indian take-out AND dine-in we had in sydney. It was made on a camp stove. Ulla our cook is amazing) We went on a hunt for bugs again, this time for glow-worms. We took the same path we've been using for every field study, the wishing tree track. (named fot the giant strangler fig you can walk though because the tree it strangled has decomposed completely).
We stopped to look at a huntsman spider (Claire was not a fan) and saw some GIANT snails along the way. Went through the huge wishing tree (over 30 m tall and hollow almost all the way up) and down a path that went to the creek running @ the bottom of the hillside. There was a suspension bridge along with way, and since I was lagging behind I turned off my headlamp and did it in the pitch-black (and I mean PITCH-BLACK). Could cover/ no stars and in the middle of a dense, sub-tropical rainforest). It was awesome. I bounced up and down with each step and it was so fun. I told Claire to do the same when she came after me, but i turned on my light when she was 1/2 of the way across because she had started to hyperventilate.
Then I got up to a vine that KT and Annie were swinging on (u-shaped but about 6-8 cm thick) so I did THAT in the pitch-dark and that was fucking freaky/AMAZING. I was swinging back and fourth until Claire came down (about 2 min) and I waited until she was fairly close before I let out a loud cackle of "MWAH HAHAHAHAHAHA" and scared the shit out of her.
When we got down to the bottom of the creek we could see little green lights everywhere along the rocky protrusions from the track above. It was like a night sky full of green constellations. Our entire trip into the woods was a Nocturnal Disneyland.
We learned about how the worms live in mucus hammocks that they make, and catch prey in the mucus w/ their lights. The extra mucus looked like hanging icicles. So beautiful. Travis got some great shots of them but I can't put his photos up because i can't download anything on this computer.
Everyone headed back but Emily, Kelsey, Anna, myself, Rob, and Susan (our entomologist). We made out way back very slowly, stopping at all the bio-luminescing things, giant snails (baseball-sized), and critters. When Emily and I got to the suspension bridge we turned off out lights and we could see the stars up above us, and the green bio-luminescing constellations below.
THEN on our way back Susan saw a reflection off of her headlamp on a tree and pointed it out to Kelsey and myself. We thought she was insane. She kept describing where it was (on a tree 25 m away) we couldn't see anything on the tree. We walked off the trail to the tree and after a couple of minutes we spotted a gecko in the side of the tree. Impossible to see apart from the "eye reflection" (which I still couldn't see) and a very faint white line on its underbelly.
Rob caught up and got the spotlight on it and we moved around to see it from the front, but we lost it in its camouflage. we eventually saw it, though we still couldn't see the tail (it was a leaf-tailed gecko). Rob scampered up 8 m on the tree holing on to nothing but vines and grabbed the gecko. An amazing feat as he is aged-looking (65+?) and there were no branched low enough to grab on to.
We passed it around and IT WAS SO AMAZING. It loved me the most. It stayed still in everyone else's hands, but he licked me twice and then scaled my chest up to my neck.
What a night. When we got back i finally broke down and showered, (as my foot-funk was reaching biohazard levels) and I put on my old spice deodorant because it is cool enough to use it here without it melting.
Inside the wishing tree
Jack
Jack
Travis
Jack
We stopped to look at a huntsman spider (Claire was not a fan) and saw some GIANT snails along the way. Went through the huge wishing tree (over 30 m tall and hollow almost all the way up) and down a path that went to the creek running @ the bottom of the hillside. There was a suspension bridge along with way, and since I was lagging behind I turned off my headlamp and did it in the pitch-black (and I mean PITCH-BLACK). Could cover/ no stars and in the middle of a dense, sub-tropical rainforest). It was awesome. I bounced up and down with each step and it was so fun. I told Claire to do the same when she came after me, but i turned on my light when she was 1/2 of the way across because she had started to hyperventilate.
Then I got up to a vine that KT and Annie were swinging on (u-shaped but about 6-8 cm thick) so I did THAT in the pitch-dark and that was fucking freaky/AMAZING. I was swinging back and fourth until Claire came down (about 2 min) and I waited until she was fairly close before I let out a loud cackle of "MWAH HAHAHAHAHAHA" and scared the shit out of her.
When we got down to the bottom of the creek we could see little green lights everywhere along the rocky protrusions from the track above. It was like a night sky full of green constellations. Our entire trip into the woods was a Nocturnal Disneyland.
We learned about how the worms live in mucus hammocks that they make, and catch prey in the mucus w/ their lights. The extra mucus looked like hanging icicles. So beautiful. Travis got some great shots of them but I can't put his photos up because i can't download anything on this computer.
Everyone headed back but Emily, Kelsey, Anna, myself, Rob, and Susan (our entomologist). We made out way back very slowly, stopping at all the bio-luminescing things, giant snails (baseball-sized), and critters. When Emily and I got to the suspension bridge we turned off out lights and we could see the stars up above us, and the green bio-luminescing constellations below.
THEN on our way back Susan saw a reflection off of her headlamp on a tree and pointed it out to Kelsey and myself. We thought she was insane. She kept describing where it was (on a tree 25 m away) we couldn't see anything on the tree. We walked off the trail to the tree and after a couple of minutes we spotted a gecko in the side of the tree. Impossible to see apart from the "eye reflection" (which I still couldn't see) and a very faint white line on its underbelly.
Rob caught up and got the spotlight on it and we moved around to see it from the front, but we lost it in its camouflage. we eventually saw it, though we still couldn't see the tail (it was a leaf-tailed gecko). Rob scampered up 8 m on the tree holing on to nothing but vines and grabbed the gecko. An amazing feat as he is aged-looking (65+?) and there were no branched low enough to grab on to.
We passed it around and IT WAS SO AMAZING. It loved me the most. It stayed still in everyone else's hands, but he licked me twice and then scaled my chest up to my neck.
What a night. When we got back i finally broke down and showered, (as my foot-funk was reaching biohazard levels) and I put on my old spice deodorant because it is cool enough to use it here without it melting.
Inside the wishing tree
Jack
Jack
Travis
Jack
3/17/10
........we woke up at 5:30 to catch birds. Sorry. We LEFT at 5:30 to catch birds. we woke up earlier. It's wet and cold. We saw one. It was pretty cool. Worth getting up for. I got to hold it and its heart was going so fast that it felt like it was vibrating in my palm
-Passed out from 10-12:30
-Lunch was delicious
-Entomologist was SO AMAZING
*we set traps for bugs
*we netted bugs
*we whacked trees and collected bugs with those spider-sheet things
*we ripped apart logs and picked out the nastiest looking ones with tweezers
-20 different spiders
-Ants
-Isopods
-Gumball-sized rolly-polly bugs
-Snails
-SO FUN SO COOL. Could do that for hours. Now I kind of get my girlfriend's ability to sit in a lab for hours on end. If it was with bugs maybe I could do that too.
-Speaking of my girlfriend learned about the giant woodmoth. Gets as big as a Sparrow (maybe 300-500 grams?) thought she would love that one.
-Passed out from 10-12:30
-Lunch was delicious
-Entomologist was SO AMAZING
*we set traps for bugs
*we netted bugs
*we whacked trees and collected bugs with those spider-sheet things
*we ripped apart logs and picked out the nastiest looking ones with tweezers
-20 different spiders
-Ants
-Isopods
-Gumball-sized rolly-polly bugs
-Snails
-SO FUN SO COOL. Could do that for hours. Now I kind of get my girlfriend's ability to sit in a lab for hours on end. If it was with bugs maybe I could do that too.
-Speaking of my girlfriend learned about the giant woodmoth. Gets as big as a Sparrow (maybe 300-500 grams?) thought she would love that one.
3/16/10
-I am NOT a fan of waking up at 6 am to go look at things we trapped. Great its a possum. Great its 20 fucking rats. Oh, some of them aren't rats. They are "carnivorous marsupials". IT'S GOT A FUCKING RAT TAIL AND IT SMELLS AND IT SCAMPERS AROUND. ITS A FUCKING RAT. and its 6 am I don't want to watch this old bearded scientist man-handle a bunch of small furry things before I have breakfast. Oh, I also am not a fan of the 30 min hike to the start of the traps, and the 20 min it took to find all of them and the HOUR we spent looking at them, while Rob told us the same things over and over again.
-I hate scientists. They have so many rules. Especially Rob. He is a crotchety old man that likes things done EXACTLY how he has done them (since the dawn of time) and god forbid you put the traps in any other order besides elliot, (big fucking one I forget the name of), elliot. If you go elliot, elliot, (big fucking one) then you are essentially ruining the ENTIRE experiment. Because.... well I never really found out why despite my attempts to ask.
-Also, when tracking possums at night, I recorded the pacers steps when they we saw the possum. Not when we were directly under where It had been. Big mistake. everyone knows that the distance of 5 kelsey paces could ruin the entire fucking trip especially since WE WEREN'T EVEN TURNING IN THE DATA SHEET THAT I HAD TO WRITE ALL THE FUCKING INFORMATION IN. I COULD HAVE DRAWN A GIANT PENIS AND ROB WOULDN'T HAVE KNOWN.
-don't worry, only 3 more weeks of field study with Rob in charge.
-BIO-LUMINESCING FUNGI IS FUCKING AMAZING I WANT IT IN MY GARDEN AND IT WAS LIKE AVATAR BUT BETTER BECAUSE IT WAS REAL LIFE.
Courtesy of Travis
This was a pretty sight walking back to camp for breakfast (courtesy of Jack)
-I hate scientists. They have so many rules. Especially Rob. He is a crotchety old man that likes things done EXACTLY how he has done them (since the dawn of time) and god forbid you put the traps in any other order besides elliot, (big fucking one I forget the name of), elliot. If you go elliot, elliot, (big fucking one) then you are essentially ruining the ENTIRE experiment. Because.... well I never really found out why despite my attempts to ask.
-Also, when tracking possums at night, I recorded the pacers steps when they we saw the possum. Not when we were directly under where It had been. Big mistake. everyone knows that the distance of 5 kelsey paces could ruin the entire fucking trip especially since WE WEREN'T EVEN TURNING IN THE DATA SHEET THAT I HAD TO WRITE ALL THE FUCKING INFORMATION IN. I COULD HAVE DRAWN A GIANT PENIS AND ROB WOULDN'T HAVE KNOWN.
-don't worry, only 3 more weeks of field study with Rob in charge.
-BIO-LUMINESCING FUNGI IS FUCKING AMAZING I WANT IT IN MY GARDEN AND IT WAS LIKE AVATAR BUT BETTER BECAUSE IT WAS REAL LIFE.
Courtesy of Travis
This was a pretty sight walking back to camp for breakfast (courtesy of Jack)
3/15/10
-I hate being awake before 9 am. I hate being awake with other people around at 9 am. My only consolation is that Kelsey, who I am sharing a tent with, is even more lethargic in the morning than me
-Strangler figs are SO COOL.
-One of the reasons that humans are so prosperous is that we have very little body hair and we can sweat. Therefore we can track prey for a long time and when it finally has to stop to pant in order to cool themselves down, we just spear them.
-There were bush turkeys screaming, (yes SCREAMing) in the middle of the night last night. I wanted to get up to go pee, but it was too dark to see and I didn't want to risk a pecker to my pecker. I held it til morning. Also, rats tried to get into our tent, I could hear them scurrying under our rain fly and trying to get the velcro up, but I was too sleepy to care.
-Leeches are everywhere.
-Strangler figs are SO COOL.
-One of the reasons that humans are so prosperous is that we have very little body hair and we can sweat. Therefore we can track prey for a long time and when it finally has to stop to pant in order to cool themselves down, we just spear them.
-There were bush turkeys screaming, (yes SCREAMing) in the middle of the night last night. I wanted to get up to go pee, but it was too dark to see and I didn't want to risk a pecker to my pecker. I held it til morning. Also, rats tried to get into our tent, I could hear them scurrying under our rain fly and trying to get the velcro up, but I was too sleepy to care.
-Leeches are everywhere.
Lamington Plateau
Ok. I've got 1 hr until my bus leaves and just enough money to pay for the internet. I'm gonna bullet point my week at Lamington, w/ a few extended descriptions, then post up as many pictures as I can. I've got much more to say on this past week in Noosa, but you'll have to wait until I get back on the 15th to hear it all because I don't have enough time.
3/4/10
-There is no point in stargazing in the Northern Hemisphere. Looking at the other side of the milky way sparkling like a million grains of sand blown across the cloudless night sky is enough to make oneself lost in space and time.
-PADEMELONS! OMG OMG OMG WITH BABIES!
-That was one of the VERY few times the sky was cloudless. It was fucking wet and cold al goddamn week. I left portland because it was 50 degrees and raining. I don't want any more of it now that I am here
-Bower birds= amazing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bower_bird
(Photos courtesy of Travis/Jack/myself)
Bower bird nest @ our campsite. This things are amazing. Rob said that there was a study done where a group of scientists broke up a bunch of blue glass bottles, and scratched the surface to identify them. Then then tracked them and found that each piece of glass could move up to 3 different nests per day. That means that the male bower birds (during mating season) are constantly stealing each other's "blue treasures"
3/4/10
-There is no point in stargazing in the Northern Hemisphere. Looking at the other side of the milky way sparkling like a million grains of sand blown across the cloudless night sky is enough to make oneself lost in space and time.
-PADEMELONS! OMG OMG OMG WITH BABIES!
-That was one of the VERY few times the sky was cloudless. It was fucking wet and cold al goddamn week. I left portland because it was 50 degrees and raining. I don't want any more of it now that I am here
-Bower birds= amazing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bower_bird
(Photos courtesy of Travis/Jack/myself)
Bower bird nest @ our campsite. This things are amazing. Rob said that there was a study done where a group of scientists broke up a bunch of blue glass bottles, and scratched the surface to identify them. Then then tracked them and found that each piece of glass could move up to 3 different nests per day. That means that the male bower birds (during mating season) are constantly stealing each other's "blue treasures"
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