Baja Day 3
4/5/10
The bonfire last night was amazing. I took up the position of firewood-getter, feeding my inner-pyro. We all went around introducing ourselves with something that was unique about us and I found out that a lot more people play Call of Duty than I originally speculated. I was one of the last people to go, so since gamer chick was already taken I decided to go with the truth. I told the group how I had never actually intended to take the class and how much I have enjoyed it thus far. I told them what I really wanted out of Baja was to have a true vacationing experience, because I'd never had that as a child. Oh, and I also made some Cholla jokes, which got big laughs, but the nickname Hurrikane has stuck. I'm not complaining, I like it.
Today was our cooking day. After last night's bonfire, which was nothing short of awesome, I had slept like a baby. Much to my dismay, Dang woke us up early to start working on breakfast for the camp. I was a little nervous about working with the group, as I didn't really know any of them that well, save for Cooper. While we were making the “Egg McMarvs” we started talking in accents to entertain ourselves. Cooper did a hilarious Russian accent while Aaron and I mimicked Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was a great feeling to know that the years of practicing that accent with Austin made that moment happen, because it made the start of the day much more fun that I usually project it to be.
Today we were also in charge of burning all the trash that had accumulated over the last two days. So, furthering my pyro-enthusiasm, I was placed in charge of lighting the diesel-drenched waste. I ended up just lighting a piece of cardboard on fire and putting it in the general area of the trash and watched the magic unfold. We had a lot of stuff to do, specifically: starting our sandy beach study, but instead we sat there for fifteeen minutes and watched the fire with a fervid excitement that could be considered borderline madness. On our way back down I got Cholla'd AGAIN. Luckily it was just on my foot, so Josh burned it off with the lighter.
Sandy beach reminded me of everything that I didn't like about the sand unit. I couldn't for the life of me remember the names of anything...save for the mollusks. We had to dig a hole during the study, trying to determine what organisms live in the sand. What surpised me, even after learing so much during this class, was that there were so many things living underneath the sand and the rocks. We found brittle stars, sun stars...it was incredible. When it finally came time to do the beach seine, I was pretty pessimistic about being able to catch anything. I hadn't seen anything in the water, and knowing my luck we probably wouldn't see a damn thing. Not even five feet out we happened upon our first crab, which was my first encounter with anything but a hermit crab...ever. So I was pretty shocked to see the size of this thing. Josh was obsessed with catching it, and we almost did, but when we had to turn the net around we lost it, but compensated for it when we saw a fish and a stingray of sorts. Turns out we lost the stingray too, but we actually got to identify the fish. It was a bullseye pufferfish, and it seriously had the coolest eyes I've ever seen. Poor cooper got stung by a stingray on the way back, even though he was shuffling, but the funny thing is we all thought it was the crab coming to seek revenge.
At lunch we had to make sandwiches for everybody. At this point I had completey forgotten about the existance of flies, so trying to slap the turkey and cheese on a piece of bread turned out to be a game of ninja trying to swipe the damn things away. Needless to say, my arms have been tired all day.
I hadn't been able to do much else all day because most of it was devoted to kitchen clean up and dish washing. This of course was enlightened by the fact that Cooper continues to talk in hilarious accents. Fun Fact: Cooper apparently won a family dishwashing competition. So needless to say we put him in charge of the heavy duty cleaning.
Mid afternoon the fish started to come in, where I witnessed my first fish-cleaning. Ordinarily I would have been creeped out, but it was actually pretty cool. Gary did most of the cleaning while I volunteered to run back into the ocean to get clean water for the table. I had no idea who he was at the beginning of the trip, but he's a pretty cool guy, who really knows his fish.
When the filets had been cut, our group had been put in charge of preparing them for the batter. We were apparently making fish tacos, and after my last encounter with seafood was a little wary about trying it. After painstakingly cleaning every bit of sand off of them, we were assigned separate duties, I volunteered to be...battered-fish...distributor..of sorts. Where I helped Hudson and Gary by putting battered filets in the frying pans. Gary was quick to praise me for my help earlier and for my bonfire speech last night, where my apparent obsession with Tina Fey was incorporated when Hudson joked about being nominated for a Tina Fey award....I like it. Somewhere between chatting with the two of them, listening to classic rocks songs on Josh's CD and the photo ops with Ian's dad I had a moment of clarity. I was at peace, I was finally doing what I had come here for. It was like i was part of a family, cooking a meal and enjoying time together under the moonlight of animas. The emotion I felt at that exact moment was foreign, it was a new type of happiness. Something genuine, not artificially inserted by playing a video game or watching 30 Rock alone in my room. It was awesome. As time went on my hand began to cramp from the constant use of the thongs. In that moment I felt a perfect opportunity to make use of my well known gamer-nerd persona. So I cracked a joke about how my hands hadn't cramped this much even while playing Wow all day, and of course I was made fun of, but it was all in good humor. I loved it. Gary, Ian's dad, and many of the other adults have also taken to calling me Hurrikane, so I'm less apprehensive about whether or not it's a joke. It's official, I'm The Hurrikane.
When everyone was fed and happily sitting by the bonfire, our group still had to work on our entertainment for the night. We were woefully unprepared at this point, and I had nothing. But Josh put all of our talents, and my apparent new celebritay to use. I was to air guitar to a Bon Jovi song on a shovel. Aaron was going to write some poetry, Haley present an award to Clarke for “help reducing the population of bunnies by way of SUV” and to top it all off, we had glowsticks. Lots and lots of glowsticks. Our performance was received well enough, and unfortunately Clarke had gone to bed, so we wouldn't be able to get to see her reaction until the morning.
Later in the evening we saw a single light off in the distance on the water. Naturally, we all assumed it was a drug cartel, so we were all freaking out. Hudson calmed us down with a reassuring “If I die, run!”. Turned out it was some guys who had wanted to sell us some scallops they had fished up.
Much later Hudson showed us out to the water, where I saw bioluminesence for the first time. This was awesome because I had only ever visualized the concept in my notes or seen the artificial glow produced by the two enzymes in class. But to see it out on the field, where it should be was simply amazing. It wasn't very bright, but when I skipped the rocks on the water I could see the sparks. I was totally tempted right there to put on my wetsuit and go snorkeling, but I didn't. Still, it was awesome, it can't be iterated enough.