Since this is my first time posting to this blog, I guess I’ll start with a little introduction…
I’m Kristina McOmber, Pomona College ’12, and I am working on a major in Biology. My academic adviser and mentor, Professor Karnovsky, helped me find an amazing internship for this summer – volunteering for PRBO Conservation Science on the Southeast Farallon Island (SEFI). Eleanor Caves, who also contributes to this blog, did the same internship for PRBO last year. Like Eleanor, I’ll be doing seabird research on the island, which I will be describing in detail over the next 8 weeks while I’m on the island, so hold your horses on the details.
So…. AFTER I told a bajillion people to follow the blog to stay updated with me, I realized I’m not a very great blog writer… uh oh… so bear with me this summer while I try my best to let you know what’s going on at the SEFI, and don’t refer to Eleanor’s past posts, because it’ll probably make me look bad.
First mistake: I didn’t take any pictures today. Whoops!
Anyway, the Cheyenne, a 34′ sailboat, captained by (is that the right term???) skipper Jim Fryer, is a volunteer boat that is part of the fleet of volunteers that take interns/biologists/supplies/trash to and from the island known as the Farallon Patrol. Yay for volunteers! The Cheyenne will be taking us out to SEFI tomorrow morning at 7:30 am from the Golden Gate Yacht Club. It’ll be a 3-5 hour trip, so I’m definitely taking some Bonine! It’s great for preventing seasickness. Much better than those lame patches that never work (equals barf barf vom, which is never pleasant).
So today, my family drove me from our home in Foster City to Petaluma, where PRBO’s headquarters are, and we got a room at the Sheraton so that I’ll be able to get to the headquarters at 6 tomorrow.
I met Jessie today, who is one of the other interns that I will be living and working with this summer. She’s really cool! She’s 23, graduated from UCSC, and already has some seabird research under her belt.
Jessie and I got to PRBO hq today around noon, did the paperwork, then got keys to the van so we could go SHOPPING!!!!! no…. not any retail therapy in union square. We went to Shell to get some propane and Safeway to get food for the 6 people that will be on the island for the next two weeks.
Ok, so, food shopping was, in one word, ridiculously hilarious. Ok, I cheated and used two words, it’s ok. ok? ok.
The list was 4 pages long. Jessie and I filled two shopping carts till they were almost overflowing, and about half of a third cart. Some of the stuff was very particular, like gluten-free soy sauce, unsweetened and semi-sweet baking chocolate, and agave syrup (which I couldn’t find…. sorry!), and others were just kind of silly in that the amount we collected seemed comical. Like, we got 6 bunches of bananas, 20 pounds of flour, 3 BAGS of bell peppers, 5 pounds of ground beef, etc.
We got some funny looks and one lady even told me that I had the most organized cart she had ever seen (at that point I had only gotten through half of the first page, I doubt she would have maintained that opinion at the end). The receipt was probably 4 feet long. The total cost was around $770, but PRBO’s club card and coupons brought it down to about $690.
The cashier thanked us for helping her keep her job.
We packed all the groceries, mail, and packages into “action packers” which are good for boat travel because they are large secure bins that are waterproof.
Afterwords, my parents, sister, and I went out to dinner in downtown Petaluma at “Graffiti” which was super fancy and nice and DELICIOUS. yummmmm!
And that was today in a nutshell!
Love, Kristina