27 May 2013

Back in Time

This weekend was far less active compared to my last, but I got a special surprise activity on Sunday.

I went to Lee Vining to attend church and pick up a few staple foods at the Mono Market. When I came back in the afternoon there was a red tent set up behind my house... hmm.... I deposited my groceries and went back outside to investigate. I met a group of a guys who were using old-style cameras (and a lot of chemicals) to make tin-types - well, aluminum types, but hey. There were also a couple guys there taking pictures on x-ray film, and also taking photos for some sort of tricky carbon developing process that involves gelatin and 4 days of your time, and makes photographs that will last forever.

"We really want to get pictures of people in costume," they said, "we like taking photos of the buildings, but what we really love is portraiture!"

Well, it was my day off, after all....

I ate lunch, walked down to the barn, pulled out my favorite late-1800s costume, got dressed, and walked back up to the house, where five exuberant photographers spent the better part of the afternoon posing me for exposures lasting as long as 25 seconds and averaging at about 15 seconds. Norm and Dave, who were dressed up to give Stamp Mill tours and history talks today, also came over and lent their services, with stunning results. I didn't see all the different photographs that they took of me, but I did get to see a few. One tin type, in particular, was astoundingly perfect. They took down my information and promised to send me some prints of the photographs they had taken. The one who does the carbon process is going to send me the real deal, the tin typers I don't know if they'll send me prints or an actual tin type - we'll see. Either way, it turned out to be a very fun afternoon and really interesting. Certainly the experience of a lifetime. How often do you get to sit for tin types in this day and age?

But now it's back to work - my weekend got cut short because one of our staff members is indisposed and I'm going to work a week of 8-hour days to help with coverage.

Until next time!

20 May 2013

Guessing Game

What did I do this weekend? Follow the pictures and see if you can figure it out!
Somewhere along Geiger Grade...


The view from my lunch break

Golden Eagle!!
Half-and-half Hill ??

A lovely view of the road.

Flowing water - after Big Bend this seems ludicrous

Campsite - have you figured it out yet?

Leaving, and arriving where??

Arrived!
So what did I do this weekend?

I walked to Bridgeport to pick up my mail.
And then I hitched a couple rides home.
All in a day's work. Wait a second - it's my weekend! Yippee!

Until next time!

12 May 2013

Another Milestone

I just authorized the payment that will bring my student loans under the $10,000 mark. Sure, it won't go through for a couple of days, but I'm still going to celebrate. Yippee!!

In the year that I've been paying them off, I've managed to pay out over $5,000. Granted, some of that was with a little help from my parents (a year-end gift that they gave to each of my siblings which, for me, naturally went towards my first student loan payments), but the majority of it was me pinching pennies and putting 40% of my paycheck towards loan payments. And if the trend continues, and I continue to remain employed for the majority of the year, I have every hope that I will be able to get these paid off within a couple years, and that is a heartening thought.

As for other milestones, I'd like to talk about goals for a moment. I like to have goals for my seasons before I get going in them. This season I have 3 main goals:
  1. Amp up my hiking mileage and try to get out with my backpack a bit more. This means that I want to work on hiking farther at a go than normal - I did lots of 4-8 mile hikes on a regular basis at Big Bend; now I want to start making 8-14 more of the norm, and even put some 14-20 milers in there. And I want to use my backpack and camp out. I only used it once last year (that fun time with my Tucson friend in the Superstition Mountains) and that barely warrants it the space that it takes up in my well-tetrised car. I'd like to try and get out with my backpack at least once a month, at least for a one night trip.
  2. Create a social life outside of Bodie. I've decided that I've spent too much of my time in town. I need to get out more, meet people in the neighboring towns, and do things with them! It'd be healthier for me to have other social circles than just the dozen or so people I work with every day, and I don't want a repeat of any of the craziness that went down last season. No, this season: I'm going to get out more.
  3. Read, a lot. Last year, of my half dozen or so books that I lugged across the country, I only read a handful of them. At Big Bend, I had one book that I was halfway through when I arrived which I didn't finish until after I left. Where does all my spare time go? A lot of it went to fun activities, yes, but a large part of it was wasted on the computer. No bueno. I've decided to try and spend more of my free time reading this season, and so far I've already read one book (Old Murders Never Die - a cheesy, poorly written murder mystery that took place in a ghost town, which made it a fun read) and listened to another (The Hunger Games!) on tape. I even got a library card and picked up a few books there. My currently cracked spine is the Big Bend favorite "The Secret Knowledge of Water" by Craig Childs. I'm two chapters in, and I highly recommend it. So I'll try to keep you guys tuned in to what I'm reading and my running book total for the summer. Summer reading club... it's like I'm a kid again. :)
So there they are in writing: my goals for the season. I'll be sure to check in here and evaluate how I'm doing as time goes by. And in case you missed it, my mailing address was in my last post, so you should check that out if you want to send me anything for some reason. But for now I think I ought to sign off - it's getting dark and I want to read some more of Childs' book before I go to bed. I've had enough computing for the evening as it is!

Until next time...

10 May 2013

A familiar place

The harsh fragrance of the bitter brush - rabbit brush - fills my nostrils, wreathed with the hint of warm pine and desert sage. Birds call, the sun is shining - though not too warmly - and I can't help but feel content.

I'm back at Mark and Lynn's house, tucked up against the mountains on the edge of Antelope Valley - no, not Lancaster, the other one. The one that has the little towns of Walker, Coleville, and Topaz nestled within it. The expansive view is dotted with trees and cows, flat pastures and rolling foothills into the mountains beyond. It's here that I spent multiple weekends "getting away" last summer, and I feel almost as comfortable as if it were my own home. Funny that I've only been in here with its owners  maybe once or twice, compared to the several nights I have spent here on my own.

I've performed most of the settle-in actions, now. I've nearly unpacked all my things in my room at Bodie, and will probably put up my decorations this week. I set up my p.o. box in Bridgeport, and even got a library card. (By the way, if you want to mail me something, my current address is P.O. Box 442, Bridgeport, CA 93517.) I made a few phone calls and bought a sandwich from Albert's, with every intention of being back there on my way back from grocery-getting tomorrow to pick up some deli-sliced meat and cheese for sandwiches. I miss eating meat and cheese sandwiches, and I think it would do me good to add them to the diet once more - at least every so often.

That's about it for now. I think I'm going to go read some of those books that I got from the library while there is still daylight left.

Until next time!

07 May 2013

A big hug to the cold!

Last night I experienced something I don't think I've ever seen before: Thunder Snow!

And this morning, when I woke up, I was pleased to see that it was still snowing big fluffy flakes outside. In fact, I made a snowman on the bench outside the museum before the park opened. It was on and off snowing for most of the day, with the exception of the parts where it got warm enough to rain. But mostly it was the beautiful white stuff, coming down from the heavens. Oh how I missed it this winter!
Thanks to Eric or Tyler or both of them, I've got a nice new stack of wood outside my house, which I started bringing in after work and I've got a cozy little fire going in the wood stove. It never ceases to amaze me how those things will heat up a room with just a few pieces of wood and some flame. Thinking back to my first season here, I've come a long way in my wood stove skills! I think one of my favorite things about the cold is being able to feel cozy and warm in it, and the wood stove (plus my holey knit slippers and my mohair/wool knit blanket) certainly helps that.
Of course, by the end of the day it was much warmed up and the streets were looking completely clear. But now that I've got the fire going, it's decided to snow again out there. But I don't really mind that the weather can't make up its mind. I'm perfectly content to be in here with my little stove and my forthcoming cup of hot cocoa on a cold day.

04 May 2013

Serendipity

Yesterday I had just arranged myself on the bench outside Mono Market to write a letter when a woman came from across the street and asked if I lived in Lee Vining.
"Sort of," I replied.
"Do you have a car?"
"Yes, it's right there."
She then proceeded to explain that her car was in the shop and she needed to get herself and her stuff from the hotel and car to her rental house on the north side of Mono Lake, on Cottonwood Canyon Road. "The nearest cab is in Mammoth," she explained, "and he wanted to charge me $180. I will give you $100 if you taxi me."

Hard to say no to that. Turns out, Anne is a glacier researcher who rents this house with her friends for four months out of the year and does about two weeks of work and several weeks of fun. And which house is it? The one that was pointed out to me my very first time down the Cottonwood Canyon Road - the off-the-grid house belonging to the granddaughter of Ansel Adams. And I got to go inside. Not only that, but we exchanged phone numbers and she said she'd invite me down to a bbq there sometime.

Just goes to show: it pays to sit on public benches.

Of course, my oil change (which I got in town because I was 1500 miles overdue) ended up costing $65.15, so most of that $100 disappeared. But I still ended the day $35 richer than I started! Although, when you include my groceries and the Monorrito I bought for lunch, maybe it's more like $5. But either way: I spent a day on the town that didn't end up costing me a dime. How about that?

Until next time!

01 May 2013

Back in Bodie

I'm back in Bodie, living in the Gregory house (like last year), with a sub-par tent trailer stored down at Milk Ranch that I'm probably going to try and sell in a few weeks, but we'll see.

The camper in Las Vegas turned out to be sorely water damaged and I had to turn it down, and on a whim I ended up in Los Angeles that night and stayed with my friends Roger and Cecile for a few fun days. I picked up a relatively cheap tent trailer on the way up to Bodie, but once I got here and set it up, I realized that it probably wasn't going to work out after all - like a big reality check at exactly the wrong moment. I still might give it another shot when they get the water turned on (because right now there's no showers and no bathrooms down there!), but for now I'm in housing. Which, unfortunately, is exactly where I didn't want to be.

In the past, coming to Bodie was an exciting thing that I looked forward to and I was always so glad when I got here. But somehow this year is different: I'm already counting the days 'til I leave. I miss Big Bend, oddly enough, and I'm constantly wishing I was back there. In fact, I've already started corresponding with them about how soon I can start this fall. I'm not sure what makes this season different - is it the disappointment with the trailer fiasco? is it just that I'm here so early that there's hardly any people in town and I'm feeling lonely? or did I really fall that much in love with Big Bend that the prospect of being away for 4+ months seems that harrowing? I'm not really sure. Today I start work, so hopefully the busyness will help me get back into the swing of things. I won't start working for the state and doing interp and the like until the 15th, but at least working in the museum will give me something to do and get me used to answering questions about the park again. My first days off I'm going into town - I have to get my oil changed, set up my mail for the season, and hopefully find a hiking buddy or two.

Until next time!