As my brief post from last week showed, things are finally moving in the field over here. That meant a couple field days, several lab days, and generally being more excited about my work again. Everything was so slow that I'd been wondering if somehow I was so inept in the field that I had managed to miss an important (and large!) hatching period.
But no, all is well. And as I was out collecting in everything from misty cool rain to driving sun in a few days, in a couple locations, it occurred to me that it might be fun to talk about the mass of stuff that I keep in my car for these occasions. This was reinforced on Monday, when I quite suddenly needed a small jar to put thousands of little hatching larvae before transporting them back to the lab. I was running through the mental list of things that I had or have had in my car (could I use that old paper coffee cup sitting in the backseat? did I have a water bottle in the car? a plastic sandwich container? a Mason jar?) -- but when I started rummaging around in the trunk, I found just what I was looking for: a tiny Nalgene bottle for keeping plankton samples.
So what does live in my trunk? Clothes for all seasons. I have a baseball cap, a knitted headband, and a knitted hat to be worn and layered as needed. There's an oversized denim long-sleeve shirt for chilly weather and a lined, waterproof windbreaker for rain. I have a pair of yellow rubber dishwashing gloves for cold winter water, and a pair of thin knit gloves to put under them. I have hip waders for cold water and water sandals (the kind with the rubber toes, that look like sneakers) for warm water. And, of course, there's a towel.
And then there's the gear. A bucket, a small lunch cooler, the aforementioned collecting jars, an aquarium bubbler, cable ties, a Leatherman, a mesh bag, an empty water bottle, a stopwatch, a meter tape, a net.
Sometimes I wonder if it's really stupid to haul all of that around, everywhere. It probably is. It would be smarter and more gas-efficient to have a couple of crates in the lab that I could grab before I go out: summer gear, winter gear, collecting gear, field experiment gear. But I really like knowing that I don't ever have to worry about forgetting things. And then, every once in a while (like on Monday), I really need some obscure thing that I'd forgotten about that's stashed back there.
I probably could vacuum out the sand, though.
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