All kinds of crazy...

Today was the last and most intense field trip of my plant ecology class. We went to a biological preserve in the Coast Ranges, the same place where I got poison oak during orientation. Today I was even more likely to get poison oak. In fact, it is an absolute certainty that I touched it, grabbed it, fell into it, brushed against it, was poked by it, nestled in a glen of it, you get the picture... But I took two precautionary measures. First I put some goo on, kind of like insect repellant, that is supposed to make your skin impermeable to the itch oils. The professor let us all partake of it... Second, I expressly went to a drug store yesterday to get Tecnu, and cleansed myself thoroughly with it upon returning home. Tecnu is a very stringent soap that is supposed to remove the itch oils from your skin. So hopefully everything will be alright. I have had poison oak three times already in 2002, so the way the year is trending, I won't be surprised at all if I still end up getting poison oak. I'd better not eat any peanuts or mango for a while....

So what did we do on this field trip? We sampled the chaparral. Oh baby, crawling through chaparral is just such fun... (blech). This was worse chaparral than what I've crawled through before. Poison oak was more widespread, and it was all on the side of a mountain with an average slope of 45%. Super.

But it was fun. And we made some interesting discoveries. My group found a marijuana plantation. It had been harvested very recently. There were still a couple plants lying around, that hadn't even started to wilt. It was pretty big. Probably had had over 100 plants. Another group on the opposite hill found the farmers' camp, including a stash of the harvest. It was my first sight of marijauna. I've led a sheltered life.... Pretty creepy though. The "farmers" had clearly been there that very day, and had probably been scared off by our group. I'm glad they'd already harvested. Who knows what they'd've done to us otherwise!

So yeah. That's the excitement for today. Now I have to go scavenge for dinner. I hope there's no poison oak on the steering wheel!